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Fort Irongall on the River Styx

Hell. Hell never changes. Wait, that’s war. Does hell change? I’m not sure. In the traditional D&D cosmology, there are nine hells and they’re all different, so I think we can conclude that hell does, in fact, change. In a sense, anyway.

With that settled, I’m curious what you think about my depiction of hell. We’ve got the River Styx, some pools of blood (which I imagine is what it rains in hell), and a variety of skulls, corpses, heads on poles and so on. I wanted to draw something a little different from the standard-issue “pit of fire,” but I wasn’t trying to completely reinvent hell. Anyway, I hope it works for you.

With this done, we’re back to our regularly scheduled maps of Vatican City. I’ll be drawing the Roman Necropolis next, which is the second-to-last part of St. Peter’s Basilica. That’ll be three maps in a row with quite a lot of death in them. I hope you guys like death. Any death fans out there? Let’s hope so. Anyway, I’m gonna go look up some floor plans for that and get to it. See you soon!

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The Vatican Grottoes

For me, the Vatican Grottoes are one of the most interesting parts of Vatican City. From St. Peter’s Basilica, you can enter through the stairs in front of the central altar, as well as the stairs in the four large columns around it.

There are mainly two things in the grottoes: tombs and chapels. The tombs are mostly those of former popes, but you’ve also got a cardinal, a queen of Cyprus, and a few others down there. A lot of the chapels are dedicated to nations, specifically: Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Mexico. I’m not sure what it takes to get your country a chapel in the Vatican Grottoes, but it must be pretty difficult if Italy didn’t make the cut. I’m just saying, they’re pretty Catholic and they’re literally across the street.

Below the grottoes, there’s one more level: the Necropolis. This is a group of ancient Roman tombs that were rediscovered in the 1940s. This will be the next part of the Vatican I’ll be drawing.

Before that, however, I’ll be drawing the next Cartographic Congress winner, an infernal fortress that guards the banks of the River Styx, with watchtowers overlooking the river and lots of rusty, bloody bulwarks, cages, etc. So, that’s certainly something to draw in between maps of the Vatican, haha. Well, I’m gonna get started on that. Let me know what you think of the grottoes!

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Vatican Grottoes (Work-in-Progress)

The Vatican Grottoes are mostly finished, but I’ve still got a bit more coloring to do. I wanted to show it to you now because, unfortunately, I’ve got a family emergency and I’m going to be away for a week to deal with it. I should be able to get this finished shortly after I get back.

All right, I’ve got to pack some things, so I’ll leave it at that. Be back soon.

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Templemore Village

Here’s the finished village of Templemore, built on the ruins of a great, ancient temple. My story about the place is that the temple was dedicated to a long-forgotten goddess of luck. While the residents don’t worship her (or even know who she is), she bestows her blessing of good fortune upon them nonetheless. So if the players show up at the tavern and start gambling with the old fellas at the corner table, things are likely to go very poorly for them.

There are variations of that story that could be fun, too. If you change the goddess and the blessing, there are a lot of potentially interesting scenarios that could become the seed for an adventure. Like, what if it’s the goddess of time and she stops the residents from aging. Or what if it’s the goddess of death and everyone rises from the dead after they die. Or what if the goddess is angry that they’re here and curses them instead. There are a lot of ways you could go with it if you want to get creative.

Next up, I’ll be drawing the Vatican Grottoes underneath St. Peter’s Basilica. These are a series of tunnels, chapels and tombs, including the tomb of St. Peter himself. This won’t take nearly as long as the main floor of the Basilica itself, but, as you can see in this picture, they went pretty hard on both the floors and the statuary, so it’ll take a bit longer than it would have if the Vatican had hired a cheaper contractor. Also, I want to add that I love statues of animals by sculptors who’ve never seen that animal in real life and the lions in that picture are a great example.

Anyway, I think that’s about it. I hope you like the map. Let me know what you think!

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Village in a Ruined Temple (Work-in-Progress)

This is the village built in the ruins of an ancient megastructure that I mentioned earlier. I considered a few options for what the megastructure might be, but I ended up going with a huge temple to some ancient goddess. The thick walls are the original walls of the temple and the thinner walls are the houses built within the shell of the old ruin, probably using the rubble as building material. A garden in the atrium has been repurposed for crops and the reflecting pool of an old, broken fountain is used as a cistern.

Anyway, I’ll be coloring this for the next few days. Let me know what you think so far!

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St. Peter’s Basilica: Roof Level

Here’s another part of St. Peter’s Basilica finished. We’ve still got the grottoes and the Roman necropolis left to draw. And, of course, the rest of Vatican City. For reasons I explained here, I’ll be drawing in the backgrounds and surrounding buildings later. In the meantime, I hope the lack of surroundings doesn’t impede anyone’s ability to run adventures in the land of Catholicism.

By the way, I’m not planning to draw the roof levels of every building in the Vatican. I decided to draw this one because:

  1. There are numerous stairs to the roof.
  2. It’s a cool roof.
  3. The basilica is kind of the centerpiece of the Vatican.

But, like, I don’t think we need a map for the roof of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. If there’s another roof that’s worth drawing, I’ll draw it, but I’ll probably skip it for most places.

Next, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, which is a medieval village built in the ruins of an ancient megastructure. I haven’t decided on the megastructure that the village is built on just yet, but it could be an ancient temple, a huge amphitheater or something like that. If you’ve got any ideas, let me know.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think!

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St. Peter’s Basilica Roof (Work-in-Progress)

Here are the lines for the roof of the St. Peter’s Basilica map. It’s probably a little hard to parse what you’re looking at here, especially since this roof– very unusually– has a number of features that are recessed into the roof (as seen here, on the right). Plenty of roofs have things sticking out, but recesses are pretty rare, since they tend to fill up with water. I’m not sure how they avoided that here, but they seem to have worked something out.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work on coloring this tomorrow. At the moment, I am incredibly sick and I’m going to give my disease-ridden body a day to rest. All right, I’m going to go lie down.

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The Town of Chalymn

Chalymn is a small chunk of a city on the world’s surface that rose up into the sky to avoid a coming disaster. The large citadel in the center belongs to Magister Viskand, the powerful mage who ripped Chalymn loose from the earth. It’s not entirely clear if the magister saved everyone else on the rock intentionally, or if he just wanted to bring a little more land with him, but, look, they’re alive and that’s what matters.

If Chalymn demonstrates one thing, it’s that a little, floating rock in the sky can have anything that they have on the surface. The surface has lakes? Chalymn has a lake. The surface has a complex network of tunnels and cities deep underground? Well, Chalymn has one of those, too. It could be a very interesting place to visit if your party happens to get a ride on an airship at some point. Or a spelljammer.

Speaking of which, I’m going to make a spelljammer version of the map with a space background for patrons, which I should have done by tomorrow.

Well, this is the second, or maybe third city map I’ve drawn that I don’t think is garbage, but I’m curious to hear what you think. How’d I do? If you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions, let me know!

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Floating City (Work-in-Progress)

Here are the drawings for the floating island city. As you can see from the sideview, there’s an underground level as well, which will be in the finished map. It’ll be like a tiny, flying underdark. A sort of “overdark,” if you will.

Anyway, I’m gonna start coloring this thing. Let me know what you think so far!