Category: Island/Sea

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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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Glogdolp – Roofs

Not too much going on in the roof level, but there is one thing I wanted to mention. If you look around the buildings, you’ll see little triangles pointing to the walls. Those are to indicate where the doors are. It occurred to me recently that that might be useful for some people, so I decided to try it and see what you all think.

Anyway, next I’ll be drawing some tokens for the Black Loch. Drow and kuo-toa and Lim the Big Dumb Ogre and so forth. Those will probably be done in a day or two. After that, I’ll be drawing the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress: a wizard’s casino. I’m thinking this is going to be more Monte Carlo than Vegas, but let’s see how it goes. In any case, after that, I think we’ll be headed back to the loch!

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Glogdolp: A Kuo-Toa Village

Here’s the annotated version.

Glogdolp is a kuo-toa village in the Black Loch. The main things they do here are mollusk farming and slaving. That big jail isn’t there to deal with widespread naughtiness.

Glogdolp is at the tail end of a larger kuo-toan nation called the Bluescale Empire, which stretches down the river to the south. They don’t have much of a presence in the Loch at the moment, but they have plans to change that. Those plans aren’t really happening in Glogdolp, but when we get to the nearby kuo-toa stronghold, you’ll get a look at the kind of nonsense they have in mind.

Basically, it’s crabs. Huge crabs. Like, stupidly huge crabs. Siege crabs. The Bluescale Empire is secretly breeding them and, at some point, they intend to use them to take over the loch.

Personally, I think Glogdolp would be a good place for a rescue mission. The kind that starts with a few potions of water breathing, so the party can sneak in through the underwater caverns. Or you could even have the party stop here to ask about something, then have them happen to see a bunch of slaves getting led into the cells. You know, start pushing some emotional buttons, get an argument going between the paladin and the rogue. We have to save them! We totally don’t. My god says we do! I don’t care about your god. You did when he was curing your Thayvian Crotch Leprosy!

Next, I’m going to draw a roof-level map of Glogdolp, which should only take a day or two. After that, I’m going to draw some tokens. Specifically, I’m going to make tokens pertaining to the Black Loch. So, kuo-toa, Lim the Ogre,  the orogs and drow of the Deep Spire, and so forth. If I’m going to draw all the places in the Black Loch, I might as well draw the people as well. That shouldn’t take long either.

By the way, if you don’t know about the tokens I made, there are around 270 of them and they’re free. You can download them all here.

Anyway, I hope you like the map! Let me know what you think of the Black Loch so far!

There are DM notes for this map available to patrons.

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Kuo Toa-Village – Work-In-Progress

I’m in the middle of coloring this at the moment. There are also a series of underwater caverns below, but I’ll show you those when it’s done.

The main thing the kuo-toa in this village do is capture travelers to serve as slaves or sacrifices. This is one of the reasons people stay at the godawful inn nearby. When the choice is either sleeping on a bed that smells like weapons-grade cat urine or getting brutally sacrificed to an imaginary fish goddess, most people would choose the former.

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The Chesterboro Arms – Lim the Ogre, Proprietor

Here’s the non-annotated version and here are the DM notes. This map is a part of the Black Loch.

The Chesterboro Arms is a straight up dump. Nobody thinks they’d ever stay at a place like the Chester, but then they find themselves in a REALLY scary part of the underdark. Wherever you look, there are bandits, monsters and all kinds of awful crap that wants to kill you. You probably shouldn’t even be there and you’re damn sure not sleeping there, so you press on. And you keep pressing on. And after a couple days of walking, you’d give anything just for a nap.

And then you see it: the Chesterboro Inn. Is the food good? You don’t care. Have the beds ever been washed? You don’t care. Is it safe to sleep here? Well, the innkeeper is the biggest ogre you’ve ever seen, so… yeah, probably. And, sure, the building looks like it’s going to collapse, but what are the odds that it happens today?

If you have questions about the Chesterboro Arms, you should understand that you’re supposed to have questions. I didn’t just set out to make this place crappy, I wanted it to be hilariously crappy. The outhouse is huge. You have to go through a bedroom to get to the storeroom. There’s a shed full of chairs. I don’t really have an explanation for that stuff, except that they seemed like things Lim the Ogre would do. Speaking of which, if you want to know the story of how an ogre opens an inn, that’s in the DM notes.

I’m going to draw another Black Loch map next, maybe the kuo-toa village. After that, I’ll do something other than the loch. You know, mix it up a bit. Anyway, I hope you like the Chesterboro! If your party ends up going there, please tell me how it went. I seriously want to know.

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The Black Loch: A Map Full of Maps

I’m giving out the patron versions of this map to everybody. There isn’t as much stuff as there would normally be since this isn’t a battlemap, but I want everybody to have it. You can download it here.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the Black Loch yet, there are only two important things to know:

  1. The Black Loch is a small sea in the underdark.
  2. I’m going to draw a map of every dot on the map above, at a 5′ grid scale.

Now that everyone’s caught up, let’s talk about what we’re getting into. There are 23 dots on the map, 3 of which have been drawn already. I’m also going to draw two more things that aren’t marked on the map, which means there are 22 maps to draw before this is finished. Unless I decide to add something else, which I may.

By the way, you might have noticed that most of the place names are pretty generic. They’ll get proper names when I draw them, but, for now, they’ll just be descriptors.

I reserve the right to move things around to accommodate the lore as I come up with it, but the general idea is that the west is sort of the civilized half of the map. Things get a little wilder out in the east and then, in the Deep Reaches, you get the crazy stuff. Let’s talk about the specific locations, as well as the other two things that aren’t on the map:

Already Finished
to be drawn
  • Inn – A solitary inn for visitors who don’t care to stay with the kuo-toa or the drow. How do they survive out here? By paying something really big and scary for security.
  • Drow Settlement – This will be a small drow town.
  • Secluded Manse – Vlyndarastyl used to send their driders to live on a small island. Someone killed them all and built a house there. I’m not sure who that person is yet.
  • Grimlocks – A grimlock settlement of some kind.
  • Duergar Outpost – This will probably be half fort, half trade outpost. It’s also a place where the duergar can keep an eye on what’s going on around the loch.
  • Kuo-Toa Village and Stronghold – This is the tail end of a kuo-toa kingdom that stretches down the Bluescale River.
  • Submerged Temple – A kuo-toa temple. One of three maps that will be completely underwater.
  • Submerged Ruins – I’m not sure what I’m doing with this. Maybe a sunken town of some kind?
  • Ancient Crypt – I don’t know what I’m doing with this. Maybe it’ll be ancient catacombs from a city that used to exist on the island.
  • Travelers’ Ruin – This is a ruined building that passing travelers stay in sometimes.
  • Dragon’s Lair – This will be the home of an ancient dragon, high up in the column of rock.
  • Fortress Ruins – A charred, burnt-out ruin of a fortress. WELL GOLLY I WONDER WHO DID THAT.
  • Deep Gnomes – I’m not sure exactly what this will be, but it’ll have deep gnomes living in it. I think it might be a settlement built around a vertical shaft that goes through the whole place.
  • Abyssal Caverns – Several systems of underwater caverns in the walls of a deep crevasse at the bottom of the sea. There may or may not be a kraken lair.
  • Surface Entrance – This is the end of a river or stream leading down from the surface. Lots of waterfalls along the way. A good way to get your players into the loch.
  • Myconids – Myconids love darkness and dampness, so you’d have to imagine they’re living somewhere in the Black Loch.
  • The Blind Colossus – A giant, faceless statue standing in the creepy end of the loch. No one knows who it is or who built it. There will be an interior of some kind.
  • Illithid Ruins – An abandoned, crumbling mind flayer city.
  • Aboleth Lair – Aboleths are like mind flayers, except they’re better across the board. Mind flayers have psychic powers, aboleths have better psychic powers. Mind flayers are geniuses, aboleths just flat out know everything. Mind flayers look kind of like a cuttlefish, aboleths are actual, giant fish. Anyway, the point is, an aboleth and its flunkies live here.
not on the map
  • A Ship – Your players will probably need a ship. There are plenty of ship maps out there, but you need a particular kind of ship for the underdark. Sails won’t do much work, so it’ll have to be a galley. A long time ago, I drew a ship for the underdark called the Grey Huntress, but it’s kind of old and I want to draw you a better one.
  • Vlyn’darastyl Streets and Buildings – This will be a battlemap for Vlyn’darastyl with a small bit of the city depicted. Someplace you can use as a backdrop if your players get into a fight, which they probably will, because drow are not nice people.

Anyway, there’s the plan. While I’m working on the Black Loch, I’m going to draw some other maps as well, but I’ll keep things progressing. Some of the maps above will be bigger than others, so it’s hard to calculate how long it’ll take, but I’d say a year or so sounds about right. So, now that you’ve got a better idea of what this project is going to look like, what do you think?

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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!