Category: Inns and Taverns

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Thanesridge Landing: A Dwarven Port

Thanesridge Landing is a dwarven port settlement. Dwarves aren’t famous for their love of ships, but they’re pretty fond of money and trade is a proven way to make a lot of it.

This map wasn’t intended to be a part of Brazenthrone, but I’ve started thinking of it like it is. In my head, this is the end of the Bitterwash River that runs through town. I’m not going to add it to the giant map of the city or anything, but you can consider it an unofficial part of Brazenthrone if you want.

The drydock on the right is called a “graving dock” and it’s actually below water level. It’s gated off from the sea and the water is pumped out. Then, when you’re ready to launch the ship, you just open the gate and sail it out. I didn’t find out how the water was pumped out, but these things date back to at least 200BC, so apparently it was possible. If you happen to know how they did it, I’d love to hear.

Anyway, I’ve got two more parts of this map to draw. First, I’m going to make a roof level, which may have some more buildings on top of the mountain ridge at the back. And I’m going to draw the rest of the steamship at the docks and make a separate map of it. It’ll be useful if your party shows up and steals the thing. I mean, they steal everything else, right? Maybe that’s just my players.

Well, I’m going to get to work on the rest of this. It shouldn’t take long. Let me know what you think so far!

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Caergyd Point (Complete)

Since this is fairly big, here’s the cave and the castle separately.

I just have one piece of advice for any DM whose party takes up residence in this castle: that cave is not a safe place to dock a ship. It’s out of sight and it gives a group of thieves plenty of time to get it ready to sail without anyone seeing. So, if they don’t station a guard down there to watch it, have somebody steal it. Maybe one of the PCs wakes up in the middle of the night and sees their ship pulling out of the cave.

It doesn’t have to be more than a short encounter. You could give them enough time to grab their swords and leap for the mast as the ship is pulling away. I’m just saying, a completely unexpected, butt-naked pirate battle in the middle of the night sounds like some pretty good D&D to me. Worth considering, at least.

Next, I’ll be updating the Tir Thelandira map with all the locations I’ve got planned. I just want to give everybody a better idea of what the island is going to look like once it’s finished. I’ll post that tomorrow, along with a brief description of what I’m planning to do with each of the locations. After that, I’ll pick one and draw it. Okay, see you then!

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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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The Green Eye Oasis

The Green Eye is a village and caravanserai built around a small oasis in a sinkhole. The place has everything a traveling merchant needs: camel parking, a room for the night, baths, a tavern and a provisioner. Oh, and water. Merchants need that to live. I mean, everybody does, but merchants do too.

I think this would be a really great place for a battle, especially if the party was inside the village while getting attacked by archers around the edges of the sinkhole. That’d create a really nasty situation, since the place is kind of… what’s the word? The opposite of defensible. It’s an easy place to attack. Making the party fight their way out of here could be an interesting challenge.

Next, I’ll be getting to work on the second map for Tir Thelandira. I’ve got a few different maps planned for the island, but I really want to draw Oakenhold next. Oakenhold is a giant tree fortress which serves as the wild elves’ capital. This will be the first time I’ve ever redrawn a map. If you want to get an idea of what it’ll look like, here’s the original. I’m fairly confident that the new version will be better than that. It certainly won’t be in black and white, anyway. I’ll also write some lore for Tir Thelandira to go along with it and I’ll make some more concrete plans for the rest of the island as well.

All right, hope that sounds good to you! Let me know what you think of the oasis!

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The Two Palms Tavern

Well, I decided to draw a palm tree on the map and call it the “Two Palms Tavern” after all. I’m not proud of having drawn a dad joke into the map, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. I won’t make a habit of it, I promise.

The vote for the second civilization of Tir Thelandira is still open and I wanted to give patrons another chance to cast a vote before I end it in a few days, so if you haven’t cast a vote, please do! Once it’s decided, I’ll write some lore for the winner and start getting to work on the maps.

Next, I’m going to draw a few maps based on an idea I’ve been sitting on for a long time. The maps will be secret rooms. Not maps with secret rooms, just secret rooms connected to nothing. They’re meant to be used along with some other map that you wish had a secret room, but doesn’t. I’ll make versions with different entrances so you can have it behind a wall or under a trap door in the floor.

These will be small maps with 1-2 rooms and they should only take 2-3 days each. I’ve got three secret rooms in mind: a hidden prison, a psycho killer murder cellar, and a cultists’ shrine/summoning circle. Those seem like they’d be fairly useful, but if you’ve got any better ideas, let me know. I might draw more later depending on what you all think of these.

Anyway, that’s it for now. If you’re celebrating a holiday soon, I hope you have a great one! Relevant holiday greetings to one and all!

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The Barre Sinister: A Spelljammer Pirate Tavern

I’ve made some fairly strange maps, but we might have a new champion today. The Barre Sinister is a tavern built on a giant, stone hand… in space. I also made a version with just the hand, which is arguably weirder. I suspect at least one of you has a use for that.

If you don’t play Spelljammer and you’re wondering how this place could possibly exist, allow me to explain the first rule of Spelljammer: Never ask questions about how things work. They just do. That’s a very important rule. No one’s trying to play Spelljammer with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Of course, not everyone is running a campaign in which the players can escape the gravitational influence of their planet, so I’m going to make an island version of this map next. That shouldn’t take long, since I mostly just need to change the background and draw a bit of land around the hand. Maybe I’ll throw a palm tree on there, who knows. Wait… would that constitute a pun in this situation? Maybe I’d better not.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work on that and I’ll be back with it in a day or two. By the way, if you’re the person who actually has a use for the empty space hand, I’d love to hear what you plan to do with it!

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The George and Dragon Inn – A 17th-Century Coaching Inn in Southwark, London

This map is based on a historic inn in Southwark, London. The establishment’s original name was The George and Dragon, although it’s known today as The George Inn. Personally, if it was up to me to abbreviate the name, I’d have kept the Dragon part and sent George packing, but I suppose that’s not the way the owners decided to go with it. They did keep the dragon on the sign, at least.

The George and Dragon was originally a coaching inn, which is an inn designed to accommodate stagecoach travelers, with large stables and space for carriages. Not many coaching inns survived the transition from stagecoaches to train travel, but The George was fortunate enough to be close to London’s railroad, which enabled it to stay in business. Lucky guy, that George.

I’ve gotten quite a few comments and messages with ideas about Tir Thelandira and the second civilization that will be living on the island. Tomorrow, I’ll start working your ideas into 3 or 4 different proposals, which I’ll put up for patrons to vote on.

Each of the proposals will be inspired by things you suggested and will probably contain suggestions put forth by several people. I won’t be able to work everything in, but I do appreciate all of your contributions. Some ideas, like an aquatic civilization, won’t make it onto the ballot, but I do absolutely want to include those in this world eventually.

Anyway, I’ll get those ideas fleshed out and post a vote in the next day or two. After that, I’ll be drawing the Barre Sinister, which is a Spelljammer-themed map that isn’t actually a spelljammer. It’s a tavern floating on a giant, stone hand that floats through space. So that should be a little something different. For those of you whose parties aren’t capable of generating enough Delta-V to reach a place like that, I’ll be making a sea version of the map as well.

All right, hope that sounds good. Let me know what you think of the map!

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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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Skatha’s Rest

Skatha’s Rest is the location marked “Travelers’ Ruin” on the map of the Black Loch. The specific travelers who come here are a clan of orog raiders called the Tideborne, who spend most of their time at sea or plundering coastal settlements.

Skatha’s Rest is an old ruin the Tideborne occasionally stop in at to hang out and drink. These folks throw the kind of party that you need to pass CON checks to make it to the end of, so it could be a fun pit stop for your players to make, especially if they’re sailing on a ship with Tideborne crew.

Okay, a couple things. First, the final vote of the Black Loch Conclave is still open. If you’re a patron and you haven’t voted yet, you’ve got one last chance to do so. The two finalists are a deep gnome shipyard and a drow outpost built into the ceiling of the loch. Tomorrrow morning, I’m going to wake up, have a cup of coffee and start drawing whichever map is ahead.

Also, I’m going on vacation early next month. This is really weird for me, since I hardly ever take a day off, but I’ll be away for a little over a week. A few years ago, I spent over three months drawing a map of Mont-Saint-Michel and I finally get to go see the place. While I’m in the area, I’m also going to visit the Chateau de Chenonceau. Yeah, I’m that much of a geek. I draw castles and stuff all day, then I go on vacation to see the castles I drew. It’s legal and you can’t stop me.

Well, that’s it for now. I’ll post again tomorrow once the vote ends, but until then, let me know what you think of Skatha’s Rest!