# I draw the occasional D&D map



## Dyson Logos (Dec 14, 2017)

Over the 9 years that I've been drawing maps, I've posted the occasional thread and map to these forums. With all the hoopla going on over Patreon right now (which I use extensively), I figured I could start posting highlights and updates of my work again.

I draw my maps using technical felt-tipped pens on a variety of paper. Lately I've moved almost entirely over to using 32lb white laser printer paper for my work (Hammermill's "Laser Print" paper with the butterfly on the package). The resulting maps are scanned, reduced to pure B&W, sometimes cleaned up a bit in Photoshop (to get rid of minor mistakes and debris on the page), and released at 1200 dpi on my blog ( *rpgcharacters.wordpress.com* )

The end result is stuff like this:

The Banshee's Tower:
View attachment banshees-tower-patreon-web.png

Fury of the Emerald Hawk
View attachment fury-of-the-emerald-hawk-patreon-web.png

Home of the Master (redrawn from module I1 - Dwellers of the Forbidden City)



Stariphos Bay


Wreck of the Wight's Shadow


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## pogre (Dec 14, 2017)

Have admired your work for some time. Thanks for sharing.


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 14, 2017)

My project this week is to expand on the maps provided with the classic AD&D D1 adventure. It included a sample tertiary, secondary and primary passage environment map for running encounters in. My goal is to bring each up to five samples instead of one.

The first set of five tertiary passages is drawn as of this evening, just needs to be scanned.


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## Thomas Bowman (Dec 14, 2017)

How come you draw on paper and then scan it in? I draw directly onto a jpeg file using my Paint program, I can edit easily enough and copy and paste as much as I want. For instance, I don't have to draw every single 5-foot square or 10-foot square that is on your map. If I make a mistake on paper, I can try to erase it, but I can never erase the lines I made completely, with a jpeg I can!


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 14, 2017)

Because that's how I draw. I like using pens, I like the tactile experience of drawing, and the ability to draw anywhere I am. I like the permanence of ink. I like the physical artifact created. I like that my work has a distinct look and feel from my creative methods.

When I started drawing and posting work a lot, I was on disability and nearly homeless and the only computer I had was a $140 netbook. Working directly digitally wasn't an option whereas ink on paper was. I drew maps on whatever paper I had at hand.

And obviously it has made an impact on others. So I keep at it, and keep improving my skills.


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 14, 2017)

This week's first map is the thorp of Rosnar Hill that I drew up.



_The patriarch of the cult of the White Archons retired to a tiny little thorp built up around a small bridge over an almost equally small river. He spent a small sum on fixing up the old church where he was first inducted into the order of the White Archons, and a significantly larger sum on a small tower on a hill overlooking the river and the thorp.

The town took on his name and became Rosnar Hill and is growing ever-so-slowly. The central point in town, just west of the river and attached to the bridge, is the “new bridge inn” – a quiet and rustic establishment that serves decent lamb, fair beer, and an excellent imported red wine from the vinyards of Angel’s Dell._

Thanks to my amazing supporters on Patreon, this map can be downloaded at 1200 dpi for personal and/or commercial use from the blog at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/rosnar-hill/


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## Grakarg (Dec 15, 2017)

Thanks so much for posting, these are really great!


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## grimfish (Dec 15, 2017)

These are fantastic as always. I frequently rip off your style when I draw my own dungeons or just doodling at work. Never with the same level of skill or imagination. I love how they are completely functional and let the game unfold without being cluttered and messy. You could prep them for the Roll20 market place or whatever fantasy grounds has and try and make some $!  Love your work!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Morrus (Dec 16, 2017)

Gorgeous! I love your work!


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## Cripes (Dec 16, 2017)

Have run across your maps several times before, and always been amazed by the quality and imagination. Where do you usually start? With a doodle, some random lines? Or do you usually have most of it mapped out in your head before you put the pen to the paper?


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 17, 2017)

Morrus said:


> Gorgeous! I love your work!




Thank you, good sir and mayor / sheriff 'round these parts. Meriff. Mayor and Sheriff. It sounds better in my head.



Cripes said:


> Have run across your maps several times before, and always been amazed by the quality and imagination. Where do you usually start? With a doodle, some random lines? Or do you usually have most of it mapped out in your head before you put the pen to the paper?




Depends on the map. But generally it starts with one room, one hall, one set of stairs, etc, and grows on its own from there.


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## Cripes (Dec 17, 2017)

Dyson Logos said:


> Depends on the map. But generally it starts with one room, one hall, one set of stairs, etc, and grows on its own from there.




Ah, I really dig that variant of the creative process myself.. Just start somewhere (be it with a map, ideas for a planet, a town full of intrigue, or what have you), get going, and see where you end up. Somehow it often just starts growing on its own, developing a life and direction that you had no idea even existed. Love that.


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## le grand fromage (Dec 17, 2017)

Another fan here, I've copies on my bookshelves of your 2014, 15 & 16 Cartographic reviews and Dyson Delves 1&2, bought through Lulu. Hoping you might in the future publish some of your mega-dungeon compilations in the same fashion??


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## darjr (Dec 17, 2017)

Love your maps. Printed out they are fabulous!


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 17, 2017)

le grand fromage said:


> Another fan here, I've copies on my bookshelves of your 2014, 15 & 16 Cartographic reviews and Dyson Delves 1&2, bought through Lulu. Hoping you might in the future publish some of your mega-dungeon compilations in the same fashion??




I WANT to, but I don't feel that just releasing the maps in a book is sufficient, and I never find myself with enough time to really fill them up properly to the point where I'll be happy releasing them.



darjr said:


> Love your maps. Printed out they are fabulous!View attachment 92085




Thanks!

It was definitely quite cool to be commissioned to draw a map for an official D&D product release!


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## darjr (Dec 17, 2017)

Well here’s to many more!


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 20, 2017)

Not all towns and cities are built along rivers, trade roads, and bays… Some boast the most spectacular scenery they can find, and in Thunderhead’s case, if the scenery isn’t good enough, the whole city travels to somewhere with even better views.

Thunderhead is built on magically resistant and strong “cloudstuff”. Once the domain of cloud giants and their kin, the city is now mostly populated by humans with a smaller population of avariels along with a number of aarakocra clans that nest beneath the city in the cloudstuff itself.

Chancellor Zamhatos, a potent sphinx storm sorcerer, doesn’t so much rule the city as maintain peace through threat of power and a network of favours and information that flows out from him to the major families in the cloud. A number of churches to most of the sky gods and stormy powers can be found in Thunderhead, and the city is considered a plum assignment by most associated clergies.

The 1200 dpi version of the map can be downloaded for free thanks to my Patreon supporters at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/thunderhead-the-cloud-city/


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## Piratecat (Dec 21, 2017)

Your work is really gorgeous! Thank you so much for sharing and posting these. I love to see them.


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 22, 2017)

Here is a somewhat rough and quick map of the Vigilance Trail as it comes down from Raven’s Pass in the Eastern Diamond Range. Not many use Raven’s Pass anymore – the major towns on each side of the pass have mostly died out and most trade now runs south of here to take advantage of routes through Yoon-Suin and the City of Copper Bowls.

Vigilance Trail still sees a few travelers every month – rarely even enough for banditry to be successful along the route. That said, someone has been burning down the abandoned structures in the area. The old inn at the base of the pass is now nothing but ashes and bits of cracked rock walls, and even Overlook Tower south of the inn structures has been burned out and is slowly collapsing with no wooden supports remaining.

The blame goes back and forth between extremist druids or other creatures in the woods, or goblins or other humanoids crawling out by Helm’s Pond at the base of the small waterfall. All that’s left in the immediate region that one would call “civilized” is the Brownside Farm by Raven’s Lake, and the small tower of the retired Magus of Orange.

There are of course several other points of interest near the Vigilance Trail.

A single menhir stands along the road between the Orange tower and the Brownside farm. The menhir is a grey stone, typical of the area, and is very worn down with very little of the old text cut into it remaining – it also detects as magical but no one has figured out exactly what the magic is.

Helm’s Pond has the obvious cave at the base of the waterfall, where rumours are that hostile humanoids are crawling up from the deeps. The reality is that this cave does indeed descend deep into the stony depths, but no humanoids make their homes here because of the much darker evil that twists the depths.

Southwest of the menhir and town is a small cave in the hills – an actual home to a small clan of goblins who try to keep to themselves and are hiding from the evil in the Helm’s Cave pond as well as the locals.

You can download the 1200dpi version of the Vigilance Trail map from the blog post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/22/vigilance-trail/


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## DeanP (Dec 23, 2017)

I'm a fan of your work as well Dyson. I especially liked the "human touch" of pen and ink.


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## Schmoe (Dec 24, 2017)

I absolutely love your maps, thanks for sharing.  I only have two tabs that are open on my browser all the time.  One is a Google search result for Dyson Logos maps.


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 25, 2017)

With all the weirdness and rushing around this month between Patreon and Christmas, I didn’t put up the usual poll to decide on what old maps would be re-released under the Release the Kraken process this month.

So instead I’m releasing one every day (except the days I normally release maps) for this week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday). These have all been drawn from amongst the oldest maps on the blog – chosen both for style and for those that I am able to clean up into usable releases.

Perrol on the Mount was a small walled city in one of my Labyrinth Lord campaigns right after the Advanced Edition Companion was released (2009-2010?). The original fortress is on the Eastern side of the mount, and the walls have expanded to include a large number of homes and shops that have built up here over the years.

Thanks to the awesome people who support me on Patreon, this map is now available under a free commercial use license and can be downloaded from https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/25/christmas-kraken-1-perrol-on-the-mount/


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## Henry (Dec 26, 2017)

Dyson, kudos for your designs. There’s something about your maps that give them a very “1983 Greyhawk” vibe, and I love the aesthetic.


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 26, 2017)

Schmoe said:


> I absolutely love your maps, thanks for sharing.  I only have two tabs that are open on my browser all the time.  One is a Google search result for Dyson Logos maps.




I find it easier to just go to the maps page of my website instead of google. 



Henry said:


> Dyson, kudos for your designs. There’s something about your maps that give them a very “1983 Greyhawk” vibe, and I love the aesthetic.




Thanks!


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 26, 2017)

We never did figure out exactly who built "the juicer". A clever contraption using the water pressure of the underground river next to it, we did discover that the main chamber of the juicer could handle 16 myconids easily, and if you had someone to really pack them in it would probably "juice" two to three dozen at a time.

Honestly, with how foul Myconid Juice tastes, I'm sure it was used for something else when it was built. One of the local pech claims it was used by illithids to juice large quantities of brains - but it boggles the imagination that anyone would have that much grey matter at a time to juice; and Jortex points out that flayers would have used vertical shafts to travel up and down instead of the twisting staircases of the juicer.

But, there's a market for Myconid Juice... supposedly it is important both in curing olive fungus infections as well as for making some more bizarre hallucinogens. So here we are, running myconid slave pens and "the juicer"...

Sometimes I start doubting that we are still the "heroes" of this story.


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## Gilladian (Dec 27, 2017)

I used this map for a dwarf/human kingdom interface city IMC last year. Was perfect!


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 27, 2017)

Gilladian said:


> I used this map for a dwarf/human kingdom interface city IMC last year. Was perfect!




I assume you are NOT referring to the Juicer... because that would be a strange dwarf/human interface.


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 27, 2017)

With all the weirdness and rushing around this month between Patreon and Christmas, I didn’t put up the usual poll to decide on what old maps would be re-released under the Release the Kraken process this month.

So instead I’m releasing one every day (except the days I normally release maps) for this week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday). These have all been drawn from amongst the oldest maps on the blog – chosen both for style and for those that I am able to clean up into usable releases. This particular map was drawn over five years ago.

Epherin’s Keep has seen better days. The stairs to the keep door are badly damaged and cracked from age, winters, and war. The keep itself is in poor repair, and were it not for the dungeons beneath also having access to the bottom of Beggar’s Rift, no one would care about it at all.

The map is divided into three parts.

The top left is the keep proper, with no detail of the grounds, but instead focusing on the building of the keep and the stairs leading up to it. In the centre of the keep is a spiral staircase leading down to the dungeons beneath the structure.

The bottom of the map is the dungeons under the keep, with the spiral staircase leading up to the keep, and a pair of barred and secured double doors leading down into the caverns below.

The upper right portion of the map is the caverns below the keep and dungeons with both stairs leading up to the dungeons, and a passageway to the north, leading to the bottom of Beggar’s Rift – a tear in the earth just north of the keep.

Thanks to my Patreon supporters, this map is downloadable for personal and/or commercial use from the blog post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/27/christmas-kraken-2-epherins-keep/


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## Gilladian (Dec 28, 2017)

Dyson Logos said:


> I assume you are NOT referring to the Juicer... because that would be a strange dwarf/human interface.




LOL! Yeah, I did mean the mountain city above it...


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 28, 2017)

With all the weirdness and rushing around this month between Patreon and Christmas, I didn’t put up the usual poll to decide on what old maps would be re-released under the Release the Kraken process this month.

So instead I’m releasing one every day (except the days I normally release maps) for this week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday). These have all been drawn from amongst the oldest maps on the blog – chosen both for style and for those that I am able to clean up into usable releases. This particular map was drawn in late 2012, five short years ago.

For some reason, this map has never been accompanied by any description beyond the name which I made up the day I drew it and then promptly forgot the map, location and name for a year or so before I found it again, scanned and released it.

The main shrine cave has a massive raised statue on the west wall and various caves and chambers that proceed beyond. The keeper of the shrine lives in a smaller cave above the shrine cave, with a secret door connecting the two caves.

Beyond the shrine and associated chambers are stairs that lead deeper...

Thanks to my Patreon supporters, this map has been released for personal and/or commercial use from the post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/christmas-kraken-3-queen-hazrens-shrine/


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## Ja Zirebiec (Dec 29, 2017)

WOW! this is some neat stuff!!


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 29, 2017)

Finally, with this 18th map in the “My Private Jakalla” undercity map set, we arrive at one of the physical borders of the city itself – the as yet unnamed river.

Along the river we have a sewer outlet, a secret exit of the thieve’s guild, and one of the city’s cistern systems (which are all upriver of the sewer outlets). One of the benefits of the Ditlana system in Tekumel (where cities or portions of cities are torn down and rebuilt ever 500-1000 years) is that you can correct for infrastructure mistakes like building water storage downriver from the sewers.

View attachment my-own-private-jakalla-progress-r.jpg

As a border map along the river, there are a lot of access points to this particular map – the secret access that the thieves use along the river proper and the sewer outlet (if you don’t mind opening the grate and slogging through the mess), sewer and passage connections to map 1O and a passage to the isolated sections of map 1P. Another sewer link feeds to this map from the east and a passage cuts in from the west where it breaks into an old basement connected to the sewer-linked passage.

Over on the right, there is a secret door from the cisterns maintenance area that links to the isolated parts of the map on the lower right. Just to the left of that secret door is a door to the basement of a building used by a group of ne’er-do-wells (thieves and worse!).


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 30, 2017)

With all the weirdness and rushing around this month between Patreon and Christmas, I didn’t put up the usual poll to decide on what old maps would be re-released under the Release the Kraken process this month.

So instead I’m releasing one every day (except the days I normally release maps) for this week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday). These have all been drawn from amongst the oldest maps on the blog – chosen both for style and for those that I am able to clean up into usable releases.

From my “Ancient Kings” campaign back in 2012 (now known as the Fisher Kings of Sabre Lake), this is Javelin Hill, the small city that is the centre of one of the character’s holdings. For those nearby it is best known for the two dwarves in charge of the place – one the height of a hill giant, and the other of more typical dwarven scale.

Javelin Hill isn’t a great place for a city – its primary water source is the swamp just north of the hill and outside of the city walls. However, it’s the tallest hill in the area, offering a clear view over the forests and swamps nearby. That’s why the fortress was originally built here, but the ancillary structures of a larger town are somewhat overwhelming for the limited infrastructure of the area.

Thanks to the awesome people who support me on Patreon, this map is available for free commercial and personal use from https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/12/30/christmas-kraken-4-javelin-hill/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 1, 2018)




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## Dyson Logos (Jan 3, 2018)

The Cove of Coals is one of the last points of interest before reaching the Darkling Lake. At a confluence of the Darkling River and the Goblin Rill are ruins reminding travellers that these underground waterways have been in use for untold ages.

The structures here are of an imported (or transformed) volcanic stone, a glass-like black stone that reflects and distorts light, giving the place its name from the red glints and reflections of explorers’ and travellers’ torches.

Voyagers and adventurers who lack allies along the Darkling often set camp on the northern of the three portions of the Cove of Coals, using the raised section of stone as a fort and spot to watch other river traffic. Few remain for more than a day, moving on to places where food can be found and that aren’t thought to be “haunted” or perhaps worse, hunted. Because of course, something foul lives in the secret passages on the west side of the cove, and travellers are tasty.

Thanks to the awesome people supporting my work through Patreon, you can download this map at 1200 dpi for personal or commercial use from https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/heart-of-darkling-the-cove-of-coals/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 5, 2018)

“We saw the thief grab the map but he was away and out the window before anyone had a moment to react. The chase after him went from rooftop to rooftop and even across Thunder Lane before we forced him down into a courtyard where Ehrik repeatedly dunked his head into a small fountain to try to find out where along the way he had managed to ditch the map.”

After a few too many games of Assassin’s Creed, or just lovely flashbacks to the starter adventure scene in the original Warhammer Fantasy RPG chasing Bertoldo Vasari across the rooftops of Nuln, sooner or later you are going to want to run a rooftop chase scene.

This map assumes a society and climate where moderately pitched roofing is the norm – with an average of about a 30 degree slope. Dashing on a 30 degree slope can be difficult, might take a few rolls. And the general rule of thumb for a snowy climate is that roofs slope up six to nine inches for every foot they cover, so assume that the peak of a roof is 1/4 to 1/3 the total width of the building above the level of the edge of the roof. So on a 20 foot wide building, the roof slopes up to 5-7 feet in the centre. This allows for easy transfer from a 3 story building to a 4 story building as long as the peak of the lower building approaches the side of the taller.

The buildings have numbers on them to indicate how many stories above street level they reach so you can figure out where jumping and climbing will come into play, and below is a sample routing along the rooftops for a would-be thief to attempt an escape before the party almost inevitably runs them down.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 9, 2018)

Home to several extensive lineages of half elves, Carran Keep has become known as “half-elf city” to many living in other towns and cities in the region. The master of the keep’s lineage goes back to the days of the elven empire and the family has modified the slave tattoos of their elven clan lineage to a mark of pride (and made them significantly fancier and larger in the process). Family tattoos have become a fashion in the town, with about half the adult population now having their blood affiliation inked somewhere visibly upon them.

While the Carran clan maintains the walls and towers of the keep, the curtain walls for the town are not as well kept and rely upon the goodwill of the townfolk to maintain them. So far it hasn’t been a problem, but wooden floors are starting to rot out on a few of the guard towers and gates and are badly in need of replacing.

Carran’s economy is driven by three nearby silver mines and a few good horse-breeders. The Carran clan maintains itself through taxation of the residents, farmers and merchants, but also maintains a small treasury of goods and coins from adventuring members of the family.

A number of hooks can drawn characters to Carran Keep such as

the small selection of elven grimoires that the Carrans have in their library,
traditional problems with monsters in the silver mines,
a young adventurer of the Carran clan needing companions on their quests,
tracking down a lead about a half-elf thief who has gone to ground somewhere in the region

1200 dpi versions of the map can be downloaded for personal and/or commercial use from the blog post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/carran-keep/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 12, 2018)

The ruins of an old temple of the Lord who Listens to the Winds has become a nest for a family of manticores. But of course all clues point to this being where the Tauvec ritual Censer of Controlling Air Elementals was left.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 16, 2018)

Some people put a lot of effort into their tombs. Others get left in a niche, sometimes still in the same clothes they died in. In the case of one matriarch of the elven line of Tehnadi a tomb in the form of the hold of her favourite ship was cut out of the stone in her honour.

The care involved in the decoration of this tomb is remarkable, with the stone cut to look and feel like petrified wood boards and beams. On the same level as the great ship-tomb are a number of lesser tombs and niches for members of the line and favoured servants of that generation.


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## darkbard (Jan 16, 2018)

I've long been an admirer of your work! Thanks for sharing here!


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## Mark Hope (Jan 18, 2018)

These are great - that rooftop chase thing is totally getting used as soon as I can find a way to throw a PC out of a window.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 18, 2018)

Mark Hope said:


> These are great - that rooftop chase thing is totally getting used as soon as I can find a way to throw a PC out of a window.




If there isn't already a "defenestrate" spell, I would immediately add one to an NPC caster's spell list.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 19, 2018)

One thing you saw in a number of classic D&D adventure modules were crazy long hallways to break parts of the dungeon apart. Part of it was so we could have more wandering monsters. Part of it was so the rest of the place wouldn’t rise up when adventurers noisily executed the guys in room 3. And part of it was so you could slip in the occasional sloping passage so characters wouldn’t realize they had transitioned between dungeon levels (and thus difficulty levels). To accommodate those long passages, this map was drawn on legal paper (8.5″ x 14″).




The Halls of Taqash Thesk were mostly cut from the raw stone using disintegration spells and then masonry was added to make them feel a little less alien. Since the ascension of the goat-king Taqash to the Realms of Pleasant Evenings, the halls have been used by a mixture of those who would claim his worldly powers, and those who seek to follow his ascent.


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## Michael Silverbane (Jan 19, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> One thing you saw in a number of classic D&D adventure modules were crazy long hallways to break parts of the dungeon apart. Part of it was so we could have more wandering monsters. Part of it was so the rest of the place wouldn’t rise up when adventurers noisily executed the guys in room 3. And part of it was so you could slip in the occasional sloping passage so characters wouldn’t realize they had transitioned between dungeon levels (and thus difficulty levels). To accommodate those long passages, this map was drawn on legal paper (8.5″ x 14″).
> 
> View attachment 93111
> 
> The Halls of Taqash Thesk were mostly cut from the raw stone using disintegration spells and then masonry was added to make them feel a little less alien. Since the ascension of the goat-king Taqash to the Realms of Pleasant Evenings, the halls have been used by a mixture of those who would claim his worldly powers, and those who seek to follow his ascent.




Assuming that those are ten-foot squares, that's about 434 _disintegrate_ spells.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 23, 2018)

The only major human settlement in the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams, Will-o-the-Wisp sits on the edge of the swamp on the shore of Dreaming Bay. The settlement has gone through several names, but one tavern name ended up sticking to the whole settlement because it was the primary watering hole for many travelling through the town. Now the whole settlement uses the name and, tragically, the namesake tavern burned to the ground years ago.



Will-o-the-Wisp is primarily a human settlement, but a noticeable number of bugbears from a few families also live here. Notoriously short-tempered, they are welcome in the town militia but are treated with kid gloves most of the time and are only really accepted because they are a small minority of the populace.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 26, 2018)

Merchants have spread the word that Zorus Island has been overrun with zombies.

Sensible people are avoiding it along with the merchants now, but clever people have pointed out that it is far too close to the mainland to leave it alone if indeed the tales of zombie contagion are true.


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## Gilladian (Jan 27, 2018)

Dyson, do you mind if I use Will-o-the-wisp for a town in my campaign? I’d post it with credit to you on my wiki...and probably modify it a bit. Not that anyone but me ever LOOKS at my wiki.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 27, 2018)

Gilladian said:


> Dyson, do you mind if I use Will-o-the-wisp for a town in my campaign? I’d post it with credit to you on my wiki...and probably modify it a bit. Not that anyone but me ever LOOKS at my wiki.




This is why I post my maps - for people to use. PLEASE use it. For commercial works there's a bunch of restrictions and stuff, but for personal non-commercial use (including posting the stuff to your website or equivalent), run with it and just throw me a credit ("Cartography by Dyson Logos" or "Map by Dyson Logos" and preferably a link to www.dysonlogos.com)


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## Gilladian (Jan 27, 2018)

Great! Ive learned, through my own carelessness, to be careful! I would never want to offend!


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## Olaf the Stout (Jan 28, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> Over the 9 years that I've been drawing maps, I've posted the occasional thread and map to these forums. With all the hoopla going on over Patreon right now (which I use extensively), I figured I could start posting highlights and updates of my work again.
> 
> I draw my maps using technical felt-tipped pens on a variety of paper. Lately I've moved almost entirely over to using 32lb white laser printer paper for my work (Hammermill's "Laser Print" paper with the butterfly on the package). The resulting maps are scanned, reduced to pure B&W, sometimes cleaned up a bit in Photoshop (to get rid of minor mistakes and debris on the page), and released at 1200 dpi on my blog ( *rpgcharacters.wordpress.com* )
> 
> ...




Love your work Dyson. Massive fan.

In particular, I love the rhyme and reason you put behind your maps. It's nice to understand why a particular map looks the way it does.

That and how you always try and avoid super-linear maps where possible.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 29, 2018)

The mysterious Ten Crown River Caves are a set of five entrances cut into the limestone walls of the Ten Crown River by another watercourse that no longer travels this way. Four of the openings are into a single cavern that runs adjacent to the river (typically referred to as a “gallery” cave). Somewhere deep inside is an old hole where the prior river ran into the caves, but it has been filled in with dirt and rubble for untold years now, leaving the caves dry and almost hospitable. 

Drawn in 2014, this map is being re-released through the blog under a free commercial-use license thanks to my awesome supporters on Patreon.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 30, 2018)

As we continue exploring the undercity along the riverbanks, the structures take on a much different feeling. Remnants up here are really that – the remains that didn’t get filled in, but just built over. Things get wetter as river water seeps into these basements and ruins, and of course, sections were sealed off in the process of building the sewers during the last Ditlana.

The largest section of this map is a series of interconnected flooded basements. Pressed down into the riverbanks and unmaintained, these spaces have flooded and have been interlinked by something that lives down here – perhaps ghouls, or something altogether alien that has settled here.

View attachment my-own-private-jakalla-progress-s.jpg

This map is relatively isolated from the overall undercity – accessed by wandering down the sewers from map 1R, or through secret doors to the already isolated sections of map 1P. The flooded basements have been sealed off from the surface for a generation or more now, but the moisture seeps up and the housing here suffers from it. The only surface access is a sewer maintenance access on the lower right.

I’m particularly happy with how this section came together. It feels run-down and decrepit – a reminder that there’s a lot of garbage under the city – that the history of the place isn’t all grand temples, cults, and the great clans – but also half-assed construction work, forgotten soggy places, and crumbling debris.


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 31, 2018)

Gruthren the Excessive (also known as Gruthren Lord of All That Shines and is Buried, Gruthren the Obsessed, Gruthren Master of All Things Great and Small, Gruthren The Builder, Gruthren the Immense and Gruthren Of Too Many Titles) had this great hall constructed on level 3 of a local dungeon that he had cleared out by a team of mercenary adventurers. Purely so he would have something this insanely big for others to discover. Once the reconstruction of the level was complete, he abandoned the site and encouraged it’s repopulation with various foul beasts by leaving behind a significant quantity of gold, gems, foodstuffs, and even some mighty magical treasures he had accumulated.

Sure enough, his plan worked, and foul beasts moved in from below and above, warring over control of the hall in the centre of the dungeon. Finally a potent mind controlling beast took residence here and used one of the magic statues left behind by Gruthren the Foolishly Brave as a magical link back to him, and drew him here to meet his doom.

Well, that’s the story at least. Others say that Gruthren died choking on a chunk of overcooked mutton at the local whorehouse, and the stories of his luring back to the Great Hall was just to conceal how much treasure his advisers and staff took with them when they vacated his palace.

(Originally drawn in 2014, resampled and cleaned up with added grid in 2018)


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 4, 2018)

Welcome back, travellers, to the Heart of Darkling – a series of free maps tied together by the underground Darkling River and the deep blackness of the Darkling Lake.



The Darkling River finally spills into the Darkling Lake in a region known as the Augite Shore. Augite is a black igneous stone with a glassy luster and the propensity to shear at nearly 90 degree angles, making it a remarkable stone for building with. To those coming down the river here, there is a sudden change in pressure and atmosphere as the roof opens up over the lake, and the walls reflect torchlight like shattered windows erected by giants.

About a hundred feet from where the river opens up into the lake is a small fortification built from augite blocks. Part of a guard post built by slaves of an earlier Aboleth overlord, it likely sits eerily empty now. But not unguarded.

Cheig’shun, the twin-tailed mutant Aboleth who controls this territory now, has no fondness for surface creatures and their methods. He leaves the fortress abandoned because he guards the area from under the waters, where his slaves anchor themselves to the lakebed and watch for boats and other intruders and wait...


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 6, 2018)

Duke Dorian (although we always called him Duke Eyebrows because… well… it looks like he has a pair of dire caterpillars arguing over which one gets to eat his eyeballs)…

Let me start over.



Duke Dorian isn’t really a “duke”, more of a “guy who has a small private mercenary force, a lot of skill with a blade, and enough underground contacts to buy a real title if he wanted one”. He handles most business at his “cottage” – a squat and well defended stone structure back on Iron Chimes Lane. In traditional overblown badguy fashion, in front of his dais where he holds audiences is a pit trap that slides the unwary down into his fight pit where he keeps a quartet of rust monsters and a naked and violent hill giant with some serious brain damage.

There’s even a little room set aside to watch the festivities in the pit below, with wall made transparent through some strange alchemy or magic.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 9, 2018)

In the heart of the swamp, Stirge Rock is a small fortification and settlement named after the best known of the local wildlife.

An outcropping of rock that has pushed up above the swampland (or at least not been completely drowned in it), Stirge Rock has always had a problem with the damned bloodsucking beasts it shares a name with. The folk of Stirge Rock are quite capable and hardy from generations of living in this hostile swamp environment.

Originally established a few generations ago, the inhospitable locale has lead to a fairly regular turnover in the local leadership and the fortification and settlement are currently “managed” by Lobouth Redgut, a red-bearded dwarf of incredibly foul temperament and brutality. Lobouth is nonetheless respected because he has lead the people in multiple battles defending the settlement from lizardfolk raiders and he has spent a significant portion of his personal funds to help import foods and other aid for the people of the town.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 13, 2018)

The Skittering Caves? Did the sage really suggest the skittering caves? The only way from here to there is through the Skittering Caves? You know I’m arachnophobic, right? Yeah, we’re going to take a break out here and prep every fire spell known to man and god alike.

The Skittering Caves are absolutely, incontrovertibly, 100% not based on the encounter between Sam and Frodo against Ungoliant’s daughter, Shelob. Honest.

I had a lot of fun putting this one together, with a lot of variation in line strength and thickness, including working on multiple thicknesses of lines in the hatching as well. An experiment that came out well.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 16, 2018)

About 40 minutes upriver from Kreland’s Ford is the old Blackhall. Sitting on a small hill, now nearly overgrown with brush and trees, the squat stone house has been abandoned for at least a decade, and is of course said to be haunted by the ghost of the previous owner who was slain in his sleep by creatures unknown.

Blackhall is obviously not a standard house – it is made of dark stone with very thick walls and narrow windows. Only a single story tall, the squat dark structure is heavy with the promise of mystery and creepiness. Of the windows, only the one looking into the overgrown garden is still intact. Leaves and other detritus covers the floors of the other rooms.

The current master of Blackhall hides from the sun in the small central secret room, and spends a little time in the chamber with the intact window, reading by candle light and occasionally walking the hall.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 19, 2018)

“No, seriously folks, wasn’t there a giant emerald castle RIGHT HERE last time we were out this way?”



A sure sign that player characters have been somewhere is the smoke, bodies, and sheer scale of destruction left behind.

In this case, we once had a massive fortress on the edge of a ravine. Now we have a big damned (smoking) hole with a few bits of the fortress dungeons and research chambers left and one set of cracks leading all the way out to the floor of the ravine (left) and a set of ruined “steps” that lead up to the edge of the crater above (bottom right). The floor of the space is home to debris from the ruins above, huge boulders, and structural debris from the massive machinery that was once housed down here.

This map was used when we played “The Emerald Enchanter Strikes Back” in a Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign. We played through the original Emerald Enchanter adventure in a previous campaign, so it was a great flashback to the prior campaign without any spoilers.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 22, 2018)

Occasionally when delving through archaic tomes about the prehuman denizens of the world, one comes across references to the Lost City of the Naga Queens somewhere around the Donon Basin. The city is supposedly home to arcane technologies that the Naga Queens once used to attempt to wrest domination of this world from the elven empire.


Turns out the Nagas never lost it - the defensive energy screen is still in effect, held in place by the pylons their servants maintain to keep the city safe. They just prefer that everyone else forget about the place so they can go about their business. The energy screen protects the city from scrying, teleportation, and from being accessed via other dimensions or planes.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 26, 2018)

Travelling along the edge of the Dry Badlands of Korush en route to the City of Copper Bowls, you find half of the corpse of a young man clutching a small dragonhide sack containing the emperor’s emblem – a courier. The trail of blood leads from the body back into the Basilisk’s Caves…

Many know of the Basilisk’s Caves because of the tale of the ancient archmage Brasorin Zijes who’s petrified form was recovered from the badlands some eighteen hundred years after his petrification. Once he was extracted from the Basilisk’s Caves and de-petrified, he was a great source of information for sages seeking information about his era – until he was slain one again when he decided to try to take over the empire.

The Basilisk’s Caves are a mix of natural and partially-worked caves and galleries cut into the face of the Falleck Promontory overlooking the Dry Badlands of Korush. Mostly ignored these days except when a storm blows through the area forcing travellers to seek cover herein.

One of the deeper galleries (the rectangular one on the lower right with a single pillar within it) has a wide natural stone chimney opening to the surface cut by floodwaters which occasionally floods that chamber, the next gallery to the left, and then the passages along the bottom of the map to the entrance when the rains bring floods down through the promontory to water the Dry Badlands of Korush every two to four years.


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## Jhaelen (Feb 27, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> The Basilisk’s Caves are a mix of natural and partially-worked caves and galleries cut into the face of the Falleck Promontory overlooking the Dry Badlands of Korush. Mostly ignored these days except when a storm blows through the area forcing travellers to seek cover herein.



Wow, that's a really cool map. I love that all the hallways are at odd angles making it really hard to map for the would-be explorers.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 28, 2018)

Another month of exploring the undercity along the riverbank, just south of the Palace of the Realm, and we again find ourselves in basement ruins that were not entirely filled in during the Ditlana but were sealed off and built over as sewers were built to take their place.

The most remarkable element of this part of the map is a great hall that is now cut into three parts that is in turn connected to what appears to be a partial duplicate of a temple understructure just south of here (in map 1O). Most of the hall is in quiet rotting ruins, connected to the old passages along the sewers in 1R. All of these sections were parts of the temple 400-500 years ago.

The westernmost section of the old great hall has been stripped of all religious iconography and some of the walls have even been replastered to keep the moisture out. A secret door connects to the sewers here and the hall is used as the meeting place for a secret society who’s members enjoy the irony of operating out of the hall that was once part of the temple that seeks their destruction.

Accessing this map requires either coming down the stairs to the sewer access and maintenance chamber on the north side of the map (the chlen hide bars here are locked to keep out intruders, but many copies of the key are now in circulation), following the same sewers from their source in map 1N, or coming in through the sewer tunnels in 1R.

(The connection map I use for this is too large for the forums, but can be seen at the blog post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/my-private-jakalla-map-1t/ )


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 3, 2018)

We have travelled down the Darkling River to finally arrive at the Darkling Lake – an underground lake of immense size that was once home to a thriving society of aboleth slaves and a few ancillary groups until a new aboleth arrived and slaughtered them and their master.

This small cove stands out from the other random coves along the lakeside because of the three bronze statues of long-haired women who reach out in supplication to travellers along the water. Each reaches out with one hand, while another hand remains behind them – the hidden hand either holding a long serrated blade or adorned with wicked long nails. The backs of the statues also show the women as deformed and twisted – thus the cove’s name as “the Hags”.

At one point, a river emptied into the Darkling from this place, and the old river cave can be followed up on the left side of the map until it collapses in on itself.

The main point of interest at the Hags, other than the statues themselves, is a small structure built into the cave wall here. Within the structure is wide well that descends to unknown depths and that is filled with the most foul sulfurous and slimy liquid. Shamans of the Darkling and neighbouring areas come here to imbibe the waters of the deeps and hallucinate while under their effects – seeking visions and omens and their spirit guides. Not all survive the poisonous drink, an not all travel here with companions who bring their bodies home, thus the Hags is also home to many a skeleton of these shamans of the deep, and perhaps a few of them linger on as undead.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 6, 2018)

Since the Day of the Green Sun three weeks ago, the catacombs of Olik Gullar have been teeming with the undead. A sanctified necropolis, Olik Gullar contains untold numbers of the dead from the city above. The catacombs have been locked down now, but some worry that it is only a matter of time before the restless dead claw their way through to the cobbled streets of the city proper…

This map is a “proof of concept” of what I wanted a few earlier catacomb & sewer maps to look like. I just didn’t have the skill at the time to pull it off. I drew this on a single page, with the two different scales for the overview and callouts – although I ended up moving the callouts a bit in photoshop afterwards because they were a bit cramped in some places and sparse in others.

In the end I’m very happy with the resulting mix of scales, and am proud to release the Catacombs of Olik Gullar to you.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 9, 2018)

With the town of Toronin razed to the ground, the ruins of the small fortress are all that remain to indicate where the town was these days.

The mossy ruins have a few streams that wander through them to a small pond in front of what was some sort of memorial wall. The massive 30-foot block of stone is badly damaged, but it is clear that it once had carvings on it, including what appears to be the back end of a lionine beast and a helmeted form bearing a great spear.

While most of the structure is in ruins and the roofs fallen in – there remains two access points to a small dungeon beneath the ruins that remains in somewhat better shape despite the years.



The dungeons in turn are made up of two levels – the worked dungeons and a smaller cave beneath. Some stone work is evident in the smaller cave, but the area was never completed because it often floods when water levels are high, and there is no easy way to remove the water that accumulates down below. One room on the eastern edge of the dungeon is also cut down further into the rock (and was used as an actual dungeon) and suffers from this same wetness resulting in it being almost completely covered in a thick slime mold.


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## fantasyclipinks (Mar 10, 2018)

I love your work, my fellow canuck. These maps are so clean and crisp, even though by adding the little rocks and rubble to form the grid lines, they are still so easy to read and write on. 
Nice stuff.
WM


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 13, 2018)

fantasyclipinks said:


> I love your work, my fellow canuck. These maps are so clean and crisp, even though by adding the little rocks and rubble to form the grid lines, they are still so easy to read and write on.
> Nice stuff.
> WM




Thanks!

And yes, one of the reasons I work in B&W instead of colour is the ease of annotation.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 13, 2018)

They call it "The Strike", the place where a massive longsword of a magical material sits embedded in the stone, surrounded by a small crater. Over the years a small church and a few buildings have been built up around the strike, and a temple dug underground where the faint glow of the magical material can be seen. Some come down here to establish their vows as paladins, others to take in the essence of the blade to supposedly increase their martial prowess.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 20, 2018)

On the western edge of the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams, the stony roots of the Highspear Mountains are exposed right down to the waterline of the swamp. Most fear to travel on this side of the swamp because of tales of trolls that seem to crawl right out of the mountains. This Troll Hole is home to a few such loathsome creatures – a small stone chimney that reaches down at least a hundred feet to damp caverns below. Water still dribbles down the chimney, a constant rivulet that the trolls drink from. But don’t make a sound here, for what comes up the chimney is far more ferocious than smoke – troll after troll seem to just explode out of the top of the chimney as they climb out seeking prey.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 20, 2018)

They tell you that there aren’t sharks in a swamp. That the water is too shallow, too brackish. They forget that not all sharks swim.

The Swamp of Forgotten Dreams is home to a burrowing beast (a massive bulette) of incredible scale that crawls not only through the swamp looking for food, but through the forgotten dreams themselves. It is one of the gateways to the dreams – climb into its back and it may burrow into the dream you are looking for…


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## darjr (Mar 20, 2018)

Love your work!

Wanted to say congrats!


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 23, 2018)

darjr said:


> Love your work!
> 
> Wanted to say congrats!




Thanks. I've been noticing all the XP you've been sending my way.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 23, 2018)

Somewhere beneath the Machineries, Ul-Vir built a crypt where he keeps his failed golem and automaton designs.

Somewhere within these crypts is of course the MacGuffin that will reanimate the old warforged paladin the party is trying to work with.

Each of the statues (the stars in a circle) is another weird golem or automaton experiment by Ul-Vir. Most mount weird weaponry, additional sensory apparatus, extra arms, extra legs, tails, crossbows, and a variety of semi-functional oddities.

In a sunken pit twelve feet below floor level is an experimental version of one of Ul-Vir’s mightiest war golems – a 35 foot rusted monstrosity plated in heavy armour and bristling with strange armament. The heart of this machine is one of the last of Ul-Vir’s golemhearts – exactly the piece of hardware to bring back a dead warforged.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 27, 2018)

_We trekked through the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams and into The Jungle Beyond to find the old temple ruins. It turns out there’s a good reason to stay clear of that whole part of the Jungle Beyond. Wyverns. A whole damned family of them roosting on the temple ruins. They claw marks cover the whole structure, the stones scratched, gouged and torn down not by the erosion of weather, but of generations of these foul dragon-like beasts._

The Wyvern Temple is a multi-tiered structure, each tier about 7 feet above the one below. The “main” tier of the structure is thus about 21 feet above the level of the jungle, with additional structure reaching up another 30 feet into the low jungle canopy.

The whole structure is in ruins, built centuries ago and left for the jungle and the wyverns to destroy.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 30, 2018)

Well folks, this might well be the final map in the main level of the Undercity map. We’ve finally arrived at the basement of the Palace of the Realm where it sits on massive stone foundations jutting out into the river that defines the northern edge of the city. There are a few extensions that can be added onto the sewers around the edges of the map, but we’ll probably leave those so the map can be expanded upon for specific campaigns in the future.

The most prominent element of this map is the basement of the Palace of the Realm – one of the few structures with a fully planned basement and sub-basement. The only access from the basement to the rest of the undercity is a guarded and locked doorway into older ruins to the south that is also defended by a double portcullis.

The main section of the basement is a “small” temple dedicated to Thúmis (the patron of the governor’s clan), surrounded by chambers for staff and scribes as well as a moderate contingent of guards who keep track of the rare comings and goings into the ruins of the undercity.






This map only links via those same ruins to the south to map 1T. Multiple staircases lead up to the Palace of the Realm above as well as down to the lower levels of the palace (and potentially to more links to the lower levels of the undercity) below.


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## darjr (Mar 30, 2018)

Amazing! What a huge undertaking and I can’t wait to take a party through it!


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 3, 2018)

This month’s addition to the Heart of Darkling takes us back up the Darkling to one of its tributaries and the Silver Shrines built upon it.

Inspired by dungeon architecture of Lord Kevin Campbell, these three shrines honour a set of underworld demigods unknown or at least worshiped under different names and forms on the surface. The main structure is a massive hemispherical dome built around the river itself, with shrines containing a silver statue of a demigod or godling along with an altar in each of the four niches in the room, all watched over by a massive silver eye statue on an elevated platform in the middle of the chamber.

The river flows through this chamber about 25 feet down from the floor of the chamber proper. Ladders on a few of the sides of the central structure allow for people to disembark from boats and climb into the chamber. Otherwise visitors can continue down to where a wide staircase leads down to the water.

The entire complex is “maintained” and run by a hive of exceptionally clever gazers who recite the stories of the godlings and their prayers and rituals. Perhaps something controls them from afar, or perhaps they really have ascended beyond the usual low intelligence of their kin...


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 6, 2018)

There was a time when there was an oracle within the walls of the city, one who could see through all things to seek answers and who could even see into the future. But that was when the city was young and the buildings sparse.

The small cave and hot spring where the oracle once lived is now the basement of a shrine to the oracle and the few prophecies that were recorded. The cave that housed the hot mineral water springs have been expanded into a large set of underground hot baths that are open to the public for a small fee. It has become a pleasant place to come for a rejuvenating bath… if you can deal with the proselytizing about the oracle that comes with it.


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## Ancalagon (Apr 8, 2018)

I have purchased your map compendiums and feel that it was money *extremely* well spent - I need a map for something, I skim trough, I find something and *tada*!  add to campaign.  I've done this ... 5 times now?    Huge time saver.

In some cases, it's not just time saving but it outright *adds* to the campaign because the ideas that come with the maps can either be used as if, or give me other ideas that I can use.  Your goblin market is a proud part of my Yoon-Suin 

Thank you so much for contributing a lot of your work to the gaming community!


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 8, 2018)

Oh yeah, the palace market would mesh nicely with Yoon-Suin.

I need to go back to the Yellow City some time soon.


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## Ancalagon (Apr 9, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> Oh yeah, the palace market would mesh nicely with Yoon-Suin.
> 
> I need to go back to the Yellow City some time soon.




If you want detailed information on how slugman biology work and how it affects their society, I'm your guy


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 10, 2018)

The Marmoset Savant is a very small, very shy, marmoset wizard of moderate level and impressive knowledge. They are probably the shiest deus ex machina I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with.

As one of the land’s smallest sages and wizards, the Marmoset Savant is rarely found in the same home twice. Once they have divested themselves of important information to get the adventurers back on track to saving the kidnapped child / saving the kingdom / saving the world, they pack up their goods and build a new home where they will be needed next.

The marmoset savant doesn’t divest their knowledge easily, however. As a shy and tiny wizard, they often need to be lured out of their tiny home of jumbled blocks with interesting trinkets, new magics, or exotic nuts & berries.

Of course, the layout of the marmoset savant’s tower can be used for any other eccentric tower-builders, and can be on a more... human scale for most adventurers to explore. Or perhaps the marmoset savant is no longer of marmoset scale and has grown large and mighty - and is now the size of a halfling.


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 13, 2018)

As we weathered the storm anchored off of Cruuk’s Shore, it was impossible to not notice the constant cascade of lightning striking to the standing stones by the old ruins that the sailor’s insisted on calling “Salanan’s Peril”. The bright flashes would leave terrifying ghost images upon the eye of bearded folk engaging in bloody sacrifices within the circle.

The warlord Salanan didn’t built the structure that sits in ruins on Cruuk’s Shore, but the ruins bear their name because they fought to maintain the structure here and prevent the Order of Talotos from engaging in their rituals at the standing stones across the small river.

It is said that the battle against the order went well for Salanan until the Year of Blue Dragons, when a series of fierce storms forced Salanan and their troops into the old structure which was then torn down by blast after blast of lightning that sundered the structure and scorched the land around it.

[video=youtube_share;v62juxcGuKM]https://youtu.be/v62juxcGuKM[/video]

I also recorded a short video of me drawing this map, since most of my existing videos show me working on dungeon maps. It is extra-short as I compressed it down to 20 seconds for easier sharing on social media.

Normally I get obsessed watching the hatching seem to pour out of the pens when I do time lapse videos of my work, but in this case, I just end up focusing on the hot-swapping of pens as I work.


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 16, 2018)

In Search of the Unknown is one of my favourite modules of all time. But there are times that the map annoys me as the main level is more hallway than rooms (and that’s with 38 rooms on that level). So today we get to explore an alternate version of that venerable dungeon.

I ended up splitting the main level of Quasqueton over two levels (the second will appear later this week). In the process I added a few new rooms to the dungeon layout and removed one or two.

I’ve also made a version of the map with the rooms numbered for use with the classic adventure module. The numbered rooms correspond with the original rooms in the adventure, and the lettered rooms are new to this map.


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## darjr (Apr 16, 2018)

Oh that’s such a cool idea! Thinking of any others?


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 17, 2018)

darjr said:


> Oh that’s such a cool idea! Thinking of any others?




Not particularly. I've got the upstairs of this to post later this week, and I haven't redrawn the basement caverns yet which I need to do and post next month.

There aren't that many dungeons that I love AND feel need a redraw at this point.


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 18, 2018)

My revised map of the main level of Quasqueton (from the classic B1 module “In Search of the Unknown) just didn’t have enough space for all the rooms on that level even after reducing the amount of hallway space, and I wanted to keep it so you could access most rooms via multiple routes, avoiding other sections of the dungeon level if you need to.

So here’s the upstairs, containing two of the best-known rooms of the dungeon – the strange magical pools and the overgrown fungal garden. I purposefully placed the gardens right against the rock face. In my mind, there are metal shutters along the top of the west wall that are well concealed from the outside. These shutters have rusted shut – allowing rain water into the room without allowing sunlight.

I’ve also made a version of the map with the rooms numbered for use with the classic adventure module. The numbered rooms correspond with the original rooms in the adventure, and the lettered rooms are new to this map.

I haven’t had a chance to get to the basement caves of Quasqueton yet, but I expect I’ll have them done by the end of the month so they will show up next month on the blog.


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 21, 2018)

There are tunnels and passages that lead deep under the land to the ever-dark homes of the various so-called “deep races”. These descents are typically marked on the rare maps of these underlands as either primary, secondary or tertiary passages.

These passages lead on for miles and thus only their general routing is typically mapped, but of course, the underdark is not a place you wander expecting to never encounter anything or anyone. Thus we have sample sections of these passages mapped out to provide more detail when running into drow or sverfneblin patrols

Here are five sample stretches of Primary Passages – these passages generally have fairly even flooring, with ceiling heights of 20 to 50 feet (averaging at around 35 feet) and widths generally of 30 to 40 feet. Some portions of these passages are worked to make travel easier, but they are mostly natural and generally fairly straight.

The original Descent into the Depths of the Earth was published 40 years ago and included one sample stretch of each of the three sizes of passages. The original primary passage example has been reproduced here (the second from the right), with four more drawn to add variety to the encounter options.


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 24, 2018)

While most traffic into the depths of the earth tries to stick to the primary passages, there are those who wish to travel either to less-ventured places off the main passages, or those who wish to avoid running into major patrols of the various races down below.

Secondary passages are generally 20 feet wide and have fewer worked areas than the primary passages. The roof varies from 15 to 40 feet above the floor, with 25 feet being usual.

In addition to being smaller and less worked, secondary passages often have more obstacles than the primaries, as the “civilized” denizens of the underdark have had less reasons to build over or around them, or have stopped using the tunnel completely because of the obstacles.

The original sample secondary passage from Descent into the Depths of the Earth has been redrawn on the far left, and is now joined by 4 additional sample passages.


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 28, 2018)

When travelling the depths of the underdark, there are passages and caves that most “civilized” denizens ignore because they are small, narrow, and fraught with obstacles. These “tertiary” passages sometimes make for useful escape or access tunnels and these have their connections to the primary and secondary passages concealed behind secret doors or other hidden access points.

Tertiary tunnels are usually about ten feet wide with ceilings between 8 to 25 feet with an average of 15 feet or so. While drow still patrol these passages, encounters are more frequently with monsters such as xorn, lurkers above, trappers, mind flayers, and various underdark vermin.

This set of tertiary passage geomorphs includes a redraw of the original from Descent into the Depths of the Earth (on the far left), along with four new example passages for use when handling encounters along these nearly abandoned and secret byways.


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 30, 2018)

It is the end of the month and time to head back into the older maps and dig up a few to re-release under the free commercial license, all thanks to the awesome patrons who support my cartographic wanderings via Patreon. Today we are bringing back “the Ruins under Axehead Mound” from four years ago. The versions being released today have been upgraded to 1200 dpi and an optional grid has been added.

My default assumption for old school dungeons is that you’ve come across the ruins of something huge and underground – something like the ruined cities of the Elderlings buried in the swamps in the Rain Wilds stories by Robin Hobb. It’s the basis I use for all my “random dungeon” rolling.

Here is a small dungeon level set up exactly along those premises – the ruins under Axehead Mound have two entrances – one a collapsed wall section that leads into a chamber, the other a pair of ruin-cluttered stairs that lead into the ruins from a ruined above-ground building.

This map was originally drawn almost exactly four years ago in a single draft using Sakura Microns (a 03 for the walls, and a 01 for the hatching).


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## Dyson Logos (May 2, 2018)

Rhinoceros Containment Caves of the Iron Overlord!

The Iron Overlord (a sorcerer of some power who is never seen outside of his full plate armour) maintains this hillside structure where the rhinoceroses are experimented upon with the goal of producing a breed of brutal war rhinos. Most of the time the place is fairly quiet, observing the four rhinos in their two enclosures. But sometimes the rhinos are magically tranquilized and carried up the sloping corridor to the lab. The room adjoining the lab to the east is also twelve feet above the lab, allowing the Iron Overlord and any guests to oversee the work being done to the rhinos without getting their hands bloody.

The whole facility lies just outside the great city. Most of those who work within the small complex (cleaning and feeding staff) live on the outskirts of town and walk here to work while the surgeon who does the major work lives in the offices behind the viewing room. The Iron Overlord himself travels here standing upon a floating disk summoned for that purpose by his apprentices.


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## Dyson Logos (May 3, 2018)

Once the basement of a small fortified temple, Lockhart’s Delve has been home to a variety of creatures and groups since the destruction of the temple proper. Some maps of the old temple of the moon god show two entrances into the lower levels – one into the basements and another into the connected crypts. But some fifty years ago the crypt entrance was completely filled with stone and earth under the orders of Short Terog, an ogre adventurer who made this her home for a time.

Most recently, the Blackguard Lockhart has used the structure as barracks while assembling their forces to cross the dark barrens and assault Oceansong Harbor. Since the fall and subsequent recapture of Oceansong Harbor, the dungeons have seen little use except by the shadows of the kobolds who came here looking for their clanmates.


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## Dyson Logos (May 5, 2018)

Cut into the cliffs near Terrek’s Wall is a solitary sealed doorway. Beyond it is the vault of the famed Lapis Monk, entombed for long centuries. The vault has lain undisturbed for ages – the doorway secured both in construction and by magic.

But time has her way. A portion of the cliff face has fallen, exposing an internal passage within the vault. Trapped chambers lay in both directions to those who would explore via this new entrance – but since when did common sense and traps prevent a little bit of dungeoneering?


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## Jeremy E Grenemyer (May 6, 2018)

The awesomeness is unstoppable. 

You rock, Dyson. Keep up the good work.


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## Chris Clinch (May 6, 2018)

I love the old school feel to them. Good job, keep it up.


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## Dyson Logos (May 8, 2018)

Jeremy E Grenemyer said:


> The awesomeness is unstoppable.
> 
> You rock, Dyson. Keep up the good work.






Chris Clinch said:


> I love the old school feel to them. Good job, keep it up.




Only because you both insist.



Emperor Tauneskalis III created the viridian beacon which to this day marks the centre of the Blue Empire. The Great Pyramid is the seat of this incandescent blue light, said to be the mark of his divine potence.

Standing 260 feet tall the pyramid is the base for the viridian light which in turn beams straight up into the sky, visible for hundreds of miles around as a needle-like green-blue line that stretches up to the clouds.

The main level of the pyramid is the only area ever open to visitors and celebrants, with access to the upper levels concealed by secret passages or guarded by imperial security forces watching for those who would defile the pyramid by scaling it.

Soldiers come here prior to deployments to bask in the light of the beacon – at other times you will find farmers here with a sack of their best grain to have it touched by the light prior to planting; expectant mothers hoping to bless their children; and even businessmen hoping for the light to aid their new ventures. Pacing around quietly are priests and administrators of the realm offering advice and counsel.

(details on the upper levels to come later this week)


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## Dyson Logos (May 11, 2018)

The upper levels of the Great Pyramid of Tauneskalis III are dedicated to worship of the divine family and observance of the great incandescent blue-green beacon that reminds all within the Blue Empire of their divine potence.

The main worship level of complex is dedicated to the history of the Empire and the Imperial Dynasties – with statues of the six emperors of the Tauneskalis family along the Green Hall on the north side. Access to this level is either by the secret staircase behind the statue of Tauneskalis III himself, or via the not-very-secret passage that exits on the west face of the pyramid. The path up the west face has been well worn by the many people that have climbed up and down this way since the pyramid was built.



The upper levels contain archives of the empire – stored in the crypts, tombs and niches constructed on these levels that have never held a body. At the very top level, a sloped chamber leads up to a balcony that faces east that is still used to this day to make imperial proclamations in the early mornings a few times a year.


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## Dyson Logos (May 15, 2018)

Cut into the foggy clefts of the Steaming Mountains, the Maze of the Storm Witch must be navigated (or the whole mountain climbed over) in order to reach the Pale Divide. Unnatural mists fill these passages, obscuring the already confusing twists and turns.

The maze is also specifically designed to prevent the most common method of exploring such a space – if an adventurer uses the “left hand rule” (or even the “right hand rule”) they will not find the way through, but will instead eventually find themselves back at the entrance instead.

That is, if the storm witch’s blindsighted grimlocks don’t get you first.

This map was specifically drawn to show how a 3D structure can easily break the “left hand rule” for navigating a maze. It was also originally called the Labyrinth of the Storm Witch, but regardless of every dictionary disagreeing with them, there are those who feel it is important to point out that labyrinths are ONLY unicursal in design.


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## Dyson Logos (May 17, 2018)

This hex sits to the lower-right of Baraloba and is mostly a forested hex cut through by the road that leads from Baraloba to the distant Citadel on Sabre Lake.

Along the road we run into a few classic items for a D&D game – there’s a large farm near Baraloba itself , a trail leading off to an abandoned logging camp to the north, and finally Strickson’s Auberge, a traveller’s inn roughly 9 miles outside of Baraloba (about three hours travel time). North of Strickson’s Auberge is another of the ancient giant’s towers overlooking the inn and valley, now slowly collapsing.

Southwest of Strickson’s Auberge is a clearing in the woods with a single massive tree at it’s centre. A trail leads deeper into the woods from the tree, probably to another town, or perhaps the base of a small group of humanoids who host their religious activities at the tree.

To see the rest of the hexes in the Baraloba and Environs hexmaps, head over here: https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/maps/multi-page-dungeons/baraloba-and-environs/


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## Dyson Logos (May 21, 2018)

After cutting through the Badlands of Slate, the Hewbank meanders through the slate hills to the east of Baraloba. This stony environment has the Hewbank meander significantly and form into small lakes where small valleys present themselves between the hills.

Another of the old giant watchtowers sits overlooking farmer’s fields on the east side of this area, and another smaller druidic farming community is nestled between forest and lake in the middle of the hex, only a few hundred yards from a massive set of standing stones that acts as the “anchor” to their community. The druids and the farmers both make use of the trading opportunities in Baraloba and generally don’t see much in the way of visitors to their own properties.

At the south edge of the map is Small Cheese Lake which was once good for fishing in, but in the last thirty years the fishing has died out here – forcing the two trolls who live in the secret cave nearby to head southeast to find more food (as they avoid both the Druids and Baraloba because they know they don’t have the trollpower to take on either settlement).

I've also included a map showing all five of the existing Baraloba hexmaps linked together.


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## Dyson Logos (May 24, 2018)

Quebec City, 1666, with magic of course.

This is the setting for the Sugar Shack Slaughter, one of the two adventures in “The Scenario from Ontario“. Written by the remarkably Kiel Chenier, the adventure takes place in the area around Quebec City presented here.

Each hex in the map is 1/4 mile across – so if sticking to good terrain an adventuring party could travel 24 hexes in a day. Which just goes to show how big modern cities are – the location marked “Maple Ooze” on the map is actually within modern Quebec City (pretty much at the intersection of Boulevard Valcartier and Rue de la Riviere Nelson – there’s a convenience store there and I bet they have those gooey maple sugar cones that are ubiquitous candy throughout the region).

As a fantasy cartographer, it is always kind of intimidating to tackle a real world location in a map. You KNOW you aren’t going to get it perfect, and with real world locations people might actually notice what’s wrong as opposed to thinking that you did it that way on purpose. Mark Richardson (who draws the maps for the 7th Sea RPG as well as for the Government of Canada) aimed me at a database of topographical maps of Canada that really helped with this piece.

Over on the blog I’ve included a second version of the map with the sugar bush and maple ooze banners removed, although the ooze and its path are still visible (since I drew them on the map in ink as I was making it unlike the banners which were added in photoshop afterwards). Printed at letter or ledger size, the map looks great and will help in running the adventure in question, or can easily be repurposed for any other settlement along a major river.


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## Dyson Logos (May 26, 2018)

Temples and churches are a fairly common sight in a city, but few maintain a standing military force without having a massive structure or complex to house them in. In the case of Keegan’s Temple, the finances were not available to build a massive church / temple / armoury complex. Instead a smaller temple was built in a walled compound donated to the church.

The compound has a main gate and a smaller postern gate for servants and deliveries. Wooden structures along the walls serve as stables, kitchens and barracks. The temple itself is often busy and also fairly exclusive to the order of lawful warrior-priests who reside and base there, so a smaller shrine has been built into the south wall for those who wish to give thanks to or petition the god of this temple without entering into the compound proper.

Beneath the temple itself is a small reliquary and crypt where fallen soldiers and aged priests have been interred and commemorated.


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## Dyson Logos (May 28, 2018)

As Canadian as Maple Syrup!

This is the setting for the Sugar Shack Slaughter, one of the two adventures in “The Scenario from Ontario“. Written by the remarkably Kiel Chenier, “dungeon” of the adventure is a massive hollow maple tree and tunnels among its roots.

Hollow trees are a favourite “dungeon” environment of mine, so I not only enjoyed working on these, but have a number of alternate uses planned for them for my own campaigns. The main level can work as an elven temple of some kind, with the central pool working as a scrying device or where the priests stand in order to be closer to avalon or the equivalent during their ceremonies. Or in a D&D5e campaign it can be the secret gathering places of the blights who are much more communal creatures than people think them to be…

These maps of the Blood Maple Hollow are redraws based on Kiel’s original maps. I made an effort to make it look as “tree-like” as I could manage for the level on the left, with the lower level on the right still having roots and tendrils to define the grid but being a bit more traditionally cave-like in textures as is my style.


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## Dyson Logos (May 31, 2018)

View attachment WEB-Caverns-of-Quasqueton-Patreon-Numbered.png

The fortress/dungeon of Quasqueton was not completed before the residents marched off to war against the northern barbarians. While the main floors of the structure are almost finished, the in-progress nature of the structure becomes apparent when descending into the lower level which is still mostly natural caves that remain unworked for the most part.

Access to this level is either via the stairs into the finished structures roughly in the middle of the map, or via the hole that runs down from the smithy on the upper level, through a room on the main level, and down to the small cave with the pool of water roughly 100 feet south of the finished rooms.

I’ve also included this numbered version of the map that links up with the upper level maps. The removal of the pit trap from the main level of the original map meant that I moved the icy-cold pool of water (room 50) from underneath it to being underneath the shaft leading down from the smithy area – they probably used it to get cold water for the smithing process using a now long-missing bucket and rope.

The original cavern level included several caverns that were completely unkeyed – I’ve included roughly as many, but added optional lettered keys to these caverns to make stocking it easier. I’ve also purposefully skipped the letter I to avoid confusion with the number 1 – so the lettering goes from A to H on the upper two levels and from J to L on the lower level.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 3, 2018)

When I put the maps up for voting in May for the “Release the Kraken” project, I included an old favourite of mine, the Circle of Doom. But as I was getting it ready to post today, I gave it a good hard look and just didn’t feel comfortable releasing it. I drew the Circle of Doom in 2010 (maybe even late 2009) for a Labyrinth Lord campaign I was running at the time. I drew it in pencil.

Pencil doesn’t scan well. It comes out very light or very jaggy if I enhance the contrast enough to make it dark. Also, I’ve gotten a bit better at the craft since 2009.

So I redrew it.

I’ve USED it three times now in my games, but always stocking it “on the fly” using random stocking from the various rules we were playing with at the time. The dungeon “level” itself is centred around a massive shaft some 70 feet across spanned by four bridges on four different levels. I’ve run it as a rapid delve through four dungeon levels using level-appropriate encounters at each level (appropriate to the dungeon level, not the character level). In other words, it quickly goes from a team of halflings at the beginning to 8 hungry trolls guarding the exit.

So enjoy, and please – give your players the shaft!


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 4, 2018)

The sign hanging from the tavern shows a matronly woman carrying a large mug of ale while holding a finger to her lips in the near-universal symbol for being quiet. But the tavern itself is rarely quiet – it is one of the few places in town with a dedicated stage for musicians and entertainers and thus attracts a boisterous if friendly audience.

The Quiet Margose is primarily made of wood, supported by 16 heavy stone pillars. The main structure is flanked by a covered biergarten on one side, and a space dedicated to the owner’s quarters and a covered wagon entry where firewood is stored on the other. The stone pillars predate the Margose and were part of a prior structure here and still bear wards against evil from the older building. The walls are whitewashed wood, and the very high roof is made of heavy beams supporting pitch-black tiles.

The Quiet Margose is purely a tavern and offers no accommodations (although it isn’t uncommon to find or or two people “napping” at the long tables by the banked fire in the early hours of the morning). The owner, Tirril Lor, is the great-nephew of the titular Margose and books the entertainment himself – leaving the acquisition and preparation of food to the Qai twins who work the kitchen and live nearby.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 7, 2018)

Tarnos Venn had a team of dwarves cut defensive structures into the Dosetlar Cliffs during the great war. The guard tower cut into the jutting edge of the cliff still looks nearly new, but the main entrance shows the damage of war and years - there are no longer any signs of where the great door once stood, instead there is just a rough and shattered-looking entryway into the stone face itself.

Tarnos of course had the dwarves build a secret exit to get out in case the front door was held or the complex was invaded and fell, but that exit has been lost. The exit leads to a few secret chambers (once home to Tarnos' fiancee and most trusted assassin), and then to the caves behind the fortress. Those caves are most often used by those in the fortress to store items that are of low value and high "stinkiness" - particularly pickled fish and such.

Semi-ironically, the most resent residents of the fortress has been considering building their own secret exit between the fortress and the caves, either right near the cave entrance or deeper into the back gallery, where it comes within 30-35 feet of the fortress structures.


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## Schmoe (Jun 8, 2018)

Hey, I just learned that you might have had something to do with the newest adventure series.  If so, congrats!


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 8, 2018)

Schmoe said:


> Hey, I just learned that you might have had something to do with the newest adventure series.  If so, congrats!




Indeed! 

I drew 24 maps for Waterdeep - Dragon Heist.


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## Schmoe (Jun 8, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> Indeed!
> 
> I drew 24 maps for Waterdeep - Dragon Heist.




Sweet!  I can't wait to see them


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 11, 2018)

In grand underdark caverns the dark elves build their cities. The oldest families establish themselves in the more defensible positions and as close to the centre of the cavern for defensive advantage against invaders.

Today’s map is a fairly small stalagmite spire fortress. The spire is surrounded on three sides by a small fortress with a spiral ramp leading up from the fortress into and around the stalagmite. The arrows on the ramp lead upwards with a fairly aggressive angle.

One chamber dominates the interior of the spire – Accessed by visitors from the lower portions of the spire ramp, the family head receives guests and talks to them from the balcony on the next level, a good 40 feet above the floor of the chamber. Further up again are a set of galleries for other family members or assassins to listen in on conversations…


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## abeir-torilian (Jun 12, 2018)

thanks for the maps


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 14, 2018)

abeir-torilian said:


> thanks for the maps




You are very welcome!


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 14, 2018)

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 of which the Oratory of the Eleventh Blessing is usually the first seen (and typically the only structure visited by outsiders).

The oratory’s main purpose is to provide a worship and study space for the residents as well as a greeting and meeting area for guests. Tucked between these are a small number of cells for scribes to work in (and the heavy stone structure makes these cells plum work spaces in the summer, and harsh punishment in the winter).


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 16, 2018)

Some cities just stink. Built over drained swampland and mostly relying on surface sewers, Uogralas is unfortunately one of the smellier urban centres of the land.

Uogralas is known as the City of the Frogs because of its swampy origins and the city's patron god, Ugrale, a great toad-like deity dedicated to brickwork, construction, and the hearth. The city is ostensibly run by Duke Sooryakan, who in turn basically runs everything past Prefect Sahint of the church of Ugrale because no edict of the Duke's will have any effect without the support and enforcement of the religious police.

Just north of the city is the walled Monastery of Raised Delights, home to a splinter group of the church of Ugrale who are exiled from the city, but otherwise accepted as long as they have no involvement in the city's politics.

Uogralas primarily exports marsh grains, a crisp watery tuber, lizard leathers, bricks, and spices collected from exotic flowers. They import lumber for boats and construction and for use as fuel, as well as meats, cheeses, and metals.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 18, 2018)

Burial mounds are a staple of fantasy games and stories. Today’s offering is a collection of nine different burial mounds for those occasions when you really need to loot a a small tomb right now.

The four lower tombs have Greek “Dromos” entrances – an “avenue” cut into the barrow hill leading to the door to the tomb itself. These avenues would be built up in stone to hold back the earth of the mound and to provide a clear route to the door. Often the end of the dromos furthest from the door would be decorated with columns or other decorations, often long gone by the time would-be tomb robbers arrive on site.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 21, 2018)

To the south of Baraloba are the Eagle Hills and the imaginatively named Eagle Hills River that runs through it from south to north before joining the Hewbank. The Eagle Hills have a mix of chalk and coal deposits that were attractive to miners. Most of the deposits have now been worked, leaving a collection of open mines and shaft mines in the area. The central point of interest in this hex is the old open chalk mine that takes up 11 of the subhexes right in the middle of the map. The hills here are bright white and are a mix of natural hills and tailings from the mining operations.

On the opposite side of the river and small lake from the mines is a boggy marshland slowly being reclaimed by the forest. If one were to dig beneath the immediate mud and water, it would be noted that the reason this area is low and doesn’t drain properly is that it too was an open mine at some point.

Further south along the river is a small drift mine that has become home to a modest group of humanoids. They keep a low profile and farm the area around the minehead, using grain stolen from caravan a decade ago as their original seed stock. There are less than a score of them living here and they take significant pains to not be noticed by the residents of Baraloba only seven miles away.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 23, 2018)

Southwest of Baraloba, the Eagle Hills continue into heavy forests. The closest thing here to Baraloba itself is yet another of the old giant’s watchtowers – although this one is not as decrepit as most of the other ruined towers in the region. A druid and their apprentice maintain the tower and keep a small herd of goats that keep the grass in the hills and vales of the area nicely clipped. A trail leads from the tower into the woods and to a massive tree in the middle of a clearing where the druids perform their rites and occasionally just engage in silent contemplation.

A little further to the west another trail leads through the woods to a very large farm / small farming community. A couple of large multigenerational families run these farms and generally try to be self-sufficient, only walking to Baraloba when they require supplies they cannot find or make on their own or with the help of the druids in the tower. The rest of the hex is unpopulated wilderness – rolling hills and a few jutting chunks of stone, expanses of dark and heavy forest teeming with wildlife, small bubbling brooks, and a lazy river looping gently through the hills.



I've also included the full set of seven hexes to show how they fit together. On a normal 6-mile-hex map these would be a village hex in the middle with (clockwise from the top) badlands & ruins hex, hills hex, forest hex, hills hex with mine, forest hex, forest hex.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 25, 2018)

Vault of the Cave Morphs!

Based on the cave work I did for the Descent into the Depths of the Earth tunnels and passages, here are five cave geomorphs that can be used to link up to any existing tunnels. They are all 2 squares wide at the entrances just like the existing encounter area maps for that adventure, so they mesh best with the secondary tunnels but can be used as constrictions in primary passages or widened areas in tertiary tunnels.

These were my first experiment using a sharpie marker as the foundation of my map drawing – for a number of these geomorphs the outer walls were drawn using a dying marker instead of my usual felt-tipped technical pens. They were drawn using a 07 gel pen for most details and hatching (the same pens I used back when I first started drawing maps), and the sharpie marker for the walls. I used a Squarehex PoGI (Pad of Geomorphic Intent) and drew them while watching “The New Girl” on TV with MissGladiator (and while digging through my Twilight 2000 materials, as you can see in the photo below).

This experiment with a sharpie marker in February (I drew these in February and am finally posting them now? WTH?) is what inspired me to buy a bunch more Sharpies which has lead to my current line of “Daily Doodles” that you can follow along with if you follow any of my social media feeds (on Twitter, FaceBook, or Google+).


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 29, 2018)

Pushing out of the cliff face like a partially exposed egg, this small dungeon complex was evidently not built here but transported in some manner. Either that, or the craftsmen were purposefully annoying in the design as the whole interior structure is at an uncomfortable 7 degree angle with the right edge of the map being slightly more than 36 feet above the height of the entrance doors.

In addition to the awkward angle, the interior of the structure bears a strong scent like a mix of musk and nutmeg. The walls and floors are painted gold, but are scratched up badly enough that most floors and west walls appear to be grey stone with gold streaks on them. Doorways, where open, have golden hair on them from some mighty beast having to squeeze through.

Prowling this space, of course, is the Golden Wolf – an extraplanar beast that must squeeze to push through the 4 foot doorways and is much more comfortable in the wide circular hall of the complex. All doors here open as it approaches, but are often stuck for others. The Golden Wolf guards its treasure jealously – the carcasses of seven platinum geese, each with its neck snapped.


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## Satyrn (Jun 29, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> View attachment 98847
> 
> Pushing out of the cliff face like a partially exposed egg, this small dungeon complex was evidently not built here but transported in some manner. Either that, or the craftsmen were purposefully annoying in the design as the whole interior structure is at an uncomfortable 7 degree angle with the right edge of the map being slightly more than 36 feet above the height of the entrance doors.



The layout itself reminded of that episode of Star Trek TNG with Riker's old ship phaseshifted into an asteroid. The description just seals the deal.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 30, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> The layout itself reminded of that episode of Star Trek TNG with Riker's old ship phaseshifted into an asteroid. The description just seals the deal.




I could just not get into TNG. I tried again about six years ago, and got through Season 1 and part of Season 2 before I just couldn't anymore.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 30, 2018)

Foul things are afoot in the town of Melad Crossings. One of the two mills has stopped, the smell of death creeps by in the wind from many buildings, the streets are barren, and those who live are not likely to be out of doors except as is necessary.

The water along the west fork of the river is running milky white, and none of the fishermen are among the living, struck dead two weeks ago just as the river began to change. But that doesn’t explain all the deaths – something else must be working it’s way through the townfolk… while the headsman says it is disease and begs for the church to send healers or paladins, others believe something far more sentient and sinister is behind the continued deaths.

Or, you know, it could just be a pleasant little town for your adventuring party to chill out at en route to their next adventure.


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 1, 2018)

Two hundred years ago the foul giant Auruxvor terrorized the lands along the western shore of the Krumpt Basin from his fortified lakeside “manor”. Padreth Warcton and a group of mercenaries and adventurers put an end to the giant’s reign of terror and with powerful magics they tore his house asunder.

Two of Padreth’s acolytes remained at the site of the old manor and assisted the locals in building a few small fortifications from the stony debris left behind. Over a few years the fortifications and homes became the southern portion of Warcton Hold. The walls and tower on the south side of the hold have many massive stones that still bear the markings of the giant Auruxvor as well as the magical violence that ended his time.

The hold continued to grow. The initial farmers who moved to the hold would leave the town walls to work their fields and herd their animals. Over the years the hold became the centre of local activity and farmers from further away would come to town to trade goods and eventually to acquire fish for a change in their diet once a few local families moved from agriculture to fishing in the Krumpt Basin.

Today there are few farmers who live within the hold itself. A few families who maintain very large farms that are then worked by local tenants are now ensconced here, along with two merchant clans, the local fisher families (who have to clean their catch at an island in the Basin to keep the smell out of the hold), a retired adventurer or two, and of course a number of worshipers of the church that originally brought Padreth Warcton and company here.

The three most obvious details a traveller notes when visiting Warcton Hold for the first time are the walls, the watchtower and the u-shaped building attached to it.

The walls are of mixed hard stone, much of it worked by the giant Auruxvor and his kin prior to it being repurposed by the locals, and stand fourteen feet tall with battlements mostly along the outer edge. Access to the wall top is via a number of small stone towers built into the wall that are of the same height but have ladders within them to the walls themselves. The walls on the north side of the hold are primarily made of field stone, but share the same construction style.

The octagonal watch tower is a stout four-story affair also primarily made of the giant’s stonework. It is connected by a wall and walkway (with an archway to pass under it) to the large wooden U-shaped structure which acts as the home to the local church and the acolytes sent here to maintain it  from the distant capital.


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 3, 2018)

Nestled into the Shadow Woods is Guimond’s Tower – a crumbling multi-story stone and wood structure that looks ready to slide down into the woods at a moments notice. Up on the top of the aged stone is a wooden house-like construction looking down on the tree tops in the area. Some believe that the ageless druid-lich (who goes by various names in various stories) of the Shadow Woods lives in the small house at the top of the tower – which explains both how the wooden structure seems to be outlasting the stone tower, and why the stone tower has not collapsed yet.

Like most rumours and sage’s tales, there is more than a small kernel of truth to this. The wooden house is indeed maintained by an ancient nearly-blind hermit who lives here unmolested because the druid-lich lives quite nearby – under the tower in fact.

The tower’s dungeon cannot be reached from within the tower, but by a secret trap door in the grounds just outside the tower. The druid-lich keeps the trap door well hidden by controlling the growth of grass over it, so it is always entirely overgrown and concealed.

The secret door leads to old stone stairs, and in turn to the crypts under Guimond’s Tower. From the old crypts, caves lead deeper underground towards the sound of dripping water and to earthen and stone caves with tree roots hanging from the ceiling and working down the walls. A small pond is back here, and a smaller altar where the druid-lich worships and works in darkness and near-silence.


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## Satyrn (Jul 3, 2018)

I've got the perfect spot for that tower in my game. The druid-lich and blind hermit, too.


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 5, 2018)

The ruins of Saurguard Haunt are but burned stones and bits of rain-cleaned charcoal. But it is a harder task to burn down the small dungeon that sat beneath it.

Used as a traditional dungeon to hold prisoners under Saurguard – the dungeon was being expanded to include a temple to the proscribed lords of damnation when construction breached into a a cave slightly beneath the level of the temple and proceeded down through the limestone to the hillside beneath the Haunt.

Of course, you can’t just leave places like this open and unguarded and not expect foul things to move in… The lower entrance to the savage caves has been claimed by giant spiders who have killed off the entire bat population that once lived here, and who knows what foulness has taken over the ancient dungeons?


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 9, 2018)

Old Wharton Mine was a small local source of onyx in its prime, but its location deep in the jungle made it nigh impossible to maintain supply lines or defenses. In the end the mine was abandoned because of prowling beasts and the difficulty in maintaining a workforce out here.

But onyx is a troubling stone. It is the standard material component for animating the dead, and it seems some dark magic is present in the old mine as well as many chips and bits of black and white banded onyx. Now the dead crawl the mine, waiting for prey to kill and try to consume. Animals that came here to get out of the heat were the first victims, but the other beasts of the area have learned to avoid it.

Now the dead wait for those foolhardy enough to try to reopen the mine, or to claim the onyx that remains.


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 12, 2018)

[PAGE 14? Whoa... for those discovering this thread part-way through, all these maps are available in higher resolution versions, many with a free commercial use license, at the blog: https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com ]



Heart of Darkling – DiTullio Islands

Several rivers run into the Darkling Lake - the vast underground "sea" at the end of the Darkling River. The Ditullio Islands are a small fishing community of mad derro tucked against the shore of the Darkling Lake where two smaller rivers enter it.

The DiTullio derro are paranoid and hostile to everyone, and often to each other. But they truly fear the aboleth lords who lurk in the darkest depths of the Darkling Lake. They have erected a number of small stone houses on their islands, and laid claim to a heavy stone tower that predates their settlement (likely crafted by magic as the stone is nearly perfectly smooth).

They fish on their boats when they seek solitude, but most of their food comes from the nets set to capture fish that come from the smaller river outlet which pours into the Darkling down a twelve foot waterfall. The constant sound of the waterfall only serves to heighten the paranoia of the Derro, but they dare not move away from it as it is their best food source.


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 14, 2018)

While much of the city is served by “surface sewers” to move waste and water, in parts of the old town there exist proper underground sewers that date back to the previous empire’s attempts to clean up the city as a whole. Basements in these neighbourhoods occasionally incorporate parts of the sewer construction, or vice versa. And of course, in the trope of D&D sewers, they have become home to wererats and other foul creatures that represent the decay and seedy side of civilization.

This map focuses on one of the more interesting parts of the sewers under Delren Street. The central location (top centre of the map) is an old basement that is no longer connected to the structure above it and that is linked into the sewers by a secret door. This basement is currently in use by Skittler, an old wererat sorcerer who maintains a small study and bedroom in a side chamber. The rest of the basement is kept fairly clean, with Skittler sweeping it out regularly (and leaving a small pile of dust right outside the secret door).

South of Skittler’s lair is the lair of a couple of less “human” wererats. The entrance to this lair are a pair of large rat-holes in the walls of the sewer – however recently they’ve taken to bringing in larger items to make themselves more comfortable, and have had to enlarge one of their holes to do so – meaning that it is only a matter of time before someone discovers this hiding place.

To the right we have a maintenance access to the sewers (a hatch leading down stairs to the sewers themselves. Extended sections of this area have been barred off with a permanent portculis-type wall. At the upper-right edge of the map we have a section of these structures that has been sealed off from the sewers proper and converted into the basement of a small inn above.


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 16, 2018)

Along the blighted coast, beyond the lands of snow and ice and the adventurers’ boom-town of Gravelthorpe there is an old white stone pier on a quiet lonely shore. In the right seasons you can sometimes find the ruined road that leads into the hills from there and eventually to the valley of the Three Pillars of Ssa-Tun.

The three pillars of Ssa-Tun are massive spires of marbled white and purple stone that reach up over a hundred feet from the ground and descend to unknown depths. Leading to these pillars are a few old ruins reduced to small mounds of rubble, and a much more intact set of ruins built up around the pillars themselves.

And of course, these ruins are inhabited by something unpleasant, alien, and milky white in colour. For the pillars of Ssa-Tun are used, when the stars are right and the proper incantations made, to travel to three specific sites in the Alabaster Hells.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/ruins-at-the-three-pillars-of-ssa-tun/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 19, 2018)

When activated through specific rituals “when the stars are right”, the three pillars of Ssa-Tun act as portals to anchor points in the Alabaster Hells. One of the three pillar-gates leads here, to a small cavern containing a lake of milky-white fluid. As with most things in the Alabaster Hells, everything here is not-quite-white in colour – from the pale grey walls to the heavy quartz pillars that seem to hold up the ceiling of the cave, to the milky-white liquid that seems to be slowly filling the cave.

Guests here quickly discover that the pillar in the centre of the alabaster node doesn’t act as a return gate – and instead they must return through one of the four other gates that can be summoned. At the end of each row of quartz pillars a gate can be called with a quick ritual and splashing the milky waters on the inward faces of the two pillars in question. The ritual, fortunately, is inscribed on the walls of the hall to the “west”. The waters, unfortunately, are both toxic and strongly alkali.

And most importantly, it would be foolish to thing that nothing resides under those waters...

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/ssa-tuns-lake-of-milk/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 23, 2018)

The Hag's Swamp

“Yes now, the Hag’s Swamp you say? It is to the southeast of the keep – mostly swampy wetlands with a few hills and a copse of fir trees. Some say there are lizard folk what live in them swamp, but I figure you stick the the higher ground and the fir trees and you can keep safe from ’em.”

The Hag’s Swamp is best known for the lizard folk lair in the middle of it, and less well known for the giant poisonous spiders that live in the fir trees. But there are a few other points of interest marked out on this close-up of the map.

An old burned out village once belonged to fishing community on one of the river islands. When the fisherfolk fell into conflict with the lizard folk, they moved to the keep and torched the place themselves out of spite.

A second house, in much better repair, is on the edge of the forest just east of the giant spiders. Obviously the resident here has some “arrangement” with the other local creatures – while she claims it is that she offers them no competition, the reality is the swamp hag that lives here does so in peace because all other residents of the area live in fear of her.

On a hill to the northeast is a set of three black menhirs set over  a small cave. The old mound was used by the druids living among the fisherfolk, and a couple of times a month they still come together, sneak out of the keep, and return here for their rituals.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/07/23/the-hags-swamp/


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## darjr (Jul 23, 2018)

Congrats on the caves of chaos! I want to print it out to mini scale. 

And that other thing!


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 26, 2018)

darjr said:


> Congrats on the caves of chaos! I want to print it out to mini scale.
> 
> And that other thing!




Thanks! At mini scale that map would be... 88" x 120-something inches I think.

And that other thing!


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 26, 2018)

The Cockatrice Pit

A number of townfolk head out to the Old Grant Farm about once or twice a month in a semi-secretive manner. They are a motley crew, a mix of the well-to-do and grubby farmers and the woodswoman ranger.

It turns out this town has a very draconian “legal system” where punishment for not fitting in or disturbing the way things are involves the cockatrice pit.

Behind the barn at Old Grant’s farm is a deep square hole dug into the ground. At the bottom of the hole is a small cave, home to “the chickens” – a pair of cockatrice that are used to dispense a very final “justice” to those who fall afoul of the locals.

Most people are just thrown in and left for the cockatrices to petrify and consume, but some are instead lowered on ropes to be fished back out afterwards and used as displays in some of the finer establishments in town.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/the-cockatrice-pit/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 27, 2018)

As the month rolls into the dog days of summer, it is time to tally up the votes of the awesome patrons who keep the site alive via the Patreon campaign and release some of our older maps under the commercial use license. This month we start off with a town drawn five years ago – the Fortress at Hawksford.

While this was once a fortress of the Ukho Confederacy, the citadel fell forty years ago to mercenaries of the Udruviel Dynasty. With the collapse of both those polities over the next decade, the Fortress at Hawksford has managed to remain ungoverned. And while no external governance has been imposed on the people of Hawksford, they have also resisted the creation of an official government of their own. Which isn’t to say the place is completely disorganized – commerce continues as normal and the walls are patrolled by various “concerned citizen groups” who try to track the comings and goings of visitors and locals alike.

The stone walls and gatehouses remain in good shape although they see little maintenance now so it is only a matter of time before they start to wear down. A large number of dwarves make the town their home, happily away from the governance of humans and elves alike.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/release-the-kraken-upon-the-fortress-at-hawksford/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 30, 2018)

Beneath the Immortal Fortress are a number of small dungeons, tombs, crypts, and oubliettes. As the fortress itself is still inhabited and the residents know better than to explore these lower areas, they remain generally unmolested, with the entrances of the more dangerous areas under guard in case anything should creep out.

These particular crypts were considered inconsequential until a planes-hopping sage showed up with a map indicating something important within – so if you can get into the fortress, getting to the crypts themselves shouldn’t be too hard of a task.

Behind the scenes, this is actually a redraw of a small crossword puzzle posted during the Alternate Reality Game that was played online leading up to the Stream of Eyes event where they announced the upcoming release of the two 5e Waterdeep books this autumn.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/crypts-of-the-immortal-fortress/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 1, 2018)

View attachment Leebs-Fortress-Patreon.png

Before we start posting maps for August, we still have the last of the maps voted on last month by the amazing supporters of the site through our Patreon campaign for re-release under our free commercial license. So welcome back to Leeb’s Fortress, originally released on the blog back in 2014.

The Leeb family has long maintained their hereditary holdings on a small spire east of town. Although not a rich family, the fact that the holdings include a small fortress that overlooks the fields down in the valley has ensured that the family name is remembered and that they are treated far better than their economics would normally allow.

But this spring the drake arrived, killing Henry Leeb and his three sons, and trapping the remaining family (and their servant in the fortress. The townfolk wouldn’t really have cared all that much, except that once it had eaten the Leeb boys, the drake began plundering the flocks of sheep from the area. Now it’s a problem. And of course, where there’s a dragon, there has to be treasure!

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/release-the-kraken-on-leebs-fortress/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 3, 2018)

The Iron Obelisk weeps in near silence – the pools of ichor growing around it, fed by its melancholy nature. The ichors seep down and flow where underground waters should, tainting the darkness with the ennui and melancholy of the pillar of iron. Slow grinding noises are heard nearby, as if the world is changing itself – pulling away as far is it can from the source of this ichor. The wound where the Iron Obelisk sits has grown forming a cave nearly 200 feet across where the world tries to isolate the rusted spike within it.

The Iron Obelisk has many powerful uses. Flakes of rust taken from the area around it and ground to dust make sleep spells incredibly more potent, whereas rust taken from the Obelisk itself can be used to counter most forms of mind control and charms. Bits of iron taken along with this rust can be worked into somber weapons and armour that spread their melancholic nature to their bearers, but also to their foes.

But those who touch the iron obelisk itself or the black ichor are cursed with the yearning sadness of the device. They will seek out places underground where the ichor can be found, and while the ichor does nothing to sate or alleviate the sadness, it calls to the cursed and bathing in it will indeed remove any other curses or diseases the target is afflicted with.

In fact, when adventuring underground, those cursed by the obelisk or the ichor will often find themselves in proximity with the ichor – even if it shouldn’t be there. There is a 25% chance that any adventure leading them underground will lead them to the black ichor in some way. It will replace water in dungeons and adventures, and will seem ominously ever-present until the curse is broken.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/03/black-ichor-of-the-iron-obelisk/


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## Satyrn (Aug 3, 2018)

I know the perfect spot for that in my megadungeon.

Thank you.


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 6, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> I know the perfect spot for that in my megadungeon.
> 
> Thank you.




Awesome!

And if someone gets the curse of the Black Ichor, suddenly they stop finding water in the megadungeon, as even water they had found before is now replaced with the Ichor until they break the curse...

Speaking of which!



Those cursed by the black ichor find themselves unable to avoid it – as if drawn to it. For those seeking to break this curse there are esoteric sages who will recommend remedies of drops of the sun’s ocean consumed on the warmest day of winter, or of travelling to the Empire of Locusts and consuming the head of their king and so on – but there are several who will finally point them to the mountain home of Onninhil Reconciler, an ancient hag who guards a passage to the underworld where the black river flows.

Somwhere behind her home, surrounded and guarded by the melancholic black ichor, is a small font of pure water that resists contamination and that when drunk from can finally break the curse of the Iron Obelisk.

Beyond Onninhil herself, there are a number of guardians within the caves. A cairn contains the remains of the warlord Arvuk Vuldag who died here rather than drink from the font and cure himself of the taint of the Obelisk and who will rise to slay any who dare to follow through where he failed. Small humanoids live in a secret cave near the entrance, hiding from their own shadows that have left them and now guard the caverns. One of the caves also holds the throne of Furykeeper Javzatu with her mighty axe “Reclaimer” – a queen of the old tribes, her skeleton is nearly twice as tall as a modern human and her axe is of the same scale.

Finally there is the font – a small trickle of fresh water down fungus-covered rocks to a fountain pool that is fouled with scum, bubbles, and slimy growths. Drinking from this font is extremely unhealthy, but is indeed one of the few ways to break the curse of the Iron Obelisk.

(With apologies to Zzarchov Kowolski, who ran a great Neoclassical Geek Revival game recently from which several elements of this map were drawn.)

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/further-delves-for-the-black-ichor/


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## Satyrn (Aug 6, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> Awesome!
> 
> And if someone gets the curse of the Black Ichor, suddenly they stop finding water in the megadungeon, as even water they had found before is now replaced with the Ichor until they break the curse...
> 
> Speaking of which!




More awesome. I can slot that into the megadungeon easily, too. I don't know where yet, but the hag might work best if I place her home some place in the early levels to function as either an enemy or an NPC questgiver.


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 9, 2018)

The Isle of Clover

Near the centre of Whispering Turtles Lake are a number of small rocky islands capped with trees. The second largest of these has been home to the small settlement of Clover since the lakeside community of Burhuie was sacked during the great war and most of the survivors escaped into the lake in a mix of rowboats and fishing craft.

Until then, the fisher folk of Burhuie avoided the Isle of Clover because of the accursed elven ruins there. Today those ruins have been repaired and massive runes of defense and strength carved into the fortifications by the dwarves who helped settle here (although there are no longer any dwarves on the island, as they were just a single family at the time). No one lives within the fortifications proper, but they are maintained for emergencies and used for storage.

The people of Clover are fishers and farmers, mostly human with a bit of elven blood in the mix. The town has no actual “government”, but a significant voice is given to Acdad Yim, a resident who left the island in his youth and returned with a not insignificant sum of gold, some interesting treasures, and a potent grasp of sorcery.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/isle-of-clover/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 13, 2018)

Old Herlihy Farm has been abandoned for a few years. It was a few weeks since anyone had seen France Herlihy at the marketplace before anyone went out to the secluded farmhouse to find she had expired in her sleep. With no Herlihys left in town, the livestock was split up between a few local farmers, and no one paid the site any more attention as it slowly collapsed.

But now the Gutbound goblin gang has moved in. They are on the run from the most fierce of all things, a goblin paladin trained as a hunter of his own kind. Who knows what crimes a goblin has to commit to be hunted down by his kin in this manner, but the Gutbound goblin gang did them.

Now they are hiding in the secret basement of a burned down outbuilding on the Herlihy Farm. Trying to keep their heads down and out of trouble until the paladin Gomox moves on to hunt for them elsewhere. But the Gutbound aren’t the most clever of creatures, and it isn’t hard to find the trail beaten into the grass where they travel from their secret refuge to the old rain barrels in the collapsed barn to collect water.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/13/goblins-at-herlihy-farm/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 16, 2018)

Word came back from some fishermen that there was a cog beached at Banana Bay – one of the few decent approaches to Esborough Island. So we loaded up a small expedition to check it out – it is usually pretty hard to get any of the locals to head to Esborough because of all the “haunted” ruins about the place, but their willingness to loot / rescue the ship was enough to motivate them and thus finally gave us the chance to explore the place a bit also.

But the boat was in even worse shape when we arrived – the port side burned through roughly midship, with the ruined interior of the ship laid bare to the elements. As the locals started digging through the wreckage, we climbed up the low cliff face and up to the ruined tower that looks down on the bay. Within we found the burned bodies of a half dozen sailors, and the first of the cinder wraiths. They look like smoke with embers floating within them, vaguely humanoid in form. They travel on the wind, they strike with fierce anger and a fiery hatred for the living.

We left several of our people behind as we abandoned the island again to the burning dead. They can keep the cog, and whatever was in that locked chest in the tower...

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/the-wreck-at-banana-bay/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 21, 2018)

Up on a steep face, by the northern fire mountain, we found what we had been looking for – a cleft into the mountain that lead not to a natural cave, but to a construction of the ones we call the morlocks.

The narrow cleft lead to a trapped chamber that struck us with an invisible force from all sides, snuffing our torches and forcing us to rely on the light granted by Zuul, opener of the ways, to progress. The main passage within was round in cross section, but with a flat floor. Metal doors blocked further access within. (Who has such steel that they might use it for doors? surely these are the tombs of the steel makers who already know the riddle of steel – our kin have only just learned the art of iron working!)

The steel makers are probably the ancestors of the degenerate morlocks. Within these tombs we found a number of funerary urns of finest steel and absconded with them to bring back to the people. There were other marvels too – strange gems strung together on copper wires, vast vats of strongest wine, and glass pillars reaching from floor to ceiling. We believe that perhaps the smallest room is a magical access to areas above or below this one – but tomb robbers who explore too much instead of running when they have found the riches they can carry quickly become the entombed, so we left before exploring more.

(Being the description of finding a small and seemingly abandoned high tech structure in the mountains – we are tribesfolk on the cusp of the iron age in Zzarchov Kowolski’s Neoclassical Geek Revival RPG, and find all this exciting and yet mystifying.)

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/tombs-of-the-steel-makers/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 23, 2018)

More Barrow Mounds of the Lich & Famous

Burial mounds are a staple of fantasy games and stories. Today’s offering is a collection of six more burial mounds for those occasions when you really need to loot a a small tomb or small tomb complex right now.

This set of tomb maps go from simple single-chambered mounds to multi-chambered mounds and finally to a pair of mounds that incorporate multiple crypts and passages such as “Shadow Dragon’s Tomb” on the lower right.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/barrow-mounds/


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## Blackmoor_Film (Aug 24, 2018)

These are pretty awesome looking. my maps, mostly done in ball point while laying on the couch, never look this good.


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 30, 2018)

It has finally been done!

I've redrawn each of the individual Caves of Chaos, then combined them all back into one massive map at 1200dpi in my style.

There are too many awesome pieces to put them all here, and the individual maps are 6 megs each, so I ask, no, I DEMAND that you come to my site to see them!

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/30/the-caves-of-chaos-dyson-logos-edition/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 31, 2018)

A few miles from the nearest outposts of civilization, just over those hills to the west of here, are the old estates of the Trent family. Sitting almost smugly on a hill in the midst of overgrown hedge mazes and fallow fields is the manor of “Mad” Fenrick Trent. Sure the first parts of the structure were initially built by his grandfather, and the last Trents to live in it were his great-grandchildren, but Mad Fenrick is the Trent who put the most work into the half-fortified squat monstrosity.

Of course, a massive cobbled together and defensively structured manor like Mad Fenrick’s Manor doesn’t stop with just the main level and a few towers. In the main courtyard of the manor is a set of stairs that originally lead to the Trent family crypt, but that now connects to a small dungeon (as well as Mad Fenrick’s Root Cellar, Mad Fenrick’s Family Crypt, Mad Fenrick’s U-Store-It, and Mad Fenrick’s Large Rodent Repository, of course).

With the manor grounds now abandoned, who knows the sorts of things that crawl about beneath the old manor house. Whatever they are, they are probably very lonely and would love to play with any visitors.

Originally drawn in 2014, Mad Fenrick's Manor has been cleaned up and re-released under a free commercial use license thanks to the amazing people supporting my work through Patreon.

High resolution versions (both with and without grid) and the free commercial use license can be found on the Dodecahedron at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/08/31/release-the-kraken-on-mad-fenricks-manor/


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 3, 2018)

It was the way of the Etturan Dynasty to show the might and connection to the earth of the rulers to dig out underground complexes to serve as tombs. Some tombs were fairly simple affairs, dug down as far as they could manage before the ruler’s death. Others were more massive undertakings – complexes of tombs, crypts, temples and shrines dug into the native stone of the land.

Prince Delan’s Tomb is one of the Etturan Dynasty’s “lost tombs” – roughly 40 tombs who’s locations were lost with the burning of the Tarek Archives. The tomb itself is a style that was made popular by a much earlier Etturan King, with various structures built off a central shaft. During construction wooden scaffolding was assembled in the shaft in order to climb from one level to another. Once Prince Delan was entombed the wooden structure was burned away leaving the central shaft with no easy means of accessing the other portions of the complex.

Much to the chagrin of anyone exploring the site now, sections of the tombs have collapsed, and foul beasts have moved into the bottom of the shaft and live in the walls down there making anything that dangles down to the bottom a danger.

Grab the 1200 dpi version of this map from the blog post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/03/prince-delans-shaft-tomb/


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 7, 2018)

Few (sane) adventurers are aware of the frightening alien intelligences that live on the other planets. Even those that doe are generally unaware that some of these creatures have access to planar travel as well as interplanetary travel. The maddening brain-stealing fungi from Yuggoth are the perfect example of something no adventurer expects to run into on the Astral.

So, what better place to experiment on captive brains?

This free-floating structure is controlled by a massive collection of brains that the Mi-Go have assembled into some sort of brain cluster. A few Mi-Go may be present at any time, as well as a few orderlies (typically strong creatures like ogres who have had Mi-Go brains grafted into their heads). The rest of the population are a mix of kidnapped people lucky enough to still have their own brains; kidnapped bodies used as a chassis for other kidnapped brains; and a few classic “brains in a jar” to round out the mix – all subject to horrifying and bizarre experiments testing the limits of the standard human / elven / halfling / dwarven brains.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/astral-sanatorium-of-the-mad-mi-go-brain-cluster/


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 10, 2018)

While a number of the old shaft tombs of the Etturan Dynasty have been found and explored, there is one that remains a well-kept secret amongst sages, masters of dark arts, and the few adventurers who have been there. Possibly the original shaft tomb of the dynasty, or perhaps a strange discovery that became the inspiration for the ones to come – the Bottomless Tombs seem to have earned their name.


The central part of these tombs is a 15 foot x 15 foot shaft that seems to go down forever. Determining the actual depth has proven to be beyond the abilities of scrying and simple engineering, and areas of both permanent magical darkness as well as areas of anti-magic (as well as a host of hostile inhabitants) make exploring the depths of the shaft an unwelcoming idea.


But this map concentrates on the tombs around the upper portion of the shaft. A total of seven tomb structures have been cut into the shaft at this area, including the Vault of Kezamdomnus which is accessed via the basement of the long-ruined Temple of Shol-Gath. These tombs and crypts are in turn protected by the inherent danger of the central shaft, as well as their own traps, magical guardians, and sometimes even the undead remnants of their inhabitants.


https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/the-bottomless-tombs/


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## pogre (Sep 13, 2018)

Congrats on the WOTC gig. I cannot wait to see the maps!


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 13, 2018)

The Bronze Vault is a small, multi-level complex cut into the Jappa Slopes and connected to one of the small cavers that dot the hillsides. Once connected to a small watchtower that was built too close to the edge, getting into the complex typically means climbing to the ruins as the door between the cave and the complex is locked, barred, and now rusted shut.


In-game, the complex fills the role of any classic “dungeon in the wilderness” setting – a place where civilization once held sway but is now home to monsters hiding in the roots of our achievements. In the grand tradition of the Moldvay Basic D&D set, this is where hobgoblins would hide their prisoners captured from the nearby town; perhaps home to a small cult that cannot worship publicly in civilized areas; or the destination for a treasure map that the party found in a previous adventure.


Personally, I like the treasure map angle – making the secret chamber in section B right by the entrance the treasure room, but with the map showing how to get there from the cave entrance instead of the upper entrance.


https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/the-bronze-vault/


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 17, 2018)

From the Tombs of the Ancient kings in Narnia (from the Horse and His Boy) and the Barrow-Downs in the Fellowship of the Ring, the trope of exploring ancient tombs and barrows (accidentally or on purpose) is one deeply rooted in our fantasy sources.


Usually the tombs contain something useful (sometimes merely shelter from pursuit or the elements, other times grave goods of ancient lords) and even more frequently the residents of these barrows are less than happy to share their homes and their treasures with living interlopers.


Today I've posted an additional nine crypts, barrows, and tombs ranging from single rooms to small complexes. Combined with the two previous offerings in the series, this brings us to 24 barrow mounds for all occasions - and the perfect excuse to break out a d24 to see which one the adventurers have stumbled across.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/barrow-mounds-iii/


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 20, 2018)

“Caves in the hills? Ach, there may be a place – we call em the travellers caves. Twisty, up and down, easy to get confused in. An’ they go deep, way deeper then any sensible person would go. So yeah, if you really think there’s beasties in caves ’round here, that’s where I reckon they’d be hiding.”


The Travellers Caves are a small complex of winding multi-tiered caves and chambers which bear the evidence of several previous tenants over the years – from animal scat and hair to old broken boxes and cold, quiet campsites.


One narrow passage leads down from the complex into deeper caverns...


This map was drawn on fairly dark paper in a lovely little travel notebook using black gel pens. The dark colour of the paper made scanning a little rough and a bit uneven in places.


https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/20/the-travellers-caves/


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## Baldurs_Underdark (Sep 21, 2018)

I always wonder with maps like this which squares are accessible to players and which are not? Is there a ruling about that somewhere in the DMG, or is it an arbitrary choice made by each DM? 

Obviously, there are lots of squares which are completely free. No discussion.
Some are half-free, and half occupied by walls. I usually rule that those are accessible.
Some are 80% occupied by rocks or walls. I generally argue that those are not accessible to characters unless they can climb on a wall like an insect. 

Any thoughts?

p.s. Compliments on the art work!


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## Satyrn (Sep 21, 2018)

Baldurs_Underdark said:


> I always wonder with maps like this which squares are accessible to players and which are not? Is there a ruling about that somewhere in the DMG, or is it an arbitrary choice made by each DM?
> 
> Obviously, there are lots of squares which are completely free. No discussion.
> Some are half-free, and half occupied by walls. I usually rule that those are accessible.
> ...



That sounds like as good a solution as any other.


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 22, 2018)

Once you are past the wards and sigils that guard the entranceway and have triggered the teleporter, you finally are brought to the archmage’s private sanctum.


The Archmage’s Chambers are hidden away deep underground, below the “comfortable” levels of the underdark to an area where the stone walls seem to press in with relentless gravity and heat. Once a small node broken open by opposing forces of elemental earth and air, the cracked tunnels were then shaped, smoothed and reinforced magically to withstand the incredible pressures down here.


The chambers are hot and oppressive, and without the small nexus of elemental air present, there wouldn’t be a cool breeze to make it survivable (and there would be no fresh air to breathe either).


And down here, the archmage keeps their secrets, their spells cut into crystal decanters instead of spellbooks, their twisted homonculi that carry wisps of ancient knowledge, and the six pillars where they store their favourite emotions and moments, safe for all time from the whimsy of human memory.


Originally drawn by David Brawley who runs Tower of the Archmage, I couldn’t resist sticking the design through the custom “Dysonizer” I have sitting at my desk.


https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/22/the-archmages-chambers/


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 23, 2018)

Baldurs_Underdark said:


> I always wonder with maps like this which squares are accessible to players and which are not? Is there a ruling about that somewhere in the DMG, or is it an arbitrary choice made by each DM?




IMO: Ditch squares. 

They are there for ease of measuring, not for controlling movement and positioning.


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 24, 2018)

A warren of small chambers, passages, and natural caves, the Dark Caverns of Turr were once a set of dwarven mines of the famously unstable Darkshoe clan. But then one day the Darkshoe dwarves picked up and left, locking most of the doors behind them. In the years since, creatures have crawled up from the darker caves below and others have moved in from the surface, and the caverns now contain a veritable Gygaxian collection of creatures that try to live together.


There are three entrances into the warrens.
- The “front door” over to the far right of the map that leads into the original Darkshoe clan hall.
- The “back door” over to the left that leads into the deeper caves.
- The “stone stairs” very near the back door that lead down into the “glittering gallery” that come down from a secret cleft in the back of a small cave overhead.


This map is actually one I drew back in 2010 when running either my Labyrinth Lord or B/X D&D campaign that year. This photo doesn’t do it justice, but it is drawn in VERY light pencil on thin typewriter paper, and was nearly impossible to scan and keep the details looking at all good. But now that I’ve figured out how to get these old maps scanned, I’ll see if I can get the last of the old “Lost Maps” finally scanned and on the blog.


https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/the-dark-caverns-of-turr/


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## robus (Sep 25, 2018)

Cool map, pondering using it for some underdark travel, but I’m confused about the secret door off the main entrance. it looks like it leads to a lower level given the dotted lines, but I don’t see stairs anywhere to indicate a level split?


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 25, 2018)

robus said:


> Cool map, pondering using it for some underdark travel, but I’m confused about the secret door off the main entrance. it looks like it leads to a lower level given the dotted lines, but I don’t see stairs anywhere to indicate a level split?




There's almost definitely a slope leading down from that secret door.


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## robus (Sep 25, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> There's almost definitely a slope leading down from that secret door.




Ok, cool


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 27, 2018)

Along the western jetties and piers of the city are the Kobold Docks, a moderately large wooden pier where boats can be purchased or rented from Jotel Vuzen, a “sahuagin out of water” if you will. Jotel acts as the agent for a few shipwrights and Xughon Belpar, a pirate who acquires his trade goods in an entirely illegal manner.


Generally Jotel has d3+1 smaller boats at the pier, and 1d3-2 larger craft in the harbour. He also often has a few smaller stolen goods in his tent on the pier that he sells on commission for Xughon, mixed in with the various apothecary goods that his elven wife Phyehni collects and sells.


Of course, with all these goods of questionable provenance moving through this area, any time that player characters find themselves buying something here there’s the off chance that they will get caught up in some other drama involving people threatening Jotel or his clients to get their goods back (or in a real twist, these are con men trying to get something for nothing based on figuring out Jotel’s dirty dealings).


The pier is known as the kobold docks because the previous business before Jotel set up here was a small enclave of six kobolds who made wickerwork coracles used by some of the local fisherfolk. But the kobolds moved on as the fisherfolk earned more money and were able to purchase or build more sturdy boats that didn’t need regular replacement.


A version of this map also appears in the Kobold Press adventure “Monkey Business” where it is set in the City of Brass.


https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/27/the-kobold-docks/


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## Dyson Logos (Sep 29, 2018)

A ghost ship haunts the waters out around the Charred Reef. She’s so old that all that remains is her superstructure, and the golden “cage” she carried on her deck. She appears out of the fog along Charred Reef on nights when there is no more than single ship or boat to sight her, slides along silently on the top of the water, and her disappearance back into the night always presages a violent storm.


Within the gilded cage is a potent banshee, the long dead elven sorceress who was within the cage when the ship sank who knows how long ago. The golden cage she is trapped within also changes her song – instead of wailing in eternal agony, to those outside the cage she seems to be singing a long lamentful song.


Entering the golden cage can be achieved through partially collapsed stairs that lead up a shaft from the bottom of the boat’s skeleton through a shaft in the floor of the cage, or by somehow (flying, climbing) getting to the balcony that surrounds the cage and walking in through one of the four doorways. Of course, the moment one steps within the cage, they become subject to the effects of her wailing song.


Any treasures that were once within the cage with the sorceress are long destroyed or lost by ages of frequent submersion, but a secret panel in the floor of the cage leads to a shallow chamber beneath which contains the MacGuffin.


A version of this map also appears in the Kobold Press adventure “Monkey Business” where it is set out in the oceans of flame near the City of Brass.


https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/29/skeleton-of-the-gilded-cage/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 1, 2018)

Briar Keep is a border fortress and small settlement that marks the northern boundary of the Satrapy where the Northlands begin. Built only a few generations ago, the keep is in excellent shape and is well maintained and houses a garrison of Satrapy forces. Unlike most settlements in the Satrapy, Briar Keep and it’s environs are also home to a number of dwarves of the Greybeard clan and associated families. 


https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/release-the-kraken-on-briar-keep/


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## Turgenev (Oct 1, 2018)

Great stuff, Dyson!

Cheers,
Tim


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 4, 2018)

Viktor Hevlod is a person who wears many hats - he is the assistant to the guildmaster of the mason's guild; master of the yellow dagger within the assassin's guild; inner council member of the order of the blue star (who perform a lot of charity work in the city); and he manages to find enough time to actually practice his stonework in all that.

But really, being a high ranking member of both the Assassin's Guild and the Order of the Blue Star (who's charity work is mostly a cover for their other work in the name of the dark ophidian gods of yore), it won't be much of a surprise when his plans or actions come into conflict with any group of local meddlers.

Investigating Viktor will generally turn to his family home, Hevlod Manor. Built entirely of stone (befitting his guild status and the teams of younger masons he employs), Hevlod Manor is a sprawling single-story structure with heavy walls built in a moderately upscale neighborhood. The manor boasts an attached carriage-house, yard, gardens, and several wings for family members and associates. Only minimal staff actually lives here - in the carriage house - with other servants and staff coming and going throughout the day and night.

Since Viktor often entertains here, he keeps the place fairly impeccable, and never allows the secret aspects of the Blue Star nor the Assassin's Guild to be visible to visitors (including those who "accidentally" get lost in the more private parts of the structure). In fact, Viktor Hevlod keeps everything so close the the chest, that the only time you are likely to confirm that he's up to all these nefarious schemes is to run afoul of them in person...

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/04/hevlod-manor/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 8, 2018)

Somewhere in these crypts, there is still the undead remnants an adventurer-archaeologist searching for the obvious secret door into the central circle.

The crypts of the Ophidian Emperor were built around a double-circle motif, designed to feel like a snake curling around the tombs and crypts. To further accent the motif, the circular halls are set about three feet lower than the other chambers and crypts. The various chambers are tombs, crypts, and “treasure rooms” stacked with fake grave goods to accompany the Ophidian Emperor into the afterlife.

All doors within the crypts are fairly thin single-piece stone blocks mounted on metal hinges. All doors and most walls are decorated with frescoes and bas-relief carvings of idealized images of the reign of the Ophidian Emperor, often showing off his mighty golden snake staff and the black Orb of Empire.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/circle-crypts-of-the-ophidian-emperor/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 11, 2018)

A set of small stony islands jut out of the waters near the the northern reach of Alders Bay. They contain a number of small ruins, likely linked to the ruins of the castles and forts that have slowly been overwhelmed by the encroaching swamps on the northwest shore of the bay.

Difficult to land on, the islands are surrounded by ship-killing shoals and much of the land is atop tall red cliffs. Most make landfall on the sandy extension that nearly forms an isthmus between the two eastern islands – although the Oni pirate Vurd Skullbow has been known to bring his vessel in through the southern access and anchor it between the three islands.

Each island has its own point of interest. The large island has a ruined watchtower on its peak, but also has a cave system beneath it that was expanded at some point, likely by the builders of the tower. Those caves are used by Vurd to stash treasure and hostages on occasion.

The northeastern island bears the marks of many landfalls and small campfires. The long beach is littered with detritus – much of it charred firewood and empty bottles and casks. On the rise of the island is a set of fairly recent standing stones – no more than a hundred or so years old – the stones all appear to have been scavenged from the other ruins on the islands.

The small island to the southeast still sports a standing watchtower, although the wooden roof has long rotted away. The island however offers no means to get to it – the top of the island is a solid fifty feet above the waters below, with treacherous cliffs on all sides.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/redrock-cays/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 14, 2018)

Prince’s Harbour is a small bay along the Flindhome River long ago wrestled from control of the local humanoids and now slowly being converted into agricultural land. The community of Prince’s Harbour is self-reliant and independent – a collection of small “outpost” farmers, woodsmen, miners and so on built up around the small community of Prince’s Harbour itself.

This map focuses on a small forested area to the southwest of the community proper and is considered to most to be the furthest point that is still “Prince’s Harbour” instead of the old Flindlands. A small gold mine along the Gnoll’s Ear river is the anchor to this area, with a few supporting farms around it. The road to the east eventually leads to the community proper.

Adventurers are most likely to be interested in this area because the virgin forests still may be home to the remnants, descendants, or lost treasures of the beastmen who once had lordship over the area – or of course because of Jendson’s Mine which is certainly going to attract some attention as last year it looked like they had exhausted their small vein of ore, but are suddenly bringing in more gold than ever.

Each hex on the map is roughly 100 feet face-to-face. This map is also the first full map released on the blog that was drawn entirely digitally in Photoshop – which has been a learning curve for me. One thing I learned was to increase my resolution a lot – this map is only 300dpi and I had to save it as a jpg to keep file size under control, but I’ve learned a lot of tricks in the month since I drew it and any future digital maps will be back at the more recent 600 to 1200 dpi and file sizes are also kept down.

There is already a second map in the set drawn for release next month, and a total of 9 maps will be in the set when it is finished.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/princes-harbour-map-1/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 16, 2018)

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 found the city were worn out.

The reason it has become a problem is there can be no proper sewer system built beneath the city as long as the churches and temples regard the catacombs as sacred reliquaries. Further, the thieves that used the massive interconnected structures of tunnels and chambers to get around the city have been known to bury their own (and possibly their victims) down here without proper rites and rituals – leading to a small but steady growth of undead prowling the catacombs. The upside of this is few thieves use the catacombs anymore, but the churches have had to start setting guards to watch over their sacred tombs and crypts to keep prowling ghouls away…

Like the Dark Caverns of Turr that I posted last month, this map is one from my history books. I drew this map in December of 2014 while researching the catacombs under Paris and Rome. I really got into it and crammed all this material onto a single letter-sized page. And then never posted it. I did, however, send a scan of it to Mike Monaco and Paolo Greco for use in Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity. So here we are, 4 years later, and I finally dug the original out of my old folders while organizing my office and have scanned it for your games and mine.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/catacombs-beneath-the-holy-city/


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## Satyrn (Oct 16, 2018)

Oh sweet.  Those catacombs will work perfectly as the "residential quarter" of my ruined dwarven city.


I'm just gonna crumple up my own rough draft.


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 18, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> Oh sweet.  Those catacombs will work perfectly as the "residential quarter" of my ruined dwarven city.
> 
> 
> I'm just gonna crumple up my own rough draft.




I would say "never destroy a map"... but I honestly toss at least a few works in progress every month.


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 18, 2018)

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 Benmiria Academy of the Arcane, and are not only locked, but boarded shut. Those who try to study the walls often awaken somewhere else with no memories of the intervening time – somehow controlled or possessed by the texts they read, or if one experiment is to be believed, by either the galleries themselves or something foul still within them.

But when the diabolist arrived in Northvale and summoned the demon Xag’tharon to destroy the king’s armies, sages noted Xag’tharon is one of several demons who’s names are known to the Benmirian archives. And the locked texts of course indicate that they were in turn translated from the mad scribings in the galleries.

The kingdom needs a clever wizard or cleric to brave the galleries to find out more – and they should not travel there alone, for who knows what other foul powers the galleries can manifest as you attempt to unlock the secrets contained there.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/18/the-cursed-galleries/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 20, 2018)

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/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 22, 2018)

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/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 25, 2018)

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/


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## Dyson Logos (Oct 29, 2018)

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/


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## Turgenev (Oct 30, 2018)

Great stuff as always, Dyson!

Cheers,
Tim


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 5, 2018)

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/


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 8, 2018)

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/


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 11, 2018)

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/


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 13, 2018)

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/


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 15, 2018)

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/


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 17, 2018)

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 weapon to be drawn in battle and then carefully returned to the Bastion.

This map of the Prince’s Bastion covers the above-ground structures – a squat dome and towers built of enormous 7 to 12 foot blocks of granite supposedly brought here from the veridian hells to make the structure resistant to most magics of this realm. For decades at a time the Prince of Clubs can be found seated on his throne, pondering the passage of eras and his role therein. The smaller throne at his side is occasionally home to his partner, the Archon Tamaru.

From the throne room of the Bastion, a pair of stairs lead down to the deeper chambers which will be detailed in a later map (or any number of dungeons from the blog can be substituted here as well).

This is the second map I’ve ever stippled. I don’t expect you’ll see many more – even though I love the visual effect, the work involved is… punishingly slow.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/17/bastion-of-the-prince-of-clubs/


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 19, 2018)

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 Nightmare Maze of Jigresh”).

Or perhaps you have learned that your DM is about to run you through the Tomb of Horrors, again, with extra horrors and less treasure.

In that case, I would probably wear the T-Shirt to the session, or perhaps drink from the mug. I’ve stuck this design on a variety of products through Redbubble. (Note that because of RedBubble’s rules regarding the F-word, there’s an adult filter to get through to see the products on the site.)

This dungeon design was triggered by a recent Twitter thread where Gil Ramirez was reminiscing on the classic “Dungeon of FU” I posted almost three years ago.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/19/eff-your-dungeon/


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 21, 2018)

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 seems fairly open and inviting, with large parts of the wall being archways without doorways (represented as the long sections of the wall that are “dotted” instead of solid), the monks and priests here keep the church locked except during major events when they invite the nobles from the region to attend their ceremonies. Aside from these events, guests are only ever received in the Oratory of the Eleventh Blessing, in the northeastern portion of the monastery.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/21/the-blessed-monastery/


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## doctorbadwolf (Nov 22, 2018)

darjr said:


> Love your maps. Printed out they are fabulous!View attachment 92085




How much does soemthing like that cost to print out?


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## darjr (Nov 22, 2018)

not much. I have a wide format printer I purchased used for $100. The paper is $45 for four 300ft rolls and a set of ink cartridges are $45, that I refill with ink.


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 25, 2018)

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 on a diet of conjured food and water.

The main chamber of the structure is the library itself, a two-tiered chamber with nearly 50 bookshelves on this level and additional stacks on the upper tier. Unlike the dungeon and the rough chasm outside, the Athenaeum is kept exceptionally clean as the scholar-priest’s animated guardians serve double duty as cleaning staff and generally see little actual defensive work – the residents of the nearby dungeon having realized that this whole area is best avoided.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/25/athenaeum-of-the-lost-lower-level/


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 27, 2018)

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.

The fortress has never fallen, but has changed hands with the winds of politics and the changing fortunes of those who have tried to hold it. The current “castellan” of the fortress is a netherman (half-goblin) who uses it as part of his claim upon the title of Warlord – although none (even those who traded him the fortress) will acknowledge it. From White Crag Fortress he taxes the local farmers and fishermen lightly, but maintains an army of half-breed mercenaries that earns everyone’s distrust.

White Crag Fortress is two discrete constructions – the Bailey Fort and the Spire. The Bailey Fort is separated from the mainland by a ditch dug into the spur of stone it is built into, with a permanent wooden bridge across leading into the main gatehouses. The Bailey Fort is a fairly large multi-story affair with a fairly large central courtyard. Should the fortress ever be owned by someone of wealth and means, this courtyard would likely be covered with a wooden structure turning it into another great hall with additional stories above it.

The Spire looks out over the sea from the tip of Merman’s Bluff. Still made of the same white granite, it is a cramped and construction, restrained by the limited amount of land to work from. It is connected to the Bailey Fort via a stone bridge as well as a small tongue of rocky land that keeps the last part of the bluff from being a complete island.

If one were to look directly down from the watch tower on the north side of the Bailey Fort, there is a cave leading into Merman’s Bluff with a small stone wharf connected to it. This postern gate to White Crag Fortress is intended to be well guarded, although the original door has been removed after it got stuck too often from rusting hinges and lock as well as swollen oak from the constant battering from the sea. In time it should be replaced by a properly oiled and tarred door, but for the time being the gateway remains open.

The main level of the structures wind up under the structures of the Bailey Fort leading eventually to a trap door opening into the fort proper. These structures are used as storage, guard rooms, and an escape route in case of emergency.

There is also a passage that leads up under the Spire, however it lacks an accessway into that structure (at one point there was such an access point, but a team of mechanical assassins used it to gain access to the spire and it was blocked off afterwards). This section contains a secret chamber that in turn has a trap door down to the lower chambers which are used as a secret dungeon for prisoners as well as an underwater escape route for those with the access and the means to travel underwater.

The tunnel leading underwater from these lowest passages proceeds 130 feet further from Merman’s Bluff and into a small cave 20 feet under water.

White Crag Fortress was originally released as two maps in 2015, and have been combined here into this single piece as part of my Patreon campaign's "Release the Kraken" goal where we release 2 maps a month from the blog under a free-use commercial license.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/27/release-the-kraken-on-white-crag-fortress/


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## Jeremy E Grenemyer (Nov 28, 2018)

Dyson Logos said:


> White Crag Fortress was originally released as two maps in 2015, (snip)



This is the kind of map someone could build a great DMs Guild adventure around. 

Thanks very much for sharing, Dyson!


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## Dyson Logos (Nov 29, 2018)

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 main level is the upper galleries and open staircase leading there. Above the main entrance is a long gallery along the wall of the underground crevasse with five windows looking down over the bridge. At one end of this gallery is a twisting staircase that leads between the levels, fully exposed and open to the crevasse for a portion of the climb. At the other end is a larger gallery and lookout.

This level of the library is a mezzanine looking over the main library with floor to ceiling bookshelves set along the walls as well as a number of reading spaces and a small locked archive where the scholar-priest keeps those volumes he is intent on repairing or copying.

The level also includes a small set of cells for people caught sneaking around the area, and a small open chapel with a statue of the god of knowledge and secrets.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/29/athenaeum-of-the-lost-upper-level/


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 7, 2018)

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 doorways – and a small tomb was cut into the looping cave and then more recently converted into a storage space.

These days the upper caves are home to a small group of bandits, exiles and outlaws from the nearby town. Their leader, Ola Zeldade, escaped town when they began growing scales as they are actually at least one quarter naga, and are in the midst of the slow transformation into a more naga-like form.

The lower caves have two old statues of manifestations of a pair of minor earth deities. Ola’s gang always posts a pair of fake “priests” down here to divert inquiry and chase away interlopers.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/07/old-cruik-hollow/


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 11, 2018)

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 PCs discover that others have already set up camp along the route.

There’s a spot where a small campfire has been kept on a few occasions, in the lee of the taller portion of the hill, and the rocks have been set up at the slope up to the main hilltop to help make it more defensible.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/10/stony-hill/


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## MichaelArkAngel (Dec 11, 2018)

God damn, you make me want to bust out my Rapidograph pens, and start creating again!!! I have been spoiled by Photoshop for so long, but your stuff is always inspiring, even for this 40-something guy!!!


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 12, 2018)

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 hazardous because of wild animals than any kind of organized hostile forces. This is the kind of place where there is more to fear from a rabid bear, or the slow encroachment of a chaos cult within the town itself.

The heart of Prince’s Harbour includes a number of small docks and wharves for fishing in the Gnoll’s Ear River, and behind a screen of trees from the river is the heart of the town itself – the cluster of structures around the large building just north of the centre of the map is the priory that took in the prince that the town is now named after, with the church set directly across the main street from it.

The Priory is now the heart of the town administration, and serves very little religious purpose anymore. For town meetings and announcements the prior uses the Prince’s Commons – the empty block with only a small gazebo-like structure in the middle. In the winter town meetings are often moved to the church instead otherwise no one would stick around.

A small island in the Gnoll’s Ear is home to Caft Manor, heart of the Caft family who own a lot of the tenant farmland around Prince’s Harbour. Caft Manor is passed down to the head of the family from generation to generation, and is currently home to “Elder” John Caft who is only 26, the youngest head of the family in anyone’s memory.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/12/princes-harbour-map-3/


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 14, 2018)

We must travel deeper via the third eye!

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 for the clues to open the third eye. The mushroom folk who live there claim to have the secret. But they will not give it to us willingly. They misdirect and obfuscate. They speak of states of mind we are not prepared for. Only when we have killed each and every one of them are we satisfied that they do not have any secret keys to the third eye.

But we start to see things differently. As if the ichor of these mushroom "people" has infected us, transitioned us somehow. And when we return stumbling and hallucinating to the chamber of the third eye we can all see how it opens, and reveal the stairway beyond.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/14/we-must-travel-deeper-via-the-third-eye/


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 16, 2018)

“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 civilization, most modern academics believe it to have originated from one of the many thousands of suns that dot the night sky. Many an aristocrat has sent scouting or raiding parties to the Monolith, bringing back a variety of alien gems, metals, and the like, assuming they were able to get past the structure’s formidable security measures.”

– From the Ynemvelt Archives

The Zealous Geometers have claimed the Black Monolith as their own, but how can you resist the call of adventure and treasure?

The Black Monolith from Another Sun was originally drawn by Jesse Goldshear and posted to his blog, Yenemvelt – Another World. This redraw is done in cooperation with Jesse’s blessing. The fully stocked level can be found on his blog (linked to from the map page).

Over the next month or two I’ll be redrawing the map of level 2 of the Black Monolith, and then I’ll keep up with Jesse’s expansions to the Monolith as he develops them.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/16/black-monolith-from-another-sun-level-1/


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 18, 2018)

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 only be accessed through windows from gardens. Stairs that lead nowhere, doors that open into brick walls.

This sprawling Winchester House-inspired map was crafted for jim pinto’s “House of Keys” RPG, the first of several in the Iron Medusa setting – a lawless RPG setting inspired by Slavic folklore.

It was drawn with a Sharpie marker and a black gel pen on an 11 x 17 page.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/18/house-of-keys-ground-floor/


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 20, 2018)

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 contains a number of rooms that are no longer accessible – including a small complex of rooms and a space full of dusty life-sized statues. One of the garden light shafts pierces up through the second floor, and is then bisected by a small hallway on the third floor.

This is the second map of the Winchester Mystery House-inspired map created for jim pinto's House of Keys RPG, the first of several in the Iron Medusa setting - a lawless RPG setting inspired by Slavic folklore.

It was drawn with Sharpie markers and black gel pens.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/20/house-of-keys-upstairs/


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 26, 2018)

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 affair, with piers, stairs and columns breaking up the large space.

Then the skeletons slip forward from the darkness and begin firing volleys of arrows at intruders while giant spider crawl down behind the cover of the columns to attack.

More skeletons, these ones riding on the giant spiders, are based in the two chambers behind the stairs leading into the temple. And the hissing always seems to be getting louder from the doors at the other end of the chamber.

In the oddly shaped chamber beyond, the hissing continues but the waves of skeletons & spiders cease. Old spider webs criss-cross this space and in the northern most portion of the chamber there is the MacGuffin – the (chest / sword / orb / skull of a minor god / preserved toe of a saint / egg of the bullywug queen / ceramic pig) that you have been seeking.

It is only when you pick it up that the hissing stops.

Run.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/26/the-temple-of-boom/


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## Dyson Logos (Dec 31, 2018)

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 remembered by the Prince of Clubs, is the Sanctum of the Entwined, a chapel dedicated to the conjoined twin gods of the last days who grant the prince his immortal form and awaken him from his ennui via the Archon Tamaru when they feel a nudge is needed to help push events to the brink of destruction whence they will finally be freed.

The Archon is much less aware of the puppeteers behind her partners actions and sudden bouts of activity and destruction. She remains unaware that they work through her to awaken the lust for destruction within him when needed.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/12/31/dungeons-of-the-prince-of-clubs/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 4, 2019)

We trekked across the Dry Reaches, searching for the lost Ziggurat of Mur. On the fourth evening we came across the ruins of an old palace or temple, slowly being conquered by the sands.

Originally we aimed towards it as an obvious location for a night camp to keep out of the cold desert wind as well as to conceal our fire from other (less friendly) explorers. But immediately we spotted the signs of habitation – trails in the sand, scales, and buried dry scat. We explored quietly but found no actual residents – although one of the upper rooms was being used as a sort of larder with a number of desert lizards hanging from hooks in the ceiling.

They waited until most of us were inside exploring to strike. They climbed out of the sand around the palace, attacking our pack animals and burro handlers before surrounding the palace. They looked like lizard folk, but orange, yellow and brown in colour. They slept in the sands, mobilizing to hunt in the morning and evening. The sand devils were ferocious, fearless, and fought until there were but a handful remaining who ran off into the desert making strange howling noises.

We did not sleep that night, waiting for their return.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/04/sands/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 7, 2019)

A small asymmetric square tower, Brentil Tower stands alone overlooking Banrior Chasm where the hordes of modronic rats once came crashing into these lands.

Currently secured and locked down by the the Sorcerer Lord Iosselmon, barring the use of magics to break in, the only way to unlock the doors are the magical keys distributed to the lieutenants of his Red Rangers.

On the nights of the new moon, you can sometimes see the luminous form of someone pacing in the enclosed balcony on the upper floor of the tower. It is said that Iosselmon’s Red Rangers don’t just use the tower to rest on their tours, but that they have to come here in order to feed whoever or whatever is prisoner up there.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/07/brentil-tower/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 10, 2019)

This small “dungeon” is home to a circle of elementalists who focus on water magics (who call themselves the Blue Warlocks). Excavated and expanded upon from a small cave that linked to an underground river, it now serves as workshops, training and teaching space, and as the repository of a small library of elemental lore.

As the name suggests, the waters here are magical in their own right – the Blue Warlocks use these waters to both enhance their magics and potions, as well as in the research into new spells and items. One of the original Blue Warlocks linked the source of the river to the elemental plane of water as well as a trickle of energy from the positive energy plane.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/10/arcane-waters/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 14, 2019)

Home to the elven bandit Illsong and their dozen-or-so fellows, the Hollowstone camp sits atop (and cuts into) a small rocky promontory in the False Loch Woods.


HollowStone is slowly developing into a small fortress. If Illsong remains untroubled in their occasional banditry and adventuring pursuits, HollowStone will gradually be built up into a potent little keep with its shadow extending over much of the False Loch and perhaps into the bordering principalities.


For now through, the camp is a mix of magically-cut passages through the natural stone paired with defenses built out of the tailings from the excavations and some “wall of stone” spells.


https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/14/hollowstone/


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## recon35 (Jan 16, 2019)

These remind me of my 14-year-old self pouring over B2 and the sample dungeon in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.  Thank you!


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 17, 2019)

Raised by a talented Wizard-Noble of old Phalorm, the Seven Spires is a small ornate castle made of seven overlapping towers set on the edge of the Neverwinter woods.

The small castle was used officially as a research space for the wizard-noble, but also served as an escape from court politics in the young war-based nation of Phalorm, and as a watch point over the growing orc menace in the region. Being fairly close to the settlement of Neverwinter, ties were maintained with that growing settlement and information about the movement of the orcs was exchanged.

The Seven Spires were unfortunately built on a dirt plain where bedrock was too deep to dig down to. In time this means the spires are doomed to slow collapse as the weight of the towers presses down and outwards on the foundations.

Whether or not Phalorm survives the orc hordes it was meant to defy (it doesn't, the orcs destroy it less than a century after it was founded), there is only so much time before the years will do the orcs' work for them and the towers begin to collapse upon themselves. Less than 900 years later, the seven spires will look more like a jagged collection of broken teeth than the castle as shown here.

_With full credit to +Mike Schley for the original Cragmaw Castle map upon which this is based. I love that map and found it really inspirational._

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/17/the-seven-spires/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 21, 2019)

“You have in your possession a sword and a shield together with a rucksack containing provisions (food and drink) for the trip. You have been preparing for your quest by training yourself in swordplay and exercising vigorously to buildup your stamina.”

The very mountain is menacing – it seems to have been savaged by the claws of a massive beast. Not an actual volcano, the top of the mountain is covered in strange red vegetation that gives it its name.

This is the setting of the first of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone – The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I got a copy of this book some time in 1982 and fell in love with the rich detailed illustrations of Russ Nicholson throughout and the mix of RPG game elements into a choose your own adventure book.

Through dozens of playthroughs, I only actually finished the adventure once – I even have an instinctive routing through the dungeons following the right-hand path to the bridge over the river – but I have thoroughly explored the passages and rooms leading up to that river. It was on the other side of the underground river that my adventures routinely went wrong.

Last month, I finally sat down with the old tattered book and gave it another run – this time marking every choice, every room, and every passage. It took me a day to complete this map of the southern half of the dungeons – everything up to the underground river.

Now I just need to map the chambers on the other side, and the maze between them and the warlock himself…

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/21/firetop-mountain/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 24, 2019)

_“The Warlock himself was a sorcerer of great power. Some described him as old, others as young. Some said his power came from an enchanted deck of cards, others from the silky black gloves that he wore.”_

Once you have crossed the underground river (across the rickety bridge, by boat, or swimming in piranha and crocodile infested waters), the areas under Firetop Mountain feel… different. Where the earlier portions contained many guards, once you get past the immediate structures around the beach, the dungeons become winding, confusing, and home to wandering patrols. Many secret doors here are one-way affairs and dead-ends often have teleport traps instead of secret passages…

It is thus a great relief to stumble into the final caves, only to discover that before you even face the Warlock in order to get to his treasure, you must deal with a fierce dragon that lairs in the cavern.

Through dozens of playings of the Warlock of Firetop Mountain, I only got through the maze a few times before giving up (often because I was playing it at school during a break). You could navigate the rest of the book without a map, but if you failed to map this section, you were effectively wandering blind – doubly so if you made the mistake of triggering one of the teleportation traps.

So last month I finally sat down and navigated every bend, dead-end, secret door, nook, and cranny of the maze. In my head the maze was small – maybe 1/4 the size it appears here. But getting the corridors to fit together well ended up stretching them out significantly until the north side map was nearly as big as the (much more densely populated) south side.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/24/and-the-warlock/


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## Blackmoor_Film (Jan 25, 2019)

Gonna have to "barrow" those Seven Spires maps for the current Blackmoor campaign. I've gotten tired of the players always going to the dungeon, so I am putting a door in the dungeon that leads to a wilderness. Kind of like the wardrobe in the CS Lewis books.

Thanks Dyson!


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 28, 2019)

Once the source of a small river that ran through these badlands, these caves are still home to the river, but it remains underground now instead of working through the nooks and crannies of the slate fields.

Broken up into multiple elevations throughout, these caves have been home to beasts and men alike seeking water and refuge from the badlands. Now they are home to Mohkath, a reclusive mantisfolk necromancer. He uses the space to study and is attended to (and defended by) a very strange assortment of animated giant beetles and skeletal constructs.

Some locals are happy to have a potent wizard nearby, even if it is a creepy one. They bring Mohkath offerings of food and skeletal remains in order to try to curry his favour in case they ever need his intervention in local affairs. But most are wary of a necromancer living nearby – and more than a few would sleep much better at night should someone take care of the whole “bug necromancer” issue.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/28/dry-river-caves/


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## Dyson Logos (Jan 31, 2019)

Mayer’s Fort is a small mountain village backed by a fierce stone walled keep. Initially a small mountain keep for a retiring adventurer, the addition of a monastery outside the keep walls slowly encouraged a small village to build up around the keep and across the river on the grassy verge.

Mayer’s Fort lacks an inn or tavern, and instead social life in the small community centres around the open garden at the monastery (the H-shaped building in the bottom middle of the map) and the bakery across the road from it.

With only 150 people, and a nobleman’s keep here, there are very few visitors that need a place to stay who don’t either already know someone in town (that they have probably come to trade with), or who have high enough social standing to seek the lord’s hospitality.

On the other hand, the town is high-brow enough to offer a magic shop (not where you buy magic items, but where you can get spell components, foci, and the other things that wizards, druids, and clerics shop for), a bookbinder, and an illuminator – all based out of the monastery and the building just southeast of it.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/01/31/mayers-fort/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 1, 2019)

Lets set the time machine for 2014 and grab an old city map for the first commercial re-release of 2019. Welcome to Cliffstable on Kerstal –  a small city that has gradually grown up where the Brown Goblin River meets the Kerstal.

The original name of the settlement goes back to when a single horse breeder maintained a stable on the raised cliff area in the south-eastern shore. Travellers and traders would come by the Cliff Stables to acquire excellent and affordable horses. While there is still a small horse trade in the region, the city is more of an agricultural and trading community in the current era.

There are two open-air markets in the city – Hillside Market in the north within the walls of the city proper (which often has a very festival-type atmosphere and sells all sorts of handcrafts, foods and treats) and Citadel Market on the cliff itself which deals more in livestock, grains, and larger trade goods.

This map was the result of waiting for two different medical appointments in one day. It was drawn in one of my little (4″ x 6″) dollar store mapping books using a Sakura Micron 005 pen. It’s very very small.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/01/release-the-kraken-cliffstable-on-kerstal/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 4, 2019)

As you head north along the Brown Goblin river it cuts deeply into the badlands, making it very difficult to cross. Boat traffic becomes prohibitive also because of the speed and roughness of the river up north. Karst Ford marks the last point where a boat can travel upriver - a ford where the river has cut through the local dolomitic stone leaving a path of hard stone that pedestrians and careful horse riders can cross while the river runs swiftly through runnels underfoot.

Overlooking Karst Ford is an unusual ruined "palace". One side has raised open stone structures that appear to be meant to serve as decorative "gardens" or similar, with the structure itself being some nonsensical series of halls and small rooms centred around a circular chamber that was maybe the base of a tower at one point.

A few efforts have been made over the years to use the structure as a garrison or guard post along the river, and the circular chamber still has wooden scaffolding within it leading up to the ruined upper level of the structure - probably intended to be used to reconstruct a wooden watch tower over the palace.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/04/strange-ruins-at-karst-ford/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 7, 2019)

Up in the hills is a small crater-like depression with a mostly smooth floor and a pair of heavy metal doors that lead to some place in the hillsides.

The doors open twice every 6-9 months. Once to allow the Blue Golem into the crater to begin its wandering, and once again exactly 10 days later when the Blue Golem returns.

The Blue Golem walks the lands nearby seemingly at random for those ten days – usually just walking from one place to another and then moving on to the next. On rare occasion the golem stops to collect something small and place it in a box build into its shoulder. Usually this is a plant or a small animal, but of course tales include it kidnapping children or seeming to want specific body parts from those that come too near.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/07/vault-of-the-blue-golem/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 11, 2019)

At the end of Rose Lane is Rose Point Manor – home of the last of the elven line of Heare and their three servants. Keeping with the name, the manor house has a number of rose bushes around it and the window shutters are painted in a rose motif.

The original manor was a much grander affair, but burned down nearly 200 years ago. The new manor was built over the same foundations, and if you were to find your way into the basement, the stairs down are still cracked and charred from that night when most of the line of Heare was lost.

The new manor is almost entirely made of stone – even the elegantly painted window shutters are made of thin slate, and much of the furniture is made of iron and steel. The elven lord of the house, Krennheon Heare, is somber and keeps much to themself, spending most of their time in study and contemplation of the arcane and the past greatness of their lineage. Occasionally guests are admitted to the manor to discuss matters of history or arcane legend – usually in the sitting room with the bay windows at the front of the structure, and occasionally back to the dining room where ancient brandies are shared over even more ancient tales.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/11/rose-point-manor/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 14, 2019)

The cellars of Rose Point Manor still show the damage from the fire that destroyed the original manor house. The stone stairs and sections of the walls are scorched and cracked from the heat. The extended subterranean structures beyond are untouched, but long ignored.

The pair of iron doors that lead to the catacombs are both rusted and long unused – the first is in exceptionally bad shape having held the fire back on the night that most of the line of Heare was lost. The locks are seized and will take significant oiling and care to make them work again.

The basement contains the usual things you expect to find in such a place – odds and ends from the manor above, a rack of wine, a few pieces of old furniture, and some supplies for potential repairs. Other spaces of note are a small side room set up as a sort of memorial shrine to the bloodline of Heare concealed behind a bookcase, and the manor’s cistern.

The lower catacombs were used as a family crypt and a secret chamber beyond the rough catacomb tunnels is decorated with carvings of deeds and people from the long line of Heare.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/14/beneath-rose-point-manor/


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## dave2008 (Feb 14, 2019)

[MENTION=83678]Dyson Logos[/MENTION], a few questions and comments for you (if you don't mind):

1) First I wanted to thank you again for sharing your awesome work (I think already did this at least once, but I want to be sure 

2) Do you do the earth/stone/solid area hatch by hand or do you have a pattern or brush (photoshop) that you use?  I ask because it is so consistent and I find when I do this type of work my ability to focus and maintain a consistent look breaks down and quality goes done.  Yours always looks great!

3) Can people use your maps in adventures they want to sell on DMsGuild or similar sites?  I don't normally write adventures, but one never knows and your maps a very inspiring!

Keep up the great work!


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 14, 2019)

> 1) First I wanted to thank you again for sharing your awesome work (I think already did this at least once, but I want to be sure




Thanks! 



> 2) Do you do the earth/stone/solid area hatch by hand or do you have a pattern or brush (photoshop) that you use?  I ask because it is so consistent and I find when I do this type of work my ability to focus and maintain a consistent look breaks down and quality goes done.  Yours always looks great!




Ten years of practice. All by hand. Even when I do work digitally, the hatching is always done one line at a time. It was the hardest element to bring over to working digitally though, as I would occasionally change magnification on the piece I was working at, and suddenly the hatching in that area would change in density compared to the rest of the map. But at heart, even my digital work is the same as my pen and paper work, just a stylus and graphics tablet.

There are a lot of "work in progress" photos on my various social media streams, but to really see the hatching flow, check out some of my videos on Youtube. Seriously, I can watch them all day just to see the hatching flow out of my pen since I sped up the videos.

https://www.youtube.com/c/DysonLogos



> 3) Can people use your maps in adventures they want to sell on DMsGuild or similar sites?  I don't normally write adventures, but one never knows and your maps a very inspiring!




That depends on a per-map basis. Some of my maps are indeed released under a free commercial-use license. To find out which it works best to follow my blog where they are posted with the license information. Generally speaking I release 4 maps a month under the license, as well as re-releasing 2 older maps (thanks to my Patreon goals).


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## Aiden_Keller_ (Feb 14, 2019)

Dyson Logos said:


> Over the 9 years that I've been drawing maps, I've posted the occasional thread and map to these forums. With all the hoopla going on over Patreon right now (which I use extensively), I figured I could start posting highlights and updates of my work again.




I try to draw my own maps as well...but yours are significantly better!


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## dave2008 (Feb 15, 2019)

Dyson Logos said:


> Thanks!
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Thank you for the replies!  I watched some of the videos, and the hatching is mesmerizing!  They also brought up a new question.  How much planning do you do before start drawing.  In the video everything appears very confident and planned out.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 15, 2019)

dave2008 said:


> How much planning do you do before start drawing.  In the video everything appears very confident and planned out.




Generally speaking, almost nothing is pre-planned.


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## dave2008 (Feb 15, 2019)

Dyson Logos said:


> Generally speaking, almost nothing is pre-planned.




That is pretty amazing.  You have developed quite a skill there.


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## Imaculata (Feb 15, 2019)

Dyson Logos said:


> Up in the hills is a small crater-like depression with a mostly smooth floor and a pair of heavy metal doors that lead to some place in the hillsides.
> 
> The doors open twice every 6-9 months. Once to allow the Blue Golem into the crater to begin its wandering, and once again exactly 10 days later when the Blue Golem returns.
> 
> The Blue Golem walks the lands nearby seemingly at random for those ten days – usually just walking from one place to another and then moving on to the next. On rare occasion the golem stops to collect something small and place it in a box build into its shoulder. Usually this is a plant or a small animal, but of course tales include it kidnapping children or seeming to want specific body parts from those that come too near.




Lovely work. Not enough DM's create round dungeons, or include round elements in their mazes, so props to you sir. I also like how part of the dungeon has collapsed, thus breaking the symmetry that is so common in lots of D&D maps.

Can one of your next maps perhaps include lots of height differences? Balconies, bridges and the like? I think those types of dungeon designs we also don't see enough of around here.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 15, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> Can one of your next maps perhaps include lots of height differences? Balconies, bridges and the like? I think those types of dungeon designs we also don't see enough of around here.




That's actually something that I'm generally well known for - while most people think of my maps because of the hatching, I use a lot of elevation changes to make them feel more 3D.

If you've seen the maps in Dragon Heist you can see what I mean.


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 16, 2019)

I’m often asked about the scale of the maps I post. In truth, I don’t include a scale on my maps because either it is pretty obvious (when drawing houses and similar structures – where a square is 3 to 5 feet), or more likely because I want the end user to pick a scale that works best for them. In the inner workings of my head, you can assume that I’m thinking at a scale of 10′ per square when drawing most of my maps as that is the traditional scale for D&D maps which is where I cut my teeth.

But for the Temple of the Mad Titan, 10 feet per square just isn’t going to cut it. Let’s crank this one up to 20 or maybe even 50 feet. A structure of Brobdingnagian proportions, the temple is made of almost inconceivably large blocks of stone and rests atop a massive cloud. At the heart of this immense structure is the throne of the mad titan.

But he is rarely found there – but always nearby. He is bound to the throne by magical chains that give him some freedom of movement within the structure, but not quite enough to get to the massive entrance and thus he is trapped here with freedom always just in sight. Some days he stands in the great hall in front of the heart chamber and raves against his captors and the world. On bad days he will hide behind the throne or in one of the nearby alcoves, hiding from the light of day and the fresh air.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/16/temple-of-the-mad-titan/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 19, 2019)

I’m playing in an awesome Neoclassical Geek Revival RPG campaign right now called “Age of Myth” where we are one of two PC groups competing to achieve the “victory conditions” of the game setting – in this case to form a kingdom by first uniting three iron age clans into a tribe, and then uniting three of these tribes into a kingdom. (The last campaign we played was also competitive, and while our group was the first to discover the location of the end-point of the campaign, we were beat to actually recovering the Eye of Set by the other group.)

The game takes place in Cromspoint, pictured here. I BELIEVE that Zzarchov is creating the hexmaps for these campaigns using a random map generator, and adjusting it to his taste. This is my interpretation of the campaign map as it stood in year 11 of the campaign (we are just starting year 13 next session – we have one session per season, 4 sessions per year).

I won’t add much more detail about the campaign, and what we are doing in it, as at least one member of the other group will be reading this.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/18/adventures-in-cromspoint/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 21, 2019)

From 2008 through to 2013, Sabre Lake was the centre of a number of campaigns that I ran – using B/X D&D, Advanced Labyrinth Lord, and D&D3e. Each campaign focused on different elements of the region – although two of them shared the same intro arc starting with Goblin Gully and then dealing with the horrible thing that was inadvertently released while exploring that site.

The namesake city of this map is a cheap crib of Sanctuary from the Thieves’ World novels – down to it being on a contested border and fairly recently having changed hands from independent to the Satrapy and then to the Allied Empires. It is the last northern city in the civilized lands. Beyond Sabre Lake there are other cities but they are weeks of travel away and remain independent of the various political factions that rule this portion of the land.

The people of Sabre Lake do their best to continue going on as if things hadn’t changed, but the lawless ways of an independent border town don’t mesh that well with the views and laws of the new management. And thus there is strife and friction between the various cults, the Imperial garrisons, the puppet government, and the few remaining citizens with money and clout from the old regime. Throw in the classic feeling of Thieves World to make it a wonderfully crapsack city that you would only love if you were stuck here.

The only element that recurs in every campaign I’ve run here is the Seer. I’ve even had two other campaigns come to Sabre lake over the years to find the Seer of Sabre Lake. To visit the seer, one first visits her shrine in the Citadel, where her acolytes will fill you in on what is needed for you to be granted an audience. Generally it involves renting a nice boat (often from a friend or family member of one of the acolytes), getting it loaded up with expensive or weird things that are useless to you (a samite sail, really? let me guess, your sister weaves samite?) (thirty four feathers from seventeen different swans?), and sailing across the lake to visit.

Those who do not complete the tasks assigned find only a rocky shore and a shallow stony valley. Guests however will find a stony trail at the shore that leads to a much larger valley surrounded by ancient marble ruins. Sometimes there is a test at this point (beat the Seer’s mighty centaur champion at chess!). And then the Seer grants you the assistance of her knowledge and visions.

Or just tells you useless riddles.

High resolution copy of the map (and a version without tags) can be downloaded from https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/21/the-citadel-at-sabre-lake/


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## Imaculata (Feb 22, 2019)

That is a gorgeous map!


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 24, 2019)

View attachment WEB-Kraken-Portal-Towers-Grid.png

Ever want to just add a little something when hopping onto a teleportation circle or using some other sort of long distance (or interplanar) portal?

The Portal Nexus was just that for one of my games. A long standing moon gate portal had the destination point obstructed by a group of planetars, so when the PCs jumped through, instead of sending them straight to the destination, they were shunted off to the nearest "portal nexus".

In this case, a weird set of interconnected towers with a number of portals and teleporters throughout, and a small number of stranded extra-dimensional "tourists".

The Portal Nexus is a set of odd interlinked towers with no ground floor entry (but a few upper level doors that lead into the towers from walkways and balconies). Enterprising thieves and those with means of flight can access the nexus via these upper level entries, but the design of the structure assumed that all persons entering and leaving the nexus would be doing so via portals.

The top level (level 4) is two towers connected by a covered bridge. I picture a single portal right in the middle of the bridge, so you can’t actually use the bridge to get from tower to tower without crossing through the portal.

The next level down (level 3) is three towers, two of which are connected by an open-air bridge. The tower on the left I picture as having two portals, at the two dead-end regions of the c-shaped room.

The level just above the ground floor (level 2) is comprised of multiple towers, and also is home to the only open-air portal of the structure. There is a large pillar made of green stone sitting on the roof of one of the smaller towers and reached by a bridge – when activated it calls down a bolt of green lighting from the skies and is open for travel for ten minutes. The spike-sided tower to the left is also home to three more portals (and a balcony overlooking the stone circle on the main level), each embedded in the wall of it’s own chamber, framed in heavy obsidian blocks.

Finally, the ground floor is home to two portals and access to the upper levels.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/23/release-the-kraken-on-the-portal-nexus/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 25, 2019)

Originally a small fortification on a rocky outcrop, the Halls of Ghuldesh were magically formed out of the rock beneath the fortification by an order of druids. The old fortifications are but a few stones atop the hill now, but the druids’ work and standing stones remain.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/25/the-halls-of-ghuldesh/


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## Dyson Logos (Feb 28, 2019)

A small settlement in the Thendrake Archipelago, Quellport sits on an unusual lagoon in a cluster of islands. Except for the Isle of Seven Bees (the elongated forested island to the upper left of the map), all the smaller islands are generally just referred to as Quellport or the Quell Islands.

There are a total of four settlements on the Quell Islands as well as a number of towers and smaller edifices –

Quellport itself is essentially in the centre of the map sitting on the gentle waters of the lagoon. With a population of about 1,400, Quellport has grown beyond being a fishing and farming community and supports several churches, guilds, and a “tower of arcane knowledge” where a number of wizards and a few clerics who make excursions out to the cube for research or spiritual reasons.

Quiet Cove on the north side of the same island as Quellport. A small fishing community built up around a couple of large manors established by well-off ex-adventurer types.

Sheep’s Cay on an eastern Quell island specializes in deep sea fishing and also maintains a friendly relationship with the cyclops living in the caves a few islands north of them. They deliver the occasional sheep and large fish to the cyclops, and the cyclops remains generally peaceful in return.

Greenshore is south of Quellport and is known for the excellent shipbuilders who set up their business here. They collect wood from the island across from them and build some of the hardiest fishing and merchant vessels in the region.

The Isle of Seven Bees is home to a strange and massive hive that sits atop a 300 foot amber tower. A number of giant bees (about 20 feet long) live within the hive and occasionally fly over nearby islands. At random intervals every few years or so, they collect upon the cube in the Quellport lagoon – and a local adventurer has regaled visitors and locals alike with tales of liquid gold and other treasures he found within the hive when all the bees were at the cube a few years back.

And finally the cube… In the middle of the Quellport lagoon is a massive cube, sitting at a slight angle in the waters. A deep blue in colour, it seems potentially related to the massive pillars of the “City of Blue”. Small bits of it have been mined and broken off, but those who work the cube itself for more than a few hours find themselves sickening and often dying within a week or two. It is said that whatever god who dropped their die here doesn’t like it when the locals try to break it apart.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/28/quellport-and-the-isle-of-seven-bees/


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## Wik (Mar 1, 2019)

I saw this post on twitter earlier today.  It looks like a pretty fun map, and the cube is very much some weird old school D&D.

You know, I love your regional maps and always look over them pretty heavily.  What's funny is that I'd never use one in my games - and I've used a lot of your maps in my table games.  But despite that, I actually find your regional maps more valuable.  They give me ideas for my own regional maps, and regional maps are things that get used over and over again through the years.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 4, 2019)

The votes for February’s “Release the Kraken” have brought us to a piece that I think would be a perfect fit into any Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign – Paradise Control.

When I was asked for an underground casino map for a D&D game, I immediately had a flashback to the classic Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle adventure that came bundled with the 1980 & 1981 editions of TSR’s Top Secret RPG by Merle Rasmussen. One of the organizations hidden beneath the streets of the city is Pair-a-Dice, a full-fledged secret casino floor set underground.

Now, realistically an underground casino in a faux-medieval environment would most likely resemble a prohibition-era gambling den more than what we think of as a casino – a couple of rooms where people can play their games of chance and maybe store some drinks and a couple of security goons. But this is full on fantasy, so I went with something a little more full-on James Bond, Dragonslayer.

Paradise Control is a small casino when compared to modern mega-casinos, but is quite the underground establishment. It was built out of the basements of multiple structures in town, although disconnected from the actual buildings above during the construction phase. A few disconnected basements remain around the casino, but the only way to the surface is the stairs at the main entrance and a secret sewer escape system.

There are two staircases down to the lobby of Paradise Control from a pair of local businesses. The lobby channels clients towards the main floor with three gambling “pits”, two bars, a linked restaurant and a few halls that can be rented, used for parties, or set up as additional gambling space as needed.

The lower left portion of the map is the service hallways for general staff, including storage space and sewer access (for trash disposal). The upper right passages link the kitchen to the dinning area, and also provide access for security to the various rooms of the establishment (the security room is in the upper right corner and comes with a set of three cells for taking care of problems).

Finally on the lower right we have a pair of offices off the main room, one of which has secret doors to the the southern banquet hall as well as to a secret stairwell down to the sewer area.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/04/release-the-kraken-on-paradise-control/


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 5, 2019)

Part of a much larger estate that has fallen to advanced decrepitude, Lorean’s Manor sits on a hillside rank with overgrown weeds and brush. Somewhere in the untended brush are a number of collapsed and half-collapsed outbuildings including the kitchens and staff buildings, coach house, and so on.

Standing before these overgrown gardens and ruins is the Lorean’s Manor. The lowest parts of the structure are hidden by errant trees and heavy ground cover, but the high arched roofs and tower make it impossible to miss for now. It is to this decrepit estate that Rosalinde Lorean returned from her studies among the mages of the Hill Islands. With the death of her great aunt, she is now head of the estate and tries to keep things in order while entertaining her great uncle’s delusions that the estate and family are still as important as they were in his youth.

As the estate has almost no money, Rosalinde has replaced the staff with faerie folk that she rescued from a collapsing faerie circle during her time on the Hill Islands. These fae provide the family with food as well as cobbler and seamstress work (although they certainly don’t do any yard work). They flit in and about the old structures where fanciful mushrooms now sprout.

Of course, once the players have met Rosalinde and her fae companions (probably to get some minor MacGuffin), it is time to change things up at the manor. The new circles the fae have been building are invaded by the same dark goblins that overran their previous circle on the Hill Islands, and they establish an unseelie beachhead in our world at the old Lorean estate. Rosalinde and her uncle are locked away in the tower as the goblin king takes up residence in the manor house and his minions spread around the estate and begin to check out the nearby town…

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/05/loreans-manor/


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## Samcro (Mar 6, 2019)

Nice casino !
I will take a look on it, can you check this website for more casinos games and plans ?
Thank you !


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 8, 2019)

A small fortification near the Hewbank in the Eagle Hills, Brenovale Castle was abandoned a few years ago when plague struck. By the time help arrived, those left behind were dead and bloated, surrounded by foul insects that appeared to carry the infection.

Constructed rapidly through wizardry, the castle remains effectively untouched today – the only sign that anything has changed is the lead plague seals on the front doors have been broken, and no sign of the infected dead can be found within.

But there are weird sloshing sounds coming from behind a collection of barrels in the basement. When moved they expose an old door, sealed not with the lead plague-seals, but with old red wax run through with long strands of human hair. And the sounds from behind the door seem to be receding to some place even deeper…

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/08/brenovale-castle/


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## jayoungr (Mar 11, 2019)

Oh, hey!  Are you the person who did the maps for _Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica?_  I made a separate thread about this, but I might as well get it straight from the source:  are those maps available anywhere for purchase as individual image files?  In particular, I'm looking for the Notorious Nightclub maps.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 11, 2019)

These lands were once the territories of the god-king Zueshel who was struck down by the Culling Blade wielded by each of the Seven Heretics in turn. Through the blade it is said that they each gained a portion of his power. Modern heretics say that this runs against the very beliefs of the Seven Heretics, who struck down Zueshel while announcing that he was no god to begin with.

Regardless, with the end of Zueshel’s reign, the people turned their worship to the Seven Heretics and a number of temples were built around the land. The greatest of these is said to house their bodies in a secret crypt, where they remain as they were when the heretics died – never decomposing.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/11/temple-of-the-seven-heretics/


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 11, 2019)

jayoungr said:


> Oh, hey!  Are you the person who did the maps for _Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica?_  I made a separate thread about this, but I might as well get it straight from the source:  are those maps available anywhere for purchase as individual image files?  In particular, I'm looking for the Notorious Nightclub maps.




I /believe/ they are all available as high res images as part of the book on D&D Beyond.


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## jayoungr (Mar 11, 2019)

Dyson Logos said:


> I /believe/ they are all available as high res images as part of the book on D&D Beyond.




Okay. I was hoping to find just individual maps without having to get the whole book in multiple formats (I already own it in print), but I guess that's the model nowadays.  Thanks!


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 14, 2019)

Most of the temples of Zueshel were destroyed after the Seven Heretics struck down the God-King – however a few rebuilt into pyramid-temples dedicated to the heretics themselves. Most of these contain (or at least claim to contain) a holy relic of either the death of Zueshel or from the later deaths of the Seven Heretics.

This particular temple claims to have the son of one of the seven heretics entombed in the reliquary below it. It serves both as an administrative centre of the rural province it is in as well as a place of quiet contemplation. Pilgrims carry water to the temple and pour it into the pool in the northeast corner as they silently ask for the intervention of the heretics or the child below into their daily affairs.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/14/temple2/


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 16, 2019)

It should come as no surprise for anyone who has had to deal with the Obsidian Clan bugbears that Nagmer the Terrible meets anyone who requests to parlay with him in the most ridiculously ostentatious cavern setup he could arrange.

Nagmer’s throne cavern is a multi-tiered affair with a natural stone bridge over an underground river. The whole cavern is lit by a massive colony of well-fed fire beetles that crawl along the floor, walls and stalactites. Any discussion with Nagmer is usually conducted by yelling from the stone bridge as his guards block the way onto the north side of the cavern.

The vast majority of these negotiations end without any success, and a fair number end with Nagmer enjoying the envoy for dinner.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/16/throne/


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## Satyrn (Mar 16, 2019)

I like it!



(The "I'd buy that for a dollar" quote is reserved for [MENTION=6733]Turgenev[/MENTION]'s thread since he, y'know, sells them for a dollar)


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 18, 2019)

The Octopus Sorcerer has been researching and experimenting with some remains of the lost Aemril “technologies” in a cave on Farmrath Summit for the last seven years.

This wouldn’t really matter to anyone except that they are in possession of another Aemril artifact – the White Hadariel Staff. The staff is likely the only remaining key into Aemril sites and your employer has a lead on an unplundered vault in the Dhuurawa Wilds and wants either the Octopus Sorcerer to come along, or even better, that you just bring the White Hadariel Staff without the annoying “this belongs in a museum” octopus.

To meet with (or ambush) the Octopus Sorcerer, you will need to find the cave on Farmrath Summit and wrangle your way past the sorcerer’s guards, workers, and a few clerical staff to interrupt their studies and “acquire” the staff.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/18/octopus/


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 21, 2019)

The Bitter Minotaur is a roadside inn along a major road within the relatively safe lands of the Satrapy. The roads here aren’t threatened by monstrous incursions and other foul beasts, but as they run through heavy forests they are still prone to a bit of banditry here and there. Thus the Inn serves as a resting point along the route instead of a defensive shelter.

The three-story Inn has a courtyard with wagon gates east and west to allow coaches to roll in, unload passengers and cargo, and then roll out to park the coaches outside the wall for the night. The inn features 21 rooms (a mix of singles and doubles) over two floors above the tavern, as well as a dormitory on the ground floor. The tavern serves food and light drink (ale and wine, but nothing stronger).

Because it is along a major road and almost exactly 1 day’s travel from the capital of the Satrapy, the Bitter Minotaur sees a significant amount of traffic with 2d10+1 rooms booked on the average night, and hires staff from many of the local farms in addition to the small staff that lives on site.

This map is heavily based on the map of the riverside Three Feathers coaching inn from the classic Warhammer Fantasy RPG adventure “Rough Night at the Three Feathers” (seriously, this adventure is incredibly fun - if you haven't played it yet, get a copy and run it now). It started out as a cleaned up version of that map for my online WHFRP campaign, but then sprouted a lot of extra details and a third story as well as a full wall making it a roadside coaching inn instead of a riverside inn.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/21/minotaur/


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 25, 2019)

An exercise in pointless stonecraft, this castle sits abandoned and oft overrun by foul creatures. A dwarven folly – a structure built purely for the sake of building a structure – the castle cuts into and juts over a small canyon in the foothills of Tismar Summit.

When the dwarves left after building the folly, they locked the doors and forgot about it. To this day the front doors remain locked and require Voldrugg’s Key (or magic) to be opened – the current residents got in instead by climbing down on to the bridges over the small river canyon and eventually discovering the mechanisms that open the door on the upper level of the castle.

No one would care about the current residents of the folly if they hadn’t recently gathered a few competing tribes and raided a caravanserai where they looted and burned… and kidnapped the fourth son of Grand Duke Dietmar Stengel. The Grand Duke would really like his son back before they eat him.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/25/the-dwarven-folly-that-is-ruldroc-castle/


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 28, 2019)

Catacombs of the Flayed Minotaurs

Beneath the buckled stone floors of the jungle ruins in the Tempest Gardens is a massive set of catacombs guarded by the eternal vigilance of fifteen deathless minotaurs.

Each minotaur has endured the ages imprisoned within these catacombs in their own way, but none are untouched by time or violence. And they are not alone – while they can barely stand each other’s company, many have surrounded themselves with a few creatures that provide them with entertainment, food, or just the comfort of sharing a living space with others – even if (as in one case) they are little more than psionic protoplasmic slime.

This map was drawn at ledger size (11″ x 17″) at a scale of 6 squares per inch. Part way through drawing it I decided it would be fun to stick in an “easter egg” like the classic Quasqueton map showing up in Undermountain – so I added bits of maps from B2, X1 and T1 as I went. Because the map is so big, it ends up being a very large file. The blog has the map available at 600dpi and 1200dpi, whereas the version posted here is 300dpi.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/28/megamap/


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## Satyrn (Mar 28, 2019)

Has your hand recovered from the inevitable cramps from crosshatching that beast?


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## robus (Mar 28, 2019)

Thanks for sharing all these Dyson, I've picked up a few for an adventure I'm planning that will fit perfectly. I'm also going to try my hand at redrawing some maps in your excellent style for an old adventure that I've foolishly promised to share (I just looked at them and thought, Dyson would not be impressed!  )


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 29, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Has your hand recovered from the inevitable cramps from crosshatching that beast?




After a decade of cartography, I don't get hand cramps from drawing. A light touch on the pen and the willingness to stop and watch Blake's 7 for a bit between sections does wonders.



robus said:


> Thanks for sharing all these Dyson, I've picked up a few for an adventure I'm planning that will fit perfectly. I'm also going to try my hand at redrawing some maps in your excellent style for an old adventure that I've foolishly promised to share (I just looked at them and thought, Dyson would not be impressed!  )




I love knowing that my maps and ideas are being used for people's games. 

And I'll be honest, I love all hand drawn maps.


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## Dyson Logos (Mar 30, 2019)

In a fun twist, this month’s Release the Kraken voting has brought back a classic “joke” map from 2016 – the Tower-Faced Demon!

There are a number of dead gods, demons and other creatures long forgotten who’s planes of existence have ceased to exist and who now float around the astral, petrified with old age and lack of followers.

While most are just ignored, or used as the occasional stopping place or landmark in the infinite phlogiston, the Githyanki are famous for using them as bases of operations, cities, fortresses and so on.

At some point this structure was the head of something large and unpleasant. And at some later time, that head was broken off from the rest of the body and then slowly retrofitted into a small fortress.

Or, if you really want to go weird, get rid of the whole astral plane stuff, and this head fortress floats timelessly 333 feet above the surface of the world, travelling where it is commanded from the spires level of the uppermost tower. It transports a team of violent warlocks and their gnomish strike force, raiding the countryside and seeking untold sources of arcane power that they have become aware of through their dark patrons.

Either way, there are numerous entry points into the head. The mouth is a huge open-air gallery (although the teeth make it difficult to land most flying creatures and craft here), and there are entrances in the right nostril and right cheek, as well as at the tops of the two towers. Thus the inhabitants are always somewhat on edge, expecting attack to come from any side at any time.

They’ve been known to “accidentally” kill each other when surprised.

Tower McDemonFace here was started as a joke really… I posted my demon-faced tower and someone said that they wanted a tower faced demon instead. And one of my patrons asked for “A ‘dungeon’ that’s inside the body of a dead creature, god, etc.”

And here’s where all that wound up… Tower McDemonFace. Who has already become a demon lord worshiped in the Yellow City in a friend’s campaign.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/30/release-the-kraken-on-the-tower-faced-demon/


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 4, 2019)

The only major river inlet on the whole of the island is the Y’ruvex Swamps, a marshy lowland pincered between mountain ranges. We believed that if we could get past the swamps themselves and to the open rivers beyond, they would likely lead us to the heart of this island and the rumoured central plateau.

But nothing healthy grows in those swamps and the mountains around them show the spoor of the mightiest of territorial predators – dragons. The Jale folk call the river valley “the Central River” in their strange tongue and the the swamp name probably translates to something like “place where the people drown and die” – a proper translation wasn’t forthcoming as our Jale guide was killed when the hippogriffs attacked us on the larger of the hilly islands. We had pulled ashore to examine the massive standing stones just visible from the shore only to discover that the tallest hill on the island is home to a large nest of the beasts.

This map is actually a stylized closeup (at roughly 3 miles per hex) of one section of the classic Isle of Dread adventure from my campaign where I mash it up with elements of the Carcosa setting. Of the classic Isle of Dread map, this shows encounter location 8 (the Hippogriff nest on the island), location 5 (the caves of the rock baboons on the lower right of the map between the volcanoes) and it doesn’t quite extend north enough for the Roc nest at 16. It also includes a lot of smaller details that were added as I imported Carcosan weirdness – megalithic standing stones on the island, a few mountain caves and shore details to attract explorers’ attention, and such.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/04/04/yruvex-swamps/


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 8, 2019)

The Ruins of Charnesse

There was never much to Charnesse – a stone bridge, a few houses, and a small common house that served ale and light food to passing travellers and the local farmers when they had a few coins to spend.

But there’s a lot less now. Smoke was seen rising from the area since yesterday, and the reports are grim. All the homes have been ruined and even the fishing pier has been damaged. A huge fire was lit in the centre of the small thorpe seemingly with the furnishings off all the buildings – and close inspection also finds bones in the mix.

Only the common house remains mostly unmolested. Most of the furniture is missing, but no other damage is to be found. And one old human is still sitting there, slowly working his way through a bucket of ale. He has nothing to say, and has no memories of anything unusual from yesterday…

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/04/08/the-ruins-of-charnesse/


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## robus (Apr 8, 2019)

Ooh - I'll take that thanks very much!


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 11, 2019)

The Vault of Tranquility is the audience chamber and sanctuary of the Dwarven mummy Gheres-Nekheb Stormstone – one of the last remnants of the Lich Shogunate. Within these enchanted halls only the dwarven mummy’s voice can be heard above the level of a hoarse whisper… and old Stormstone rarely speaks louder than that himself.

From these secret halls, Gheres-Nekheb sends out spies and assassins to the lands of the living, keeping tabs on the ever changing politics and alliances where the Shogunate once ruled.

Hidden in the stony outcrops of the Yalon Badlands and further concealed by illusions, the front door of the vault has been sealed and presumed unopened for over 700 years – however on rare occasion those contacted by agents of the mummy lord are invited to an audience and are escorted through the main entrance. It is said that the assassin Khoutef bears one of only three keys that open this portal.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/04/11/tranquility/


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 15, 2019)

The Wooden Duck is a walled coaching inn nearly a day’s ride from Granitespire, about an hour outside of Prince’s Harbour. It has a small tavern but is mostly dedicated to 8 private and semi-private rooms and a large common room for travelers to stay overnight.

The Wooden Duck is owned by a widower who moved here from Granitespire – he is eternally on edge because back in the city he killed a silver merchant and expects the monkeys of Granitespire to swarm down upon the Duck at any moment, even decades later.

The main bartender, Hemrus, is a particularly ugly halfling with spiky bright blond hair who wears tall platform shoes to look over the bar. He is energetic and quick, and yet quiet and surly in disposition. He earns tips for his prompt service, never for his pleasant demeanor.

In addition to the bartender, the Inn maintains a staff of 4-6 additional cooks and servants who take care of horses, clean the rooms, and cook when the main cook isn’t on hand.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/04/15/duck-inn/


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 18, 2019)

The crypts under the Grand Cathedral in Javelin Hill are where the faithful and powerful are interred to rest in silence. But something went wrong. Probably linked to the burial of the Lord of Sunsets, minuscule stone “eggs” managed to work their way into the stonework and packed earth of the crypts…

Unfortunately, few travel down to the lowest level of the crypts and the “great mausoleum” at its centre – otherwise they might have noted the weird stone and earth “tumours” that were growing here, consuming the dead and reconfiguring the whole structure.

But now most of the weird tumors have opened up and revealed their contents – strange insectoid creatures of elemental stone incorporating the bones and grave-goods of those buried here. Some perhaps even show some understanding of who’s bones and clothes they wear.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/04/18/infestation/


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 21, 2019)

Psychedelic Cellar of the Stone Giants

Up in the hills there’s a small river cave where a pair of stone giants have set up their own private grow-op to supply themselves (and a few shamans and priests back “home”) with giant-scale psychedelic fungus.

The “psychedelic cellar” itself is well protected in giant terms. Stone bars block access along the river to all but the smallest of would-be thieves (halflings could be an issue), and the door to the cave is kept under lock and key. The easiest access to a would-be thief is to work their way up the icy cold stream that feeds the mushroom cave. At the tightest point, this requires about five feet of travel underwater where the cave ceiling is only an inch above the stream’s surface at best.

Of course, enterprising thieves could slip in and out of the cave this way to steal human-use quantities of psychedelics (using waterproof bags) as long as they timed their runs for when the giants aren’t in the cellar.

The two giants who live here are… predictably sketchy. Either tripping hardcore or coming down, they are at least a little paranoid about other stone giants coming to snatch their stash – or worse, telling the hill giants about their source and having a full on hill giant home invasion on their hands.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/04/21/psychedelic-cellar-of-the-stone-giants/


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 23, 2019)

If we set the wayback machine to nearly a decade ago, there’s essentially a full year where I posted nothing but geomorphs to the blog. Behind the scenes I spent a couple of months working on geomorph concepts to figure out what format worked well enough that it was not too apparent when you moved from one geomorph to the next.

I was originally going to work with Erol Otus’ “Geomorphic Mini Dungeon Modules” format of 11 x 11 with entrances in the sixth square on each side, but it was way too obvious when you moved from one to the next – it felt like you were exploring geomorphs instead of a cohesive map.

After about a dozen designs, I settled on these 10 x 10 geomorphs with entrances on squares 3 & 8. The design caught on and there are thousands of geomorphs available on the net that use this structure now.


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## Dyson Logos (Apr 29, 2019)

TL;DR: Four new geomorphs in a flashback to a decade ago, and the DungeonMorph Dice Kickstarter is going strong and moving in on $10k of the $15k target!

bit.ly/2XHYo0d

It is always kind of exciting being involved in a Kickstarter as it goes live. And this one is a great reminder of when I first started working on maps for the blog. It is refreshing to go back to my classic geomorph concepts and start drawing new ones again.

Doubly so knowing that they will be translated onto dice as we move forward! Joe over at Inkwell Ideas is Kickstarting 3 new sets of DungeonMorph Dice and I’m developing designs so we’ll have a Dyson map on every die in the set.

This set of 4 are (clockwise from upper left):

Barracks Dungeon Geomorph – The main feature here is a barracks room with two attached latrines and a commander’s office and quarters adjacent to it.

Tombs and Crypts Geomorph – Reminiscent of my Spiral Crypt design that was used in the Shadows of Forgotten Kings adventure, but much more compact.

Water Feature Cavern Geomorph – linking dungeons to caverns, we have a small oddly shaped lake that is used as a well and water storage in the dungeon section, and perhaps a shrine in the area to the southeast.

Large Cavern Geomorph – A larger cave to explore, with a few raised and lowered sections to it.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/04/29/more-geomorphic-dungeons-with-dice/


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## Dyson Logos (May 3, 2019)

A small dungeon or sublevel of another dungeon, the Black Armoury is where the Mad King sealed away the Weapon after using it once in the Battle of Zayhr Mountain. The guardians of the weapon are trapped here in eternal vigilance – their own life force replaced with the energies of the Weapon itself.

The structure itself is a multi-tiered affair with stairs up and down to various sections, and a high ceilinged chamber with rough natural cliffs and ledges has an overlook that leads back to the upper hall of the armoury.

Linking the various levels and sections together is a small secret chamber – home to the Mad King’s advisor and assassin who is the elder among the Weapon’s guardians.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/05/03/armoury/


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## Dyson Logos (May 7, 2019)

Back due to popular demand, we have another partially walled tavern. This tavern (even with the walls) is more suited to being in a town or city as it has no “guest rooms” per se and is strictly a tavern and not an inn.

The upstairs rooms are for the owner’s family, while the ground floor has the bar and tavern and storage. Food is cooked in a pot in the fireplace.

In the courtyard we have some space to unload goods, as well as a pair of privies by the lilac tree (to try to contain the smell).

High resolution versions with and without grid are, of course, on the blog along with the commercial use license: 

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/05/06/12goats/


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## Dyson Logos (May 9, 2019)

While a number of the old shaft tombs of the Etturan Dynasty have been found and explored, there is one that remains a well-kept secret amongst sages, masters of dark arts, and the few adventurers who have been there. Possibly the original shaft tomb of the dynasty, or perhaps a strange discovery that became the inspiration for the ones to come – the Bottomless Tombs seem to have earned their name.

Seventy feet beneath the cluster of tombs at the entrance to this seemingly bottomless shaft are a second series of tombs. These are notable in that both sets of doors into the shaft are on the same level and same orientation (an open archway in the centre of both the east and west walls of the shaft), and that the lower set of portals are linked by a stone bridge that spans the shaft.

The central part of the so called bottomless tombs is a 15 foot x 15 foot shaft that seems to go down forever. Determining the actual depth has proven to be beyond the abilities of scrying and simple engineering, and areas of both permanent magical darkness as well as areas of anti-magic (as well as a host of hostile inhabitants) make exploring the depths of the shaft an unwelcoming idea.

High resolution version of the map, commercial use license, and the map to the upper levels of the tomb are on the blog at https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/05/09/tombs2/


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## Dyson Logos (May 13, 2019)

The Bubble City of Oublos

The great city of Oublos-Dorren was destroyed decades ago by a massive pyroclastic flow followed up by a slower engulfing surge of lava from the Searing Mountains eruption. All of the city except for a small “bubble” almost exactly 180 feet across centred on a small temple of Lazotl – a local deity of misfortune and revenge.

The priests of Lazotl got the warnings of the impending eruption through a series of poison-induced visions and managed to erect a protective spell over their temple and a few buildings in the area through the Reliquary of Kesh, an artifact that had “fallen” into their possession.

Travel in and out of the “Bubble City” is now only achieved through magical teleportation by those who know the way, and through a glowing green magical portal on the peak of the temple of Lazotl. The portal opens up to two different places in the world above – stepping through the north side of the portal leads to a small basement shrine of Lazotl in the nearby fishing village of Ashford (which was reduced to a few homes during the Searing Mountains eruption).  Stepping through the south side of the portal leads much further away, to the frozen plains at the edge of the world.

The bubble city is illuminated by this portal in a flickering green light, as well as the mix of Lazotl worshipers, thieves, and a few mercenary adventurers that use the bubble city as a “safehouse”.

PCs would most likely find the bubble city in search for the Reliquary of Kesh, or hunting for one or more of the dastardly residents of this small bubble city.

High resolution version of the map (with and without grid) is available along with the free commercial use license here: https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/05/13/oublos/


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## Dyson Logos (May 20, 2019)

Ever since I started drawing Geomorphs, I’ve had the intention of making a dungeon that took advantage of them to have sections of the dungeon that change from visit to visit – visually based in part on the map of Lankhmar in the old Lankhmar D&D sourcebook.

Thus, every time you enter the dungeon, some sections remain the same, and some sections change. Further, due to the vagaries of geomorph design, some sections may become completely locked out in some visits, and some hard-to reach areas may suddenly be available.

My goal is to make a set of 4 or more dungeon levels that each contain 2+ geomorphs. Further expansion is easily possible by just “plugging in” a geomorph to any of the edge rooms or corridors and adding new structures that way.

And there are a LOT of geomorphs to choose from these days. There are well over a thousand of them on Dave’s Mapper these days, not counting the huge new collection being put together by myself and a number of other cartographers for the latest DungeonMorph Dice Kickstarter.

A high resolution version of the dungeon map can be downloaded from the blog at https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/05/20/geohall1/


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## MonsterEnvy (May 20, 2019)

Just got Ghosts of Saltmash and I must say, I really like the little change to artstyle from Dragonhiest to there. It's hard to put into words, but I just think the maps are really improved.


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## Dyson Logos (May 20, 2019)

MonsterEnvy said:


> Just got Ghosts of Saltmash and I must say, I really like the little change to artstyle from Dragonhiest to there. It's hard to put into words, but I just think the maps are really improved.




Thanks. That's the effect of nearly two more years of experience.


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## Dyson Logos (May 23, 2019)

We are in the last 9 hours of the DungeonMorph Dice kickstarter – so perfect timing to release level two of the Geomorphic Halls!

This one takes a cluster of 4 geomorphs as the heart of the level. Since so many geomorphs interconnected can result in a lot of unreachable areas, there are two different staircases down from this level to level 3 (so one should be accessible), and if all else fails, there’s still that one staircase down from level 1 that bypasses level 2 completely.

I love the various configurations and neat rooms that are available for the structure thanks to the thousand+ geomorphs out there now that use this 10 x 10 design – but I also made sure to include some sections in the level that will be memorable on their own (particularly the great hall on the north side and the thin diagonal halls to the tiered chamber on the upper left).

But yeah – last 8 hours! DungeonMorph Dice. GET SOME.

Kickstarter: http://bit.ly/2XHYo0d
Geomorphic Halls Level 2: https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/05/23/geohall2/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 1, 2019)

The second map chosen by our patrons this month to be re-released under the free commercial use license is Control – a map based on a joke that I drew as part of Mapvember in 2016. This re-release brings the original map up to 1200 dpi and pure black and white.

This tomb on the edge of the desert of the gods is the resting place of four Huecuvas of unusual intelligence for their ilk, as well as a few guardian mites that served them in life and still serve them now.

In life the four Huecuvas were warlocks dedicated to four spirit nagas, all children of the same night hag who rode their father (a paladin of great will) relentlessly through the years. While treated as typical huecuvas in most respects, they retain a typical human intelligence in death and still can cast two level 1 and one level 2 spell per day.

The huecuvas are entombed in their private tombs in the leftmost chamber. They generally remain somnolent unless something disturbs the complex or their tombs, although they occasionally wander the complex when awakened by foul dreams and premonitions.

The chamber on the far right of the complex contains four pools each radiating a different colour of energy with swirling currents within the waters tracing out the shapes outlined on the map to those who inspect them closely. The circular rooms have lowered central areas filled with dirt and excrement from the mites (as well as the buried corpses of those mites that have died from the many diseases carried by the huecuvas). These night soil pits are watered occasionally from the magical pools and grow a number of edible mushrooms as well as a few less savoury fungal creatures.

Unlike most mites, the twenty or so living in the complex do not have their usual tiny complexes of secret tunnels and trap doors and thus operate pretty much in the open as caretakers and defenders of the complex – watching for invaders from the small arrow slits looking down onto the approaching path.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/01/control-kraken/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 3, 2019)

The black stone cliffs of Robrus loom over Rat Crater Lake – the dark stone looking perpetually wet and somehow tainted by the often rainbow-sheened waters in the crater.

The cliffs are pierced here and there by small caves – places where inclusions of softer stone have been washed away by the waters of Rat Crater when the water level here was 20 or so feet deeper. Most are narrow little crevasses and defiles, but one is significantly larger and has become home to an ogre mage and a crippled warlock who seems to be as much studying the ogre mage as working with him.

Stashed around the cave are the remains of several expeditions that disappeared in and around Rat Crater. Probably including whatever MacGuffin brought the party here to begin with.

This maps is a departure in some ways from my standard style as I was playing a lot with line weights as I worked on it. I think I’ll try again with another cave in this style, but with the heavy black outline of the cave reduced to half the thickness before it breaks up into my usual hatching.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/03/black-cave/


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## Satyrn (Jun 3, 2019)

Dyson Logos said:


> View attachment 106638
> 
> We are in the last 9 hours of the DungeonMorph Dice kickstarter – so perfect timing to release level two of the Geomorphic Halls!
> 
> ...




I really like how these give an interesting border, a clear boundary to the set of geomorphs so they don't just spread out endlessly.


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 6, 2019)

A “basement tavern”, the Fire Beetle is built underneath “Trinkets & Secrets”, a fortune-teller’s storefront and the closest thing to a “magic shop” as you’ll find in Letath.

The Fire Beetle Ale House is a classic fantasy tavern – dark, windowless, smokey, serving ale and whatever hot stew is on that day. Entry is by a set of stairs down practically underneath the entrance to Trinkets & Secrets. As expected, it has an anachronistic bar with a grizzled but friendly bartender behind it, some booths for quiet discussions, and a pair of private rooms for meeting mysterious strangers in or handing over ill-gotten gains.

Behind the bar is the owner’s office, a storage room, and access to the owner’s upstairs apartment. Sharing the upstairs with the owner’s apartment (but with no common access) is Trinkets & Secrets – home to a fortune-teller and their spouse, with a room for private seances (and for examining trinkets being pawned off here) as well as a small store where charms, medallions, and lucky trinkets can be bought (and a moderate selection of spell foci and components).

High resolution versions of the map with and without grid (along with the commercial use license) can be found at the blog: https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/06/firebeetle/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 10, 2019)

Potent wizards locked away in their towers working on mighty magics… This is the way it has been in tales, and thus this is the way many wizards operate to this day. Ahsryn Spire is such a wizard’s tower, erected to provide a safe space for wizardly work far enough from civilization that no one should take too much interest, and defensible enough that if they do take interest there’s very little they can do.


Fingers of otherworldly minerals reach up from the roof of the tower, drawing energies down from the ether into this world – charging strange magics and empowering spells beyond their normal boundaries.


“The wizard of Ashryn Spire” seems to be a child – maybe in their early teens. Some say the wizard does not age, but those who remember the construction of the tower suggest that the wizard seems to be aging very slowly… and in reverse of the common methodology of growing older.


Only other wizards and their ilk have ever been seen visiting the tower – usually arriving via magic or unusual conveyances such as lightning-strike chariots, standing on the backs of a flock of miniature pegasi, and so on. The general assumption is that the wizard of the spire’s primary guests are from other worlds – places known by nicknames such as the Yellow Hells, the Land of Ink, and the Infinite Violet Sea.


https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/10/ashryn-spire/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 13, 2019)

*Oubliette of the Forgotten Magus*



An abandoned throne room, flanked by cobweb-covered statues, this dungeon was designed and dug out to be something far grander than it is now.


Originally dug out for access to the underground river here, these dungeons are damp and quiet, home to massive cave spiders that hunt blind fish in the river. And of course, the Forgotten Magus. Paranoid and arachnophobic, the long-dead magus hides in one of the two small “closet” spaces in the dungeon, occasionally running from one to the other when his paranoia overtakes him and he can sit in one place no longer.


A desiccated husk of his former self, he still wears his finest robes and wizard hat. He knows the ins and outs of the dungeon and caves and can travel them at remarkable speed (even better if adventurers have killed the cave spiders already, clearing his route).


Of course, he knows why adventurers are here… they seek the magic jewel that he taps for his arcane powers! Thus when on the run, he scatters the occasional gem behind him to distract, and isn’t against including the occasional bead from his necklace of fireballs in the mix.


https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/13/magus/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 15, 2019)

*The Tomb of Za'az*



Designed after multiple iterations and revisions over weeks of painstaking design by the magus Braincain007 in the land of Reddit, the Tomb of Za’az was then recreated by the drug-addled crafthall halflings of clan Logos.


A classic “dungeon for the sake of a dungeon”, the Tomb of Za’az has never been home to the mythical Za’az, and only achieves the title of Tomb because of the two adventurers who died here in a previous delve. It is a manifestation of the archetypal “place where the MacGuffin is hidden” and contains prisons, pits, chambers of pillars for no good reason, curtains, a swimming pool, a shrine, and all the other amenities expected of a dungeon that manages to stick to a straight grid design throughout.


https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/15/the-tomb-of-zaaz/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 18, 2019)

*Geomorphic Halls - Level 3*



This is the third level of the Geomorphic Halls, a dungeon designed around my dungeon geomorph design to produce levels that have specific waypoints and landmarks, but also areas that shift and change between visits.


As we continue down into the Geomorphic Halls I get to experiment with different types of configurations. This level uses 4 geomorphs loosely scattered around the level – but in a tight mess of corridors, rooms and other connections. This particular map does something I generally avoid and fills up almost every available nook and cranny of a letter-sized page.


As with the other levels of this dungeon, you can use any of the geomorphs from my own Geomorph Mapping Challenge, or the thousands of other compatible designs from sites and blogs all around the net.


https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/17/geomorphic-3/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 20, 2019)

*Red Talon's Lair*



Cut from the stones of the Weirding Mountains by the drowned priests to craft a gateway for their mad god, this small complex has been “abandoned” for a few hundred years since the collapse of their order.


All the masonry of the complex was made of red stone brought up piece by piece by the Firestand scavengers from those undersea ruins. In the intervening years, much of the masonry has fallen or been removed, leaving the complex a mix of grey stone of the mountains interspersed with blood-red halls and walls in the various chambers.


In modern days, the old space has been taken over by the Talon clan of wererats as they stick their whiskers into crime and espionage throughout the realm. They generally ignore the unholy detritus of the Drowned Priests, as most previous inhabitants have… But one old wererat, Red Talon himself, started quietly collecting small stone idols and masonry with odd writing on it a few years ago, and is now quite mad – possessed by the urges of the mad god.


It is only a matter of time before he starts to look for a way to open the way between the worlds. Presumably it would be here, within the ancient complex of the drowned priests… but wererats are sneaky and perhaps in an attempt to hide this from his kin, he might instead attempt to part the way and invite the mad god under the streets of one of the cities that the Talon clan operates within…


https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/20/red-talons-lair/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 24, 2019)

*Isle of Kheyus*



There are many small independent island cities in the Copper Seas that I have visited in my attempts to navigate out of those quiet and confusing waters. Today we look at the Isle of Kheyus, where the remnants of ancient civilizations have the locals cowed and eking out a living in fear of the past coming back to haunt them.


Kheyus was once home to a massive city of some ancient civilization that covers much of the northern end of the island. The city has been reduced to ruins down to the stone of the island itself, but throughout the islands people have found bits and pieces of ancient artifacts and the occasional defensive construct defending tombs and treasures…


The city of Kheyus sits at the outlet of the main river of the island and ekes out a living from the Copper Seas and subsistence farming in the river valley. The people of Kheyus are openly hostile to “explorers” and “adventurers” seeking treasure and ancient history in the ruins to the north – more than once have the defensive constructs of that city (awakened by nosy explorers) threatened the city and farmlands here, and one on occasion an ancient plague was released that killed nearly a third of the populace.


But adventurers still come, and the strange crystalline structures on some of the islands have been farmed for crafting magic wands and orbs and attract magi and craftsmen. And the people of Kyni Bay (the walled town in the bay south of the great ruins) are also aware of the ruins of a lost city in the mountains that they keep secret from travellers and adventurers – for unlike the ruins, the lost city is still mostly intact, and they worry that far more powerful constructs are hidden away there defending ancient vaults.


1200 dpi versions of the map are available from the blog in colour, greyscale and B&W - https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/24/kheyus/


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## Dyson Logos (Jun 29, 2019)

*Letath, City of the Academy*



Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and the many patrons over on Patreons vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. For older maps I also work on upgrading the quality of the scan where possible.


Letath is a city that appeared in my “From Winterspire to Yoon-Suin” campaign a few years ago. It is a trading city on the eastern shore of the Persimmon Sea and is home to a major “military academy” where mercenaries are trained in exchange for 4 years of service in one of Letath’s two mercenary companies.


The presence of the best known military academy in the Alliance or the Satrapy has attracted a lot of people seeking training. A number of nobles in the city have started their own smaller training operations, and just about every noble in town is either retired military or the head of a small mercenary company of their own.


Youngsters from around the realms are shipped here for training in the various households around town – those with connections getting private instruction from the noble houses, others signing up at the academy.


https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/06/29/letath/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 1, 2019)

*The Court of Summer Wines*



The Court of Summer Wines is a well-to-do establishment that offers a wide selection of wines imported from near and far as well as a fruits, breads and sweets to be paired with such.


The food menu varies daily based on what is available in town, but Haspar (the owner) works hard to maintain a constant supply for his wine and drinks menu. The venue stopped serving harder liquors and brandies after one too many occasions where people would move on from wine to hard drink late in the night causing any number of brawls, damages and general unruliness.


During the summer, much of the drinking and eating takes place in the courtyard of the structure with the fountain in the centre bubbling away quietly. During the hottest months, canvas coverings are pulled over much of the courtyard to provide shade from the hot summer sun (because drinking in the sun often results in headaches and stomach aches, the management tries their best to increase sales with nice cool spaces).


Finally, the Court also has a few rooms for rent at most times. Only Haspar Ruggles and his best cook live on site, with the rest of the staff coming in to work every day – leaving a pair of rooms for rent on the east side of the structure. Currently the smaller of the two rooms is rented out to Krivotos, a centaur who was recently reincarnated into the form of a human and who is now trying desperately to fit in with “regular” civilization. He is a great source of information about the eastern forests and the druids therein.


1200 dpi versions (with and without grid) are at the blog - 
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/01/winekraken/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 3, 2019)

*The Half-Cask Tavern*



Up near the docks, between the Clinkers district and the docks themselves is the Half-Cask. In an area known for its inns and taverns, the Half-Cask presents a very traditional “drinking hall” environment, making it popular with locals and travellers alike.


The Half-Cask is a friendly single-story tavern / drinking hall of fairly traditional design.  Stone foundations and lower walls are topped with raw timber walls and a heather-thatched roof. Operating without a “bar” per se, clients order drinks (and sometimes food) from the staff who work the room.


The owner, Amina Donisi, tells many tall tales of adventures, distant lands, strange islands, and improbable monsters. These aren’t actually her own experiences, as she has never been more than a few hours outside of the city – but are amalgamations of stories told by other visitors & clients of the establishment.


The main entrances to the Half-Cask are on the north side of the structure, as far as possible from the fireplace. In the winter, the south door is usually blocked to prevent people from coming in there so the main room remains nice and warm in front of the roaring fireplace.


1200dpi versions (with and without grid) along with the free commercial use license are at https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/03/halfcask/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 8, 2019)

*the Vanshiro Reliquary*



A quiet structure for the contemplation and learning about the life and trials of the paladin Eneshra and their eventual transformation into the dragon Vanshiro who flew into the west and who’s occasional returns to these lands are a mix of myth, hearth-tales, and the one time it landed on this very hill  to speak to the Grand Eclesiast and deliver the three emerald scales.


Four generations later there is no longer a Grand Eclesiast at all. One of the scales was used and destroyed in the Battle of Long River, another went missing with the last Grand Eclesiast who travelled south to find the Eye of Kin. The final scale is supposedly still here, kept under guard by the small number of faithful priests and paladins who maintain the reliquary.


A 1200dpi version of the map along with the free commercial use license are at https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/08/vanshiro/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 11, 2019)

*The Ruins of Greymail Clanhold*



Greymail Clanhold has fallen. Word of the tragedy has only recently made it down from the mountains, but the stories paint a bleak picture of the hold being invaded and the dwarves destroying much of the structure to keep it out of the invaders’ hands.


But that is only part of the tale. There are still dwarves once of the clan in the ruins. They survived the siege through cannibalism and they were the ones responsible for collapsing the extensive hold to deny it to their foes – killing most of the non-combatants of the clan in the process.


These guilt-wracked survivors hate themselves more than anything and only survive out of a twisted need to defend what is left of the clanhold – and yet they are still the only ones destroying it. In the time since the siege and fall, they have smashed the statue of the clan founder by the entrance and dragged the larger parts out of the clanhold to throw them down into the ravine below.


The survivors are in great pain, and seek their own deaths defending the clanhold one last time.


1200 dpi version of the map and commercial use license are at the blog post - https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/11/greymail/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 15, 2019)

This is the fourth level of the Geomorphic Halls, a dungeon designed around my dungeon geomorph design to produce levels that have specific waypoints and landmarks, but also areas that shift and change between visits.


This is the final level of the Geomorphic Halls – except for that one small tunnel that has been dug out to the west, leading perhaps to other complexes or the fabled “underdark”.


The east side of this level of the complex is a span of natural caves and a quiet lake which in turn is home to a small island at the base of spiral stairs that descend from the low ceiling (and from the level above).


As with the other levels of this dungeon, you can use any of the geomorphs from my own Geomorph Mapping Challenge, or the thousands of other compatible designs from sites and blogs all around the net.


1200dpi version of the map, along with links to the other three levels and many many geomorphs to fill it are available here - https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/15/geomorphic-4/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 18, 2019)

*Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide Perspective Map*



When I got a copy of the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide some 33 years ago, it was a flood of information, rules I would consistently ignore, scraps about the underdark for the first time since the D series of adventures…


And a collection of pages at the back on drawing perspective-based maps. Not the isometric (axonometric) projections of Castle Ravenloft, but grids set at various perspectives and rotations along with instructions on photocopying and cutting them up, or tracing them in order to draw multi-tiered maps of some of the larger spaces in the underdark.


33 years later, I finally did it.


I ended up choosing a grid that looks a lot like an isometric projection instead of a perspective piece, and following the directions for tracing the grid for a section, then moving the grid and tracing the next section produces very… vertical separations between elevations.


The end result is a multi-tiered open space to explore – a large uneven “cave” (that has definitely been modified by the residents over the ages) with ramps and stairs between sections.


I’m definitely going to take another shot at this using a grid that has a stronger perspective and probably a smaller space to try to make something more like a traditional cavern. But I’m spectacularly happy with this piece, and glad that I finally drew it after 33 years of “planning to draw it”.


The 1200 dpi final map can be downloaded at the blog post - https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/18/dungeoneers-survival-guide-perspective-map/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 25, 2019)

Nearly a decade ago I spent most of a year drawing and posting geomorphs to this blog. This year’s Kickstarter for a new series of DungeonMorph dice from Inkwell Ideas brought me back to drawing them again… with the slight stylistic improvement of a decade of experience.


Clockwise from top left we’ve got:
Shrine / Temple complex with secret reliquary.
Forge / Workshops
Magic Pool
Crypts / Tombs


And of course, while these geomorphs work great with each other (and the thousand or so compatible morphs collected by Dave @ www.davesmapper.com ) but also with the four dungeon levels of the Geomorphic Halls.


1200 dpi versions of the geomorphs are of course on the blog - https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/25/geomorphs4/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 28, 2019)

*The Crypt of the Smith*



Drawn back at the end of 2015, I've upped the resolution on this map and am re-releasing it today.


The Smith’s Reliquary was crafted from heavy blocks of stone banded together with huge bands of steel that wrap around the structure like the hoops on a barrel. These bindings have rusted through the two hundred years this reliquary has stood, discolouring the stone of the building as well as the walkway and the cobbled street that passes along it.


The central chamber within is the reliquary itself, with a massive anvil in the centre of the space, flanked by tools and half-complete weapons and iron hardware of immense size. The back of the chamber is a huge furnace, long cold but for a few coals that are kept burning by the priests, replaced every few hours as they burn out.


Behind the central chamber is the resting place of the Smith. Either a mighty titan of the craft, or possibly an actual godling struck down somehow. But the sarcophagus is a lie, and within it is but the corpse of a stone giant embalmed and secured against grave robbers.


The true tomb of the Smith is hidden deep beneath this structure. In the priests’ chambers on the left side of the map is a small secret door behind which is a secure area containing a key as well as a variety of minor artifacts of the church (the first nail crafted by the Smith, a hammer head that has been shattered from heavy use, leather tongs that held his works, and so on). The key in turn unlocks the secret door hidden beneath the anvil in the main reliquary. But first one has to pull the four massive iron bolts that hold it in place and then slide this hundred-ton piece of steel aside.


Beneath the trap door is a set of stairs leading down to a natural cave with heavy and poisonous sulfuric fumes bubbling up through mud pits. The whole cave is wet and hot and oppressive. At the far side across a small bridge over the mud pits is the actual tomb of the Smith with a shaft of blackest obsidian through his chest – still breathing, but never waking.


1200 dpi versions of this map, with and without grid, can be downloaded at https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/28/smith-kraken/


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## Dyson Logos (Jul 29, 2019)

*The Frogs' Reliquary*



Even bullywugs have saints, holy frogs, and sanctified leaders and allies. They aren’t common, and they are revered. This bullywug reliquary dates back to the rule of the Verdant Administrant and The Empire of Gold.


The reliquary itself is collapsing into a much deeper dungeon. It can be entered from the jungle entrance in an old bullywug temple, or by climbing up out of the deeper levels below. But getting into the reliquary proper to acquire the holy relics within requires collecting the Agate, Jade, and Lapis keys that are sealed into tombs around the space.


High resolution copies with and without the notation are on the blog - https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/07/29/frogs/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 3, 2019)

*The Phoenix Diadem*



Portals between worlds are crafted from potent materials in places where the energies of the world intersect with that of other places. Sometimes these ‘ley lines’ are conveniently found where the sky meets the earth and the portals can be built on the surface of the world itself.


But more often they meet in places deep or high. And thus we build “dungeons”.


The Phoenix Diadem is such a place – built beneath the world and linking it to other places. But it is not just a portal; it serves as a prison to those whom it calls forth. There is insufficient space here for the great birds who fly in the liminal worlds between the planes of water and air (referred to as the para-elemental planes by some sages learned in the ways of the many worlds). Within the diadem they find themselves trapped, forced to subservience in order to be able to return to the cold skies of their world.


Even without the spells and rituals to summon forth the great para-elemental birds, the placement and design of the Phoenix Diadem allows things to “leak through” between worlds. Smaller elemental phenomenon occasionally breach into the diadem, and some unfortunates have also been lost here, having “successfully” pushed through from the Prime to the homes of these creatures.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/08/03/diadem/


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## Dyson Logos (Aug 5, 2019)

*The Old Turnip Inn*



We don’t know why we call it the Old Turnip… it’s just always been the Old Turnip. Well, I guess about 30 years ago it was the Old Turnip Eatery and Inn, but that didn’t last.


You can tell it is old just walking past. The windows are out of square now as the building has settled over the years, and it still has a small outbuilding for horses from when this was the East Gate district, before the new curtain walls were built under Geoffrey the Bold’s rule.


With only two fireplaces, the upstairs gets a little cold in the winter, but the rooms are cheap and the blankets are warm. The current owner, Haknoi, is an unusually thin dwarf who is rumoured to buy liquor and ale stolen from other inns in the city.


The woodwork is old and stained from ages of use and abuse, but a close look will note old sigils against the undead, dark magics, and the evil eye inscribed into many surfaces, including the undersides of all the tables.


https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/08/05/turnip/


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