Category: Temples

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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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Elderseed Sanctuary

Elderseed Sanctuary is a small treehouse settlement in a giant baobab. I designed it with a druid community in mind, but it could easily be a village of wild elves as well. Or aarakocra. Or avariel. Or weresquirrels.

Here’s a question to think about: is it a treant? If so, that makes this place mobile, which allows for some interesting possibilities. For example, your party could make camp in the woods and wake up next to this thing. That could be a handy approach if your party isn’t great at following a trail of breadcrumbs to the next adventure. Just park the next adventure on top of all their stuff and see if they can work out what to do.

Next up, I’ll be drawing another map from the Black Loch. This time, it’ll be the ancient crypt on Cairnhollow Isle. I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing with it, but I think it’ll be a fairly decrepit series of winding tunnels and catacombs, leading to a huge, elaborate burial chamber at the end. I’ve got a bunch of maps of the Paris Catacombs, so hopefully I can give the map a fairly authentic feel.

Well, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think about the map!

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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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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 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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Altar of the Black Lamb

This map was the demonologist’s tower chosen by the Cartographic Congress. One of the stipulations was that it would have a portal to hell and I decided to go a little… non-traditional with that. “Traditional,” in this case, would be your standard-issue Door of Fire. And the problem I have with that is that it’s boring. It’s been done and it’s not scary. It doesn’t give players the sense of fear they should feel when they’re about to travel to a place where literally everybody wants to torture you to death.

So I came up with something else: a black void in the chest cavity of a rotting, dismembered storm giant. It’s the most awful thing I could think of and, to me, it’s the kind of welcome mat Hell needs. And, since “Create a Permanent Gate to Hell” isn’t a spell in the Player’s Handbook, who’s to say it doesn’t require a dead giant as a component?

I think it works pretty well in the other direction, too. If the plan is for something to come out of the portal to attack the party, it’s going to be a lot scarier after pulling itself up out of that thing. Imagine a pit fiend coming out of there. Imagine narrating that. Holy crap.

Next up, I’ll be drawing a map from the Black Loch. I want to get some serious work done on the Loch over the next few months and I’m going to start with the Abyssal Caverns, a series of caves and tunnels in the sides of a deep, underwater crevasse. I don’t have too much of a plan yet, but there will probably be a kraken’s lair.

Also, I wanted to say one last thing to the old school DMs out there. If you played D&D in the 80s or 90s, imagine using this map and your parents walked in and saw it. They’d be like, “I knew it! I knew you were worshipping satan!” Haha, oh man. I’m glad that’s not a thing anymore.

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

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The Tigers’ Nest Monastery

Some monasteries make wine, while other monasteries make bread. This monastery makes bareknuckle kung-fu killing machines. Or, as they’re known in D&D, monks.

As a DM, having a monk in the party can be a little difficult. Not because there’s anything wrong with the class, but because coming up with useful loot for a monk is tough. They’re like warriors who don’t want magic weapons or armor, but they’re not spellcasters, so they don’t want wizard and cleric stuff either. Bracers of Defense are good and so is a Ring of the Ram, but after that, what do they even want?

One solution that’s worked for me is giving monks abilities instead of items. Have someone teach them the “Iron Palm” and give them +1 on all their unarmed attacks. It’s basically a magic weapon for a character that doesn’t use weapons.

This kind of thing can be good for druids who spend all their time shapeshifted, too, since they’re also pretty hard to find presents for. With druids, I’d present it as the blessing of a nature spirit or something, but the idea is the same. You can do this with other classes as well, but the rest tend to be a lot easier to please.

Next up, I’ll be drawing a map for the Black Loch. This is a new addition that isn’t marked on the map: The Architects of the Awakening. They’re a duergar cult that were the villains of my last campaign and they’ve got a fairly complicated story. The very short version is this:

The duergar race have the psionic essence of the mind flayers within them, but their psionic abilities are nowhere near those of the illithids. A duergar priestess believes she can awaken that essence in her people, granting them the same power the illithids have. She has found a way to do it, but she and her followers must act in secret, as her methods would be considered a heinous abomination by every living thing on earth, the duergar included.

I’ll make a separate post about it in a day or two that explains their story in more detail if you’re interested. Until then, I hope you like the Tigers’ Nest. Let me know what you think!

There’s an annotated version of this map and DM notes 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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The High Temple of Mystra

 

This is the main temple of Mystra, the goddess of magic in the Forgotten Realms. In addition to its religious functions, the temple also houses a massive storehouse of magic in the caverns below. I only included the first level in the map, but there’s a stairway on the left side of the caverns to allow you to expand into another map if you want.

The symbols at the bases of the towers are meant to be glyphs that teleport people between levels. But if you’d prefer boring old stairs, I made another version with those.

My game is starting soon, so I’ve gotta wrap up this post. Next up is more Brazenthrone!

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Mont-Saint-Michel – Fourth Level

Here’s the annotated version, the elevation guide and the DM notes. If you need the free VTT stuff, it’s on the patreon.

It’s been quite a journey, but here we are at the end. Time to chuck the ring into the volcano and start on the next adventure.

To all my patrons, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to make this. I try to draw maps that no one else makes and create unique settings for your games. Hopefully Mont-Saint-Michel will serve you well.

The elevation guide is up there. The French version isn’t, but my French language consultant is coming over for D&D in an hour and I should have it up tomorrow morning. Tonight, I’m gonna DM my game and celebrate the end of this project with fermented beverages.

Starting tomorrow, I’m getting to work on the backlog of Cartographic Congress maps. First up is Predjama Castle, a Slovenian castle built in the mouth of a cave.

There are hi-res print versions and a whole lot of VTT versions of this map available to patrons.