Category: The Black Loch

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The Black Loch Conclave has ended. Here are the results.

After several rounds of voting, a new location for the Black Loch has been chosen: Kenneth’s proposal of a drow outpost built into the ceiling of the loch, allowing them to keep an eye on the passing ships below. I love the idea and I think it’ll make a great addition to the setting.

Of the twenty new locations proposed, the outpost is the only one that will put a new dot on the map, but it isn’t the only one that will affect the loch. Quite a few of your ideas have inspired me in ways that will affect how I draw the remaining locations. Let’s go over them:

Grimlocks

The proposal that came in second was a shipyard run by deep gnomes. When Leo proposed it, my first thought was, “Oh my god… I forgot to put a shipyard in the loch!” I decided that, if this proposal didn’t win, I’d work the idea into the grimlock settlement.

Basically, a team of deep gnome engineers builds ships using grimlock laborers. The grimlocks, who are paid in meat, have come to realize that they get more meat by building ships than they did by hunting. So, the gnomes are rich, the grimlocks are fat, and whoever the grimlocks used to eat are still alive. Everyone’s very happy with the arrangement. Continue reading “The Black Loch Conclave has ended. Here are the results.”

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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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The Streets of Vlyn’darastyl – Roof Level

I never know what to say when I post the roof level of a map. “Hey, here’s a useful, but slightly less interesting version of the last map I made!” Whatever, let’s talk about the Black Loch instead.

The loch is about 2/3 of the way done so far and, lately, a lot more people have been messaging me about it. The same thing happened when I was 2/3 of the way through Brazenthrone. The reason is that a lot of people are starting to use it. What I’ll be drawing next doesn’t matter as much when your future campaign is going to be there. But when your current campaign is there, it becomes a lot more relevant.

So, I wanted to list the unfinished locations here, along with whatever I’ve got planned for those places. Also, this is roughly the order I’ll be drawing them in:

  1. Travelers’ Ruin – A ruined structure on the coast of Cairnhollow Isle. The Tideborne orogs from the Deep Spire dock here to hang out and drink from time to time.
  2. Drow Settlement – A small drow community.
  3. Ancient Crypt – No specific plans yet, except that there will be at least one box with a dead person inside it.
  4. Grimlocks – A grimlock settlement.
  5. The Blind Colossus – A huge, eyeless statue standing in the middle of the loch. It will have an interior.
  6. Aboleth Lair – The lair of an aboleth named Psor’il and its minions.
  7. Submerged Ruins – No plans yet.
  8. Duergar Outpost – A small outpost built by the duergar to conduct trade and keep an eye on the loch.
  9. Fortress Ruins – The burnt-out ruins of a fortress near the Isle of Ash.

In addition to the above, there will be one more map that has yet to be decided on by the Black Loch Conclave. I’ll draw it whenever the final vote has ended, which means it’ll probably be first or second.

Anyway, that’s about it. If you’re running a game in the loch right now, I hope things are going well and I’d love to hear what your party has been up to!

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The Streets of Vlyn’darastyl

This is a battlemap for the Drow City of Vlyn’darastyl. It’s mostly meant to be a backdrop for encounters your party might have in the city, but I figured I’d throw a tavern, a shop and a small market in there to give it a little extra utility. By the way, these buildings don’t actually correspond to anyplace on the city map, so don’t go crazy trying to find them. Hopefully no one did that before reading this far.

I’m going to draw a roof-level version of this map as well, which should only take a day or two. After that, I’ll be drawing the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress, the Infected Citadel. This is a small, dwarven hold that’s been tainted by the Far Realm. Things will look fairly normal at the top, but, as you descend, it starts to get stranger and stranger, until reality just completely breaks down at the bottom. Like, the floor becomes a thick mass of worms writhing around giant horse eyeballs. And there’s an eight-eyed fish head sticking out of the wall. Or something like that, I don’t know.

Honestly, I have no idea how I’m going to draw this place, but I’m very much looking forward to figuring it out. I promise you that it will be full-on crazy time.

Anyway, I’m gonna go post the last five proposals for the Black Loch Conclave. Let me know what you think of 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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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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The Black Loch Conclave (AKA “The Unholyrood”)

I mentioned in an earlier post that I wanted to hold a vote to give more people a voice in the creation of the Black Loch. Here are the details on that:

First, I’m going to send out a message to all patrons asking for proposals for new locations for the loch. If you have an idea for a place you think would make an interesting addition, please reply to the message with a brief description of your idea (or a long one, if necessary). In any case, I’ll get more details from you if your proposal is chosen.

The call for proposals will be sent through patreon’s messaging system, so if you don’t check that very often, please do. I’ll be sending it out tonight.

I’ll start the voting in a week or two, depending on the number of proposals. The first round of voting will consist of multiple votes, with around 10 proposals each.

After that, the two proposals with the most votes from each ballot will be pitted against each other in a second round of voting. Runoff votes will be held until one location wins. That location will be added to the loch and, of .

There are a few rules:

  1. One proposal per person.
  2. No megaprojects. If you think your proposal might be a megaproject, send it to me anyway and I’ll let you know. Keep in mind that the Flying Rook and Five Arches are not megaprojects, so you can still think pretty big.
  3. With the above exception, you can propose any kind of location you like. It can be tied in with the existing lore of the Black Loch or it can be entirely new.
  4. If you have a proposal, there’s no time limit to tell me, as long as you let me know before the final first-round vote is posted. This could be as long as a month from now, but I’ll make sure you have at least two weeks.
  5. All patrons can participate in all votes. All votes count equally.

And that’s it. If you have any questions, leave a comment or shoot me a message!

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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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The Cull’Thaine Estate

The Cull’Thaine Estate is home to the drow matriarch of House Cull’Thaine, the ruling family of the city of Vlyn’darastyl in the Black Loch.

Something about this map got me thinking. There are two parts of the Black Loch— the setting I’ve been making maps and lore of– that came from the Cartographic Congress: the Cull’Thaine Estate and Vlyn’darastyl, where the estate is located.

Over a year ago, a patron named Matt proposed an idea to the Cartographic Congress that won the vote and became Vlyn’darastyl. One of the locations marked on that map is the estate of House Cull’Thaine. A month ago, a patron named AN7 proposed a map of that house’s estate. That proposal won and now we have this map, which three people have had a hand in creating.

Without Matt, Vlyn’darastyl wouldn’t exist. Without AN7, the Cull’Thaine Estate would be a dot on the map. And the Black Loch was my idea, but none of it would exist without the rest of my patrons. So, this has become something of a collaborative effort over time. And I’d like it to become more so.

I want to give EVERY patron a voice in how the Black Loch comes together. So, here’s the plan: later this month, I’m going to take proposals from ALL patrons for a new location in the Black Loch. Then, I’ll have a vote on those proposals, which all patrons will be able to participate in. We’ll have a series of runoff votes until one proposal remains and that will become a new location in the Black Loch.

After I’m done with the next map, I’ll send out a message to all patrons calling for proposals. Then, once I’ve given a week or two for everyone to submit their ideas, I’ll start the voting. I don’t know how many proposals to expect, but the Cartographic Congress usually gets 5-10 proposals every month, so I think 40+ is possible here. Realistically, if I put 40 options on a single ballot, no one is going to read them all, so I’ll hold multiple votes, once a week, with 10 options on each ballot. The top two proposals from each will go on to a final ballot, which we’ll whittle down to one winner.

Anyway, that’s the plan. I’ll send out a message with more details when I’m done with the next map, so you can just reply to that if you have a proposal. Also, to be clear, a separate Cartographic Congress vote will be held as usual.

The next map will be a Man-o-War-class spelljammer, but first I need to make a quick edit to the map of Vlyn’darastyl. The Cull’Thaine Estate looks different from the way I drew it on the city map, so I want to make a revised version that matches. I’ll have that done in a few hours.

EDIT: The revised map of Vlyndarastyl is finished: annotated version, non-annotated version.

Okay, that’s it! If you’ve got any thoughts on the map, the vote or anything else, let me know!

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The Whisperer – A Creature from the Black Loch

A few weeks ago, I posted a map called the Smoldering Abyss. It was part of the Black Loch and one of the more notable things living there was a monster called “the Whisperer.” Well, Jamie, a longtime patron, offered to write up some stats and do an illustration of the creature.

You can download it here. If it’s the kind of thing you’d like to see more of, Jamie and his partner Josh are making monsters over at their patreon page, Odd’s Gardens. Josh is an insanely talented artist and the dude is probably going to end up illustrating the actual Monster Manual one day, but, until then, he and Jamie are making their own.

By the way, let me just back up that last statement: This is Josh and this is the 5th ed. Monster Manual. Tell me I’m wrong.

Anyway, have a look at their stuff. The art is unreal and there are free versions of most of the creatures.

Well, I’m about to start inking the next map. It’s a town built on a bridge over a canyon and I’ll post photos once I’m done in a day or two. I’m really happy with it so far and I think you’re gonna like it. Okay, back to work.