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The Map in this post is covered under my Restricted Release License and is intended for personal gaming use. Distribution outside of your own sessions is a violation of this agreement.
The high-resolution versions of this map are available exclusively to patrons at the Level 1 Adventurer tier and above and to all Legacy Patrons.
This map was drawn for Ghosts of Saltmarsh and is copyright Wizards of the Coast. All text is original to this package and is unrelated to the Ghosts of Saltmarsh version of the map.
Like the stump of a broken tooth, the Isle of the Abbey rises from the dark waters of Black Sphinx Bay. Its cliffs are sheer and jagged on all sides except the southern approach where the land slopes down to wind-scoured sands known as the skull dunes. Reefs lurk just beneath the surface around the island like marine predators eager to tear open approaching craft. There was once a pier on the northeast coast of the island with a narrow channel to approach it, but that structure collapsed into the bay decades ago.
For most, the island is a place glimpsed from afar; a silhouette of ruin and stone against the horizon.
The heart of the island is the shattered remains of the Abbey of Saint Varro. Once a revered sanctuary dedicated to a reclusive ascetic order, the abbey grew into a fortified monastic complex, its walls etched with prayers and halls echoing with chants and hymns.
Isolation, however, breeds secrets... and the Abbey of Saint Varro became a place of whispered unease. The monks practiced a form of contemplative silence and writings spoke of visions of “the hollow sea” and “the bones beneath the sand”. Then the order disappeared in one night two centuries ago, leaving the abbey abandoned and the island gained a reputation for being touched by something uncanny. Storms break around the island in unnatural patterns and fishermen report hearing bells tolling from the island even though the bell tower had collapsed long before.
The Skull Dunes earned their name not from bones or burials, but from the way the wind shapes the sand over the basalt fissures beneath. When storms sweep in from the south, the dunes resonate with a hollow moan that one traveller described as “the moaning of a thousand flensed skulls”. Sailors say the dunes “sing of death” and keep well clear of even the south side of the island because of them.
The numbers on the grid of the Skull Dunes are directly related to these basalt fissures. Each square with a number has basalt fissures beneath it, and the number is the chance (on a d20) that traveling through that square will encounter one of these hollows - typically concealed by the sands above. The dunes conceal or partially conceal old menhirs placed by the monks as they mapped the crevasses and fissures and the movements of the sands and mystical links to the “hollow sea”. Most of these markers are buried or broken, but finding one is a sure sign that it would be safer walking elsewhere.
The island’s interior rises sharply beyond the dunes - up to the rough-edged plateau of the island proper. Rocky paths wind toward the abbey ruins, passing through scrubland dotted with the remnants of monastic gardens and collapsed outbuildings. The abbey itself is a haunting structure: the main tower collapsed taking down much of the structure’s roof, and its cloisters are open to the sky. Strange carvings adorn the surviving walls, depicting spirals, hollow circles, and stylized waves. These symbols may be warnings or keys to understanding the monks’ final days.
And beneath the old Abbey there is of course the remaining understructures...
