I draw the occasional D&D map

[Dyson Logos]

Gorgeous! I love your work!

Thank you, good sir and mayor / sheriff 'round these parts. Meriff. Mayor and Sheriff. It sounds better in my head.

Have run across your maps several times before, and always been amazed by the quality and imagination. Where do you usually start? With a doodle, some random lines? Or do you usually have most of it mapped out in your head before you put the pen to the paper?

Depends on the map. But generally it starts with one room, one hall, one set of stairs, etc, and grows on its own from there.

 

[Cripes]

Depends on the map. But generally it starts with one room, one hall, one set of stairs, etc, and grows on its own from there.

Ah, I really dig that variant of the creative process myself.. Just start somewhere (be it with a map, ideas for a planet, a town full of intrigue, or what have you), get going, and see where you end up. Somehow it often just starts growing on its own, developing a life and direction that you had no idea even existed. Love that.

 

[le grand fromage]

Another fan here, I've copies on my bookshelves of your 2014, 15 & 16 Cartographic reviews and Dyson Delves 1&2, bought through Lulu. Hoping you might in the future publish some of your mega-dungeon compilations in the same fashion??

 

[darjr]

Love your maps. Printed out they are fabulous!

 

[Dyson Logos]

Another fan here, I've copies on my bookshelves of your 2014, 15 & 16 Cartographic reviews and Dyson Delves 1&2, bought through Lulu. Hoping you might in the future publish some of your mega-dungeon compilations in the same fashion??

I WANT to, but I don't feel that just releasing the maps in a book is sufficient, and I never find myself with enough time to really fill them up properly to the point where I'll be happy releasing them.

Love your maps. Printed out they are fabulous!View attachment 92085

Thanks!

It was definitely quite cool to be commissioned to draw a map for an official D&D product release!

 

[darjr]

Well here’s to many more!

 

[Dyson Logos]

Not all towns and cities are built along rivers, trade roads, and bays… Some boast the most spectacular scenery they can find, and in Thunderhead’s case, if the scenery isn’t good enough, the whole city travels to somewhere with even better views.

Thunderhead is built on magically resistant and strong “cloudstuff”. Once the domain of cloud giants and their kin, the city is now mostly populated by humans with a smaller population of avariels along with a number of aarakocra clans that nest beneath the city in the cloudstuff itself.

Chancellor Zamhatos, a potent sphinx storm sorcerer, doesn’t so much rule the city as maintain peace through threat of power and a network of favours and information that flows out from him to the major families in the cloud. A number of churches to most of the sky gods and stormy powers can be found in Thunderhead, and the city is considered a plum assignment by most associated clergies.

The 1200 dpi version of the map can be downloaded for free thanks to my Patreon supporters at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/thunderhead-the-cloud-city/

 

[Piratecat]

Your work is really gorgeous! Thank you so much for sharing and posting these. I love to see them.

 

[Dyson Logos]

Here is a somewhat rough and quick map of the Vigilance Trail as it comes down from Raven’s Pass in the Eastern Diamond Range. Not many use Raven’s Pass anymore – the major towns on each side of the pass have mostly died out and most trade now runs south of here to take advantage of routes through Yoon-Suin and the City of Copper Bowls.

Vigilance Trail still sees a few travelers every month – rarely even enough for banditry to be successful along the route. That said, someone has been burning down the abandoned structures in the area. The old inn at the base of the pass is now nothing but ashes and bits of cracked rock walls, and even Overlook Tower south of the inn structures has been burned out and is slowly collapsing with no wooden supports remaining.

The blame goes back and forth between extremist druids or other creatures in the woods, or goblins or other humanoids crawling out by Helm’s Pond at the base of the small waterfall. All that’s left in the immediate region that one would call “civilized” is the Brownside Farm by Raven’s Lake, and the small tower of the retired Magus of Orange.

There are of course several other points of interest near the Vigilance Trail.

A single menhir stands along the road between the Orange tower and the Brownside farm. The menhir is a grey stone, typical of the area, and is very worn down with very little of the old text cut into it remaining – it also detects as magical but no one has figured out exactly what the magic is.

Helm’s Pond has the obvious cave at the base of the waterfall, where rumours are that hostile humanoids are crawling up from the deeps. The reality is that this cave does indeed descend deep into the stony depths, but no humanoids make their homes here because of the much darker evil that twists the depths.

Southwest of the menhir and town is a small cave in the hills – an actual home to a small clan of goblins who try to keep to themselves and are hiding from the evil in the Helm’s Cave pond as well as the locals.

You can download the 1200dpi version of the Vigilance Trail map from the blog post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/22/vigilance-trail/

 

[DeanP]

I'm a fan of your work as well Dyson. I especially liked the "human touch" of pen and ink.