Month: August 2021

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Tokens and an Updated Black Loch Map

 

Here’s the updated Black Loch map.

All this stuff is free for everyone. You can download it here.

So, these are the tokens I drew. I’d say you can figure out what most of these critters are, although you may have some questions about the half-orc with a mustache and a combover holding a cup of coffee. That’s Stan– short for Stanislaus, not Stanley– and he’s my character in a game I’m playing in.

You know your dad’s friend from work? That’s Stan. He’s a strange sort of RPG character, but the campaign he’s in involves flying around the solar system in a spelljammer searching for dragonballs, so he’s less weird than you’d think. And one of the other PCs is a railway maintenance robot, so there’s a case to be made that Stan isn’t even the weirdest one in the party.

Anyway, I know nobody else needs Stan’s token, but I thought I’d throw him in there just in case. I’d rather you have Stan and not need him than need Stan and not have him.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m gonna get started on the next map.

Oh, one last thing– if you’re new here, I made around 300 more tokens you can also have. Feel free to share them if you know anyone who’d want them.

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The Halls of the Awakened – Unfurnished

Here’s the unfurnished version I promised. Instead of talking about it, I’d like to share something completely useless with you. I was looking through the 5th Ed. Monster Manual today and I noticed that there were a TON of entries starting with D. The D’s start on page 46 and end on 122. Anyway, I did what any crazy person would do and I got out a calculator. There are 76 pages of D’s out of a total of 304 pages of monsters, meaning that 25% of the monsters in the Monster Manual start with the letter D. And what’s the game called? That’s right… D&D.

*head explodes*

A few months back, I said I was going to draw some more tokens and I intend to start on that. The reason I hadn’t before is that I was a little behind on things, mostly as a result of the Cobalt Flotilla taking a bit longer than I’d anticipated. Anyway, I’m now caught up and I’ll get started on those today. Hopefully, I’ll be posting them tomorrow, then another batch every month or so.

After that, I’ll be drawing the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress: “a pirate lord’s fortress with a casino and underground lair hewn out of granite.” That proposal won the vote by the biggest margin I’ve seen in a long time, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s a thing a lot of people would like a map of. It’ll be like the Mont Acceaux Casino, except you don’t get kicked out for throwing up all over the floor.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work. Let me know what you think of the map!

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The Halls of the Awakened

 

The Halls of the Awakened is a cultists’ lair hidden deep in the Black Loch. If you’re interested in my version of the lore, I’ve written a giant wall of text about it in the DM notes here. I’ll have an unfurnished version of the map for you tomorrow.

A bad guy lair with an entrance inside a cavern isn’t anything new, but I intentionally made the caverns here pretty big. As the party makes their way through, it gives them time to get a little paranoid. And to start asking questions, like, “Is this the right place?” And, “What if that person lied to us?” And, “What if this is a trap?” It creates some tension and makes them feel like they’re someplace dangerous, which is the mood I like to create in a dungeon.

If you read the lore I wrote about this place in the last post, it has a lot to do with psionics. I expect most people will probably use this map for something else, but, in case you’re interested in inserting the Architects of the Awakened into your game, I wrote some ideas for psionic powers into the DM notes.

Of course, you can use the rules for the unofficial Mystic class if you want, but that’s not what I’m looking for in a psionic NPC. What am I looking for? Darth Vader. No, seriously. If I’m introducing a powerful force the players are unfamiliar with, I want it to scare the hell out of them. I want them to get telekinetically flung across the room like a rag doll. I want to have stone walls flying at them and ceilings coming down on their heads. I want stuff to happen that isn’t in the Players’ Handbook.

If you throw a fireball at the party, they know what that does. “It’s fine, no big deal, we’ve got the HP to handle it.” But when you tell someone they can no longer breathe? They don’t know what that does. There are rules, of course, but they don’t know what they are because I made them up. The unknown can be pretty scary, especially for experienced players who aren’t used to surprises.

Anyway, I’ll get the unfurnished version of this up tomorrow, along with the updated Black Loch map that has the location marked on it. I’ll also talk about what’s next. Until then!

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The Lore of The Architects of the Awakening

The Architects of the Awakening are a duergar cult who were the villains of my previous campaign. They’re also the subject of the next Black Loch map and they have a fairly complex story. My group broke up before I got the chance to tell it all, so I’m going to write it out here in case any of you find them interesting enough to use in your own game.

For a TL;DR, check the end of the last post.

First, we need to talk a bit about duergar history. The duergar were a clan of dwarves who were enslaved by mind flayers for several thousand years.  They eventually rose up against their masters and won their freedom, but their hatred for the illithids never faded.

Some time later, a duergar queen named Duerra launched a war on an illithid city, capturing the residents and performing experiments on them to discover the secrets of their mental powers. She is said to have found the source of their psionic essence and to have infused it into her own people. This tale is more legend than history, but, for the purposes of this story, it is the truth.

It is indisputably true that the duergar possess more of a talent for psionics than most races, but, despite having the psionic essence of the illithids within them, their powers are nowhere near those of their former masters. The question of why this might be is one that the duergar have never really asked. But, about 100 years ago, a priestess named Astali, a follower of Deep Duerra– the aforementioned queen who later became a goddess– started asking it. And she was determined to find an answer.

Continue reading “The Lore of The Architects of the Awakening”

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The Tigers’ Nest Monastery

Some monasteries make wine, while other monasteries make bread. This monastery makes bareknuckle kung-fu killing machines. Or, as they’re known in D&D, monks.

As a DM, having a monk in the party can be a little difficult. Not because there’s anything wrong with the class, but because coming up with useful loot for a monk is tough. They’re like warriors who don’t want magic weapons or armor, but they’re not spellcasters, so they don’t want wizard and cleric stuff either. Bracers of Defense are good and so is a Ring of the Ram, but after that, what do they even want?

One solution that’s worked for me is giving monks abilities instead of items. Have someone teach them the “Iron Palm” and give them +1 on all their unarmed attacks. It’s basically a magic weapon for a character that doesn’t use weapons.

This kind of thing can be good for druids who spend all their time shapeshifted, too, since they’re also pretty hard to find presents for. With druids, I’d present it as the blessing of a nature spirit or something, but the idea is the same. You can do this with other classes as well, but the rest tend to be a lot easier to please.

Next up, I’ll be drawing a map for the Black Loch. This is a new addition that isn’t marked on the map: The Architects of the Awakening. They’re a duergar cult that were the villains of my last campaign and they’ve got a fairly complicated story. The very short version is this:

The duergar race have the psionic essence of the mind flayers within them, but their psionic abilities are nowhere near those of the illithids. A duergar priestess believes she can awaken that essence in her people, granting them the same power the illithids have. She has found a way to do it, but she and her followers must act in secret, as her methods would be considered a heinous abomination by every living thing on earth, the duergar included.

I’ll make a separate post about it in a day or two that explains their story in more detail if you’re interested. Until then, I hope you like the Tigers’ Nest. Let me know what you think!

There’s an annotated version of this map and DM notes available to patrons.

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The Torrents

I’m giving out all the patron content for this map to everyone. You can download it from my Google Drive here. I’ve also put it in the public Foundry module (manifest URL).

The Torrents are one of the ways to reach the Black Loch from the surface, starting as an above-ground river and turning into a series of cascading waterfalls going deeper and deeper underground.

As an entrance to the underdark, I like this for a few reasons. First, it’s fast. There’s no three-day journey down the stairs. Your party can make it into the bowels of the earth in around an hour. Second, it’s super dangerous. There’s no better way to emphasize the perils of the underdark than nearly killing half the party on the way there. Also, it’s one-way, which is nice. No DM wants to write a whole campaign and then have the PCs decide the underdark “isn’t for them.”

There’s also an interesting possibility with the Torrents that I’ve been thinking about: you can have the party enter the underdark accidentally. I wrote a few ideas about how you might go about doing that in the DM notes, if you’re interested. Personally, if I were going to send a party in like that, I’d wait until a big part of the campaign had just concluded. Then, just as they’re heading down the river to meet the king and collect their heaping mountain of gold bars…

“A loud crash wakes you up in your hammocks. The boat appears to be falling.”

I’m not saying you should do that, I’m just… I’m not saying you should not do it. It would be really funny, though.

Next up, I’ll be drawing a map chosen by the Cartographic Congress: a mountain monastery clinging to a cliffside with a waterfall running past. This will be based partly on Paro Taktsang, a Buddhist monastery in Bhutan. There’s something I love about places built in really dangerous locations.

After that, I’ll probably do another map from the Black Loch. I’ve been thinking about adding a location to the loch map based on something from my previous campaign. It’s a duergar cult called the Architects of the Awakening and they’re up to some pretty twisted stuff. The campaign never finished, but I think it’d be pretty cool to put the bad guys in the Black Loch and see if anyone else wants to do something with them.

Anyway, that’s about it. Let me know what you think of the Torrents!

 

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The Benthic Academy: An Undersea Ruin

Here’s another version of the map with air pockets in some of the rooms.

When I draw a ruin, I like to trash the place. I don’t want it to just be a building with holes in the walls, I want it to look like a hotel room the Rolling Stones spent the night in in 1976.

In this particular map, however, some parts are less trashed than others. That’s because the Benthic Academy is a college of magic– or, at least, it was until whatever disaster swept it under the waves. Unlike most places, the academy has magical wards holding some of it together, particularly the library (on the right), the faculty rooms (bottom center), and the dean’s residence (upper left).

The wards were meant to prevent cracked walls, broken windows and leaks, but they’ve done such a great job that, even after years underwater, a lot of the academy is still in one piece. Depending on which version of the map you use, they may have even caused a few of the upper-level rooms to retain air pockets.

If you might be using this map, I’ve got a few suggestions. First, I’d recommend considering your party’s underwater capabilities when planning encounters. Keep in mind that most melee weapons roll with disadvantage underwater. And, even if your players stop to re-equip themselves at Tridents-R-Us, you may need to consider how dependent they are on any magic weapons they won’t be using. If that Hammer of Hit Point Obliteration is doing a lot of work, you may want to dial the enemies back a little. Also, remember that Lightning Bolt and Fireball aren’t really on the menu anymore.

Second, I’d start the party out on the roof level. Since they’re swimming down into this, that’s the first thing they’ll see.

And finally, if the spellcasting PCs can’t cast Water Breathing enough times to  get the whole party down there, just put a few potions of water breathing into the loot of the adventure before this one. Don’t worry, handing out suspiciously convenient water breathing potions before an underwater quest is an ancient DM tradition.

Next up, I’ll be drawing another map from the Black Loch: the surface entrance. This isn’t a stairway, it’s a series of waterfalls, and it’s probably the quickest way into the Underdark from the surface. Is it the safest way? Probably not, but that’s your party’s problem. Also, since this entrance presumably leads down from a river on the surface, it allows for the possibility of traveling to the Underdark accidentally. And the best part: it’s one-way.

Anyway, I’m gonna start sketching that out. Let me know what you think of the Benthic Academy!

There’s an annotated version of this map and DM notes available to patrons.