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BackStage Pass - Season 4 Number 4

And here we go, the eight maps that will be posted to the Dodecahedron this month (April 2017). With Patreon's removal of sub-$1 patron levels as of this month this goes out to all patrons. 

As always, thank you so much for your support, you make this possible. Also I've got a super-secret MAJOR project that I'm starting work on this month that won't be realized in completion until sometime in 2018. It's a huge commercial commission piece that I was hired to do - which was base...

Release the Kraken on Dreifer's Fortress!

Every month that funding here remains over the $400 mark we vote on a selection of maps to see which will be released under the free commercial-use license. Last month the second choice was Dreifer’s Fortress from the summer of 2014.

Normally my maps come with a story, but this one didn’t. So, let’s fix that!

The coastal stronghold of Dreifer’s Fortress looks out over what becomes the Persimmon Sea to the north and the Dragon Sea to the south. Once a military installat...

The Reanimator's Home

Torsus Keld tries to remain unnoticed among the townfolk, but it is hard when you are the only person in the area with a background involving a significant amount of adventuring, spellcasting and magical research.

Mr Keld has specialized in the animation of the inanimate. While this normally is reserved to small homonculi and similar, his recent experiments have been towards building golems and in that process he has been finding himself working with corpses – and the town is beco...

Release the Kraken upon Tramur's Lakehouse!

The old stone structure at the end of the lake by Devil’s Creek has been quiet but not abandoned for a few years now and the town folk know to keep their distance. Once the lakehouse of Viscount Tramur, it is now home to strange and somewhat disturbing demonic Kabuki infestation. The white-faced demons maintain the grounds immediately around the lakehouse and are said to grab anyone coming too close and forcing them to watch their endless plays… and then something even more foul perha...

Videric's Hollow

“The crone Amylindis is whom you will have to find for those herbs you seek. She has built a small hut in the woods, at Videric’s Hollow. But she’ll not be glad to see you, she doesn’t like strangers… and you folk are certainly that.”

In the wooded hills northeast of Kreland’s Ford is a small gap in the hills made notable by a small spring-fed stream that has cut a small cave into the earth and stones below. Folk tales postulate that this was the home of Vider...

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Some very minor changes to the campaign are coming today. Nothing that should impact most patrons except those pledging at the 5c and 5c levels.

Somewhere along the way Patreon turned off the ability to accept pledges below the $1 mark. They did this once before and then apologized, reinstated it, and told us they would let us know if and when said change would be implemented.

It seems it happened a few months ago.

So today I'm going to be removing the 5c and 50c patronage options ...

The Crashed Engine

When the flaming metal castle arrived in the skies, it was intercepted by three warlocks in mid-air – one on her hippogriff, one on flying carpet, and one just levitating there in the skies as this monstrosity of steel and fire approached.

But as hoped, their magics prevailed and the castle was shattered and fell to the land in pieces – most into the Lake of 800 Lilies, but one section sliding along the shore to come to rest near the fishing village of Velland.

This piece ...

The 2016 Dodecahedron Cartographic Review

Another year of maps! 107 pages of maps with annotations curated from the maps posted to the Dodecahedron throughout 2016 (basically all the maps posted except for the My Private Jakalla maps which are still not complete).

The Review is available in two formats. The main emphasis of the release is an 8.5 x 11 inch spiral-bound book offered through Lulu. As spiral binding isn’t available through OBS, this is only available through the Lulu storefront. This $18 print editi...

Lords of the Aldeiron Peaks

On the highest ridge of the Aldeiron Peaks, looking down over the city of Samlein is the hold of those who call themselves the "Lords of the Aldeiron Peaks". Cut into the near vertical cliff faces are caves on each side of the narrow ridge that lead into the lair of three mighty drakes and below that the small headquarters of the three lords who ride them.

Not actual nobles, these lords are successful adventurers who trained the drakes years ago and have settled here where they can ...

Sietch of Morning

In the desert, dug into rocky promontories and outcroppings, are the secret homes of the desert “nomads” – the sietches. The Sietch of Morning is a mid-sized sietch – acting not only as a village home for the desert folk, but incorporating a meeting hall and home for a small cult of the sisterhood.

Like most successful sietches, the Sietch of Morning incorporates a number of wind traps to draw air down deep into the rock where moisture is trapped and extracted to maintain a ...

Secret Codices of the Emerald Hawk Society

The Emerald Hawk Society is one of those organizations that coins itself a secret society, but that is far too proud of themselves to keep it a secret.

The “secret” headquarters of the society is a heavy stone building that was once a “small” guard post for a much larger estate within the city walls. The society has converted it into an exclusive clubhouse with dark wood furnishings, displays of minor artifacts and other goods they have acquired over the years, and of course...

Gateway to the Valley of Revelations

The drenkind come from a small mountain valley known to those who have visited it and the few sages that know of them as “the Valley of Revelations”. Within this secret mountain valley they once maintained their farms and a community of tens of thousands.

Now there are but a few of the blue-skinned drenkind remaining, most living within their mountain valley monastery. The old stepped farms have sat fallow, and the valley is mostly grass and small forests concealing old village and farm ru...

Fortress of Diane the Thrice-Damned

When betrayed during her plot to take the throne from her sister, Diane the Thrice-Damned retreated to this small fortress for the next five years along with the witch Enshelon and the company of a few loyal men at arms.

The fortress had been a guard fort in previous years, marking out the oceanside limits of the throne’s lands. With the turmoil caused by Diane the Thrice-Damned’s attempt at the throne, it was easily taken over by her small retinue and her sister chose to ignore her presen...

Voting for this month's commercial releases!

Look at me, trying hard to not fall behind like I did last month!

Here's this month's "Release the Kraken" poll - https://goo.gl/forms/06ch4ClNg4z2BTNf2

Behind the Fallen God

We rebelled.

We fought the priests and the blue-skinned mercenaries they had hired from other worlds with the money they had made on the backs of the people. Blood ran red and purple in the streets for days.

Then a brave soul climbed upon the idol of Sur-Es-Allo and was not immediately struck down by madness or disease. And to one of the idol’s tentacles he tied a length of strong hemp rope.

And we pulled.

We had intended only to destroy the idol, symbol of the p...

Backstage Pass - March 2017

 March is here (which means GM's Day is just around the corner), so here is this month's backstage pass!  

Thank you so much for your support!  

Crypts & Tombs beneath the Graveyard

On Friday I posted a map of secret tunnels and crypts beneath the Graveyard of the Thoughtful Daughter. At the north end of those tunnels, reached through a secret panel in the floor of the mausoleum of Ankrabar the Violet, a mostly collapsed archway leads into a larger underground sepulcher – which is where this map begins.

The old sepulcher at the bottom of the map has been buried and forgotten, the entranceway filled in with rubble, then overgrown, and finally a new mausoleum w...

Release the Kraken upon the Breached Fortress of Anoros!

Another month over the $500 funding mark means that we took the top two entries from this month's voting for re-release under the commercial license. I re-released Ravenson's Landing yesterday, and today it is joined by a slightly cleaned up Breached Fortress of Anoros. As with all the Release the Kraken posts, this is not a "paid post".

The Fortress of Anoros has long been buried beneath the Three Peaks. Originally cut into the peaks by a warrior of the plane of Earth trap...

Release the Kraken upon Ravenson's Landing!

Every month that we maintain funding over the $400 mark I sift through my back catalog and bring up a selection of maps that we then vote on as to which will be released under the free commercial-use license. This month we are releasing two such maps, the first of which is Ravenson's Landing. As such, this is (as always with the Release the Kraken posts) a free post:

The small community of Ravenson’s Landing lies in a shallow bay by a small river, a useful source of fre...

Secret tunnels beneath the graveyard

The tombs and mausoleums of the Graveyard of the Thoughtful Daughter encrust the hill in the northeast of city of the gods concealing the older graveyard that has been here since the foundation of the city that stood here before.

A secret door in the stonework of the mausoleum of Ankrabar the Violet leads down into a series of tunnels and crypts leftover from the original graveyard. Tight damp tunnels lead from crypt to crypt and to the occasional sealed tomb. Some of these tunnels ...

My Private Jakalla - Map 1H

It is time to dig deep under the city streets of a yet unnamed city of Tekumel. The goal of this project (started last year) is to produce a large set of maps that interconnect to produce something akin to, but very much different in style from, the original Jakallan Underworld map that M.A.R. Barker used in his Empire of the Petal Throne games.

This is the eighth map in the set, and the blog post will bring you to the rest.

Like the last part of the undercity map, this map co...

AIEEE! We're late! Release the February Krakens!

Yeah, I'm WAY late in getting this poll out this month. So that means YOU have only a week (well, not even that) to vote on what maps are being reissued under the commercial license this month!

Voting on this one will be closed on the 24th of February after I release the Friday Map next week so I can release the kraken maps over the last weekend of February.

Follow this link to vote!

https://goo.gl/fo...

Garlough's Grisk Refinery

A key component in many healing potions is the dried remnants of the grisk – a mollusk with near-magical regenerative powers. Except of course it is a lot of trouble to get significant quantities of dried grisk… being that it is very hard to kill.

So here we come to Garlough’s Grisk Refinery, built around a tidal pool on the rocky shores of Iron Cauldron Bay near where one of the few natural grisk colonies was found.

Garlough’s breeds and collects grisks in the first p...

Bellfield Landings

Everything that can go wrong is going wrong in Bellfield Landings.

Something keeps digging up the graveyard and chewing on the bodies – except for the bodies that get upset about that kind of thing and start fighting back and then wandering into town wondering why they were buried in the first place.

The priest was sacrificed on his own altar last night, his blood used in some horrific demon summoning ritual that has even darker forces slipping into town through the corrupte...

The Underhill Saloon & Eatery

Cut into the hillside under the Temple of Three Winds are ten round windows that look into the Underhill Saloon and Eatery, a halfling establishment that attempts to cater to all comers.

While traditionally halfling in architecture and design, the Underhill Saloon itself is built mostly to human scale. On a busy evening the drinking and eating overflows from the main hall into the entry hall and sometimes even the coatroom where guests are cheered as they enter the building either f...

Portal of the Elder Brain

The House of the Ten Chambers of Errestos is an arcane cult dedicated to unraveling mysteries mathematical and metamagical. Their membership is small and scattered throughout many places of learning both arcane and divine. The largest group of the Castellans of Ten Chambers live and work in the city of Kaldath where they have painstakingly assembled a physical reproduction of some of the interdimensional mathematics that they study.

The residents of the city have other names for the...

The Kobold Cicruit

When I talk about my dislike for Tucker’s Kobolds, I usually admit that I once ran a Tucker’s Kobolds style adventure in my teens when I thought it was clever to do everything in my power as a DM to make 1/2HD, low-intelligence humanoids into top-trained commando killers just like in that classic Dragon magazine article.

And then someone tells me how much they’d love to see a map designed for such a thing.

While this map is inspired by Tucker’s Kobolds with many very s...

February Patreon Update

Happy February, patrons of the Dodecahedron!

I'm running a bit late this month, so the map post that would normally be up today will be going up tomorrow.

The backstage pass for this month just went up for all patrons at the $1 level and above.

Rewards were NOT mailed out last month to patrons at the $12.50 level. That will be remedied on Monday when I mail out last month's along with this month's. The goal was to get a small poster-map version of Myrelin's Skyrealm done...

Backstage Pass - February 2017

February is here, and so is this month's Backstage Pass!

Enjoy!

From Winterspire to Yoon-Suin (poster map)

We finally finished our first Dungeons & Dragons 5e campaign last month – and to celebrate the end of the campaign I made a poster-map that I gave out to all the players in the group as the campaign wound down.

Over a week and a half, I took the original map that I drew up for the campaign (last spring, about two-thirds of the way through the game) and expanded on it and drew it at a much larger size – where the first map took up most of a letter page, this version took up f...