D&D General Maps, Maps, Maps! Dungeons, Ruins, Caverns, Temples, and more... aka Where Dyson Dumps His Maps.

Index Card Dungeon II – Map 9 – Ancient Sewers

This is the ninth map in the Index Card Dungeon II set. This map sits directly to the east of Map 8 (Connecting Tunnels). It has no remaining surface connections, as the city above was razed many ages ago, leaving only a few basements and bits of sewers.

The cult is blissfully unaware of the ancient sewers and have not ventured within. The main interest (aside from adventure) would be the quest for esoteric knowledge about the ruined city while attempting to figure out who lived there and who destroyed it so long ago.

Over time the collapsed sewers have been infiltrated by water that flows in from the west along with a few blind cave fish. The water slowly seeps through the ruins deeper into the rubble and detritus of the ancient city that once stood here. While most of the sewers collapsed long ago, the remaining stonework shows excellent craftsmanship and includes a lot of faded bas-relief carvings (quite elaborate and time-consuming for work done on civic sewers).

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 9,000 x 5,400 pixels (30 x 18 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 2,100 x 1,260 or 4,200 x 2,520, respectively.

Hexatomb

Outside of the City of Copper Bowls, at the border between the farmlands that support it and the badlands beyond, is the Hexatomb – an old burial site that is the source of ghost stories more than anything else anymore. Inside, it shows signs of having been used for small illicit parties, as a goat shed during bad weather, and at some point, an archery range had been set up here, shooting at the central statue.

Signs of foot traffic in and out of the tomb seem a little too frequent and a little too recent when compared to the interior. Secretive survivors of the purging of the Heretics of Zhole have found the secret back chambers of this tomb and use them to meet each other and to conceal the Zhole-blessed – a priest who has been changed by Zhole in its image. The Zhole-blessed’s head is now a cube of blue crystalline material with a soft glow. The rest of the blessed’s body has also begun mutating, and they now stand roughly nine feet tall.

The hexagonal chamber at the south end of the map is a two-tiered room. The lower tier (reached through the door on the north side) is two flights of stairs below the height of the upper (southern) tier. The chamber attached to the upper tier is the home of the Zhole-blessed, with the other survivors of the purge generally still living in town in secret and only coming out here once a fortnight.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 6,600 x 10,200 pixels (22 x 34 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 1,540 x 2,380 or 3,080 x 4,760, respectively.

Depths of the Ashen Throne

The Ashen Throne is a dungeon near the Cindermaw – an ancient volcanic caldera. A geothermally heated subterranean river carves through winding corridors, pooling in eerie grottoes that glow with phosphorescent fungi. Scattered throughout are crystalline veins and a lone, pulsing amethyst shard rumored to guide or mislead those who seek it.

Centuries ago, an elementalist named Vaerush carved the labyrinth to tap the earth’s ley lines and amplify their divinatory magic. After Vaerush vanished, a cult of echo-sprinters – spirits bound to the structure’s resonant geometry – claimed the site as their sanctum. Over time, kobold miners tunnelled in, drawn by whispers of untold wealth – reshaping passages and trapping unwary intruders.

Recently the Ashen Throne became home to a half dozen small groups of kobolds led by “Compass-Claw” Skik, who hoards sparkling gemstones; echo-sprinter spirits that replay sounds from the labyrinth’s past; a water weird named Currifold who is jealous of any who dirty its subterranean river; and a set of crystal living statues that guard the massive amethyst shard.

Now a renowned cartographer is hiring adventurers – they have heard that there are a series of maps that lead to the amethyst chamber in the Ashen Throne… but they are carved into the ruins of several structures around the Cindermaw. The cartographer wants copies of these maps, and for the adventurers to follow said maps to retrieve the amethyst shard (not realizing exactly how big that shard is).

The actual design of this map was purely an exercise to fill a 16 x 9 inch page – the same ratio as a standard TV or monitor. Why? WALLPAPER! I currently use “The Halls of Geryon” as my desktop, but it gets cut off on the right and left sides. So I drew this (and another one I’m posting later this month) as potential replacements. As a display piece, it has a few “easter eggs”, the most obvious one being the compass rose appearing as an actual part of the structure.

As such, there are 4k and 1080p versions of the map for download at the blog post.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 19,200 x 10,800 pixels in size (64 x 36 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 4,480 x 2,520 or 8,960 x 5,040 respectively.

Graxworm – Map 17 – The Belly

The Graxworm is a massive dead dragon of mythic scale, several miles long and large enough to contain a town in the mouth. Creatures have set up here to “mine” the massive corpse for its valuable materials – leather, scales, ichor, tendons, and more. Practically every bit has some value to someone, and in the long term, the expectation is that nothing will remain, not even the massive bones. Today’s map is down beneath the Corpsegaard – the great belly of the beast itself. The graxworm has multiple stomachs, and here we are exploring one of them.

The belly of the beast is a foul rotting miasma – pools of corrosive ichor stand stagnant and foul in the great sagging caverns that were the stomachs. As such, much of the space around the stomachs is turned over to industrial processing (due to the easy access to the ichors) and to the prisons and holding facilities within the beast. The industrial facilities are mostly in line with those shown in maps 13 & 14, and the holding facilities are similar to the dungeons (shown in map 19) and are used to hold reticent and rebellious spawn, as well as captured labourers who are too resistant to be kept with the general workforce.

Since this area is drawn at a smaller scale as used for the industrial areas and the Corpsegaard, this map is presented without a grid.

The Graxworm Megadungeon was proposed to me by Gallant Knight Games – a dungeon set within the corpse of a dragon some seven miles in length. If I were to map out the whole thing we’d be looking at a good 100+ maps, so instead we’ll be focusing on points of interest as a sort of “point crawl” megadungeon setting. We are finally approaching the end of this megaproject!

The Pillared Vault of Serathis

Nestled beneath crumbling temple ruins, the Shattered Vault of Serathis is a damp and sprawling complex. Rough-cut stone columns rise from wet stone floors, vaulted halls drip with moisture. Ornate runes glow faintly along cracked walls, hinting at long-forgotten rituals. Alcoves conceal old scrolls now rotted and mildewy.

The vault served as Serathis’s inner sanctum – a secluded priest of the princes of the elemental planes. Serathis slowly went mad and paranoid, and when their paranoia finally pushed them over the edge, they chased off all other priests and faithful and finally fractured the vault itself with arcane wards to keep it out of the hands of their perceived enemies. Since then, the temple above collapsed, sealing the Vault in ominous silence.

Elemental Unrest & The Shade’s Bargain

Corrupted elementals and strange fluctuations in elemental magic have plagued the tower of Melwer the Mage (a low-level wizard with delusions of adequacy) and he believes the source of these disturbances is the ancient elemental temple in the Red Swamp (which was once the Red Forest, but has slowly flooded over the last few hundred years). But those who take up his request to descend into the ancient halls awaken the Seeker’s Shade (an ally of Serathis who was slain in the time of paranoia and isolation). The Seeker’s Shade will offer explorers arcane secrets in exchange for reconstructing the fractured wards – if they can gather the rune fragments and re-empower them. This will of course increase the regional elemental magic fluctuations and enrage Melwer the Mage.

And of course, within the Vault, elemental-based magics are unpredictable and erratic, at times empowered, disrupted, or changed by Serathis’s broken wards.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 x 7,500 pixels in size (48 x 25 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 3,360 x 1,750 or 6,720 x 3,500 respectively.

Graxworm - Map 18 - Servitors' Quarters

The Graxworm is a massive dead dragon of mythic scale, several miles long and large enough to contain a town in the mouth. Creatures have set up here to “mine” the massive corpse for its valuable materials – leather, scales, ichor, tendons, and more. Practically every bit has some value to someone, and in the long term, the expectation is that nothing will remain, not even the massive bones. This is our last map in the set – exploring a section of the upper intestines that has been converted into servitors’ quarters for the favoured of the death god.

As mentioned earlier in the series, while the “public face” of the Graxworm is up in Graxworm town where various humanoid groups have settled and seem to be running the show, the reality is that the vast effort to convert the Graxworm into hardware and temporary housing is being lead by sapient maggot-like creatures that inhabit the Corpsegaard – the city at the heart of the great wyrm.

Here we have housing for the lowest of these creatures – the servitor class that dig and harvest materials and bring them for processing – as well as the uncontrolled “young”. The young are no more than giant maggots at this stage, eating tunnels through the corrupted flesh of the graxworm and generally being underfoot.

This whole section is mostly untouched – the structures cut into the walls of the intestines are unpolished and rough, and many are uninhabited. Strips of tissue hang from the walls and ceiling, and the whole environment is unlit, moist, and foul. The small tunnels that snake through the area are the passages cut by the younger maggots, consuming their way through the Graxworm and “preparing” areas to be harvested in the future.

The Graxworm Megadungeon was proposed to me by Gallant Knight Games – a dungeon set within the corpse of a dragon some seven miles in length. If I were to map out the whole thing we’d be looking at a good 100+ maps, so instead we’ll be focusing on points of interest as a sort of “point crawl” megadungeon setting. This is the final map for this collection – I might come back to it to describe other points of interest in the future, but this completes the full selection of maps as indicated on the Graxworm exterior view.

Reliquary of Whispering Steel

Long buried beneath the fractured remnants of an ancient battlefield, the Reliquary of Whispering Steel was excavated to house the armaments of legendary warriors whose souls were bound to their blades. Over time, these weapons began to whisper forgotten lore and forbidden secrets, attracting those drawn to power and madness alike.

The Shattered Hall
The main entry is a once-grand corridor littered with broken weapons. Every sound here reverberates with ghostly whispers. If you listen to them they are sometimes informative, sometimes maddening. Decoding the echoes can reveal the secret door at the north end of the hall to the secret tombs beyond.

Bound Blades of the Moon
Six spectral weapons float in the air, each slowly rotating, in the circular chamber with the moon inlay on the floor. Interacting with the blades can summon the spirit of their fallen warrior to consult with – but be warned that some of these spirits will demand a deadly trial to prove one’s worth.

Seekers of the Reliquary are many. The most likely reason is to uncover lost historical knowledge from the spirits, weapons, and whispers. Others seek to recover a legendary cursed weapon that whispers tactical insights in battle. And some find themselves tasked with quests tied to the redemption or destruction of warrior souls still bound to their steel.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 x 19,200 pixels in size (48 x 64 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 3,360 x 4,480 or 6,720 x 8,960 respectively.

Dyson Logos said:

View attachment 412651

Reliquary of Whispering Steel

Long buried beneath the fractured remnants of an ancient battlefield, the Reliquary of Whispering Steel was excavated to house the armaments of legendary warriors whose souls were bound to their blades. Over time, these weapons began to whisper forgotten lore and forbidden secrets, attracting those drawn to power and madness alike.

The Shattered Hall
The main entry is a once-grand corridor littered with broken weapons. Every sound here reverberates with ghostly whispers. If you listen to them they are sometimes informative, sometimes maddening. Decoding the echoes can reveal the secret door at the north end of the hall to the secret tombs beyond.

Bound Blades of the Moon
Six spectral weapons float in the air, each slowly rotating, in the circular chamber with the moon inlay on the floor. Interacting with the blades can summon the spirit of their fallen warrior to consult with – but be warned that some of these spirits will demand a deadly trial to prove one’s worth.

Seekers of the Reliquary are many. The most likely reason is to uncover lost historical knowledge from the spirits, weapons, and whispers. Others seek to recover a legendary cursed weapon that whispers tactical insights in battle. And some find themselves tasked with quests tied to the redemption or destruction of warrior souls still bound to their steel.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 x 19,200 pixels in size (48 x 64 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 3,360 x 4,480 or 6,720 x 8,960 respectively.

Reliquary of Whispering Steel

Reliquary of Whispering Steel (300 dpi promo) Long buried beneath the fractured remnants of an ancient battlefield, the Reliquary of Whispering Steel was excavated to house the armaments of legenda…

dysonlogos.blog

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a MOST EXCELLENT dungeon

Scavengers' Deep - Map 21

The Scavengers’ Deep is a reminder of the amount of work that went into underground structures during the great war. Generally, the elves only built underground when hiding their breeding and research facilities, whereas the forces of the kingdoms, assisted by the dwarves, were constantly building underground as the elves were unrelenting and would completely raze any surface defences that they defeated.

But the structures now known as the Scavengers’ Deep are atypical, an elven complex mixing some (ruined) surface structures, natural caves, and significant sprawling underground complexes dedicated to research, training, and breeding their slave species.

This is the twenty-first map in the Scavengers’ Deep series – this sits to the south of Map 13 (released… eight months ago). This map starts a new row of maps along the bottom of the existing set.

We are back on the west side of the mesa that makes up the Scavengers’ Deep megadungeon.

As with most of the west side of the mesa, military structures were built into or attached to the mesa here. The main element of note here is a cluster of three hexagonal bastions – one is built into the mesa proper with an enclosed roof, while the other two are shorter and topped with battlements and are connected by an elevated walkway to the first.

A fourth, smaller bastion protrudes from the mesa just south of the three, with windows looking down over the area and arrow slits along the hallway that leads to it.

Most of the north side of this map is dedicated to the small fortress that contains the bastions. There are two ways of getting into the fortress from within the mesa complex, but both require going through some of the hall of columns in the centre of the map. This passage connects to the long curving passage that leads to the maps to the south and east of this map.

There is a single breeding pit similar in design to the others throughout the complex – a corkscrew ramp behind an iron grate leads down to the lower levels of the pit, while observers can watch from the entry level or the lab level above it.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 x 14,400 pixels (48 x 48 squares) in size. To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the suggested 10′ squares that this is designed around) – so resizing it to either 3,360 x 3,360 or 6,720 x 6720 pixels in size, respectively.