I draw the occasional D&D map

[Dyson Logos]

The lair of Qiroi, scaled wyrm of the Red Fjords, is far from secret. The rocks for a mile around are burned free of all plantlife, the waters tainted, the skies quiet. The entrance to the old dungeons beneath the ruins of Caenleigh Hold are clearly marked with his spoor and shed scales. And within the dungeons you can hear the serpentine slithering of the long monstrous dragon.

Qiroi is no fool or bestial dragon. The sounds and movement within the dungeons east of the entrance cave are those of illusions planted to lure the unwary. For Qiroi lives beneath the dungeon, in a set of chambers reached through the river that feeds the ancient Caenleigh well.

But he is still a dragon, and has little patience for interlopers and would-be dragon hunters. He uses the illusions and distractions to help him get the jump on intruders, to strike them from behind with his corrosive breath and potent magics.

High resolution B&W and shaded versions of the map are at: https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/20/well-of-the-wyrm/

 

[Dyson Logos]

Much of the daily life in Archsford, the City of Glass, is managed by the Council of The Ancient Masters – a collective guildhall representing all the major guilds and many of the minor guilds in the city (Glassblowers, Masons, Cartwrights, Stevedores, Coopers, Merchants, Mourners, Physicians, Scribes, Charcoal-Burners, and a few others).

From the Guildhall, they organize the city watch and defenses, as well as festivals, trade agreements with other cities, tax collection, and many things that one would expect to be handled by the Duke of Archsford and his civil service.

The hub of the Council is the Guildhall and temple of the Ancient Masters – a combined keep, place of worship, and town hall. On entry to the structure, the large main hall is usually populated with small lean-to shops (and the three chambers on the left are more permanent stores selling wares imported by members of the guildhall from strange and exotic lands). The rooms on the right are dedicated to the civil service and records of the guild.

The northern chamber is the main worship hall for the ancient masters themselves, the ancestor-gods of the temple. Most truly important meetings with the senior members of the guild are usually handled in this chamber and the room to the west, pacing around and occasionally intoning chants and rites while engaged in negotiations and power-brokering.

Beneath the temple are the crypts. This well-hidden substructure is only accessible via a secret door under the chair set in front of the statues of the three ancient masters in the main hall. Down here are the three crypts of the masters, who still whisper advice and prophecy to scribes who sit outside the crypts with one ear to the cracked masonry. A larger chamber past the crypts holds the scrolls of what the scribes have gleaned from the masters, as well as a secret door to a deeper crypt where something darker is entombed.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/22/guildhall-and-temple-of-the-ancient-masters/

 

[Dyson Logos]

A small keep within spitting distance of the Kearwood Grove - a sanctified grove of the druids of the Somernigan Woods - Sanhelter Keep is essentially a ranger base for keeping an eye on whomever or whatever moves in or our of the woods.

At some point the lords of Sanhelter stopped watching for poachers in the Somernigan, leaving that to the druids (and turning a blind eye to anything the druids may be doing that the Lords of Amargos would not approve of).

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/25/sanhelter-keep/

 

[Dyson Logos]

Home to foul goblinoids now, the Sapphire Vault appears to have been part of some larger structure at one point – the construction of which is significantly beyond the skills of the current inhabitants. Access to the vault is via one of two small caves on the cliff-face – the smaller cave being about 12 feet above the larger and used primarily as a look-out for invaders, looters, and adventurers.

Once past the rough entrance of the cave, the walls of the vault are covered in bright blue tiles – although many are cracked or missing from ages of abuse. Three major chambers exist within the vault, two of which are used as living areas by the goblinoids and the furthest one from the entrance claimed as the domain of their priest-king.

The goblinoids have not discovered the secret cave and passage from the southern chamber to the base of the cliff face. The cave was obviously used to store provisions by a previous tenant, and the dried remains of foodstuffs and a few now empty casks of water can be found down here along with some tools and other goods.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/29/the-sapphire-vault/

 

[Turgenev]

Great stuff as always, Dyson!

Cheers,
Tim

 

[Dyson Logos]

Above the waterfall on the Azer river is an outcropping of pink granite with a small flat plateau atop it. J’cob Wyvernseeker earned his title here as his travelling companions from Elk Harbor watched him climb the rock and be picked up by a wyvern that he then flew across the sea to the west.

Some say he was just killed up there by a passing wyvern, and the stories of his travelling companions were just fanciful tales to get them an extra drink or two at the tavern.

Regardless, the landmark also marks the location of a small “dungeon” – a set of passages and stairs that are used to cross both the Azer river and avoid the waterfall in the process. The passages of Wyvernseeker Rock are damp and foul – the stonework probably dwarven, but never completed.

This map was inspired by the module “Eye of the Serpent”, an AD&D1e adventure published in 1984 that I recently played through with the Monday Night Labyrinth Lord group. The maps in that adventure were drawn by Geoff Wingate / Paul Ruiz and it is specifically his style of rock face that I’m trying to emulate in this map.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/05/wyvernseeker-rock/

 

[Dyson Logos]

The tomb of the Kirin-Born Prince is one of the older known tombs of the Etturan Dynasty – and one of the few who’s location was not lost with the burning of the Tarek Archives. Many expeditions to seek out the later “shaft-tombs” often use this tomb as a sort of base camp, much to the chagrin of the Etran Cenobites.

A small order of religious monks has sprung up around several of the rediscovered Etturan tombs and attempt to maintain or rehabilitate the structures to worship and seek the gifts of the many god-kings that were entombed in the region. However, their numbers are few and the gifts of god-kings are sparse if not completely non-existent – thus the Etran Cenobites eke out a paltry living, only noticed when they harass would-be tomb-raiders.

This map was inspired by the Empire of the Petal Throne campaign I’ve been playing in – where we recently went exploring an old Engsvanyali-era tomb on the southern continent. The linework was all done on paper, with the shading added digitally afterwards.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/08/tomb-of-the-kirin-born-prince/

 

[Dyson Logos]

Perched out in a small lake in the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams is a small stony island keep only a hundred or so feet from shore. Surrounded by the heavy swamp forests, the island and keep are only visible when you fly overhead or manage to get to the shore of the nameless lake.

Built with a combination of magic and bullywug slave labour, the small keep on the nameless lake was meant to be Greth’s place of refuge as he studied the effects of the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams. But as with most who decide to live in the swamp, Greth long ago ceased to be an impartial observer and has instead found himself in a strange nightmare, no longer remembering why he is here, trapped on this small island refuge surrounded by the timeless swamp and the strange creatures that wander it.

Ever since I started practicing drawing and illustrating, I’ve been enjoying the heavy smooth lines of working with a Sharpie marker. So occasionally I take the marker to my map work. This map is inspired in a large part by the small island keep in the Eye of the Serpent module which I also drew in this style while exploring it in a recent Monday night game session.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/11/greths-island-keep/

 

[Dyson Logos]

This month’s map of Prince’s Harbour is set at the outlet of the Gnoll’s Ear River into the Prince’s Harbour itself off the Flindhome River. Land along the Gnoll’s Ear is rough and rocky, making it poor farmland in most cases except in small stretches where significant soil has built up.

The Gnoll’s Ear has a bad reputation, a rough current, and a lot of rocks, so few homes are built along it proper – instead most people build homes nearby, tucked into the forest or along the roads outside of the main streets of Prince’s Harbour itself just to the north. Properties here are a mix of subsistence farming and lower class residential for those who work for the craftsfolk and richer families in town.

The main reason adventurers may find themselves in this area is a passing interest in the burned ruins of a major structure on the partial peninsula formed by the Gnoll’s Ear, or just when travelling through the area.

The ruins were a three-story stone manor house and outbuildings – there used to be a road between them and Jendson’s Mine on Map 1, but it is almost entirely lost to nature now. The ruins have been used as a meeting place and “haunted ruins” dares by the youth of Prince’s Harbour for a couple of generations now, so everyone would be quite surprised if it turned out that there was indeed a secret haunted basement to the structure that can only be found by someone carrying the magical key to it.

Each hex on the map is roughly 100 feet face-to-face. The Prince’s Harbour maps are the first set of maps on the blog drawn entirely digitally in Photoshop – which has been a learning curve for me. Because I was in the middle of a major learning curve drawing this, they are being released as 300dpi jpgs instead of my usual 1200 dpi pngs. There will be a total of 9 maps in the set when complete.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/13/princes-harbour-map-2/

 

[Dyson Logos]

A dense complex of odd chambers and nonsensical halls, Izzel’s Folly is home to at least one foul fiend normally only found in the third glaucous hell and is in turn overrun with foul little humanoids that seem to spontaneously erupt through from their particular hell to accompany (and feed) the fiend.

Izzel originally built this as part of a larger structure in their research into summoning forth the many alchemical salts of the yellow hells – but at some point everything went wrong. The surface structures are all destroyed and all that remains are these underground areas which were once painted in all imaginable shades of yellow, but which are now a pale blue-grey (and occasionally green-grey where the brightest yellows still cling).

The structures down here include a variety of pseudo-temples (to contact the residents of the yellow hells), strange metamagical machineries, workspaces, grand halls, secret chambers, and even a chamber completely divorced from the rest of the structure, only reachable through passwall, teleportation, and similar magics.

And of course, many foul little demonic beasts.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/15/the-many-chambers-of-izzels-folly/