Ye Olde Wizard’s Observatory – the traditional place where you are likely to find a stargazing seer. The tower comes equipped with the mandatory ground-floor orrery that makes it dangerous to stand around that room for too long unless you want to get smacked in the head by a flaming representation of the elemental plane o...
2022-04-09 22:56:37 +0000 UTC View Post
A small dwarven watch in the Barrow Mountains, Unrol Kaz’ad used to house a small team of dwarven rangers who would patrol the traditional thirteen-and-a-half mile radius around the watch looking for signs of goblins, giants, and trolls in the region. With the encroachment of human pioneers into the region and the slow decl...
2022-04-07 21:39:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the maps coming out this month on the Dodecahedron. Once again this is entirely thanks to your support. You make this happen and I am incredibly grateful.
I'll admit I'm a bit anxious about releasing two...
2022-04-07 04:51:40 +0000 UTC View Post
These lands were not always swamps and jungles. The rivers were re-routed, the lands flooded, the forests allowed to become dense jungle all during the falling days of the great civilization that was here before.
In the jungles and swamps you can find many remnants of what is now called the Bullywug Empire (not because ...
2022-04-05 00:49:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Every month we go through our back catalogue of maps and YOU vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. In March all the choices were curated from maps of ruins found on the blog. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that this map was the top choice, ...
2022-04-03 02:08:17 +0000 UTC View Post
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/dysons-book-of-swords#
We explored the area around and on top of the Temple of Kuvartma with Tuesday’s map release – so today we head inside the temple and then to the understructures – including the passage to the inside of one of the pillars jutting out of the water. Again the awakened apes maintain the surface level of the temple as they d...
2022-03-31 23:04:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Of the ruins explored this month on the blog, the Temple of Kuvartma and the surrounding shrines to the various demon apes in his entourage are in the best repair. A small tribe of awakened apes does their best to maintain the structures along the shore here, primarily focusing on the smaller shrines of the demon-apes and gen...
2022-03-28 23:59:15 +0000 UTC View Post
The hilltop Athenaeum of Vicon was abandoned and left to collapse when her worship fell out of fashion with the change in empires in old Zorisz. The goddess of visions, Vicon’s priesthood used this structure and the dry climate it was built in to store scrolls and codices recording the various visions and dreams attributed ...
2022-03-26 23:33:31 +0000 UTC View Post
The local peoples worshipped the twin gods of Vullil & Raizil, bringers of rain and sun respectively. But with the arrival of the cult of the great sky god, the cults of Vullil & Raizil fell into disfavor and decline. Here a major temple to the twin gods still stands with heavy stone walls and much of the stone roof s...
2022-03-24 22:45:34 +0000 UTC View Post
The stream running under these ruins was once much more formidable – blocking easy traffic for miles up and downriver. And thus these bridges were built and now abandoned. The all-stone construction of the northern bridge has fared much better than the southern span which was made of wood laid across a series of stone suppo...
2022-03-22 00:37:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Along the shores of the Ironflow are a number of dwarven ruins – outposts and other structures built by the dwarves of Kuln. Some of these have been absorbed by the Black Mire, but most sit quiet and abandoned since the fall of the dwarven citadel – slowly falling to the elements and the strange creatures that escape from...
2022-03-17 22:43:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Fort Redshield was badly damaged by a series of great magical earthquakes and abandoned soon thereafter. But it didn’t remain abandoned for long. The ruins have been home to various bandits and exiles over the years and have gradually fallen into worse and worse repair under the rough treatment of these groups and those who...
2022-03-14 23:20:31 +0000 UTC View Post
The crumbling spire of an old tower marks the ruins where Brollmoreth, Demon of Shallow Graves and Patron of Silent Children was once worshipped. It is said that the demon physically tore itself out of the stone here after a drop of Demogorgon’s ichorous blood was flung to the ground in an ancient battle.
In modern ti...
2022-03-13 00:05:09 +0000 UTC View Post
The ancient Kale city of Steldin Dorg was reduced to naught but rubble in an assault that opened the last round of hostilities between the Kale and the People and set the stage for the final collapse of the already weakened Kale empire. Transplanar energies brought to bear here were barely contained and the magically-contamin...
2022-03-10 22:11:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Shagunat Keep was built on the ruins of a much older elven structure and now that the keep itself has fallen, the ruins present an interesting mix of elven and human stonework, especially underground. The stairs up the hill to the ruins are definitely elven, whereas the heavy stonework of the keep proper is mostly human.
<... 2022-03-07 19:04:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and vote on which two should be re-released under the free use license. Today we are bringing back one of my companions to my many dungeon geomorphs – the Geomorphic Halls.
Ever since I started drawing Geomorphs, I’ve had the intention of making a dungeon t...
2022-03-05 17:00:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Forget the Great Modron March...
The Kraken March sounds like a song or something...
ANYWAYS, now that I'm picturing a Kraken "marching" through town playing the trombone, a marching drum, and a xylophone (oh! and ...
2022-03-05 02:45:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's a map from 2019 that we're re-releasing today.
Sprawling over the area where the Greenbeck river joins the Vhec is the trading centre of Jalovhec. A “point of light” in an area of dark forests, wastelands, and inhospitable low mountain ranges, Jalovhec is walled and well defended against predation by the loca...
2022-03-03 23:42:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's this month's backstage pass collection.
This month's maps are all ruins. I'm also going to go through the archives so our selection for the Kraken releases are also ruins this month.
2022-03-03 02:46:39 +0000 UTC View Post
These cavern geomorphs are designed to mesh with the other few hundred geomorphs I’ve posted to the blog over the years, the many varieties of DungeonMorphs published by Inkwell Ideas, and of course the thousand or so more that are on DavesMapper.
The majority of the geomorphs in this set have water features – small...
2022-02-28 23:12:01 +0000 UTC View Post
This stepped pyramid has no ground-level access, and in the ages since it was built no one has maintained the wooden stairs that used to lead to the entrances into the top tier. The stairs have rotted or burned away, leaving a sheer 15 foot climb from tier to tier. The doors at the top are stone with primitive rope locks insi...
2022-02-26 23:44:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Arcane waters have created a sinkhole above this cavern – one that has nearly consumed the ruins of an old homestead beside it. The old well at the homestead goes down to the arcane waters directly, but it is probably safer / wiser to head down using the stone stairs that seem to have formed of their own accord around the s...
2022-02-26 00:24:03 +0000 UTC View Post
This set of six geomorphs is all centred around crypts and tombs and associated structures (like memorials, preparation chambers, mausoleums, etc) Each geomorph (of which there are six here, for those new to geomorphs) can be connected to each other geomorph either in a grid format as they are laid out, or offset where you mo...
2022-02-23 23:13:43 +0000 UTC View Post
These are atypically sized geomorphs. The three on top are double geomorphs – 20 squares tall by 10 wide; while the bottom geomorph is a triple – 30 squares wide by 10 tall. This allows for larger chambers and more intricate designs than the average geomorph, while also maintaining full compatibility with the usual 10 x 1...
2022-02-21 00:26:03 +0000 UTC View Post
These cavern geomorphs are designed to mesh with the other few hundred geomorphs I’ve posted to the blog over the years, the many varieties of DungeonMorphs published by Inkwell Ideas, and of course the thousand or so more that are on DavesMapper.
We have little lakes, crevasses, multi-tiered caves and caverns, twisti...
2022-02-17 23:54:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Built on the highest hill to be found near the Red Ford across Shelfbel Brook, Redford Citadel is still a good half-mile from its namesake ford. The Citadel was built not so much to defend the ford as to track who and what is using the ford and to provide a safe stopping place for those travelling this deep wilderness.
...
2022-02-14 21:09:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Two days travel down the coastline of Dehnuk from the capital is Nuzur Hollow – a small cave that was once under the waterline before the cataclysm that came with the collapse of the ancient Zorisz Empire. The cave still shows the signs of having been underwater for millennia with chunks of dead coral on the walls and the r...
2022-02-12 21:12:47 +0000 UTC View Post
A freebie (not patron-supported post) to help track the state of Darklingtown.
I’ve been posting district maps of Darklingtown Districts for four months now (a total of nine district maps so far) and since March is being dedicated entirely to maps of ruins (and in some cases what’s under ruins), I figured this would...
2022-02-10 02:16:31 +0000 UTC View Post
The Darkling River works its way through the underdark beneath the grey hills to depths unknown. Darklingtown is a trading community built into a series of claustrophobically low-ceilinged caverns on the banks of the Darkling and a number of its tributaries. Darklingtown (which in turn will be made of 9+ maps) is the seve...
2022-02-09 00:14:52 +0000 UTC View Post
