Category: Huge Maps

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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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The Cobalt Flotilla: Oscar Mike

Here’s the flotilla on the move. They’re keeping a pretty tight formation, but this is a pretty big map as it is and, if I spread the ships out much more, it would have ended up with a grid size of OMGxWTF.

Some of you might end up using the flotilla and you may want to run a naval battle. I say “may,” but, I mean, let’s be real: it’ll happen. Anyway, I’ve got you covered: here’s the Cobalt Flotilla Showdown Map. Good guys on the top, bad guys on the bottom. Unless the flotilla are the bad guys, in which case… look, I’ll let you figure it out.

Anyway, the last thing to do is make individual maps of the ships. That shouldn’t take me long, so I’d say it’ll be done in a day or two.

One last thing: you might be wondering why it’s called the Cobalt Flotilla. This map was chosen by the Cartographic Congress. Jon, who proposed it, explained to me that he was planning to populate it with kobolds, who come from German folklore, and that the word “cobalt” derives from “kobolds.” Thus, the “Cobalt Flotilla.”

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know kobolds were a thing outside of D&D. Now that I do, I can promise you one thing: from here on, all kobolds in my game will have German accents. I wouldn’t want to be historically inaccurate.

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The Cobalt Flotilla

Whew, okay! So, this is the thing I’ve been drawing over the last few weeks. When I started this, “an island made of ships” seemed like a simple enough idea. But, as it turns out, you need a lot of ships to make an island and ships kind of take a while to draw, so it turned into a bit of an accidental megaproject. Still, I don’t know about you, but I think it was worth the effort.

I suspect a lot of people will have questions about where the sleeping quarters are, so let me talk about that. Historically, most crew aboard ships usually slept in hammocks. Space is limited on a ship and beds are big. Hammocks, on the other hand, are small and can be stowed overhead during the day, allowing the room to be used for other things.

This many ships would require a ton of crew and a ton of hammocks. But hammocks aren’t interesting and I didn’t want to fill the map with them, so I mostly depicted the rooms as they would look during the day, when the hammocks are stowed in the rafters.

Since I’ve drawn all these ships, I figure I might as well use them for more than just this one map, so I’m going to spend the next few days making individual maps of each of the larger ships. I’m also going to make a map of the flotilla on the move. This shouldn’t take long, since everything’s drawn and colored and I just need to move stuff around. For patrons. I’ll be making annotated versions of the individual ships as well.

When I went into this, I didn’t think I’d be drawing something you could base an entire campaign around, but it’s starting to look like I did. There are a lot of things you could do with this, really. Let me know if you’ve got any thoughts about that.

Well, I’m gonna get to work on wrapping this stuff up! I should have more for you tomorrow, if not later today.

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The Deep Spire: All Levels

Here are the non-annotated version and the unfurnished version. Also, here are the DM notes in case you missed the last post.

Sorry, this took a bit longer than I expected, mostly due to the Photoshop-crashingly large size of the image file. As soon as the stores open back up, I’m buying a new computer. I bought my current one when my previous machine died and it’s still kicking, but it’s time for an upgrade. I haven’t bought anything other than food in almost a year, so as soon as the stores open back up, I’m going to the local indie computer place with the name that probably sounded super hi-tech in 1989 and I’m gonna tell them I need a machine that will literally melt a hole through my desk the second the video card starts running. I’m “supporting local businesses,” or at least that’s my excuse.

Anyway, there are a couple more things I still need to make for this, including some multi-floor maps. You can use this one with all the floors, of course, but I’m going to make some maps with three levels each as well. I think I can get all that posted later today.

Well, I hope you like the Deep Spire! It was a month’s work, but I think it’s a pretty good start to the Black Loch. Let me know what you think!

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The Deep Spire: 6th Level and the Citadel

Here are the annotated version and the unfurnished version. And here are the  DM notes.

The last part of the Deep Spire is done and so are the DM notes, which… well, they started off as “notes” but, by the end, they were somewhere between a “lengthy screed” and a “borderline manifesto.” Anyway, they go pretty deep into the history of the spire and the people who live there.

For those disinclined to read them, the TL;DR is this: a clan of orog raiders called the Tideborne settled the place, a drow noble house rescued the orogs from disaster and moved in, then they opened the place up to settlers and traders to make money.

If you’re not familiar with orogs, they’re The Other Underdark Race. I like them for when I want an NPC who isn’t a duergar, drow or deep gnome, but I also don’t want them to be some weird crap like a cloaker or whatever. Orogs are basically orcs, except better. They’re Orcs 2.0. They’re bigger, as smart as humans and have sophisticated, well-organized societies.

Of course, they’re not any less into the raiding scene than orcs are, but, to be fair, that’s a very practical trade in a society where everyone is the size of Andre the Giant.

Anyway, the DM notes will give you plenty to read, so I’ll leave the post at that. There’s a few more things to make for the spire, including some tokens I mentioned previously and an assembled map with all of the spire in it. I’m going to make an annotated version of that as well, which will have a little more flavor to it, now that I’ve got more of the lore figured out. It shouldn’t take more than two days, so I’ll be back with that soon. Hopefully a few people will have made it through the DM notes by then, haha.

All right, back to work!

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The Deep Spire: 5th Level

Here’s the annotated version and the unfurnished version.

This part of the Deep Spire looks a little different from the rest. I’ll talk about why in the DM notes, which will be coming with the next map, but I’ll explain it a bit here.

So, this part of the spire is occupied entirely by a drow noble house: House Vaerixas. They were once the ruling house of the city of Vlyn’darastyl, but they now live here in exile.

As with most drow cities, the dominant deity of Vlyn’darastyl was Lolth. But, unusually, the deity revered by their ruling family was not. For ages, House Vaerixas worshipped Eilistraee, the drow goddess of freedom and beauty, instead. While the other nobles may have preferred a ruling house that was more in line with the others, they had grown accustomed to it and, for their part, House Vaerixas made no attempt to impose their goddess or her rules on the rest.

Then the Matron Mother died and her daughter Ysri took her place. While the old matron was devoted to her goddess, Ysri Vaerixas was a zealot. Under her rule, the will of Eilistraee would never be denied or compromised. After abolishing slavery– an institution abhorrent to Eilistraee– the other houses rose up against Ysri, forcing her to flee with the surviving members of House Vaerixas.

They came to the Deep Spire, occupied at the time by a gang of raiders in need of protection from a coming assault. Ysri made their leader an offer: she would establish a home in the spire and an arrangement of co-rulership would be created between her house and the bandits. In exchange, the renowned and feared Darksong Knights of House Vaerixas– paladins of Eilistraee– would stand in their defense. The bandit leader reluctantly agreed and their agreement has stood ever since.

Many things have changed in the spire since then, but Ysri’s burning need for retribution has not. She resides in the spire for now, but she doesn’t plan to forever.

So, the story of the spire is coming together. You are, of course, free to tell your own, but I feel like a map this big needs to have some lore in order to make it easier to use for those DMs who don’t have the time to worldbuild it all from scratch.

The next map will be the last part of the spire and will include the floor above this, as well as the citadel, which you can see here. After that, I’ll put the whole thing into one big image. I didn’t think that’d be a usable size for VTTs, but I just found out that Foundry can handle maps up to 50MB. Like, 50 megs. Fifty. Holy crap. So, I’ll make a VTT version of that as well.

Also, I’m in the process of fixing up the public Foundry module. There’s nothing new in there, but I’ve been tidying it up, so you may want to update it if you’re using it soon. There’s more tidying to do and I’ll let you know when it’s finished.

Man, I can’t wait for the other VTTs to catch up to Foundry’s file size limit. I’ve got 50MB ideas and, if you give me a 50MB canvas, I am just going to take my foot completely off the brakes. We will be on the autobahn to Crazy Town.

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The Deep Spire: 4th Level

Also, here’s the annotated version and here’s the unfurnished version.

Higher and higher we go! I usually crop my maps closer to the edges, but I want to leave in all of the background so you can see the lower levels spiraling below. It should be fine, since this is only 44×43 anyway, which is fairly small as my maps go.

This level of the Deep Spire is predominantly inhabited by deep gnomes and has a gemcutter’s workshop, a tinkerer and the spire’s second tavern, where the locals drink. The tavern is hidden away from the main walkway in order to keep the visiting sailors from finding the place.

There’s also has a big, open plaza, which is a good spot for an encounter that requires a little more space than you’d find in most of the spire. And it’s still located conveniently close to the edge, meaning your players can chuck the enemies over the side. Or, if your players are being all “Phoenix Wright, Rules Attorney,” you can have the enemies chuck them over the side. Plenty of exciting possibilities.

The next level will be the drow neighborhood, which will have, among other things, the estate of a drow noble house living in exile. The last level will begin with a gatehouse, which guards the barracks on the other side and the citadel beyond that. I’ll probably just make the 6th level and the citadel one single map, so there will be two more to go.

Well, despite my repeated requests, this map refuses to draw itself, so I’d better get back to it!