Category: Cartographic Congress

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The Goblin Queen’s War Wagon

It’s a little awkward when the party travels a long distance and nothing happens along the way. I mean, if they’re going on a 300 mile journey, I don’t want to just tell them, “Okay, you’re there. Now what?” But I also don’t want to involve them in some complicated adventure that’s going to take 5 sessions, because that’s a little more of a detour than I’m looking for.

Traveling encounters are almost their own category of adventure. Not so long that you have to spend more than a session or two on it, but enough to avoid giving the players the impression that they just teleported. And a little something more than, “2d6 giant rats cross your path, roll for initiative.”

I like this map as a traveling encounter. A bunch of goblins in a Winnebago isn’t something you see everyday and it’d make for a fun fight. But it’s low commitment as well, so they can get back to reassembling the Sacred Crystals of the Ancient Ones or whatever they’re up to. Simple, but not boring.

Someone should write a whole book full of traveling encounters. That’d be really useful. I know some of the people reading this write and publish adventures, so feel free to steal that idea.

Anyway, I’m going to make an alternate version of this map for patrons, which shouldn’t take more than a day. It’ll be a “de-goblinized” version for DMs who want to use this map for humans or… well, anyone else that isn’t green. It’ll have elephants up front and be moderately less filthy. All right, I’ll be back with that soon. In the meantime, let me know what you think!

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The Forgotten Place

The Forgotten Place is an ancient ruin unearthed from the sands. It’s the perfect place for your party to do some archaeology, or– perhaps– some “archaeology.” In case you’re not aware of the difference between those two words, let me explain: the one with the quotes means grave-robbing.

I’d probably go with the second option in a D&D game. Brushing the dust off of pot shards to learn about the customs of ancient peoples may be morally and academically superior to scoring fat sacks of loot from a dead guy, but, well, moral superiority doesn’t buy you full plate and a castle.

I also want to mention that some of you may have more use for half of this map than you do for the whole thing. Maybe you like the desert ruins, but you want them to lead down into a different dungeon. Or maybe you like the underground part, but you want to put it under an old cathedral. Either way, go for it. Mix and match. There are no rules in RPGs*.

Anyway, the next map will be the Goblin Queen’s Carriage. This is going to be a giant carriage/war wagon that a tribe of goblins use as a mobile raiding camp. If you picture it looking like something out of Warhammer Fantasy, then we are very much on the same page. I think it’ll be a map that offers a lot of fun possibilities. After that, I’ll be getting started on the giant pit megadungeon that I’ve been talking about.

Well, that should do it for now. If anyone’s got any ideas on what might be pulling the giant goblin carriage, let me know. I feel like horses would be boring, but a giant seems like a bit much. My best idea right now is yaks, so if you can top that, I’ll consider it.

*There are multiple books full of rules in almost all RPGs.

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The Defiled Monastery

The premise of this map is simple: for many years. this monastery was occupied by the peace-loving followers of the god of wisdom and happiness. Then, some non-peace-loving followers of the god of smoking meth and shaking babies arrived. And, after the liberal application of a technique known as “violence,” the former occupants were driven out. Then, they smashed the statues, burned the books and started sacrificing nearby villagers.

There’s a fairly simple adventure to be run here, which starts with a monk approaching the party and saying, “Help.” I’m fairly sure I don’t need to elaborate on where it goes from there. It’s not a complicated adventure, but they don’t all have to be some ultra-sophisticated Game of Thrones type of thing. Sometimes The Witcher is more your speed. “Please kill dudes, I have money.” “Dudes are dead. Gib money.” Had a busy week? Drop a dozen cultists and a demon into this place and let ‘er rip.

So, let’s talk about the giant hole we discussed a few weeks ago. That megaproject is officially happening and I wanted to share some details. A lot of people had ideas on how to use the location and I want to make sure you can do what you want with it. Since it’s a giant pit, the most important thing is what’s at the bottom. People have proposed an imprisoned entity, a planar portal, an artifact, an aboleth lair, a pile of trash and debris, and more. My version of the bottom will be something different, but I’m going to draw alternate versions with at least those options as well. I think I’ll be able to get started on this in about a month.

Anyway, I think that’s it for now. If you’ve got any thoughts, by all means let me know!

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The Castel Sant’Angelo – Rome, Italy

When I first started working on this map, I didn’t know much about the Castel Sant’Angelo. I knew that it was in Rome and once belonged to the pope, but I wasn’t aware that it was originally built as the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. When I read that, I had to pause for a second and process what I had just learned. So…wait, the pope used to live in a gay man’s tomb? Huh. That was my fun fact for the day and now it’s yours.

That also helps to explain why this place is so unusual. The long, circular ramp at the entrance and the long stairway up the center aren’t things you’d see in many castles, but they were a part of the original mausoleum and are still there after 1900 years of renovations.

There’s an alternate version of this map I want to make for patrons and it should only take a day. I think there are a lot of things this map could be used for if it was just a bit less of a castle, so I’m going to remove the outer walls and leave the keep in the center. At that point, it could be a temple, a monastery, a small village, an unusual wizard’s tower, etc. I think you’ll see what I mean.

Well, I’m gonna get to work on that and I should have it for you tomorrow. In the meantime, let me know what you think of the Castel Sant’Angelo. And if you’ve got any questions about the place, feel free to ask. It is genuinely a strange castle, it’s not just you. I promise.

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Scaligero Castle – Sirmione, Italy

So, there are eight buildings called Scaligero Castle in Italy. They were built by the Scaliger family, who ruled over Verona and were not very creative at naming castles. I mean, being fond of your own last name is fine, but maybe mix it up a little.

This is the Scaligero Castle in Sirmione, which has a very unusual feature: a fortified port. The port once held a fleet which the Scaligers used to control Lake Garda and its waterways. It’s mostly a fortification rather than a noble residence, so it’s fairly utilitarian in design, with most of the castle being defensive structures. The only two buildings inside are a barracks and a tower.

If you’re looking for a way to use this map in your game, allow me to suggest pirates. That’s what I’d use it for and something tells me I’m not alone there.

Next, I’ll be drawing a map I’ve been looking forward to making for a while now: the Château de Brézé. This is a French castle that looks like it was made for RPGs. There isn’t one photo that can explain this place, so let me walk you through it:

  • This is the Château from above. Note the dry moat surrounding it.
  • At the bottom of the dry moat, the walls of the moat are lined with tunnels and caverns. Here’s a photo of these. Here’s another.
  • Some of these lead to very long tunnels. A lot of them are interconnected. And a lot of them predate the castle, having been dug as an underground settlement in the 1100s.
  • So, to recap: people dug tunnels, creating an underground settlement. 400 years later, someone built a castle over that settlement. Then, they dug more tunnels. This place is unbelievably fascinating.

So, that’s the place I’m going to draw for you. I’ve been wanting to draw the Château de Brézé for years and it is time. Wish me luck.

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The Digging Machines

This map is an underground mining complex run by mechanical constructs. It has equipment for stamping and smelting ore, as well as a factory for making more constructs. I imagine this place being built by deep gnomes or duergar, since they are:

A) Good at engineering, and

B) Crazy enough to think building self-replicating machines is a good idea.

For patrons, I’ve got a version without the machines in case you just want a regular mine. And there’s the unfurnished version as well for anyone who just wants some caves.

There’s some good stuff coming up, so let’s talk about it. Do you like castles? I hope the answer is yes, because castles are happening. Bullet list mode, engage.

  • Next up is Scaligero Castle, a very unique Italian fortress with its own walled harbor.
  • After that, I’ll be drawing the Chateau de Breze, a French castle with a complex network of tunnels running underneath it. I visited this place a while back and took hundreds of photos of these tunnels so I could make a map of them one day. That day is soon.
  • A few months back, the Castel Sant’Angelo came in second to the Chateau de Breze in a vote for the next big historical map. But Shawn proposed the Castel Sant’Angelo to the Cartographic Congress last month and won, so I’ll be drawing that too. In case you’re unfamiliar with the place, it was originally built as the tomb of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, but was later turned into a fortress by the pope. It’s another very unique place.

So, that’s our future: a France sandwich with two slices of Italy. How’s that sound?

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The Monastery of Varlaam in Meteora, Greece

Whew, this thing was a ton of work, but it’s finally done! This is a place I’ve wanted to draw for a long time and I was really glad to see someone propose it to the Cartographic Congress and win.

There’s something I didn’t realize about this place until I started working on it, though. I knew there was a mountaintop monastery in Meteora, Greece, but when I started looking for floor plans of the place, it turned out there are six. And there used to be twenty-four.

Imagine something for a moment. It’s the middle ages and you’re Greek. But the big city lifestyle was never for you, so you and a couple other fellas go out to the middle of nowhere, climb to the top of a giant rock formation and start building a monastery. Here, you can devote your life to God, get away from the rest of the world and live in quiet peace. And then some other people show up and start covering every rock in sight with twenty-three other monasteries. I mean, the first few are probably fine, but once they start hitting double digits, you’re probably ready to throw your hands up and move back to Athens.

So, here’s what I’ve got planned: I’m going to make a small map next. It’ll be something to do while I’m waiting for the last Tir Thelandira map to be decided on. If you’re a patron, the runoff vote is now open. After that, I’m going to finish Tir Thelandira and get started on that giant city-ship map I was talking about in this post. That’ll probably take a month or so to finish. It’s absolutely a megaproject and it’ll be bigger than any ship map I’ve ever seen by an order of magnitude or more.

Anyway. that’s what’s in the works. Hope it sounds good! Let me know what you think!

Wait, one last thing: if you’re a patron and you use Foundry, I just started a new Foundry module. Because Patrons’ Module 2 got so big that Foundry couldn’t export it without crashing. Not a joke. Anyway, you can find the link to install Patrons’ Module 3 on this page.

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Ethermont House

Ethermont House is the guildhall of the Imperial Society of Extraordinary Adventurers, who have done pretty well for themselves over the years. As it turns out, breaking into the homes of evil wizards, killing them and selling all their stuff is a fairly profitable line of work.

When the job is done and you’ve finally cleaned all the little chunks of Saruman off your battleaxe, Ethermont is a great place to go and relax with some friends. Then, after a night in the beer hall and the billard room, you can go up to the guildmaster’s office, pick up another contract and head out to smoke Voldemort.

So, I started my patreon 5 years ago this month and it feels like I should do something special. So I’m going to hold a vote for all patrons on which historical map I should draw. The options will be:

  1. Château de Brézé – A French castle with an elaborate network of caves and tunnels dug around and underneath it.

  2. Stack Rock Fort – A British sea fort off the coast of Wales.

  3. Church of St. George, Lalibela – A very unique church carved into the bedrock in Ethiopia.

  4. Castel Sant’Angelo – Hadrian’s Tomb, which later became the pope’s castle.

These are places that have been on my to-do list for a while now and I think they will all make amazing maps. One of the monasteries of Meteora, Greece would have been on the list as well, but it just won last month’s Cartographic Congress vote, so I’m drawing it next. Between that, the giant ship and whatever wins the vote, there’ll be some cool stuff coming up.

I want to say thank you to everyone who’s supported my art over the last five years. Being able to wake up and draw maps for you every day is the best way I can imagine to make a living and I appreciate it more than you will ever know. Thank you all.

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Driftport 40K: In the grim darkness of the open sea, there is only fog.

The other version of Driftport is a pretty nice place. This is the version for DMs who imagine it as a place where the residents might drink turpentine, engage in cannibalism and sacrifice outsiders to an ancient abomination lurking deep beneath the waves. Or it can just be the night version, I suppose. Your call.

Drawing this gave me an idea for a map of another large, seafaring settlement and I wanted to get your opinions. Imagine a ship, like a galleon or a ship of the line, but much bigger. Bigger than any sailing ship ever built. 400′ (130m) long and 140′ (45m) across the beam. Eight masts, thirty sails. But this isn’t just a ship, it’s a town with hundreds of residents. Across the ship’s 5-6 full decks, there are shops, craftsmen, a marketplace, a tavern, an inn, a temple, gardens, a library, a mill and a lot more. There are cabins for the middle class, luxury apartments for the rich and hammocks for the poor. This is a ship you could get lost in. It could be a community of traders, explorers, pirates or wanderers.

I don’t know what the biggest ship map ever drawn is, but I’m fairly sure this would be larger by an order of magnitude. It would probably take around a month to draw and color. Anyway, is that something you’d be interested in?

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The Floating Town of Driftport

I’m going to say something wildly controversial. I probably shouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway and I hope it doesn’t offend anyone. I liked Waterworld. I haven’t seen it in years, but I watched it a few times as a teenager and I thought it was a pretty good movie. Feels good to get that off my chest.

Driftport was sort of inspired by the town in that movie. It’s the kind of town people might build if there was no land. A collection of salvaged ships and scrap wood Frankensteined together into a floating community.

There are a few things that might need an explanation here. The first is the building at the bottom right. This is a trywork. It’s a stove used to harvest oil from blubber. Since wood, coal and peat are hard to come by in the sea, I’d imagine whale oil would be the common fuel used for cooking and heating.

The other two unusual buildings are a ropemaker and a distillery. Rope and rum seem fairly mission critical for a place like this. You need rope for fishing nets, boats and to hold this place together. And you need rum because… well, in the Age of Sail, every ship brought loads of it on every voyage. They considered it a necessity and I’m going to assume they knew what they were doing.

I’m going to make an alternate version of the map next. It’ll be a grimmer, darker sort of place. I’m just going to adjust the colors, add some fog, stuff like that. Anyway, I’ll have it done by tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll still have patrons at that point after what I said about Waterworld.