Category: Crypts

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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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The Hall of the Bearded Men

This is the ancient ruin found on Tir Thelandira. The wood elves who inhabit the island don’t know who built it or why, only that it was here before they were. The “Bearded Men,” as the elves call them, are a great mystery. They certainly weren’t elves and they don’t look like humans, either. A few claim to have seen a Bearded Man who arrived on a ship centuries ago, but few believe them. Perhaps, one day, another Bearded Man will arrive, if any still exist.

This map is the ancient, mysterious ruin that patrons voted for. I hope you like the way I went with it. I thought it’d be funny to put this big, obviously dwarven ruin on an island full of elves who don’t know what a dwarf is and think of them as an almost mythical race.

There’s one more map to draw before Tir Thelandira is finished and I’ll be sending out a message to patrons asking for proposals for what it should be as soon as I post this.

The next map will be the guildhall of the Imperial Society of Extraordinary Adventurers, including their library, vault and exhibit hall. If that doesn’t sound like something you’ll need, don’t worry. It’ll basically be a large, well-appointed mansion and that’s something everyone’s got a use for. “Adventuring” usually involves a lot of burglary, in my experience.

Anyway, I hope you like the map! I used to draw dwarven stuff a lot and it felt good to be back in that saddle again.

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Secret Room: Psycho Murder Basement

This is the first of three secret rooms I’m drawing. It’s meant to be used with another map that you’d like to add a secret room to. For example, maybe you want to run an adventure in the glorious French castle of Chateau de Chenonceau. But your adventure requires a brutal axe-murder dungeon and, inconveniently, the Chateau de Chenonceau doesn’t have one of those. This map is meant to solve that problem, with two different versions so you can have the secret entrance either behind a wall or under a trapdoor in the floor.

Next, I’m going to draw another secret room map: a hidden prison. This is for situations where you need to hide some hostages or sacrifices or something. You know the adventures where the party has to go somewhere and rescue people? It’s for those.

It shouldn’t take long to draw. I actually got this one done in two days, but I decided to hold off on posting it since it’s probably the most grisly map I’ve ever drawn and Christmas felt like a slightly awkward time to put it out there. I mean, what do you even write in the post? “Have a great holidays everybody, here’s some dismembered corpses!” I don’t even know.

Anyway, hopefully you find the idea of the secret rooms useful! I’m not going to be spending a ton of time on them, but I want to draw a few and see what everybody thinks. If you’ve got any thoughts about these or how to make them more useful, by all means let me know!

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The Lost Catacombs of Auldbaern

The Lost Catacombs of Auldbaern are ancient, dwarven catacombs in the Black Loch. The winding, labyrinthine tunnels are lined with niches holding the bones of long-dead dwarves. I’m sure your party will be deeply interested in all those remains– for academic, archaeological reasons, of course.

But they’ll be particularly fascinated by the royal tomb deep within the catacombs, with its gold and silver sarcophagus and lavish funerary offerings. Oh yeah, they’re gonna archaeologize the hell out of that.

Nearly half the time I spent drawing this went into the royal tomb alone. I wanted it to be so much more ornate and splendid than the rest of the map that the party would be completely unprepared to find something like it. I think the appeal of exploring old catacombs is the possibility of finding something unexpected and amazing. And the royal tomb is the unexpected thing I put there for players to find. Hopefully, they’ll enjoy the scenery while they’re killing the king’s revenant and arguing over who gets his magic battleaxe.

Next up, I’ll be drawing the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress: a gothic manor house with a moat, in which a knight or lesser lord resides. It’ll be a little bit Ravenloft, a little bit Mordheim and it should make a good home for a bad person.

Well, I believe that’s about it. Let me know what you think of the map!

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El Ojo de la Madre – Aztec Version

Okay, here’s the alternate version of the underwater temple I promised. Could be useful if your party ever ends up in Chult, Maztica or any other place that’s basically Mexico with lizardmen.

I’ll be drawing a tower fortress next, in the style of Barad-Dûr from Lord of the Rings. I have to admit, that was a nice-looking evil tower. But if you engineer a fortress in such a way that it falls apart when someone destroys a piece of jewelry, that seems like a serious design flaw to me. Something to consider.

Anyway, I’m gonna finish this coffee and start sketching. 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.

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The Great Pyramid of Khufu, depicted before it was looted.

Here’s the non-annotated version and here’s another non-annotated version without the treasure.

I didn’t draw this because it’s the most famous pyramid in the world, I drew it because I genuinely think it’s fascinating. But exactly what is fascinating about it is hard to convey in a map alone, which is why I made the version above to explain it. There’s a mysterious tunnel that leads nowhere. There’s a set of three granite slabs that were dropped down to seal the burial chamber. There’s a narrow, vertical passage with a hidden entrance. And it runs through a cave.

I think this would be a great place for an adventure. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just have somebody tell the party it’s there and it’s full of treasure, then have them figure out how to get inside. Personally, I think it’d be fun to let the players think it’s just a fantasy map. Then, after the session is over, tell them they just looted the Great Pyramid. Yeah, in Giza, the big one. Yep, that’s what that was.

Well, I’m not drawing another pyramid next. Instead, I’m going to draw the regional map of the Black Loch. I expect this to change over time as I come up with new ideas and develop the lore of the place, so think of it as the Black Loch v1.0. It’ll have a bunch of locations marked on it, which should give you an idea of what it’s going to look like as it comes together. Any changes I end up making will probably add things rather than subtract them, so I’d say you can probably expect to see maps of whatever is there.

Anyway, I hope you like the map! This concludes our Egyptian tetrahedral mausoleum double feature.

There are DM notes for this map available to patrons.

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The Pyramid of Sobek

If you’re looking for a slightly more classic pyramid, here’s the alternate “cool but can you dial that back just a bit” version.

Sobek is the Egyptian god of the Nile and is depicted here a few times. Fun fact: Sobek was history’s first dragonborn. A lot of people thought Wizards of the Coast came up with them in 4th ed. D&D, but the truth is, the Egyptians came up with them around 2500BC. True story, look it up.

The bottom level of the pyramid was inspired by Tutankhamun’s tomb, the red stone sarcophagus being a good example of that. Some of the upper levels, on the other hand, get a little less historical and a little more this guy. That may not be quite what everybody’s looking for, but that’s why I made the alternate version.

I spent some time looking at the insides of actual pyramids while drawing this. Not because I was trying to make it historically accurate, but because I wanted it to have a similar sort of feel. One of the pyramids I looked at quite a bit was the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the pyramids of Giza. I briefly considered designing this map around that, but that wasn’t going to work. I do still want to draw it, though, and I’ve decided I’m going to do that next.

Let me explain why. It’s not a perfect place for an RPG map, but it has some things going for it:

  1. It feels authentic, because it is. I think that counts for a lot.
  2. I want to draw it as it was before it was looted. This lets you give your players the experience of being the first people to break into the Great Pyramid and I think that would be pretty awesome.
  3. Breaking in without boring a hole through the side (which is what happened) would involve this: smashing a stone seal over the entrance, heading into a tunnel that leads deep underground, finding the entrance to a narrow passage concealed behind a wall, then climbing 150′ (50m) up that nearly vertical passage, which runs through a small, natural cave. There’s more, but are you intrigued yet?

I don’t know if this sounds as interesting to anyone else as it does to me, but I really think this could be an amazing experience and I’ve got a powerful urge to draw the place. In any case, it shouldn’t take that long.

Well, I’m gonna get started. I hope I didn’t talk up the next pyramid so much that people lost interest in this one. In any case, let me know what you think!

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

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Brazenthrone – The Grand Temple

Brazenthrone‘s Grand Temple is a religious complex dedicated to all the gods of the dwarven pantheon. I use Forgotten Realms deities for Brazenthrone, so the big golden gentleman in the middle would be Moradin the All-Father, surrounded by the other 13 gods of the Morndinsamman. The four larger statues are Berronar Truesilver, goddess of hearth and home (and wife of Moradin); Clangeddin Silverbeard, god of battle; Sharindlar, goddess of love and healing; and Dumathoin, god of mining and gems.

I said I’d be doing one of the larger maps chosen in the Great Vote next and I’ve decided on the small, but densely-populated merchants’ trade port island. In the vote, it was in the large category, but I’d say it’ll end up being what I’d normally class as a “huge” map (actually, I’d say it’ll be pretty massive). Also, as I said before, I’m looking to tackle Brazenthrone’s Anvil Quarter and Noble Quarter soon and one of those will probably come after that.

Here’s a version of this map without all the numbers and words on it. There’s DM notes, higher-res versions with even less words on them and VTT versions available to patrons, should you be interested.

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The Assassins’ Monastery

If you like this map, but you’d prefer to hide the secret rooms from your players, here’s a version without them. That’s also the version for people who’d prefer this monastery to be occupied by honest, wholesome monks who actually spend their days thinking about god, growing herbs and killing as few people as possible. Also: boring. Just kidding, do your thing.

In case you missed the last post, this place was inspired by Rudkhan Castle in Iran, which was actually controlled by the historical assassins at one point. I think this place could be used for plenty of other things, though. Maybe they’re cultists. Or vampires. Or werewolves, or bandits, or… bandits who are also werewolves. You get the idea. Anyone who wants to hide in plain sight.

I said I was going to do a residential part of Brazenthrone next, but I changed my mind. I’m doing the Grand Temple instead. After that, I’m doing one of the bigger maps chosen in the Great Vote. Then, I’m not sure, but I can tell you this: I want to make a push to get Brazenthrone’s Anvil Quarter and Noble Quarter finished. That gets the core of the city done, along with entrances from the surface and the underdark, and puts the whole thing in a much more usable state. I think I can get those both finished within the next two months or so. All right, I’m going to get to work on that temple.

As always, there is patron stuff for patrons.