Beneath the Bastion of the Prince of Clubs are the dungeons – consisting of great halls, deep galleries, the hollow library, and the Grey Oubliette – a small island fortress in a cavern, accessible only through the fortress above.
Beyond the Oubliette, forgotten by most and rarely even ...
2018-12-31 16:30:02 +0000 UTC View Post
The first thing you note when descending the stairs into the ancient jungle temple is a hissing sound, like sand pouring through a massive hourglass. The walls down here are a heavy greenish stone, set in massive blocks without mortar. The main chamber at the base of the stairs is a multi-leveled...
2018-12-26 21:25:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Overlooking the grand ballroom of the House of Keys is an upper level balcony,a hint that perhaps one of the sets of stairs in the building actually leads upstairs instead of into a blank wall.
The upstairs is, of course, a confusing maze of tight corridors and small rooms, and of course co...
2018-12-20 21:32:21 +0000 UTC View Post
The ancient house appears to be a massive sprawling mansion from outside. Inside it shows all the signs of unplanned and almost cancer-like growth and change. New wings added haphazardly, sections renovated to new purposes and sealing off other sections in the process. Rooms and sections that can on...
2018-12-18 19:58:03 +0000 UTC View Post
“Vymrrysian scholars have long theorized as to the true nature of the Black Monolith, that totemic object which stabs out from the Infrared Octagonal Hills to the southeast like a knife. While some holdouts still cling to the notion that it was constructed by a long-since-exterminated civiliza...
2018-12-16 19:20:35 +0000 UTC View Post
There are depths beyond this world to which we must travel. We must open the third eye and follow what lays beyond. The true challenge is finding out how to open it. The eye is closed and no matter what we whisper into the ear, it does not open for us.
It is the expansion of the mind we explore fo...
2018-12-14 17:53:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Instead of continuing along the southern edge of Prince’s Harbour, this month I decided it was time to draw the heart of the town itself. This really shows off how the town is a low-density unwalled affair. While located at the edge of the Flindlands, the actual wilderness around the town is more ...
2018-12-12 19:40:23 +0000 UTC View Post
A simple map today – I was experimenting with grid design and and layers of elevation, and more fiddling with steep cliff-like elevation changes, and this circular stony hill was the result. It should work well for a obvious place to set up camp when travelling, or more likely, where travelling PC...
2018-12-11 00:43:19 +0000 UTC View Post
The limestone caves of Old Cruik Hollow are at the head of a box canyon and show the signs of decades of use by various groups over the ages. Stairs have been cut into the floor of the cave on the left leading into the upper caves. Sections of the caves have been closed off with wooden walls and doo...
2018-12-07 20:23:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey! It's the December backstage pass, with the two maps from November that didn't get finished in time for last month's backstage pass.
Enjoy, my friends!
Connected to the lower level via three different staircases, the upper level of the Athenaeum of the Lost contains fewer books than the ground level, but has a number of interesting locations.
One of the first things noticeable about the Athenaeum when approaching it from the broken bridge on the ...
2018-11-29 20:57:51 +0000 UTC View Post
No more than a generation ago did Hender, Warlord of the Two Realms, build the white fortress at the end of Merman’s Bluff. A small and fiercely held chunk of white granite looking over the dark and choppy seas where once the local fisherfolk made deals with the merpeople of the Octopus Kingdom.
Linked to the greater dungeon only by a broken stone bridge across an underground crevasse, this remote underground library is maintained and guarded by the resident retired scholar-priest who keeps the place locked down, guarded with a small collection of animated objects, and who in turn subsists ...
2018-11-25 17:55:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Up in the Fox Hills is a small monastic order. They make mead and honey, study liturgical texts, and commune with their god of the harvest. The monastery grounds include a number of stout stone structures dominated by a large church that remains closed to outsiders.
While the Blessed Monastery see...
2018-11-21 21:08:58 +0000 UTC View Post
It is time to select the maps to be released under the commercial license this month. I've selected a collection of towers and tower-like structures for this month's choices, reminding me once again that one of these days I need to run a campaign that is entirely tower-based.
2018-11-20 20:41:43 +0000 UTC
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Crass Commercialization Time! With extra emphasis on the crass!
Sometimes you just need a dungeon that tells every other dungeon how you feel about them. Or a substitute level in a larger adventure when the original level was just a massive pain in the ass (I’m looking RIGHT AT YOU, “the Night...
2018-11-19 20:13:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Surrounded by the cyclopean ruins of the Temple of the Abyss, the Prince of Clubs retreats to his green and black granite bastion to while away the ages between the godwars he is forced to fight. A champion of the forces of change & chaos, his own existence seems stolid and phlegmatic – a weap...
2018-11-17 22:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
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 f...
2018-11-15 19:40:57 +0000 UTC View Post
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.
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 combina...
2018-11-11 21:48:30 +0000 UTC View Post
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 chagr...
2018-11-08 19:42:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Attached is the majority of this month's backstage pass. Because I was working heavily on a pair of commissions in October, we have 8 of this month's maps in the Backstage Pass file. Which means I'll hopefully have the December pass up early with any other maps that might make it out this month.
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.
S...
2018-11-05 19:50:34 +0000 UTC View Post
To celebrate Halloween, we are releasing to thematically-appropriate maps from the last year under our royalty-free commercial use license.
Explore the dungeons under the dark standing stones of Prior's Hil...
2018-10-31 19:29:48 +0000 UTC View Post
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 ...
2018-10-29 18:43:05 +0000 UTC View Post
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 po...
2018-10-25 20:10:54 +0000 UTC View Post
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, Scr...
2018-10-22 19:48:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Sorry about the double-post, thanks to my own lack of attention and the new posting format at Patreon, I managed to post this as a non-paid post initially.
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, t...
2018-10-20 19:57:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Supposedly once home to a demented prince of alien demons, the walls of the cursed galleries are decorated in mad texts painted in bold black on every available inch. These texts speak of other worlds, demonic powers, and foul creatures from “beyond the veil”.
The galleries are beneath the Ben...
2018-10-18 17:51:21 +0000 UTC View Post
The Holy City has a slight necropolis issue. For most of the history of the city, old mines and caverns beneath the hills of the city have been used as crypts and tombs. Some areas were expanded by churches specifically to inter the deceased, others just adapted as the small silver mines that helped...
2018-10-16 18:19:23 +0000 UTC View Post