Category: Caves

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Caergyd Point

Caergyd Point was inspired, in part, by Conwy Castle in Wales. “Caergyd” is my attempt at a made-up Welsh castle name. All I really know about Welsh is that there are several castles with names that start with “Caer” and that a lot of Welsh words have a Y in them. This is the culmination of those two pieces of knowledge. Hopefully it’s passable.

This map was largely designed to be an ideal castle for a party to buy or otherwise acquire. To that end, it’s got a lot of things a party would want in a castle: a smithy for repairing equipment, a laboratory/study for the wizard, a chapel for the cleric, a kennel for whatever filthy creature follows the ranger around, a secret room, a tavern, a trading post to unload loot, and several empty rooms for the party to do what they want with.

There’s one more part of this map to finish: the sea cave underneath. I decided to make it separate in order to keep the map from being too huge. It’s about half-finished already and I should have it up tomorrow.

There are only three things in the cave: a dungeon, storage space, and a parking spot for a ship. Still, for parties that do a lot of sailing, it’ll be pretty useful. Or if you want to use this place as a pirate fort. Or if you want to have the party storm the castle to kill the bad guy, but leave a way for them to escape. I guess it opens up a few options.

Anyway, I’m gonna wrap that last bit up. Let me know what you think!

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Cave of the Sun

The Cave of the Sun is another map for Tir Thelandira. It’s an oracle and holy site where the elves gather to seek guidance from their goddess. The cave takes its name from a hole in the roof of the cavern, through which light beams down onto the pool within.

I’ll draw more of Tir Thelandira next month, but right now there’s something I have to draw. It’s Italian– Venetian, to be specific– and it’s glorious. It’s not a real place, but it could have been a real place. Unfortunately, somebody screwed up. Let me explain.

In Venice, there’s a famous landmark called the Rialto Bridge. Before it was built, proposals by several architects were considered and the one they went with was this. And, I mean, it’s fine. I don’t hate it. The problem is that a guy named Andrea Palladio proposed this. And they passed on that.

Was it because the guy who made the winning proposal was named Antonio Da Ponte and his last name is literally the Italian word for bridge? Was there a bribe involved? I don’t know. Maybe no one knows. But I do know this: I am going to make a map of Andrea Palladio’s objectively superior bridge. And I’m going to do it right now.

I want to thank Masque for telling me about Andrea Palladio’s design for the Rialto. I might never have found out about it otherwise. Just to let everyone know, I’m always open to suggestions and I’ve drawn a few of them. So don’t hold back on me. There’s no such thing as too many ideas.

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The Black Loch: Caves and Tunnels

I’m fully prepared to admit that these are some of the most uninteresting maps I’ve ever made, but that’s basically the point. There are plenty of interesting maps in the Black Loch, but sometimes that’s not what you need. Sometimes you just need a cave or a tunnel without anything special in it, because it’s random encounter time and the party will be fighting *rolls dice* …giant bats.

That’s what these are for. They’re not specific locations marked on the regional map, they’re for the places in between.

Of course, the Black Loch is a sea, so there will be plenty happening along the coast as well. For those encounters, there’s the Black Loch naval battlemap. While I originally made it as a backdrop for ship battles, I think it’s just as good for encounters on land as well. And it’s plain enough to be fairly reusable.

There’s only one thing to do before I get started on the last map in the Black Loch: draw tokens. I’m going to make tokens for all the various creatures mentioned in the lore, as well as the notable characters. I already made tokens for some, so I just need to knock out the rest.

Anyway, I won’t ask what you think of the maps because, let’s be honest, they might be the most boring maps I’ve ever drawn. But I hope they’re useful.

Well, I’m gonna stop typing and start drawing. I’ll be back with some tokens in a few days!

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The Sanctum of Psor’il

Here’s an alternate version without the worm.

For a number of reasons, I don’t draw monsters in maps. It might look like that’s what I did here, but… it is and isn’t a monster. Allow me to explain. Psor’il, the aboleth who resides here, is trying to bring a creature from a bizarre, hostile dimension into the Black Loch.

To allow it to cross over, the aboleth’s minions are making a substance called “schismic flux,” which weakens the barrier between dimensions. They’ve weakened it quite a bit, but not enough for the creature to pass through. So, at the moment, the creature is stuck in between planes. And it’s visible in this world, but it’s not tangible yet. In other words, the monster is scenery. Weird, scary scenery, but not a monster. Yet.

I’m very curious what your opinions on it are. I was trying to make this place as strange as possible and that was one of the things I came up with. I also made a version without the worm in case anyone objects.

Next, I’ll be drawing the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress: a sewer system with tunnels that cut through ancient, dwarven ruins, leading deep into the earth. After that, I’ll be back to the Black Loch to draw one of the last 3 locations.

Anyway, I’d love to know what you think about the map. And I know it’s kind of a strange one, so if you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask!

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Scarhide Yard

Scarhide Yard is a shipyard run by deep gnome engineers and grimlock laborers in the Black Loch. This strange partnership began when a group of gnomes approached a tribe of starving grimlock hunters with 300 pounds of meat. The gnomes needed workers to build ships and the grimlocks needed food,  so they came to an arrangement. The gnomes got their laborers and the grimlocks got as much meat as they could eat, forever.

Sixty years later, the gnomes are still overseeing operations, but the shorter-lived grimlocks have passed the torch to the next generation. This is good, but, potentially, also bad. The good part is that this generation of grimlocks wasn’t raised to hunt. They were raised as carpenters and shipwrights and they’re a lot better at it than their parents were.

The bad part is that they eat a lot. And, unlike their parents, they have never known hunger. They’ve never been without the endless supply of meat that the gnomes send for every week or two. And if that meat stops arriving? That’s a scary thought for the gnomes. Best not to let that happen.

If you’re looking for a ship for your party to purchase (or steal) from here, you might have a look at the Grinning Widow. It’s a ship designed for the underdark and it’s exactly the kind of thing Scarhide Yard would build.

This map was partly inspired by Leo’s proposal to the Black Loch Conclave. I was always planning to have a grimlock settlement here, but Leo made me realize that I’d forgotten to put a shipyard in the loch, so I sort of hybridized the two ideas into Scarhide Yard. Anyway, I hope you all like how it turned out!

Next, I’ll be drawing another one of the five remaining locations in the Black Loch. This time, it’ll be the Blind Colossus, a huge, eyeless statue standing in the deep reaches of the loch. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing with the place, but it’ll definitely have some mysterious rooms and passages inside it, built by an ancient civilization for unclear reasons. Ideally, I’d like it to be unsettling, but highly intriguing. The kind of place that your players feel like they shouldn’t go into, but feel compelled to explore anyway. We’ll see how it goes.

All right, I’m gonna start sketching. Let me know what you think!

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The Village of Spyr-Anaisz

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

Spyr-Anaisz is a small drow village in the Black Loch. The residents here aren’t big city drow, they’re rural drow. Drow hillbillies, if you will.

I don’t picture them chewing tobacco or wearing cowboy hats, but I imagine there’s a different sort of culture here. A bit less backstabbing and cutting throats to get ahead. Not much infighting among the nobility, since there’s only one noble house. And I think the city drow would probably look down on them, as inferior drow from an inferior place.

With an economy based around fishing and mushroom farming, Spyr-Anaisz isn’t a particularly wealthy community, but they are a fairly safe one. Built in and around a cluster of giant stalactites, the village hangs 80′ (25m) above the ground, making the list of dangerous creatures the people of Spyr-Anaisz have to worry about quite a bit shorter than it would be if they lived down below with everyone else. It isn’t the most convenient living arrangement, but sometimes convenience has to come second to security. Especially in the Underdark.

Next up, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner. This will be a multi-level village built in and around the branches and trunk of a giant tree, with bridges running between the buildings. I haven’t drawn a map like this in ages and I’m really glad to get another chance.

It’s not the first map of a tree village anyone’s ever made, but I think it’ll be a pretty unique take on the idea. I’ve got a lot of ideas about it swimming around in my head right now and I really want to start sketching things out and see how they look on paper. I think I’m gonna get started on that now.

Well, I hope you like Spyr-Anaisz. Let me know what you think!

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The Silver Dragon Inn

A lot of inns have fanciful names, like “The Dancing Fox.” But you walk in, look around… no dancing fox. Not even a non-dancing fox. Deep down, you knew there wouldn’t be a fox, but you had a little hope and it was still a bit disappointing.

The Silver Dragon Inn doesn’t have that problem. This place delivers on the promise of its name, with an actual silver dragon lairing just underneath it. The original idea behind the map was that the innkeeper is secretly the dragon in human form, but there are a lot of different things you could do with it.

I’d recommend doing whatever you think your players won’t expect. Here are a few ideas:

  • The innkeeper admits to being the dragon.
  • The innkeeper claims to be the dragon, but isn’t.
  • The innkeeper works for the dragon.
  • The innkeeper controls the dragon somehow.
  • There is no dragon, the innkeeper is making it all up.
  • The dragon, the inn and everything else in your campaign was all a dream and the PCs are a bunch of sleeping farmhands.

Next up is the spelljammer I promised a few months ago. I held a vote on which one to draw and the Whaleship was the winner. Designed as a passenger liner, it’s got plenty of space for crew and cargo and I think it’ll make a good reward for high-level parties that have paid their dues.

By the way, if you hadn’t heard, Spelljammer is coming back. Wizards of the Coast announced it on April Fool’s Day and everyone thought it was a joke, but apparently they were serious. After making several settings that everyone has already forgotten about, it looks like WotC is finally ready to throw in the towel and give the people what they want. Maybe if we’re lucky, Planescape will be next.

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

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The Roost

This is the map chosen by patrons in the Black Loch Conclave: a drow outpost in the roof of the Black Loch. This map is complicated to say the least, so let me break it down for everyone.

The Black Loch is a small sea in the underdark. There’s a large hole in the roof of the loch’s cavern, leading up to a sea on the surface. The hole, known as the Great Breach, is about 100 meters wide, with water constantly pouring down the sides.

The falling water does not fill the breach completely, however. There is enough space for an airship pilot– a talented airship pilot– to maneuver a vessel down the center. Not many places in the underdark are accessible by airship, but the Black Loch, very unusually, is.

So, this map is a surveillance outpost located at the bottom edge of the Great Breach. It’s used by the drow to track the comings and goings of airships. The drow also have a hangar here, in which they keep their own airship, known as the Duskfall.

TL;DR: It’s a spy outpost at the bottom of a giant waterfall in the underdark, where the drow keep their airship. I hope that doesn’t sound as insane to you as it does to me.

Anyway, you may have noticed that this map has a map of an airship inside it. I’m going to take a day or two to make a separate map of the airship next. You may need it if you bring your players here, because, let’s be honest: they’re going to steal it. Seriously, no matter who your players are or what kind of game you’re running, your party has a one hundred percent chance of stealing that airship, or at least trying to. I honestly can’t imagine a party that wouldn’t. Still, if that’s a problem for you, it can always be a broken airship.

Well, that’s about it. Out of twenty ideas for a new location in the Black Loch, this is the one you chose. I hope you all like what I did with it. Anyway, let me know what you think!

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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 Smoldering Abyss

Here’s an alternate version if you’d prefer the place dried out.

The Smoldering Abyss is a part of the Black Loch almost no one even knows exists. It’s a deep, underwater trench at the bottom of a larger underwater trench at the bottom of the loch. And, in a place where no one even wants to think about what might be under the surface of the sea, places like this tend to go unnoticed.

There are three things of note here. The first is an ancient, kuo-toan royal catacomb. Built thousands of years ago, before the kuo-toa became… let’s say “psychologically non-conformist,” it was a place where they buried their kings.

The second thing is a monster called “the Whisperer.” It’s a huge, black beast with rubbery tentacles and a wide, fanged mouth like an anglerfish. While not as big as a kraken, it’s more than big enough to scare the hell out of the sailors of the Black Loch. Fortunately for the sailors, the Whisperer hasn’t been seen in almost 250 years and many believe it to be dead. Unfortunately, they’re wrong and it’s not. It’s hibernating here and it’s about to wake up.

Finally, there are the smoking rocks. Those are a type of hydrothermal vent known as a black smoker. They’re like tiny, underwater volcanoes that pump boiling hot water filled with minerals into the sea and are usually found around 3km below the surface. If you’re planning to use the map, keep in mind that those vents would actually make the water fairly warm here. And they’d burn anyone who got too close pretty badly.

With another Black Loch map down, I’m going to spend the rest of the day drawing some tokens, which I should have for you sometime tomorrow. After that, I want to check another Black Loch map off the list. I’m not sure which one, but I’ll let you know in the next post. Then, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, a mountainous island settlement.

Anyway, that’s the plan for now. Let me know what you think of the abyss!

There are DM notes for this map available to patrons.