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

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Wit & Wisdom Apothecary

The tenth shop in our small shops series of businesses at the intersection of Market & Random - this tiny structure is home to a herbalist and many, many of their herbs.

This shop is run by a surprisingly young vendor considering the name and the stereotype of elder women as the collectors and masters of herbs and poultices. The vendor generally remains in the structure – coming out if strictly necessary, but otherwise only seen in the mornings and evenings as they string up low value herbs outside the shop to attract business (and to try to overwhelm the stink of Red’s Leatherworks).

The shop itself is closed for two and sometimes three days a week as the owner heads to the docks to acquire herbs from distant lands and then to head out of the city to hunt for the mainstays of their business.

While the ground floor looks very tight on the map, it doesn’t really do justice to walking in the door and finding yourself in a single room with herbs hanging from nearly every inch of available surface – the beams overhead, nails in the walls, string running from nail to nail, and so on. Ensconced in all these herbs is a wood stove and two chairs – one where the owner sits and one for customers to explain what they need (and preferably give the full backstory over a cup of strange tea).

A trap door leads down to the basement where herbs that are more effective when not fully dried are kept, again hanging from every possible location including off the ladder. Upstairs is a tiny two-room apartment divided by a curtain where the proprietor lives.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 6,300 x 4,800 pixels (21 x 16 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) – so resizing the image to 1,470 x 1,120 pixels.

 

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Ruins of the Waste Treatment Facility

The remains of a waste treatment facility draw attention, but rarely does anyone stick around them for long. Massive pipes lead here from different parts of the ruined city, coming out of the sewers and leading to these ruins. Some follow to find out if the pipes once carried water (hoping for a source of water, or to turn it back on somehow), others just to find out where they lead, and a few to prey on those in the first two categories.

The machinery was long ago stripped for parts to be used in other wasteland revival projects, and sections of the retaining walls have collapsed. Two structures and five concrete “lagoons” of various sizes remain, connected by ancient rusting pipes once painted green.

Obviously to anyone who’s played Fallout, this kind of location is pretty typical of the later games. Definitely have some mirelurks around the place, and some mutant ones in the smaller processing plant.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 9,600 x 12,000 pixels (32 x 40). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for 10‘ squares) – so resizing the image to 2,800 x 2,240 pixels or 5,600 x 4,480 pixels, respectively.


 

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A Roman Fantasy Town

Drawn for an upcoming novel by Jason Tondro, this started out as an isometric map of a Roman settlement for a setting with more magic (and a lot more necromancy) than the real world and slowly morphed into more of an illustration of the same. It still works as a map but is significantly more fiddly and detailed than what I normally draw for such items.

The basic shape and structure of the settlement are based on the ruins of an actual Roman settlement in Spain. Some liberties were of course taken for this fantasy version of the settlement – with emphasis on shrines and two necropoli as well as a functional outer wall. The outer wall can be bypassed by climbing the tall hill upon which the Sanctuary is built – but that portion of the hill is quite steep with forest between it and the mountains shortly behind there, making it a possible way for a few people to slip in and out if they avoid the guards, but not a viable way of moving any decent military force into place. The rear of the Sanctuary provides a formidable wall of its own.

The main structure at the base of the hill is the forum, with the baths at the far end. Between the forum and the sanctuary are several temples (the main ones being to Dispater & Mercury) and some administrative structures. Down below the forum are the houses of rich locals who generally run the government of the civitas – the settlement and the lands around it – which in this case includes several copper and iron mines which make the local magistrates quite rich, which in turn results in the town’s upgraded baths and other structures as they compete with each other to be the most “generous” to the settlement to raise their own status.

This fantasy version of the town has a significant necromantic presence, thus explaining the two different mausoleums. The southern one is full of crypts, whereas the one on the very left of the map is full of niches where urns filled with cremated remains are placed.

When Jason Tondro’s novel is released, I’ll write up another post about it and where to get it. In the meantime, hopefully, this settlement can make an impact on your game worlds.

 


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Blackspear Outpost Overrun

Something powerful smashed through this small dwarven fortress. You can trace its path from the southern of the front doors to the outpost, up the flights of stairs to the “hall of friends” and then south and east through a wall, more doors and to the warking’s audience chamber. Here the path continues, smashing the warking’s throne, and then through the secret passage behind it. It isn’t hard to figure out where this beast caught up with the dwarf it sought, for the trail of destruction ends at the next corner – where the beast has completely smashed the stonework in its frenzy to consume the unlucky dwarf.

Aside from the damage of the rampaging beast, the outpost is in fine shape, showing the attention that its caretakers lavished on stonework and maintenance. There are a number of secret doors, mostly connected to the warking’s secret passage (that connects their chambers, the throne, the throne room antechamber, the small redoubt on the southeast corner, and a secret exit just beyond the redoubt.

To the south of the throne room is another guard room, and beyond that are the Blackspear Vaults. The door to the main vault sits open, looted and barren. But the door to the second vault remains sealed – the keys needed to bypass the magical traps and locks consumed with the death of the warking.

Most of the outpost remains in exactly the shape it was when the warking was consumed – stone furniture generally untouched but stripped of bedding, dishes, and so on. The bookshelves are empty but for dust, the main vault’s chests lie open, with only a few copper coins scattered around the floor, and an eerie wind blows through the place.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,200 x 11,700 pixels in size (34 x 39 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 that works with the furnishings as presented) – so resizing it to either 2,380 x 2,730 or 4,670 x 5,460 pixels, respectively.

 

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Graxworm Map 15 – Lungs Detail

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 we are deep within the corpse of the graxworm – sections of the lungs reached via Corpsegaard (the secret city at the heart of the fell beast). While most of the lungs are petrified, clever engineering has converted the alveoli within the lungs into the bellows that power the manufacturing and refining capacity of the necro-industrial complex.

Like most of the industrial processes within the Graxworm, the pattern of this map repeats itself with variation from section to section throughout the lungs. An overview of the lungs and how they are accessed will be included in the map of the Bastion city of Corpsegaard. While Corpsegaard has secret accessways into the mountain upon which the Graxworm lies, the bellows here are connected to air shafts that lead to the outside – each shaft opening to a set of a dozen or so fist-sized holes under a scale on the corpse to hide them from view. Observers of the Graxworm have identified that air is taken in beneath the scales by watching how the occasional morning fog that shrouds the mountain is pulled into the chest area.

Many amateur engineers have worked on the various bellows to various effect. This particular example shows three different types, each powered by ropes or chains attached to a wheel rotated by those unfortunate enough to be the workers down here (slaves or the lowest caste of the grubs). The structures to the left of the bellows (cut into the outer wall of the lungs) are used to house these lowly workers – with mustering chambers between their housing area and the bellows themselves.

We have other chambers within this section of the lungs – one with pipes leading to it indicating that it used to have one of the bellows within until the alveoli finally rotted away. Other chambers contain “fresh” air sacs (still filthy with rot and nacreous fluids) to be harvested for the bellows. Finally, a manifold on the far right takes the various bellow inputs and pushes the air out to the city or the industrial processes.

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’ll be posting a few maps in the set every month for… well… quite some time!

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,200 x 13,200 pixels in size (34 x 44 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 2,380 x 3,080 or 4,760 x 6,160 pixels, respectively.


 

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Longboat Mountain – The Cold Stones

The trail up Longboat Mountain splits in several places – the first is between the Silver Vale and the Drop Falls where another path takes travellers along the west face of the mountain towards Red Eagle Tower. The second split occurs up past Reflecing Lake where the main path follows the stream coming down the mountain from the valley at the top, but a side branch heads up to a relatively flat area set with standing stones of Brobdingnagian proportions (the largest being 25 feet across and slightly over 60 feet tall).

The stones are used by a small circle of druids who ignore the other creatures and hazards of the mountain, arriving in bird form to this ritual site.

The brave folk who have explored the mountain (and those who listened to their stories in the taverns for years after) call this circle “the cold stones” as the stones are always chilled to the touch (and surrounded by a ground mist around them as the cold interacts with the mountain air) and they say that magics that produce either heat (or flames) or cold seem to be pulled into the stones harmlessly instead of manifesting as normal.

The stones protect a magical portal through to a small dungeon deep beneath them. The portal opens up under the table / lintel stones on the upper right side of the circle – and can only be opened by casting (and the stones absorbing) two fire spells and two cold spells. This opens the shimmering blue portal for fifteen minutes before it closes again.

The small space beneath the stones has no other human-sized access. Travelling through the portal lands one on the very small island in the centre of the root-filled caves below. Also on this island are five small stones in a circle around the portal – if the portal is closed (as it does after fifteen minutes) casting any fire or cold spell at or within this small circle of stones will reopen the portal for one minute.

From the tight entry cave, one can squeeze around stones at the ends of two of the five points in the cave to enter a slightly larger cave that has been set up as a refuge and vigil for the druids of the Longboat Mountain circle. There are rarely any members of the order here, as they only come up to the circle on the full moon.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,200 x 13,200 pixels in size (34 x 44 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 2,380 x 3,080 or 4,760 x 6,160 pixels, respectively.

 

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Frothanger’s Garden

Frothanger’s Garden is a small dungeon set into a hill in the Thornwilde – hidden by it’s creator from the prying eyes of the world. This small sanctuary was the cherished domain of the archdruid Frothanger, who wielded their power across the planes. This small garden was a place where they could store and grow rare and magical flora from across the multiverse.

The magics invested into the garden have kept it flourishing long after Frothanger and their circle had moved on from this world. For 14 hours each day, the garden is lit by a magical “sun” that radiates down on the six tiers – each tier has a slightly different colour and intensity to this light to best suit the plants on that level. A small stream flows in from the south side, down the six tiers, and out the north side of the garden.

The highest tier of the garden was known as the Celestial Atrium. The small tree and bush on this tier are from worlds closely linked to the positive energy plane. The fruit from the bush are treated as goodberries (d4+1 new berries grow every day). The larger odd-shaped tree emits a zone of protection from evil for 20 feet around itself. The statue up on this tier is of Frothanger, and is completely covered in vines who’s sap acts as a sleeping potion to those who ingest it directly from the living vine.

The second tier has two statues of fauns frolicking in the grass and flowers that abound here. The biggest tree nearly touches the ceiling and has branches all the way down to the grass cover, concealing the small extended space behind it. The ground cover conceals a wide net of roots and vines that extend from the spiky tree on the left which will entangle victims and drag them into its blade-like leaves.

The third tier is deadly silent, and the magical zone of silence (emanating from the tree on the right) extends into the tier below. That fourth tier is home to a dangerous and predatory plant with iron-strong whip-like vines that grab, slice, and strangle.

The fifth tier is home to the Xag-Yi Tree – a bush that glows with positive energy and crackles with lightning. This tree is sapient and friendly to most living things and will attempt to warn adventurers about the violent plant on the tier above if they haven’t encountered it yet. The other tree on this tier also looks quite menacing, having blade-like metallic leaves that ground out the lightning from the Xag-Yi tree.

The final tier is remarkably mundane – as the greenery on this tier is from this world. The plants here are a variety of bushes and herbs with curative properties. Any alchemist or botanist with access to this tier of the garden can produce one potion of healing every three days (it only takes d6+2 hours to concoct one, the delay is until the herbs, berries, and roots have regrown.)

Most of the remainder of the garden structures have been ransacked after being abandoned except for one sunken mushroom garden (full of strange and exotic fungi) in the lower areas.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 5,400 x 6,900 pixels in size (18 x 23 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 that works with the furnishings as presented) – so resizing it to either 1,260 x 1,610 or 2,520 x 3,220 pixels, respectively.

 

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Scavengers’ Deep – Map 12

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 twelfth map in the Scavengers’ Deep series – sitting east of Map 9 and south of Map 11. The dungeon complex in this region is a “new” one – not connected immediately to those in the previous 11 maps, but linked via a tight maintenance passage that is mostly filled with a large pipe that links to the massive manifold in the northwest portion. These pipes in turn link to old water pipes in map 11, and to an empty overflow tank to the east of that chamber.

This complex includes a three-level structure that climbs above the rest of the complex via a set of spiral stairs. The purpose of these chambers is lost to time and the fall of the Deep, but the design of the chambers would imply that the top level was someone’s living quarters and workshop.

This map is connected to the complexes in Maps 11 and 9 via the old water pipes. The caverns that intertwine with these complexes connect to both of those maps also – one cavern is linked via a very narrow set of caves to a natural space on this level that is overlooked by the passage along the north side of it – evidently at one point a place where new thrall subspecies were observed.

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Here’s a low-resolution compilation of the twelve existing maps of the Scavengers’ Deep set. If printed at miniature play scale (where 1 inch equals 5 feet), each of the individual maps making up the Deep would be 8 feet by 8 feet in size making the current set 32 feet x 24 feet in size. Expect more maps of the Scavengers’ Deep over the coming months, probably at a rate of one map per month.

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.

 

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The Autumn Lands Map D

The Autumn Lands lie to the south of the Midsummer Lands. This map sits above Map B and to the right of Map C (the map that connects the Autumn Lands to the Midsummer Lands). The goal of the Autumn Lands is to produce a series of commercial-use hexmaps that can be used in their entirety, or just one map for a specific adventure. There’s no set scale for these maps, and the items on the maps are not to scale with each other so we can see points of interest like towers, cities, and caves. If you really need a scale for this and don’t want to pick one yourself, go with six miles to the hex.

For this series, I’ve been working with the style I started putting together a couple of years ago where the rivers run along the hex borders – this allows for river travel to be great for exploration as you can see the hexes on each side of the river as you go.

This region is of the northern portion of the Mulberry Sea, which is thick with islands near the coast of the Autumn Lands. These islands are significantly less populated than those to the south, and are instead home to many ruins and scattered oddities that speak of older civilizations that no longer sail the Mulberry Sea.

Other points of interest around this map include towers of a lost city emerging from the sea in a section of shallows, the small volcanic isle to the southwest (which is supposedly a very recent addition to the sea, only erupting from the waters in the last hundred years or so – and due to the lack of other volcanic activity in the area, this implies that it might not be entirely natural), a number of standing stones, and two islands almost entirely covered in ruins.

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I've also attached a low resolution composite map of the four existing Autumn Lands maps.

 

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