The Stygian City: Bottom of the Pit

So, here we are at the bottom. Remember that circle-and-star symbol I’ve been drawing on the floors throughout this dungeon? Yeah. This is what that’s about.

So, the Stygian City is finished, but it’s not. For patrons, I’ll be drawing a few alternate bottom levels, which will include an underwater aboleth lair, a vault for some kind of artifact or entity, and a gateway to the underdark (or Hell or wherever). I’m also going to draw one where the bottom is just full of trash and debris, because I think that’d be pretty funny. What did you expect to find down there? A giant monster?

In my last post, I talked about an idea for the next megaproject. Just to let you know, the response was overwhelmingly positive, so that will be happening. I want to finish up the alternate levels of the Stygian City first, so it’ll probably be a couple months before I get started, but I’ll get to it before long.

I’m also going to make a Stygian City Codex for patrons, a brief overview of each level for non-patrons and there are a few more things I want to add to the DM notes.

But before all that, I’ll be drawing the next Cartographic Congress map, the Palace of Thorns. This is the palace of a dark fae lord, which is covered in vines and thorny overgrowth. I don’t know how I’m going to draw this place just yet, but I’ll figure it out.

Anyway, I hope you like the way I finished out the Stygian City! Let me know what you think.

Dhelduhr – The Entrance

Here’s the entrance to yesterday’s map of the village of Dhelduhr. For patrons, there’s also an underdark version of the village. It isn’t wildly different from the original, but it’ll spare you from having to make excuses for the plants.

With that finished, I’m ready to get started on the last three levels of the Stygian City. These will include a prison, a temple with a jumping-off point and, at the bottom, Ghanya. If you’re not that into my Ghanya lore, I’ll be drawing four alternate bottom levels for patrons, so you can tell a different story here if you like.

Before that’s done, I’m also going to make a post about my idea for the next megaproject I have in mind. I know I said that a few weeks ago, but I made a note to remind myself and I’m actually going to do it this time.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think of Dhelduhr!

The Village of Dhelduhr

Dhelduhr is a dwarven village carved into the cliffsides of a canyon. This is most of it, but I still need to draw the entrance. In the center-right of the map, there are some stairs up to the clifftop, where there’ll be a small building with some stables.

I also want to make an underdark version of the map for patrons. This place would fit pretty well in that setting, but I need to get rid of the plants and the colors are a little bright. I’ll have all that done in a day or two, then I’ll get to work on the last three levels of the Stygian City.

Okay, see you tomorrow!

The Stygian City 16, 17 & 18: The Myconid Village

The next batch of floors in the Stygian City includes a myconid village on the 16th level, an ancient oracle on the 17th and a center for magical research on the 18th. The next three floors will be the last and will include the thing that lies at the bottom of the pit: Ghanya. I’m also going to draw three or four alternate bottom levels for patrons, but that’s it for the canonical Stygian City.

To a large extent, I’ve been writing the lore of this place around building players up for a horrifying revelation when they reach the bottom and discover that people dug this giant hole and built a city around it so they could feed themselves to a monster. So I’ve really been looking forward to drawing the freakish monstrosity at the bottom of the pit and I’ll be doing that before long.

First, though, I’ll be drawing a map of a village carved into the sides of a river canyon with windows and balconies dotting the rock faces and rope bridges strung between the sides. It looks cool in my head, which usually means it’ll make a good map.

Anyway, if you’ve got any questions or thoughts about the map, let me know.

The Stygian City 13, 14 & 15: The Kuo-Toa Colony

On the 13th level, the pit intersects with a small, underground river, which eventually leads to the underdark. So, after the city became abandoned, it was only a matter of time before the kuo-toa found the place and moved in. Which they did.

The kuo-toa Archpriest who rules the colony wants to expand his territory, but unfortunately, he’s stuck between an ancient night hag above and a circle of myconids below. He’s scared of the night hag and he should be. She’s got half a dozen Pit Fiends on speed dial. But he feels like he’s got a chance against the myconids, so he’s planning an attack across the broken bridge over the 15th level that serves as the border between their domains.

The 16th level– the center of the myconid colony– will look a lot like the mold-covered half of the 15th. A huge fungal garden growing around a set of ancient fountains. After that, things are going to start getting weird as we get closer to Ghanya. The myconids are the last friendly folks for the party to encounter in the pit.

There are only six more levels to draw before we reach the bottom and I think this should be done before the end of the year. I’ve got a few ideas for the next megaproject and the one after that and I’ll talk about those before too long to see what everyone thinks.

But next up, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, a Bronze Age Mycenaean citadel. Here’s one example, although I don’t know if I’ll be drawing a map inspired by that one specifically. Anyway, Greek stuff! Everybody loves Greek stuff.

Well, I’m gonna browse some pictures of Mycenaean palaces. Hope you like how the Stygian City is coming. Let me know what you think!

The Stygian City 10, 11 & 12: The Hag’s Domain

Here’s the non-annotated version of the map.

The next three levels of the Stygian City are finally finished and, as you can see, there’s a lot going on. I’m giving out the annotated version to everyone and, for patrons, there are in-depth explanations of everything in the DM notes. I wrote 4 pages of notes on these three floors alone, including some encounters and suggestions for monsters to populate the place with. If nothing else, read the part about the flesh golems in the 12th level. If I need to see a psychiatrist for coming up with something like that, let me know.

The next few levels of the map will be a kuo-toa settlement with an underground river running through it. After that, there’ll be a myconid colony, with whom the kuo-toa are in a state of… not friends. I’d say this project is about halfway done at this point, maybe a little more. Feels like pretty good progress to me.

Next, I’ll be drawing a draconic hatchery, where dragons and wyverns are raised, trained and ridden. Riding dragons is often regarded as some highly 1990s D&D, but let’s be honest: it still goes hard. And I feel like it’s something that everyone thinks all experienced players have done at some point, but hardly anyone has. So, you know, something to think about.

Anyway, if you’ve got any thoughts or questions about the map or anything else, by all means let me know.

The Stygian City: Goblin Village, Spiders’ Nest and Temple

The 7th level of the pit is home to a clan of goblins, who get by on a healthy diet of giant bats, giant spiders and mushrooms (which are basically a vegetable). Below that, the 8th level is overrun with spiders and in dire need of a treatment that only Dr. Flamethrower can provide.

Then there’s the 9th level. Most of this floor is a giant temple to Ghanya (the deity of the people who built the pit). But there’s a smaller group of rooms that are disconnected from the rest. This was once a tomb, but is now the residence of a vampire named Khrani, who sleeps here during the day, then flies out with the bats at night. Compared to the rest of the pit, her rooms are pretty nice. Just because you live in a literal hole in the ground doesn’t mean you can’t live in a nice hole in the ground.

For patrons, I’ve updated the DM notes quite a bit. There are new entries for these three levels as well as a new section with suggested creatures to populate each level with. When this is finished, the DM notes are going to be… not quite a campaign, but as close as I’ve come to writing one for any of my maps. Have a look and let me know what you think so far.

Next, I’ll be drawing the Black Citadel. This is going to be a ziggurat that serves as the lair of an evil organization. Imagine the party is finally heading out to confront the National Association of Sinister Wizards and, after an arduous journey, they finally arrive and they see this. No need to double-check the address, that’s definitely the place. Even the word ‘ziggurat’ sounds sinister. Ziggurat.

Anyway, I’m gonna get started on that. Once it’s done, I’ll be getting back to the pit. Speaking of which, tell me what you think so far!

Drow Academy of War, aka “Black Metal West Point”

This is a place where drow men– the ones who weren’t smart enough for magic school– go to learn how to bludgeon each other to death with assorted metal objects. The lower level of the map is an obstacle course and I suspect that some people might not be into that, but I think it’s a very drow thing and I want to try to sell you on it.

Here’s how I imagine it. The students don’t run this course solo. They’re running it alongside other students and it’s a race to the end. And the person who comes last is punished. That’s important because one of the main points of the course is to foster ruthlessness in the students. The real danger here isn’t the obstacles in their way, it’s the other drow who are trying to impede them. “Be ruthless” and “Watch your back” are important lessons to learn in drow society and I can see them building something like this to teach those things. I’m not sure I’d like this idea for anyone else, but I think it works really well for the drow.

Next, I’m going back to Das Pit. I’ll be drawing the next few levels of the city, which are going to get a lot more interesting. The upper levels were dug early, when the residents lived around, rather than in, the pit. But now we’ll be getting into the city itself, which is much more elaborate. The next few floors will have a goblin settlement and a colony of giant spiders (which are the main thing the goblins eat). Anyway, I’m looking forward to drawing it and, as soon as I stop typing, I can, so

The Stygian City: Caves and Catacombs

The next three levels of the Stygian City are finished! As promised, I updated the previous levels with the lower level windows. I also renamed all the previous levels. I’d originally named the first three floors 0, 1 and 2, but I realized that it would take less time to change them to 1, 2 and 3 than it would to answer questions about that for the next several years.

For patrons, I updated the DM notes with an overview of the history of the pit and how it came to be. I made a copy of this story for non-patrons as well, which you can find above. I’m very curious to know what everyone thinks about it. In any case, this whole place is designed to be very flexible, so if you’ve got a better idea of what to do with it, you can tell your story instead.

Next up is a drow academy of war, where drow males can go to become useful for something other than reproduction or being beaten for the entertainment of others. There’ll be an arena, training areas, maybe even a classroom where students come to study Drow Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. After that, I’ll probably draw another few levels of the pit.

Well, I hope you like how it’s coming so far! Check out the DM notes and let me know what you think of the story. And if you’re not a patron, check this post tomorrow and I’ll have a copy for you too.

The Stygian City: Into the Pit

Our gigantic dungeon starts here, in a small village called Ekersfield. The villagers live in and around the top of the pit, mining iron ore from the level below. This is the nice part of the pit. The welcome center, if you will. Past this point, most of the pit’s inhabitants get a lot less friendly.

So, there’s an unusual problem with this project and its kind of unavoidable. See, the map above is finished… but it’s not. If you look at the uppermost level, you can see the windows in the sides of the lower levels of the pit. But on the bottom level, there aren’t any. That’s because I haven’t drawn the maps below this yet and I don’t know where they’ll be. So I’m going to have to update these maps after I draw the next ones. Which will also have to be updated later. And so on. A bit of a pain, but no big deal.

For patrons, I’m also making modular versions of the maps. These are individual floors which can be rearranged as you like. Here’s how they work: first, the lower level windows won’t be shown on the sides of the pit. And second, all the stairs descend counter-clockwise. The stairs won’t always be in the same place, but they’ll always move in the same direction and, if you want, you can rotate the map to get them close to each other. With only three floors, that isn’t super relevant just yet, but there will be a day when there are 20+ floors and it will be then.

Thus begins another very large project. They always seem too big to ever get done, but they always do. Brazenthrone took two years to draw, but it got finished. The Black Loch took a year and a half, but it got done too. I think this will take less than a year, but we’ll see. In any case, it’ll be done one day and, hopefully, you’ll like it. But for now, how’s it looking? Off to a good start?