The Stygian City: 13, 14 & 15 (Work-in-Progress)

This is the art for the kuo-toa settlement in the Stygian City. A small, underground river flows past the 13th level, which is how the fish people found the abandoned settlement and moved in. On the 15th level, a broken bridge across the pit separates the kuo-toa from the myconid colony below.

By the way, I’ve revised the plans a bit for the rest of the project. Here’s what I’ve got in mind now:

1-2: The village
3: Villagers’ mines
4: A maze of tunnels and collapsed chambers overrun by mold
5: Caverns inhabited by giant bats
6: Catacombs
7: Goblin village
8: Giant spiders, huge webs strung across the pit
9: Ancient temple
10: Industrial workshops
11: Hag’s thralls
12: Night Hag’s palace
13: Kuo-toa settlement and river
14: Main kuo-toa settlement
15: Bridge across pit between kuo-toa and myconids
16: Myconid colony around a crumbling fountain
17: Ancient oracle and library with a long-abandoned scholars’ camp containing notes about the pit’s history
18: Undead/Demons. Magic Stuff?
19: Ancient prison
20: Ceremonial jumping point with temple
21: The bottom: Ghanya (with several variants of the bottom level, including a sealed vault/prison, underdark entrance, trash and debris and aboleth lair).

1-16 are pretty much locked in, but if you’ve got any thoughts about what might fit in anywhere below that, let me know. If I like it and I can work it in, I just might.

Dragonriders’ Hall

I usually talk about the map in these posts, but this one is what it says on the tin. It’s a stable/livery/hatchery for dragons. Let’s talk about Council of Wyrms instead.

Council of Wyrms was a 2nd Edition D&D boxed set with rules for making dragon player characters. And it was absolutely terrible. Did I buy it? Yes I did. In my defense, I was 15 and a lot of stuff seems like a better idea than it is when you’re 15.

I tried it for one session before realizing what the problem was with letting the players be dragons. At level one, they can fly. And they have innate spellcasting abilities. And a lot of hit points. And they can blow away just about anything with their breath weapons. And, if being really big and scary is a problem for some reason, they can shapeshift into a human. Keep in mind, this isn’t one dragon. This is the whole party. So, imagine trying to write an encounter that’s challenging for four dragons. Here’s what that looks like:

“Roll for initiative. What are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna barf hot death on all the enemies.”

“Same.”

“Same.”

“Same.”

“The bad guys all take nine billion damage. You win.”

Did anyone else ever run a Council of Wyrms game? If so, let me know how it went for you. I struggle to imagine what a successful campaign would look like, but who knows? It’s probably happened at least once.

Next up, I’ll be getting back to the Stygian City. This thing is about halfway done and I feel like it should be finished by the end of the year, or at least close. There’s going to be an underground river in this area and a kuo-toa settlement in the ruins. I’m not sure what the lore around the kuo-toa will be, but if anyone has any suggestions, let me know. So far, all I can tell you is that they’ll be rivals with the myconids living further down.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Please do not buy Council of Wyrms. It is very, very bad.

The Stygian City 10, 11 & 12: The Hag’s Domain

Here’s the non-annotated version of the map.

The next three levels of the Stygian City are finally finished and, as you can see, there’s a lot going on. I’m giving out the annotated version to everyone and, for patrons, there are in-depth explanations of everything in the DM notes. I wrote 4 pages of notes on these three floors alone, including some encounters and suggestions for monsters to populate the place with. If nothing else, read the part about the flesh golems in the 12th level. If I need to see a psychiatrist for coming up with something like that, let me know.

The next few levels of the map will be a kuo-toa settlement with an underground river running through it. After that, there’ll be a myconid colony, with whom the kuo-toa are in a state of… not friends. I’d say this project is about halfway done at this point, maybe a little more. Feels like pretty good progress to me.

Next, I’ll be drawing a draconic hatchery, where dragons and wyverns are raised, trained and ridden. Riding dragons is often regarded as some highly 1990s D&D, but let’s be honest: it still goes hard. And I feel like it’s something that everyone thinks all experienced players have done at some point, but hardly anyone has. So, you know, something to think about.

Anyway, if you’ve got any thoughts or questions about the map or anything else, by all means let me know.