Category: Island/Sea

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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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The Blind Colossus

The Blind Colossus is a huge, eyeless statue in the Black Loch. Sailors who have seen it think it depicts a human, which is a strange sight deep in the underdark.

The truth is that the Blind Colossus was built by a tribe of humans called the Ardyeni, barbarian raiders who were driven underground thousands of years ago. They lived in the Black Loch for over a millennium, building a city and several outlying towns in the deep reaches of the loch. They are the ancient ancestors of the race known as “grimlocks.”

There’s a long story about how this happened in the DM notes, but I’ll try to summarize it for everyone. A few hundred years after the tribe was driven into the underdark, an Ardyeni mage created a device to speak to the gods. It sort of worked.

The Ardyeni king spoke with an entity named Bylir, who wasn’t a god, but a being from the Far Realm. The best explanation I can give is that Bylir is the sort of thing H.P. Lovecraft would write a story about. Not a god, not a demon, but very powerful. Definitely not your friend.

Anyway, the Ardyeni started to worship this thing. Bylir gave them blindsight, which let them see in the darkness. Then Bylir took their eyes away. Then it began demanding blood sacrifices. And finally, after a few centuries, Bylir gave them to an aboleth as slaves.

Several thousand years later, the device used to contact Bylir still survives inside the Blind Colossus. The descendants of the Ardyeni survive as well, but have changed a lot and are no longer considered human. Many of them still serve the aboleth, who lives in the ruins of their ancient civilization.

Speaking of which, the next map will be the lair of that aboleth. It’s one of four more maps left to draw for the Black Loch and I’ve got some interesting ideas for it.

Anyway, I think the Blind Colossus came out pretty well, but it’s a fairly unusual map and I’m curious what people think about it. If you’ve got any thoughts, let me know!

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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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Brackenbury Manor (Inspired by Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire, England)

Brackenbury Manor is almost a real place. If it were a real place, the real place that it would be is Little Moreton Hall. Little Moreton is a 16th-century manor house in Cheshire, England, which looks unsettling in a way that I’m not sure really comes through in the map. Here’s a picture to show you what I mean. If that building looks completely fine to you, you’ve had too much to drink.

I didn’t originally plan on including the gardens in the map, but after my last post, someone suggested that I should. And they were absolutely right. See, here’s the thing: these are the hedges. They’re cut into tunnels. You can walk through the hedges! I don’t know about you, but the DM part of my brain couldn’t stop thinking about how awesome it would be to have a monster hiding in there, waiting to jump on someone the second they come around the corner. In any case, I think the extra effort was well-spent.

Next up, I’ll be drawing the grimlock settlement from the Black Loch. It has a shipyard, where most of the ships in the loch are built. The basic story is this: a team of deep gnome engineers builds ships using grimlock laborers. The grimlocks, who don’t care about money, are paid in meat. This situation has been working out for years, with rich gnomes and fat grimlocks. And there’s no reason to think it won’t. Unless they run out of meat. That would be a problem, especially for the gnomes. This is a bad place to be the last thing made of meat.

The grimlock shipyard is one of only 6 maps left to draw for the Black Loch. Aside from that, there are some tokens to draw, as well as a few generic backdrop maps (caves, tunnels, etc), but it’s getting pretty close to being finished!

Anyway, that’s it for now. Hope you like the map! 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!

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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 Mother’s Eye

The Mother’s Eye is a kuo-toan temple partially submerged in the waters of the Black Loch. The part of the temple above water is meant, perhaps surprisingly, to accommodate land-dwelling races.

Do land-dwelling races worship naked lobster lady? No, but they make great sacrifices. And kuo-toa do human sacrifices like Brazilians play soccer.  They love it, they’re great at it, it’s kind of their thing. It’s not their only thing, of course. But, you know, it’s a big one and they work hard at it. You’ve gotta respect that.

The kuo-toa of the Black Loch have big plans and I’ll talk more about what those are when I draw the kuo-toa stronghold, which I’m probably going to do within the month.

But first, there are two things to do. The first is to make an alternate version of this map with the temple on land. I figure that, if I’m going to draw an Aztec/Mayan style pyramid and put it underwater, I should probably make a version that isn’t underwater while I’m at it. It should only take a day to get done.

After that, I’ll be drawing the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress: a tower fortress, similar to a smaller version of Barad-Dûr (from Lord of the Rings).

Anyway, that’s it for now. If you’re a patron and you’ve got an idea for a new location for the Black Loch that you’d like to add to the upcoming vote, you’ve got another week to let me know. Speaking of which, the ideas people have submitted so far are really good. Like, REALLY good. I can’t wait to see which one you go for.

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Black Loch Naval Battlemaps and Tokens

You can download the ship tokens and maps here.

I spent yesterday and today making a bunch of stuff to help you run naval battles in the Black Loch. Most of it is in the picture above. There are nine ship tokens, plus two tokens of the loch’s resident sea creature, the Whisperer. One of the tokens shows the Whisperer clearly and the other is just a dark shadow under the water to freak your players out with.

There are also four maps that are mostly water. Since I want to get started on the next Black Loch map, I decided to keep this fairly simple, so all the water maps are basically just the map above, cropped in different ways. They’re nothing fancy, but they’ll let you run naval battles in the loch without having to use a sea map that looks like a sunny day in the Caribbean.

Anyway, with that done, I’m going to get started on the Submerged Temple, a kuo-toa holy place in the Black Loch. I’m thinking it’ll be partly above water, but mostly below. Maybe like a pyramid with the tip above water? I’m not sure, I’ll figure it out after a few sketches.

There’s one other thing: I’m unable to continue updating the EncounterPlus module with new maps. I’m sorry to those of you who use EncounterPlus, but the program I use to export the module hasn’t been working properly, possibly due to a conflict with a recent release of Foundry. If things change and I can start updating the module again, I promise that I will. Until then, I’m really sorry.

Also, I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m planning to hold a vote of all patrons for a new Black Loch location. I’ll post about that in a day or two and send out a call for proposals for locations to add to the loch.

Okay, I’m gonna start sketching that temple. I hope you like the naval battlemaps! Are they the most boring maps I’ve ever made? I think they might be, haha.

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Ard Skellig

Here’s a map of the interiors of the buildings and here’s a map of just the island with nothing on it.

Of the many Irish isles, one would have stood out to ancient settlers as a particularly good place to live. With its rolling hills, thick forests and an abundance of arable land, it was exactly what many of them were looking for. The island was called “Ireland” and, conveniently, it was the big one in the middle.

But for some people, Ireland was a bit too easy. They were looking for a challenge. These people wanted to make their homes on a smaller island, several miles offshore. Maybe a steep, jagged rock jutting out of the sea, preferably with no trees, very little flat ground, and, of course, no farmable land. Because agriculture is basically cheating.

A little ways off Ireland’s southwest coast, they found exactly what they were looking for: Skellig Michael. They headed over, built themselves a few big, stone beehives to live in, and enjoyed spending the rest of their lives away from the fast-living, hectic lifestyle of rural Kerry.

Then, over 1000 years later, Luke Skywalker showed up. Seriously. If you recognize this place, that’s probably why. In 2015, part of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was filmed on Skellig Michael. And if the island’s name rings a bell, that’s probably because you’ve played the Witcher. The Kingdom of Skellige is named after it. I’m not sure how the producers of Star Wars or a Polish author even knew this place existed, but apparently it’s more famous than you’d expect.

Anyway, next, I’ll be drawing another map from the Black Loch. This time, I’ll be drawing the ruins of an Illithid settlement, which should be a pretty interesting place to explore. After that, I’m going to draw the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress, which I am ridiculously excited about.

Once in a while, someone proposes something to the Cartographic Congress that’s very similar to an idea I’ve been wanting to draw for a while. And, once in a while, that proposal wins. This is that proposal: a town built on a bridge over a river canyon.

I’ve seen a couple maps based on similar ideas before, but I’ve got a whole different sort of thing planned. I’m planning to draw buildings along the sides of the bridge, plus a lower level underneath the bridge deck, and hollow spaces inside the support pylons. I want to have the settlement extend into the cliffsides beneath the bridge as well. I’ve got a big vision for this and I think it’s going to be really cool, either as a settlement or as a dungeon to explore.

Well, that’s it for now. Hope you like Ard Skellig. Let me know what you think!