# HellHound's Maps - Underdark and Beyond (13 Maps)



## HellHound (May 27, 2005)

Our underdark campaign is about to start to revolve around an ancient subterrainean ocean, and I had some spare time in the van today while the gelflings were at dance class so I started making maps for the various locations we'll be using.

I'm not a great map maker, I'd classify myself as "Fair". But I love making them.

So here's the first in the set - I'll probably post two versions of each, one plain B&W as I draw them, and one on parchment with some notes thrown in.

Some of the quality settings for the JPG images may suffer in the process of keeping the files below 242k in total size, mind you.


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## RangerWickett (May 27, 2005)

Nifty.

How are you envisioning the Underdark?  Is it the traditional bare caverns that stretch for miles in darkness?  Are the tunnels are carved by ancient Dwarves?  In my setting, the 'Underdark' is the remnants of tunnels burrowed by the ancient worm that shaped the world, and it has its own ecosystem fueled by all the dying things on the surface from above and the rising warmth of magma from below. Caverns covered with mats of fungal grass are more common than those of plain stone.

The map is very crisp, and I've always been a fan of the hatching technique for marking walls and such.  Very nice.


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## HellHound (May 27, 2005)

This particular campaign is classic D&D, so the underdark is a huge set of caverns... Seems that the gods created the world with a LOT of limestone it it, and then the ancient floods washed much of it away. Or something like that.

It's a campaign I threw together when my players were asking to play "morally ambiguous" characters, so it's based out of a Skullport variant, and includes a lot of underdark adventures, and will lead into the City of the Spider Queen module soon.


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## Ashy (May 27, 2005)

Hound - those absolutely ROCK!  You are much, much more than a "fair" mapmaker, my friend!


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## Nellisir (May 27, 2005)

Those are pretty great, HH.  Particularly the parchment version.

Cheers
Nell.


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## Eosin the Red (May 27, 2005)

Big map fan - not such a big UD fan. However, those are some nice maps. Though simple visually they still come across with some style.


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## Arnwyn (May 27, 2005)

Pretty nice, and slick design - but indeed, the grids have all but disappeared due to keeping the file small.


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (May 27, 2005)

Very nice! If you don't mind, I'm gonna snatch them for possibel future use in my game!


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## Ferret (May 28, 2005)

Awesome! What is in these rooms? Any background on the area>


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## Bobitron (May 28, 2005)

That looks great! Nice work.


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## IronWolf (May 28, 2005)

Nice looking maps!  I hope you keep posting the maps you end up making for your Underdark campaign.  I have a party of PC's that is frequently finding themselves in the FR version of the Underdark, so I can never have too many maps of that sort.


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## HellHound (May 28, 2005)

First off, here's a revised version of the first map with a grid added to it.

The grid is a little weird, but that's because it took me some work to get it in place.



IronWolf - 

I'll keep posting maps as I make them. I love maps. And I'm going to need a few more just for the lakeside adventures I have planned.

Ferret -  

It was once a temple used by Kuo-Toa - that's the structure at the south end of the map with the well in front of it in the rough cave. They also had the back exit. Later it was taken over by slavers, who built the double fortress fronting the main cavern, as well as the look-out tower that has since collapsed by the back entrance. Now, it depends on what you want it to be. In my campaign, it has just been put back together by another group of slavers, but they haven't found the two secret door, and have not bothered to move into the back entrance area.

Eosin - 

Hopefully, since most of these maps are based around a huge underground lake, you'll find stuff you can use for a non-underdark campaign - all you need is a lake or ocean up against a cliff-face for most of the ones I'll be posting.


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## HellHound (May 28, 2005)

Here's the next one in the set, and old monestary, now abandonned.

It was a rare drow monestary back in the day. A bastion of law for drow who sought the training provided here. It was a small monestary, but the power of those who resided within kep ti safe for generations. In time, a few other monks joined the order, finally including two githzerai, one of whom became the master of this enclave. It was the githzerai presence that brought about the end, however, as an inquisition of mind flayers struck in order to destroy their hated ex-slaves, and they not only killed the master of the order and his brother, but also all but two of the monks, and destroyed the stone bridge that linked the island monestary to the shore and the underdark caves. 

Who lives there now? Up to you... in our game it will -probably- be the base of some aboleth slaves who have whatever item the party is seeking.


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## HellHound (May 28, 2005)

Oh yeah,

Cthulhu's Librarian -

Of course you can use it! That's why I'm posting them here, not to show off, but to give back to the community that gave me some awesome maps for this very campaign over the last year.


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## Valanthe the Sleepless (May 28, 2005)

Wow! I really love the parchment and the maps. You are definitely better than just a fari map maker. Do you draw them free-hand and then scan into PhotoShop?

Man I really need to bane up on my PShop skills. 

Very very nice work.

- Val


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## HellHound (May 28, 2005)

Yep, drawn free-hand, I love that style of mapping.

The only thing I do in photoshop to the base maps is I white out the map grid in the areas where I don't want it. Oh, and superimpose them on parchment that I made over the last few weeks.


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## Crothian (May 28, 2005)

I see a PDF in the works here, these are really good and I like the hand draw look of them.


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## HellHound (May 28, 2005)

Could be, Crothian... But I'd need someone to do the write-ups on them or something, making them non-realms specific and eliminating stuff like githzerai and mind flayers from the histories of these places.

---

here's how the party is getting to the ocean in question - the ancient Dwarven Stair. This access to the shores of the dark sea navigates down 120 feet from a small abandonned fortress at the top with accesses to the underdark, to the stony shore of the sea itself.


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## HellHound (May 29, 2005)

Here's a bigger one that I enjoyed making. I like good multi-level maps that are not too big overall. I like dungeons, I love multi-level environments, but I hate huge sprawling complexes that take forever to explore.

This is a temple to some water deity or another. It has changed hands repeatedly over its existance, and is difficult to maintain because it actually has no other access to the underdark except the one access to the dark sea itself. A small underground river used to enter the deark sea from this point, and the temple was built around it, and the centrepiece of the temple is a waterfall chamber leading to a large pool. The river pours down from the centre of the ceiling of the chamber, and pours down past the observation deck on the top level, the blessing platform on the second level, and into the pool proper below, where the water is channeled into the dark sea itself.


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## arwink (May 29, 2005)

HellHound said:
			
		

> Could be, Crothian... But I'd need someone to do the write-ups on them or something, making them non-realms specific and eliminating stuff like githzerai and mind flayers from the histories of these places.




Waves hand in the air.

I'd do it


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## HellHound (May 29, 2005)

Well, as of the 15th of next month, I'll be paying you money for E.N. Arsenal: Pistols, Arwink. So hey, yeah, I'm game.

Drop me an email about it, Arwink, and we'll discuss how we'll do it - ie: one map per PDF, with a lot of text, or one page (roughly) of text per map, 5 or so maps per PDF.


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## HellHound (May 29, 2005)

Here's number 5 in the set - the Duhr-Ilvahn Trading & Salvage outpost is an old trading community that lies on the one main access between a drow city and the dark sea. The top of the map is the access route to the drow city, and the south is the port facility. This community has grown over centuries of trade, and the current ownership also runs a salvaging operation, keeping tabs on lost barges on the sea - their own and others.


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## Nifft (May 29, 2005)

Gorgeous! 

 -- N


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## arwink (May 30, 2005)

HellHound said:
			
		

> Drop me an email about it, Arwink, and we'll discuss how we'll do it - ie: one map per PDF, with a lot of text, or one page (roughly) of text per map, 5 or so maps per PDF.




Done.


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## HellHound (May 30, 2005)

I'm going to take a few days break here... Have some layout gigs to do for paying clients (one for a government agency, one for a grade shcool), so I'll get back into mapping once I clear my desk again.


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## Arnwyn (May 30, 2005)

I love maps like these - Underdark maps are great.

What I particularly like about these maps, though, are that they have lots of _terrain_. Things like water, islands, bridges, stairs, multiple levels - these are what make maps more interesting and fun to use in a game.


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## Nellisir (May 31, 2005)

arnwyn said:
			
		

> What I particularly like about these maps, though, are that they have lots of _terrain_. Things like water, islands, bridges, stairs, multiple levels - these are what make maps more interesting and fun to use in a game.




I'll ditto this.  Also, if you go pdf, multiple maps is better than a single map, with maybe 1-2 pages of text.  Mechanics (door stats, DCs to open, damage from falling into the waterfall) should be included as well as basic descriptions.  I wouldn't do adventures, just adventure locales.

Cheers,
Nell.


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## HellHound (May 31, 2005)

arnwyn said:
			
		

> I love maps like these - Underdark maps are great.
> 
> What I particularly like about these maps, though, are that they have lots of _terrain_. Things like water, islands, bridges, stairs, multiple levels - these are what make maps more interesting and fun to use in a game.




Thanks!

That's what I like about good maps too. Plain ol' dungeons are... plain. It's the cool terrain that the players and GM will remember for sessions to come. In our campaign we've been using the Chasm Bridge from the promo of Dungeon printed way back in Dragon 131. It reappeared more recently in a Dungeon magazine in the past two years, also. because of the two bridges and the natural 'toll bridge' environment, the players remember it from session to session, and it has become a sort of 'first chapter' to set up an adventure - it's the sign that the players have left their familiar territory and are ventring out into the depths again.

I'm going to use the Dwarven Stair in the future the same way for dealing with the dark sea. It's a great, scenic way to know you are on the shore of the sea. The players will *first* get there via the trading and salvaging camp, which is near Ched Nassad in my game, but will discover the Stair is far closer to their HQ.


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## jmucchiello (May 31, 2005)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> I'll ditto this.  Also, if you go pdf, multiple maps is better than a single map, with maybe 1-2 pages of text.  Mechanics (door stats, DCs to open, damage from falling into the waterfall) should be included as well as basic descriptions.  I wouldn't do adventures, just adventure locales.



I was thinking about doing a series like this. Sort of an instant dungeon, just add denezins. But, of course, I never have the time to finish anything. So who am I kidding?


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## Nellisir (Jun 1, 2005)

jmucchiello said:
			
		

> I was thinking about doing a series like this. Sort of an instant dungeon, just add denezins. But, of course, I never have the time to finish anything. So who am I kidding?




I think we have the same playbook, Joe.   

Nell.


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## HellHound (Jun 1, 2005)

If anyone has any requests, I'd like to take a hack at a few when I have some spare time. I lack inspiration even more than I lack mapping skills.


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## silentspace (Jun 1, 2005)

Beautiful maps!  

How about a svirfneblin city? My players are about to enter one in a pbp game here on enworld. It's been taken over by a couple mindflayers and their goons.  In the caverns under the city is a rift filled with poisonous clouds that heads deep into the ancient underdark


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## HellHound (Jun 1, 2005)

Yoinks! That's a mighty big order, Silentspace. For now I'm going to give it a pass for the city proper. I'm a lot more comfortable with locales, not big areas. The biggest one I did so far in this style is the trading & salvaging outpost, and that has room for maybe a hundred denizens total, nothing close to a city in scale.

To go bigger, I'd have to change scales, or switch to multiple sheets.

I may give a shot at a few -sections- of the smurf city... errr... svirf city, like a city gate, the town hall, and so on.


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## HellHound (Jun 1, 2005)

Number 6 in the sea-shore underdark set - maybe the last in the set? Maybe one more.... then I'll start doing some non-seashore based ones.

This is a quick one, but a big one on paper (full sheet map). It's a bridge over a river that feeds into the sea, the bridge top is about 50 feet above the river, so the bottom is probably about 40 feet above. There is a little guard tower onthe upper ledge, 20 feet above the ledge and bridge (60 feet above the water level).

The location is nice for use in game as a way-point because it is memorable (bridge, river, guardpost, long old worn down stairs to the seashore), and it acts as an intersection, with three egresses into the underdark proper from here, as well as access to the sea and to a minor shipping waterway.

I didn't like this one much when it was about 2/3 done, but now when I look at it, it's one of my faves in the set. Definitely got the feel across a lot better than the dwarven stair.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 1, 2005)

A wizard's private sanctum in the underdark, built in water-carved tunnels near a massive underground lake.  The lair itself starts with a narrow tunnel that opens into a flooded room with only stalactites and stalagmites, which can only be easily navigated with flight magic, spiderclimb, swimming, _or_ (if you're drow) levitating and pushing yourself from stone pillar to stone pillar.

The interior of the lair has a bit of a spiral upward, with a trap door in the wizard's personal chamber that actually opens into the ceiling of the flooded entry chamber.  The wizard has a trophy room for all the monsters she's killed, a sculpture room to practice stoneshaping, and a false escape in her personal chamber that will hopefully distract attention away from the trap door in the floor.  The false escape leads to some sort of death trap.


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## Hand of Evil (Jun 1, 2005)

Hellhound, between you and Phineas Crow, I think I will stop mapping.  These are great.


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## HellHound (Jun 1, 2005)

Thanks, Trace!

Ryan - I'll give it a try once I get the latest two PoD releases up and ready to go.


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## silentspace (Jun 2, 2005)

Cool. I didn't mean a big metropolis, really just a small community of svirfs.  Great stuff, keep it coming!


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## HellHound (Jun 2, 2005)

Okay, as soon as I get my scanner back from the eldest gelfling, I'll post up my latest maps. One was from Ryan's description... well... mostly. It's off in a few ways from the initial description, but I like it a lot. A LOT a lot. It turned out really nice, for something that takes up 1/3 of a sheet of graph paper.

The second was something I need for my game, a cathedral on the shore of the sea. I have a thing for temples, forgotten gods, cults and so on... Out of the 8 seaside maps, three involve temples (the first has the old kuo-toa temple as the basis for the fortress, there's the water temple, and now this cathedral).

Now that the seaside is out of my system, I'll finally give those Smurfs... err... Svirfs a shot.


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## HellHound (Jun 2, 2005)

*Ryan's Lair*

I loved this one on paper, but it doesn't look quite as good scanned. 

It's the lair for Ryan, hope you like it!


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## HellHound (Jun 2, 2005)

Last one of the ocean-side set, unless someone makes requests for more.

This is a cathedral I need for my current plot-line. It is long-abandonned and no one knows who originaly built it.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 2, 2005)

These are really nifty.  I don't know what the digital version might be lacking, but if you like the print version better then it must be stunning.  I really like it. It feels nice and convoluted, with hidey-holes like any good cunning spellcaster would want.

Not sure if the sorceress in question would appreciate being called 'Fell,' but that's beside the point.  Very nicely done.

The Cathedral's also very nice. I'd put some interior windows on those rooms in the main hall, so that you could have people hiding inside, watching as the heroes enter to confront the baddy, and then bursting out when the showdown starts.  But still, you'd better stop sharing all these for free, man.  We could sell these things.  Maps are like gamer cocaine.







Dice, as we know, are gamer crack.


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## HellHound (Jun 10, 2005)

Next map in the set. 

This is a wizard's tower sent to me as a request. This only details the above-ground levels. The below-ground stuff will be on the next map I post.


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## Angel Tarragon (Jun 27, 2005)

Great work Hellhound!


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## Turanil (Jun 29, 2005)

These maps are incredibly good. I downloaded them all for my personnal use.  I hope you don't mind.


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## iwatt (Jun 29, 2005)

Awesome.....Awesome maps. Thanks.


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## Erywin (Jun 29, 2005)

Wow, great awesome maps   I will definately be using some of these, love the black and white hand drawn and then put on that wonderful parchment   Now if I only knew more about Photoshop to try some of this stuff myself 

Keep up the great work,
-E


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## Mista Collins (Jun 29, 2005)

Excellent maps.. too bad my underdark campaign just ended.. I guess I'll have to use these great maps for something else. Keep up the top-notch work.


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## Sunaj2k3 (Aug 23, 2005)

*Underground Maps?*

Hellhound,

If Phineas's thread can come back from the grave, this one can too.  Is there any way to get the maps of the underground level(s) of the wizard's tower from you?  I liked what you did with the Underdark set and hope you post more.


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## HellHound (Aug 10, 2007)

Sunaj2k3 said:
			
		

> Hellhound,
> 
> If Phineas's thread can come back from the grave, this one can too.  Is there any way to get the maps of the underground level(s) of the wizard's tower from you?  I liked what you did with the Underdark set and hope you post more.




Is 2 years later too late to answer that question?

Goals for this map when I started:

- Location that can be used for 1 to 3 fights.
- Set up so these fights can overlap into each other easily, so it could become one huge running battle.
- Abandoned location where a group of drow archaeologists are looking for something

So, I settled on an old fortress of some kind that had a water supply, but where the water level had gone up in the distant past, making it so most of the old site is unusable because it is under a few feet of water.

However, because fighting in knee and waist deep water is no fun, a chunk of the location is above the waterline, and this will include some larger spaces to keep the encounters more interesting, whereas the semi-submerged portions are going to include a lot more 5 and 10 foot halls.

And of course, multiple levels. Because I love 3D battlefields.

- - -

So I started with the main entrance. Right off the bat I got the multiple level effect across by using a stone bridge over the entrance passage. To accent that the raised sections weren't the primary part of the fortress, I've made the stairs in that section a mix of man-made and natural formations.

People don't remember exactly who built it or when, but the whole thing stinks of rot and stagnant water ever since the water table moved up 8 feet and the two wells in the fort have overflowed to fill all the old living quarters. There are slime molds and other nasty stuff living there now, and most people just ignore it. Except now a team of Drow archaeologists have gone there to get a magic item long buried under the muck somewhere that the players also need.

And of course, to make it more fun, the Drow team is being hunted by a Cerebrelith. It's time to recreate the movie "Predator" in the underdark.


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## Raven Crowking (Aug 10, 2007)

This is beautiful work!!!!

RC


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## XCorvis (Aug 10, 2007)

Score! I love these maps...


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## HellHound (Aug 10, 2007)

Thanks. I'm buried in GenCon stuff for the next week or so, so I won't be posting anything new for a while.


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## Monte At Home (Aug 25, 2007)

Great stuff. Most of these fit into my upcoming campaign really nicely. Yoink!


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## HellHound (Aug 27, 2007)

(awesome) Monte yoinked my maps.

I'm having a strange geeky fanboy moment.


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## Dog Moon (Aug 27, 2007)

HellHound said:
			
		

> (awesome) Monte yoinked my maps.
> 
> I'm having a strange geeky fanboy moment.




Hehe.  This means you have to create more.


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## HellHound (Aug 27, 2007)

Dog Moon said:
			
		

> Hehe.  This means you have to create more.




Hey, I posted a new one just this month!


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## Nellisir (Aug 27, 2007)

HellHound said:
			
		

> Hey, I posted a new one just this month year!




Fixed it.


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## jaerdaph (Aug 27, 2007)

Wow, Hellhound - very impressive.


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## HellHound (Aug 28, 2007)

Here's my latest.

This is actually part 1 of the prior map. En route to the drow archaeological dig, the party came across an old toll fort along what used to be a major underdark trade caravan.

Originally, the building on the right was the main entrance to the 'fort' and they would have pedestrians travel up and over the fort to be inspected, whereas caravans would pass between the tower and fort.

The tower on the left is a full 20 feet higher than the fort on the right (the floor of the tower is 30 feet above the cave floor). It has no access points except via the undercave passage between the fortress and the tower.

In my campaign, the Cerebrelith had been using this as his base of operations between hunts. When the players arrive it is abandoned but there are multiple skull-less bodies hanging from the archway of the tower on the left as well as some in other locations throughout the structure.

- - -

This was mapped using a blue pen instead of my typical mechanical pencil, on standard (although water-damaged) 4-quad graph paper. This meant I couldn't go back and change any mistakes, but it also provided for cleaner detail work in many places (especially along cave walls). After scanning, I desaturated it and increased the contrast to make it look black. The parchment was the one I designed for a book ENP released to support the ENnies two years ago - the base is a scan of tea-soaked paper, with some digital enhancements.


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## HellHound (Aug 29, 2007)

Here's one that I qualify as a failure (that I posted on CM a few months ago, but not here) - done one weekend at a Feis (irish dance competition) while waiting for the youngest Gelfling to dance.

It is from a scene in the long-ago canceled psionics book I wrote. The empire in question had a massive crystal mine that they used (and then worked dry) to get crystal for psicrystals, dorjes, capacitors and so on. In the flavor text for the adaptive ooze, it describes one of these creatures errupting from the fortified mine entrance and killing a lot of the workers and guards before being put down by a group of psion law-bringers.

A thousand years later, here are the ruins of the mine entrance.

Starting from the bottom of the map:

*Two guard towers*. The construction of these is awkward and not that well thought out - the guard walks are aimed towards the space between them - obviously designed to watch over the traffic of workers and product more than to defend against attack.

*The Gorge*. There is a deep gorge here at the edge of a cliff-face. This massive gorge is why the mine exists - the cliff-face used to have visible crystal deposits on it, so the Duan'Kan built the bridge and mine to access the cliff face and then to dig into the face to follow the crystal veins. The bridge is a flat bridge, to allow for easier transport of crystal out of the mine.

*Towers*. There are two defensive protrusions that jut out over the gorge. They exist for archers and kineticists to use to watch approaching traffic in order to defend the mines proper.

Then there are a bunch of rooms - up to the GM, but likely including a small barracks and kitchen environment for the guards who worked here, but not the miners. They would have been fed at the mining camps some distance away.

*The Shaft* In the back of the rooms is the elevator shaft with two elevator platforms. To the East of the shaft is the room with the machinery to raise and lower the platforms to the mines below.


_Wow, looking at my maps from 2005, I realize I've let my skills rust pretty badly. I have to really work on these to bring them up to par with the stuff I was doing then._


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## HellHound (Aug 29, 2007)

These next two I'm officially "unhappy" with.

To make excuses - they were drawn on paper I am unhappy with (I love mapping on it, but it scans VERY poorly), and the pencils I had with me sucked. Further, I had to create it as I went instead of pre-planning sections, because I was working on it during a competition on a challenge from the eldest Gelfling to produce an elven tree fortress / home.

The lines aren't as dark or as good as I like, and I had to experiment with a different fill than my stonework fill, concentric circles of a tree cross-section.

Anyways, here is the Elven Fortress of Guenevae (in two parts - the first part has the side-view describing where the other maps fit together. I'm particularly pained by how crappy the side-view is).


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