Category: Caves

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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.

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Altar of the Black Lamb

This map was the demonologist’s tower chosen by the Cartographic Congress. One of the stipulations was that it would have a portal to hell and I decided to go a little… non-traditional with that. “Traditional,” in this case, would be your standard-issue Door of Fire. And the problem I have with that is that it’s boring. It’s been done and it’s not scary. It doesn’t give players the sense of fear they should feel when they’re about to travel to a place where literally everybody wants to torture you to death.

So I came up with something else: a black void in the chest cavity of a rotting, dismembered storm giant. It’s the most awful thing I could think of and, to me, it’s the kind of welcome mat Hell needs. And, since “Create a Permanent Gate to Hell” isn’t a spell in the Player’s Handbook, who’s to say it doesn’t require a dead giant as a component?

I think it works pretty well in the other direction, too. If the plan is for something to come out of the portal to attack the party, it’s going to be a lot scarier after pulling itself up out of that thing. Imagine a pit fiend coming out of there. Imagine narrating that. Holy crap.

Next up, I’ll be drawing a map from the Black Loch. I want to get some serious work done on the Loch over the next few months and I’m going to start with the Abyssal Caverns, a series of caves and tunnels in the sides of a deep, underwater crevasse. I don’t have too much of a plan yet, but there will probably be a kraken’s lair.

Also, I wanted to say one last thing to the old school DMs out there. If you played D&D in the 80s or 90s, imagine using this map and your parents walked in and saw it. They’d be like, “I knew it! I knew you were worshipping satan!” Haha, oh man. I’m glad that’s not a thing anymore.

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

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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 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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Hyphis – A Myconid Colony

For those newer DMs who may be unfamiliar with the race: myconids. TL;DR: Mushroom people. No, not like Toad from Mario Brothers. But also, yes, kind of like that.

There are two things I want to specifically point out about this map. The first is the middle floor. The brown room. That’s compost, which is what myconids consume for sustenance. What are they composting? Well, they’re by the water, so it’s probably mostly fish. Which means that room is covered, wall-to-wall, with decomposing fish. Imagine the smell of a fish market. Now imagine that the fish are completely covering the floor. Now imagine that all those fish have been putrefying for a month. YUP.

In game terms, what this means is: saving throws vs. immediate projectile vomiting with the force of a shotgun blast. That’s always a good time to be the DM. If you’re on a VTT, see if you can find a sound effect for this. And be sure to check the tanky PCs’ character drawings, because if Paladin Fancypants is sporting a closed-face helmet, he is now both sick AND drowning. If that’s not a memorable D&D moment just waiting to happen, I don’t know what is.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the giant mushroom running through all 3 levels of the map. My lore for it (and, of course, feel free to ignore it) is that it’s an 800-year-old sentient mushroom that the myconids made friends with. It can see and hear anything that happens in the vicinity of its spores, which, at this point, can be found almost everywhere in the Black Loch. So, it’s kind of an oracle. It’s called the Red Warden and nobody, itself included, knows what it is or where it came from.

In any case, it could be a source of information, should your party need it. A good place to come to get some answers if you don’t mind walking through rotting seafood and puking like a drunken 14-year-old. It’s fine, the top floor will be a nice bit of eyebleach. They’ll love it.

Anyway, next up is the Benthic Academy, the underwater ruins of an ancient college of magic. After that, I’ll probably draw another map from the Black Loch.

Well, I hope you like Hyphis! Let me know what you think!

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

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Ollin’s Borehole – Unfurnished

I don’t have too much to say about the unfurnished version of Ollin’s Borehole, but I have a ton to say about the next map, so let’s talk about that instead.

The Cobalt Flotilla is a home for a nomadic, seafaring community. It consists of a number of vessels, large and small. Now, the thing that makes the flotilla unique is when they come together. They tether their ships to each other, lay out planks and rope bridges to connect them and form a sort of island where they can all get together to trade, make decisions as a group, and so on.

To make it more interesting, I decided that I wanted all the ships to be really different. There will be some European-style ships, of course, but a lot of European ships tend to share a similar basic shape and layout and I wanted to draw some REALLY different ships in there. So I did some research and I found a few. Where did I find them, you ask? Asia. Allow me to introduce some highly interesting ships you may not be familiar with:

  • Atakebune – A Japanese warship, largely used as boarding vessels. (Wikipedia)
  • Turtle Ship – A Korean warship with a completely enclosed upper deck, covered with spikes to deter boarders.
  • Karakoa – A double-outrigger raiding ship from the Philippines.
  • Drua – A double-hulled ship for Fijian chieftains.

I’m also going to include some riverboats, rafts, longboats and smaller vessels to give it even more variety.

Also, I’ve decided to draw the ships separately. I’ll make a map of the assembled flotilla tethered together, of course, but drawing them separately means I can make maps of each individual ship as well so you can use them independently. And I’ll make tokens of the ones that are too small to warrant their own map.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what was happening. I’m gonna go draw some boats!

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Ollin’s Borehole – An Abandoned Deep Gnome Mining Outpost

Ollin’s Borehole is a sapphire mine in the Black Loch. Well, it was a sapphire mine until some duergar bandits found the place, smashed their way in and killed everyone. Since then, it’s just been another hole in the ground. But, as holes in the ground go, I think this one is pretty interesting.

I wrote… let’s call it “the framework of an adventure” for this map. I’m hesitant to call it an adventure because there are a few things missing from it, most notably the monsters. I left them out because I wanted to make it flexible for parties of any level. So, if your players are level 2, this place is full of kobolds. If they’re level 10, it’s full of umber hulks. You get the idea. I also don’t specify the amount of loot to be found, largely for the same reason. Basically, I left out the stuff that I’d typically change when running an adventure that was made for parties of a different level than mine is.

Anyway, it’s called “The Lost Sapphires” and it’s in the DM notes. I’m curious what you all think of it, so I’m giving it away to everyone. It’s nothing complicated, just a single-session dungeon run, but it’s an easy way to get your party into Ollin’s Borehole. I can’t promise you’ll love it, but I can promise it will explain why there’s a big pile of beds at the bottom of the pit.

And I can promise that you will have a 15-minute argument about how much those beds should mitigate falling damage if your party’s rules lawyer lands on them. I apologize for that in advance.

I’ve got an unfurnished version of this map on the way, which I’ll have for you tomorrow. After that, I’ll be drawing the Cobalt Flotilla,  a floating community made up of a bunch of ships lashed together, forming a big, wooden island. And then I’ll be drawing a historical map, the Château de Chenonceau. It’s one of those places that’s straight out of a fantasy map, except people actually built the thing in real life. As inspiring as I found it, it seems like the least I could do is draw a map of the place so it can have a few more battles.

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

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The Lair of Kaliphex

In case anyone is having a hard time understanding this complex labyrinth of a map, I made an annotated version to break it down for you. Hopefully that clears everything up.

There’s an unfurnished version, too, in case you need a cave without a giant, golden head and huge piles of cash. I suspect your players will prefer the one with the money, but it’s up to you.

So, the Lair of Kaliphex is a part of the Black Loch and is home to the resident dragon. Patrons can read about her in the DM notes, but here are the important parts:

  1. Kaliphex is a red dragon.
  2. She’s around 11,000 years old. Even for a dragon, that’s ridiculously old.
  3. She’s not evil. She’s not good, either, but she’s killed and destroyed so much that it just doesn’t do anything for her anymore.
  4. She’s lived on a number of different worlds. The last one may have been the Old World, where the tabletop wargame Warhammer was set. And she may— possibly— own Ghal Maraz.

For those of you unfamiliar with Warhammer, Ghal Maraz is the specific warhammer from which the game gets its name. It was made by dwarves, wielded by a god and seemed like an appropriate thing for an 11,000-year-old dragon to have.

In case you’re wondering, I do play Warhammer. My army is mixed Destruction and it’s pretty weird. The general is an ogre on a pink stonehorn. I’ve also got some orc cavalry whose armor is painted with elaborate heraldry like Brettonian knights. I call them the “High Orc Noble Cavalry.” And then there’s Pamela the Devourer, a colossal squig wearing way too much makeup and crashing through a wall like a demented Kool-Aid man. I want to be clear that no part of that last sentence was a joke or an exaggeration. I paint some weird stuff.

I also play Warhammer 40K, for which I have a Tyranid army. I mainly play Tyranids because I like the models, but it’s also nice to be on the team that’s winning. I haven’t actually played in quite a while, but I’m looking forward to meeting up with a friend for a game as soon as the Warhammer store re-opens. He’s probably reading this and, yes, I mean you. I haven’t forgotten.

Next, I’m going to be drawing a spelljammer. I drew a mind flayer dreadnought a few months ago, but this is going to be a more reasonable-sized vessel. Something for the party to cruise around in. Spelljammer is the one setting where people are still using maps from 1995 and I think it’d be good to get a proper map out there for DMs running their games offworld. I’m not sure exactly what kind of ship design I’ll be doing, but it’s not going to be the kind that just looks like a boat.

Well, I’m gonna go look at some spelljammers. If you’ve got any suggestions, let me know!