Category: Tokens and Assets

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The Blackboots’ Camp

This is the encampment of the Blackboots mercenary company in Tir Thelandira. The Blackboots are from all over the place. so the camp is filled with tents from all over the place. You’ve got ridge tents, pup tents, tipis, a marquee and, of course, yurts. If tents had a hierarchy, yurts would be the king.

The Blackboots are meant to be everything Glaver’s Regiment isn’t. They’re a cavalry company made up largely of former bandits, known for their dubious loyalty and their habit of killing more civilians than enemy soldiers. Hired after the wood elves destroyed the first human colony, the Blackboots are in Tir Thelandira to commit atrocities and read poetry. And they don’t know how to read.

The next map is something I’ve been asked to draw by several people over the years. I told them it wasn’t time. It’s time. I’m drawing Hohenzollern Castle. Strap on your spikiest helmet, things are about to get Prussian.

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The Complete Black Loch Token Collection

These are the rest of the tokens for the Black Loch. You can download the complete collection here.

The collection also contains the previous tokens I made for the Black Loch, as well as the ship tokens, so there should now be tokens of every creature I’ve mentioned in the lore, as well as every significant character.

With that crossed off the list, there’s only one thing left to do: draw the last map. The final location is a place called Charwall and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it until I found some inspiration in a couple of proposals for the Black Loch Conclave.

The first proposal was for a colony of dragonborn who worship Kaliphex the Immortal (the dragon in the picture above). The second proposal was for a kobold settlement in a series of watery tunnels– a sort of “Kobold Venice,” if you will. Those proposals sparked some ideas and I put them together to create Charwall.

Basically, Charwall is a settlement of draconic races, with dragonborn, dragonkin, half-dragons and kobolds living together. Most of the residents aren’t from the underdark and they’re not exactly sure why they came to Charwall. They just know that they were drawn to the place, by something.

That something is Kaliphex the Immortal, an 11,000-year-old red dragon who resides nearby. It’s unclear even to Kaliphex what’s causing this, but she came to the Black Loch to be alone and now a group of dragonkin appear to be worshipping her. I’ll figure out the details of what’s going on as I work on the map.

As I said, this will be the last part of the Black Loch. It’s been quite a journey so far and I hope it’s turned out as well as you’d hoped. I’ve got another journey in mind after this is done and I’m looking forward to telling you about it.

Well, I’m gonna get to work. Let’s get this thing over the finish line.

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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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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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Man-O’-War-Class Spelljammer

Here’s a version of the map with extra crew quarters. And here are some tokens of the ship and the weapons.

There’s a time in every Spelljammer campaign when the party has finally committed enough crimes and looted enough corpses to afford a new ship. Maybe not the Doomlord-Class Planetary Sterilizer they’ve always wanted, but something better. They’ve been cruising around in a stylish, but poorly-armed bugboat for about eight levels now. They used to love it, but now… well, the decks are stained with blood, they’ve got three NPCs sleeping on the floor, and there isn’t a square inch of the ship that the wizard’s familiar hasn’t peed on. So they head down to the shipyard to buy themselves a big boy spelljammer.

The Man-O’-War is an elven-designed light warship with lots of cargo space, seven officers’ cabins, and enough firepower to hold its own against most of what the old ship had to run away from. The four ballistas are fairly standard, but the catapult is a little more interesting. Instead of using rope and wood to launch a projectile, this catapult uses a high-pressure boiler that builds up steam, which can be released to fire the weapon.

But the best thing about the Man-O’-War is, arguably, the rear cargo doors. They can be used to load or unload cargo or passengers, either on land, or *ahem* mid-flight. An excellent way to prevent overcrowding in the brig.

Earlier, I said I was planning to draw another spelljammer later this year, but I think I’m going to make it at least two, with the next one coming in three months or so. It’ll be a bigger ship than the Man-O’-War, something beefy to use as a late-game vessel. I’ll probably hold a vote on which ship to draw when I’m ready to get started on it. I know there aren’t a lot of maps out there for Spelljammer and I want to draw a few more for those of you running games in the setting. With the Dragonfly, the Man-O’-War and the next one, that’ll give you an early-game, mid-game and a late-game ship, which at least covers the fundamentals. After that, I’ll see where you want me to go from there.

Next, I’ll be making some things for the Black Loch. Since a campaign in the loch would probably be a naval campaign, a water map and some ship tokens would be helpful for a lot of people. Someone pointed this out to me recently and I’m going to go ahead and make them now. It’ll take a day or two at most and, afterwards, I’ll probably get started on another Black Loch map.

Okay, that’s it. Let me know what you think!

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The Grinning Widow: A Ship for the Seas of the Underdark

The Grinning Widow is a ship designed for the Black Loch. In an underground sea, sails aren’t going to accomplish much, so the Widow doesn’t have any. She’s a galley, powered exclusively by rowing, with a crew of 20 oarsmen who all look like they walked out of a “skipped leg day” meme.

For defense, the Widow is armed with a ram on the bow, as well as two ballistas, one of which is a little scarier than the other. You see, I’ve been drawing the “big crossbow” ballista in my maps for a while now, but I wanted to change things up a bit, so I started searching for different ballista designs. I found a few I liked, but then– out of nowhere– this thing struts into the room. Yes please.

I don’t know if it’s real and I don’t care. It’s awesome and I decided it was definitely going in the map. I made a token of it, too, by the way, as well as the other one. You can get them both here. Personally, I’d give it around double the range and damage of a regular ballista in the DM’s Guide, but require a 2-person crew to fire it every round. And give it +1 to damage if the party names it.

So, here’s a funny story from my game. A few years ago, my players spent some time on a ship like this one, down in the underdark. The orog crew ended up teaching them Orcish, which my wife’s elven wizard got quite good at.

Several months later, she’s with a different party, being confronted by orc bandits, and she uses her knowledge of Orcish to speak with them.  The bandits look at each other and burst out laughing, which leaves the party confused. Finally, the orc leader stops laughing and tells her he’s never heard an elf in a fancy dress speaking Orcish. And he never imagined that, if he did, she’d be speaking the filthiest Orcish he’s ever heard.

They end up eating with the orcs, who tell her that everything she says is heavily laced with curse words. She hadn’t realized it, but the orog sailors taught her to speak like they do, which is very crudely, even by Orcish standards. So she knows the language, but she can’t speak it without cursing. Fortunately, orcs don’t tend to be prudish about that kind of thing, but no one expects it from someone like her.

Anyway, next up, I’ll be drawing a mountainous island settlement. And after that, I’ll be coming back to draw something else from the Black Loch. Maybe the illithid ruins? We’ll see.

Well, I’m gonna grab some coffee and start sketching some islands. Let me know what you think of the Widow!

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

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The result of a hard day’s work in the token mines.

You can download these tokens here.

With the exception of one random elf, all 17 of these tokens fall into one of two categories:

  1. The forces of evil
  2. Camels

Let’s talk about one of the camels. A year or so ago, I mentioned something I’d discovered called a “zamburak.” This is a camel with a swivel-mounted cannon on its back and it is an actual, 100% real thing. And now you have a token for it in case you’d like to light your players up with some camel-based artillery! However it goes down, I’d say it’ll be their first time having that particular experience.

But the best part won’t be the battle. It’ll be when Dave Smartguy tells you how completely unrealistic a cannon mounted on a camel is. Google it, Dave. Go on, do it. We’ll wait.

As I said, I’ll be drawing another Black Loch map next. This one isn’t marked on the map, but it’s just as important: a ship. Chances are, if you decide to run a game in the loch, your players will need one and all the maps of galleons, cogs, caravels and other sailing ships are going to look a little out of place in a sea without wind. So I’ll be drawing a modest-sized galley with no masts that’s better suited to the environment. I expect it won’t take long.

Anyway, I hope you like the tokens! If you’re new here, I’ve got about 300 more tokens for you here. And 11 more here. Oh, and here’s another 43. Feel free to share these with anyone who might need them.

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Tokens and an Updated Black Loch Map

 

Here’s the updated Black Loch map.

All this stuff is free for everyone. You can download it here.

So, these are the tokens I drew. I’d say you can figure out what most of these critters are, although you may have some questions about the half-orc with a mustache and a combover holding a cup of coffee. That’s Stan– short for Stanislaus, not Stanley– and he’s my character in a game I’m playing in.

You know your dad’s friend from work? That’s Stan. He’s a strange sort of RPG character, but the campaign he’s in involves flying around the solar system in a spelljammer searching for dragonballs, so he’s less weird than you’d think. And one of the other PCs is a railway maintenance robot, so there’s a case to be made that Stan isn’t even the weirdest one in the party.

Anyway, I know nobody else needs Stan’s token, but I thought I’d throw him in there just in case. I’d rather you have Stan and not need him than need Stan and not have him.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m gonna get started on the next map.

Oh, one last thing– if you’re new here, I made around 300 more tokens you can also have. Feel free to share them if you know anyone who’d want them.

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Black Loch Tokens

You can download these tokens here.

These are tokens for everybody in the Black Loch with a name, plus some Tideborne orogs, Darksong Knights and an assortment of kuo-toa. And a chicken. There are also some alternate versions, most of which are just different skin colors.

Here’s a link to the DM notes for the Deep Spire in case you need a reminder of who these people are. That’s where everyone with a name is from, with the exception of the three ogres, who are from the Chesterboro Arms.

Anyway, I hope they’re useful to you! By the way, are the kuo-toa a little too murloc? I’m still not sure. Whatever, here’s a picture of everyone hanging out in the Chesterboro:

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The Deep Spire, 1st Level: The Harbor

First, as usual, the accessories: a version without the ships and ship tokens. There are two versions of the tokens: one that will look good on this map but will look terrible on almost any other map, and an alternate version that will look terrible on this map, but good on most others.

This is the first of six levels of the Deep Spire. The next few will be much bigger, since the harbor doesn’t go all the way around the column and the other floors do. I’m not sure how long this will take overall, but I’ve got a lot of it planned out already and this has taken much less time than I expected it to, so I think it could be done in about a month.

I’ll have DM notes when everything’s finished, but, for now, let’s talk about what we’re looking at. The harbor is a big, open chamber underneath the spire. The ceiling isn’t that high– call it 25 feet (8m)– but this is in the Underdark, so no wind means no sails, which means no masts.

At the entrance to the harbor is a chain boom, like the one in Brazenthrone’s Underdark trading outpost. In the upper left is the gate leading into the spire. On the right are livestock pens. The residents don’t want pigs in the spire, but they do want bacon, so this is where they keep and butcher the animals. In the center, just inside the big support column, is a cargo elevator leading to the second floor. It’s raised and lowered by turning the two big wheels on the sides and is useful for hauling up crates of trade goods or players who failed their persuasion rolls at the gate.

You may have noticed that I changed the colors from what they were in the last post. I decided that using awful, crappy colors might not be the way to go and I decided to use good colors instead. I think that was the right call.

Also, I’m going to make unfurnished versions of all the levels of the Deep Spire. Since I draw everything by hand on paper, that isn’t as simple as turning the chairs off, but it won’t take that long either. I should have the unfurnished version of the harbor up within a day.

Anyway, if you’ve got any thoughts on the map so far, let me know!