Category: Castles and Forts

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Eel’s Maw Stronghold

The kuo-toa get no respect. I don’t mean from lorebooks, I mean from DMs. When you’re writing an underdark campaign and you need a powerful empire, who do you think of? The drow, sure. The illithids, of course. Maybe the duergar. But the kuo-toa? No, those are trash enemies for random encounters. I mean, sure, sometimes they play a significant role in a story, but they hardly ever take center stage.

Well, the kuo-toa of the Black Loch aspire to a little more than jumping out of the water and getting decapitated by your half-orc barbarian. They’ve got plans to take over the loch and subjugate the other races. Including your precious drow.

The plan is crabs. Siege crabs. Crabs the size of your house with carapaces a foot thick. Walls don’t save you from that. Soldiers don’t save you from that. Running for your life? That might do it.

The kuo-toa have been breeding siege crabs in the caverns below the Eel’s Maw Stronghold for decades and, as soon as the next brood reaches maturity, they’ll be ready to kick things off. The kuo-toa intend to move up in the world, or at least wreak enough havoc to take everyone else down a peg or two.

Next up, I’ll be drawing another map from the Black Loch. This will be a battlemap for the drow city of Vlyn’darastyl. It’ll be a few streets with some houses and shops. Nothing too fancy, just something that’ll make a good backdrop for encounters in the city. I don’t expect it to take too long.

By the way, I thought I’d give away the DM notes for this map, so you can download those here. Also, here are some siege crab tokens and a trebuchet token I made.

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

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The Citadel of Ash

A lot of people will look at this map and see a place inhabited by one of two things:

  1. Bad guys
  2. Dwarves

Why? It’s the lava, of course. Lava in FRPGs is practically code for dwarves and scumbags. It’s almost like decent, respectable humans can’t recognize the defensive utility of molten rock.

Hopefully, this isn’t how it works in real life, because I recognize the defensive utility of molten rock. And I’m a little too tall to be a dwarf.

Anyway, the first vote of the Black Loch Conclave started yesterday and, if you’re a patron, you should go cast a vote. There are some amazing ideas people have proposed for this and I really want to see what everyone decides on. Honestly, there are a few proposals that have inspired me so much that I’m thinking of incorporating some of their ideas into other maps if they don’t win. I am so glad I did this.

Next up, I’ll be drawing the Kuo-Toa Stronghold from the Black Loch. Like the Mother’s Eye, it’s going to be partially underwater. I don’t think I’ve seen a map of a semi-submerged castle before, so this should be fairly unique, or at least not something there are a million of out there. And, once it’s done, I should have time to knock out another one or two Black Loch maps this month.

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

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Coxton Tower: A Towerhouse in Moray, Scotland

Man, it’s been a while since I’ve made a map with only six rooms and I’d forgotten how fast I could draw something this small, haha.

Anyway, Coxton Tower was built in Moray, Scotland in the 1500s and this map is fairly accurate, with a couple of exceptions. First, it shows the tower on a clear, sunny day, which is a grossly inaccurate depiction of Scottish weather. And second, the size is off, which is intentional. An accurate map of Coxton Tower would have an interior about 3 1/2 tiles across. That’s a little tight for RPG purposes, so I doubled it.

Also, if you look at a photo of Coxton Tower, it’ll be a bit different from the map above. That’s because a staircase was built up to the second-floor entrance in the mid-1800s. I wasn’t sure whether to draw it with the staircase or the ladder, so I just drew it both ways. Here’s the version with the stairs.

There’s an interesting feature of Coxton Tower that I wanted to point out. It’s called a “yett” and, if you’ve never heard of one before, it may be because they’re mostly unique to Scotland. A yett is a metal gate, similar to a portcullis, but mounted on hinges so that it swings open like a regular door. It’s just behind the main entrance on the second level. You can see a photo of Coxton’s yett here.

Well, I hope you like the map! And yes, that is a deep-fried Mars bar on the kitchen table. I choose to believe that’s historically accurate.

Next, I’ll be drawing another map from the Black Loch. This will be the drow noble estate of House Cull’thaine, the ruling house of the city of Vlyn’darastyl.

After that, I’ll be drawing a new spelljammer map. I know a lot of DMs put their players in my Dragonfly spelljammer last year and are getting ready to upgrade the party to a big boy ship, so I’ll be drawing you an elven Man-o-War to fill that role. It’ll be a bigger, better-armed ship for a mid-level party. And, for those of you who are planning to keep the campaign going into the higher levels, I’ll draw you the late-game war machine your players dream about later this year.

Okay, back to work!

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The Town of Five Arches

Here’s the non-annotated version.

Five Arches might seem like a place you’d only find in the realms of fantasy, but you’d actually find something fairly similar in the realms of Italy– namely, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. And there’s another bridge like this in Germany called the Krämerbrücke, as well as one in England called Pulteney Bridge. This map was heavily inspired by all three.

I think Five Arches would make a pretty interesting location for a “please sir, take back our town from the green people” type of adventure. It’s not the most original premise, but I think a unique setting can make that kind of adventure much more interesting. And those kinds of classic scenarios are the bread and butter of a lot of FRPGs. Most of us can’t reinvent the wheel every week.

Next up, I’ll be drawing Scotland’s 28th most famous castle, Coxton Tower. It’s not huge or epic, but it’s an interesting place with some distinctive character and I think it would suit a lot of encounters nicely. “Useful but unique” is one of the main things I aim for with my maps and I think Coxton Tower fits that description very well.

By the way, I’ve decided that the next historical map will be from India. I don’t know specifically what I’ll be drawing, but I decided on India for two reasons:

  1. There are some incredibly cool places in India.
  2. It’s India’s turn. I mean, it’s been India’s turn. They built this, this, that, this place, one of these and this thing and they still can’t get a fantasy map? At this point, I think they’re due.

Anyway, I’ve been looking over my options, but if you have any suggestions, by all means let me know in the comments (if you’re not a patron, you can leave a comment on my website).

Well, Five Arches was a bigger project than I thought, but it turned out exactly how I’d imagined it and I hope you like it too. Let me know what you think!

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Fort Bourtange – Roof Level and Dutch Version

Here’s the roof level, which is the last part of Fort Bourtange. I also made something else: an annotated version in Dutch, which I’m giving out to everyone.

I’m aware that everyone in the Netherlands under the age of 105 speaks perfect English along with 50 other languages, so I know you probably don’t need this, but I still thought it’d be nice to do. Plus, the English version comes from a Dutch tour map I translated, so I figured I could just not translate it and make a Dutch version that way. There are a couple things I had to use Google for, so I can’t promise it’s perfect, but let me know if anything is wrong or just super weird and I’ll fix it.

Anyway, the next map will be a demonologist’s lair, Remember A Dark Place? I’m gonna try to make someplace freakier than that. It’s not Hell, but it’s the home of… well, a big fan of Hell. A Hell stan, if you will. Hopefully I can come up with something uniquely terrible.

I’ve also got the next historical map picked out, which I’ll be doing sometime in the next few 2-3 months. This time, I’ll be drawing a place in Britain– or, more specifically, Scotland. There are some incredible places in Scotland, like Stirling Castle, the Wallace Monument, and about half the buildings in Edinburgh. Instead of drawing any of that stuff, I’m going to draw Coxton Tower. It’s a towerhouse in Moray and I think it’d make a great map. It’s not huge, complicated or flashy, but it’s interesting. It’s got some unique character, both inside and outside, and it’s the kind of place everyone can find a use for.

I don’t know exactly when I’ll start on it, but I definitely want to put some work in on the Black Loch first. That’s Scottish, too. Well, a little. I mean, it’s not the Black Lake. Anyway, I’m gonna go sketch out some freaky demon stuff. If you’ve got any thoughts on any of this, let me know!

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Fort Bourtange

In the 1500s, the Netherlands were ruled by the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs were an astoundingly inbred German noble family with faces that were about 85% chin. For some reason, they were the rulers of the Spanish Empire.

The people of the the Low Countries didn’t want to be ruled by German people, Spanish people or inbred people, let alone a combination of the three. They wanted self-determination, a republic and the right to worship the protestant version of God. So, in the mid-1500s, the Dutch Revolt began.

The Spanish Empire ruled Spain, part of Italy, Austria, and– you know the countries that speak Spanish today? All of those. It was a daunting enemy, but the Low Countries had one thing going for them: stupefying amounts of money. And they planned to leverage that to win.

One of the things the Dutch spent that money on was Fort Bourtange. Since the Spanish were allied with the Holy Roman Empire, they’d need a way to protect the Dutch land from the Deutschland. One of the main roads to Germany passed through a marsh, so the leader of the revolt, Willem van Oranje, ordered the construction of a fort across it.

Building a star fort with forty buildings, a crownwork, four ravelins and two moats is an expensive operation. But not only did they build it, they built it on a sandbar in the middle of a marsh.

Fort Bourtange was such an obvious deathtrap that not many people were inclined to order their armies to assault it. But, about 100 years after its construction, Bernhard von Galen, the Prince-Bishop of Münster, came along to give it the old college try. During a parley before the attack, he told the fort’s commander, Captain Protts, he had 200,000 guilders for him if he’d surrender Bourtange. Protts famously responded by telling von Galen he had 200,000 bullets for him and his men. Von Galen decided to send his soldiers to go receive them, which resulted in a crushing defeat for his army. He then went on to besiege the nearby city of Groningen, which he also failed at.

In later years, the fort began to transition into a village, where the soldiers of the garrison lived with their families. Then, in the 1800s, the fort was turned into a village for local farmers.

Well, this map was a ton of work, but I hope you like it! I’m going to make a roof-level version of the fort next, which should only take a couple days, then I’ll be moving on to the next map. I plan to make a big push on getting some Black Loch maps done over the next few months as well.

Anyway, let me know what you think of Fort Bourtange!

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

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The Flying Rook

Here’s the annotated version and here’s the unfurnished version.

The Flying Rook is the sort of place wizards build to show off. Anyone with the power to keep this architectural Frankenstein standing is no joke, but– just in case anyone wasn’t fully convinced– they made it fly as well.

I didn’t have any particular purpose in mind when I added the windmill, but, the more I think about it, the more I’m wondering– and hear me out here– what if it was a propeller? Like, what if this whole thing was kind of an airship? That’s not for everybody’s game, of course, but it’s an idea you could roll around in your head if you want to do something a little different.

So, now that we’ve got that 13-story building taken care of, I’ll be moving on to something considerably bigger. Naturally.

As I mentioned before, I’ll be drawing Fort Bourtange, a magnificent 16th century grapeshot dispensary star fort in the Netherlands. It’s a big place, but I believe it’s all one level, so it shouldn’t take an unreasonable amount of time. I think I might get it done by the end of the month, but I don’t want to make any promises.

I’ll be making an unfurnished version of the map as well so you can use it as a village instead of a fort if you prefer. And it actually was a village for a few centuries, so that’s not a stretch.

Well, I’ve been champing at the bit to get started on this map for a couple months now, so I think I’m gonna go do that. Let me know what you think of the Rook!

There are DM notes for this map available to patrons.

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Gamblers’ Key – A Pirate Fortress and Casino

Here’s the unfurnished version of this map.

Gambler’s Key is a pirate lord’s fortress with a casino in the front and a loading bay for pirates to drop off their plundered cargo in the rear. It’s sort of the opposite of a mullet: a party in the front, business in the back. Well, I guess it depends which side you consider the front, but… whatever, let’s not overthink it.

Ryan, who proposed this map to the Cartographic Congress, asked me to make a token of this as well. Basically, the token is for inserting the island onto a sea map in which the party’s ship is 1-2 tiles in size. Anyway, you’re all welcome to it as well and you can download it here.

The other week, I talked about drawing a map of Fort Bourtange, a star fort in the Netherlands. I want to get that started fairly soon, so here’s the plan: I want to get a Black Loch map drawn this month, so I’m going to do that next. I’ll be drawing the “secluded manse,” which is the home of a powerful wizard living on the island of Driders’ Rock.

After that, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner: a floating, thirteen-level tower dedicated to magical experiments and research with a dock for airships. And then I’ll be drawing Fort Bourtange. I’d like to get started on it around the beginning of next month, but we’ll see how long the other two maps take. Sound good? I hope so.

Anyway, let me know what you think of Gamblers’ Key!

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

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The Château de Chenonceau

God the French make some cool stuff. “Let’s just build it over the river.” Sure, why not, here’s money, let’s do it. Amazing.

While I was researching this place, I learned a bit about the castle’s most famous resident, Catherine de Medici. She was the queen of France in the mid-1500s, who later ruled the country as Queen Regent after her husband died. She was also a woman who liked to party and, by all accounts, she threw a GREAT one. There’s actually a wikipedia page specifically about her parties. Parties that happened 500 years ago. Let me go ahead and quote that for you:

Catherine arranged entertainments that lasted for several days, including fancy-dress jousting and chivalrous events in allegorical settings. On Mardi Gras, the day after the banquet in the meadow, knights dressed as Greeks and Trojans fought over scantily clad damsels trapped by a giant and a dwarf in a tower on an enchanted island. The fighting climaxed with the tower losing its magical properties and bursting into flames.

Sure, you know, typical Saturday for me too. She also put on the first fireworks display in France, as well as– at least once– a party where the food was served by topless women. Keep in mind that this was the 1500s. At a time when they would light you on fire if they thought you were a witch, this lady was running strip shows. Wild.

Anyway, I know a lot of people were looking forward to this map, so I hope it’s everything you were hoping for! I’m planning to do some more historical maps before too long, but next I’m going to return to the Black Loch. I’ll be drawing the myconid colony next, then I’ll be drawing the next Cartographic Congress map: the underwater ruins of the Benthic Academy, an ancient college of magic. After that, I’ll probably be getting back to the Black Loch again, since I want to make some more progress on that. In any case, I’ll be drawing more of the loch over the next couple months.

Well, I’m gonna start drawing some mushrooms. Let me know what you think of the Chateau!

An annotated version of this map and DM notes are available to patrons.

 

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Château de Chenonceau (Work-in-Progress)

These are the lower two levels of the Château de Chenonceau. The two floors above these are also finished and the whole thing is ready to be colored.

When I draw real places, I do a lot of research and I think it pays off. One of the most interesting things about this place wasn’t in any of the floor plans I found, old or new. I actually discovered it from an instagram video I stumbled across. Apparently, there are stairs leading from the basement kitchens down into the water below the castle. In addition to just being really cool, it gives the place a semi-secret entrance to enter or leave by, which is always a nice option to give a party, should they make the effort to look for it.

I’d normally expect this to take about three days to color and finish up, but I’m going to be going camping for a couple days, so it’ll be a little longer than that. I wanted to let you all know in case anyone needs to send me any messages in that time. It’s completely fine if you do, it just might take a few days before I can get back to you.

Anyway, I’ll be leaving tomorrow, but I’m going to try to get as much work done on this as I can before then!