Built into a squat hexagonal stone “tower”, the Bast’Inn (pronounced pretty much as “Bastion”) is a popular drinking establishment, especially during nice weather as it sports a second-story patio with six additional tables.
While owned by the Stonefinger dwarven clan, the Bast’Inn isn’t popular with any o...
2020-02-14 02:25:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Somewhere beneath the temple of the Shinning Lord are the catacombs of the last of the line of King Adrih. With the sacking of the temple, there has been no better time for treasure hunters to find and loot the old tomb.
The catacombs themselves are partially collapsed and sections have an inch or so of stagnant water ...
2020-02-10 20:09:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Built of pale stone in the twilight of the Humut Crater, the Pillar of the Igesej Loremaster was originally built by an arcanist studying the object that formed the deep angled crater – believing it to be a god or portion thereof.
Today the small tower is home to the Igesej Loremaster, a strange fellyfish-like sage wh...
2020-02-06 19:38:22 +0000 UTC View Post
I knew I was forgetting something when I posted the Release the Kraken poll this month!
THE BACKSTAGE PASS!
Here's the 9 maps that I'm planning to release this month on the blog. It includes two more decks of the redraw o...
2020-02-05 18:55:35 +0000 UTC View Post
When travelling through the badlands to the City of Copper Bowls, a distant tower can be seen looking down over the caravan road. While no caravan traffic leads from the road to the old tower, with a bit of looking a foot path can be found that sees infrequent use.
Kabrel’s Tower sits quietly on a stone outcrop lookin...
2020-02-03 21:46:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Wait, what is this?
The Kraken Poll being released at the beginning of the month? Have strange pod people abducted Dyson Logos and finally replaced him with a fully armed and operational mapping station? Or has he finally caugh...
2020-02-01 20:56:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Originally drawn in the summer of 2018, The City of the Frogs is being re-released today thanks to you under the Release the Kraken thingamabob!
Some cities just stink. Built over drained swampland and mostly relying on surface sewers, Uogralas is unfortunately one of the smellier urban centres of the land.
Uogral...
2020-02-01 20:20:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and re-release a few under the free commercial use license. The first of these for this year goes way back to 2011 and was drawn in a small moleskine notebook... It is also one of the first city maps to be released on the blog. For this re-release, I’ve tuned up the scan a ...
2020-01-31 23:37:10 +0000 UTC View Post
In these remakes of the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks maps, Deck II (and later Deck V) are the decks where my style shines through a bit. These decks (or ‘tween decks) have large inaccessible areas of machinery, hull, structural supports, power storage, and all the infrastructure that keeps the other decks operational. 2020-01-29 20:59:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Few modules have dug their way into my brain the way Expedition to the Barrier Peaks has. When I pulled the module out to adapt it as the capstone adventure for my first D&D5e campaign, I realized that I still remembered which numbered encounters were which, the sequence of the colour coded key cards and what they signify...
2020-01-27 20:05:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Late as usual, here's the poll to vote on which maps will be released under our free commercial use license this month!
2020-01-26 05:01:52 +0000 UTC View Post
This walled temple space can serve many purposes or deities. I drew it based on three concepts primarily – the love of asymmetry in Tsolyani temples and general construction in the Tekumel setting, the columns of Greek & Roman designs, and the temples on the planet Athenas in the Borderlands 3 game.
2020-01-24 22:18:08 +0000 UTC
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This three-tiered tomb complex contains a number of reliquaries, crypts, and memorials of Jeberiath’s Silver Army – warriors embedded permanently into their silver-wrought armour to fight against the Sarahdu menace.
While the war was won, Jeberiath’s Silver Army bore the brunt of the defense and less than a handfu...
2020-01-22 20:13:29 +0000 UTC View Post
In a series of posts about running D&D games in public, Frank Mentzer (of BECMI D&D fame, and with a lot of other D&D credits to his name) discussed the importance of having a “generic” dungeon ready to run and shared the one he has used 30+ times to date.
And he was cool with me redrawing the dungeon. T...
2020-01-20 22:32:42 +0000 UTC View Post
The City of a Thousand Eyes
The City of Towers
We return to the towers and skybridges of Sharn again this month with another set of towers and plazas designed to work with the map I drew of the bridge intersection in “Eberron – Rising from the Last War” and last month’s Skybridge Nexus map.
Today’s...
2020-01-18 21:12:57 +0000 UTC View Post
As the first adventure of the new campaign, we have chosen to rally behind the cleric in their search for artifacts and relics of Saint Sadon the Orange – a champion of Irmos the Victor. The small village of Iyesgarten provides little direct information (it is said that their church once held Sadon’s pauldrons – but tha...
2020-01-16 21:00:30 +0000 UTC View Post
For the new campaign of the new year, we started with a map of the small village of Iyesgarten, the last piece of quiet civilization in the Satrapy, and then tightened the focus down to the Iyesgarten Inn – because what adventuring group doesn’t spend at least some time at the local inn in search of adventure?
Now w...
2020-01-13 21:36:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey, there's already two of these posted, but here's the full set of 10 maps being released this month.
That's right, amazing patrons, I'm finally almost fully caught up!
The main attraction of tiny town of Iyesgarten is the Iyesgarten Inn. Once a small inn and adjoining blacksmith now combined into a single inn about a decade ago. The side that used to be the smithy (on the right) still smells like iron, woodsmoke, and the donkeys that worked the bellows.
Owned and operated by Ramona &a...
2020-01-09 22:13:26 +0000 UTC View Post
A new year is here and it is time for a new campaign! And a classic trope of the fantasy campaign is to start in or near a small village – big enough that it can provide some equipment, rumours, NPCs to interact with, and even a few mysteries – and yet small and distant enough that it acts as a final point of civilization...
2020-01-06 21:07:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Once a defensive border fortress looking over lush fields, the whispering outpost guards nothing but sand and scrub now - far from any borders.
Not destroyed by siege or strife, the Whispering Outpost has been left to collapse quietly as the lands around were stripped of life by the Efreet Aznakath Flamehenge. As the la...
2019-12-31 19:17:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and you vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. I took the top three this month, bringing the total number of maps released under this license in 2019 to 70.
When activated through specific rituals “when the stars are ...
2019-12-29 18:32:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Half buried in dirt, the wreck of the UPFS Skerples looks like some sort of massive bone or ceramic growth at first glance. The super-ceramic hull of the ship is almost completely unaffected by the crash landing here – any damage to the outer structure was caused by much higher-energy arcane systems mounted on some other ve...
2019-12-26 21:28:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and the many patrons over on Patreons vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. Our second map this month is was drawn way back in 2014.
I like towers, I particularly like them when the entrance isn’t completely obvious....
2019-12-26 05:12:40 +0000 UTC View Post
A moderate sized manor house built of thick and heavy stone, the most noticeable thing about Woodrest Manor is the four-story tower on the northeast side. Built a century or two ago, it is the handiwork of a young Bruldrugg Solidshield and his clanmates (Bruldrugg is now the elder of his family, and the Craftmaster of the Mou...
2019-12-23 17:41:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and the many patrons over on Patreons vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. Our first map this month is a recent creation drawn in August.
2019-12-21 19:25:18 +0000 UTC
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In the airy heights of the upper levels of Sharn are places where the towers thin out and the connections between them are almost artistic instead of utilitarian. Sweeping bridges connect fine spires and unlike the lower levels of the city, few buildings have been added to these bridges – leaving them open and clean-looking...
2019-12-19 21:19:33 +0000 UTC View Post
It is time to select the maps that will be the last ones re-released under the free commercial use license this year!
So head on over to the google form, choose your favourite, and we'll probably bring three of them up instead ...
2019-12-18 19:58:32 +0000 UTC View Post
The foul vampiric beast, now awakened after untold years of slumber, seeks again the crown of Krovzonos.
But the kingdom was destroyed from within and without in order to rid the world of the vampire nobles of the land. If the beast seeks the crown, it will most certainly be found in the ruins of the old palace, where o...
2019-12-16 19:44:20 +0000 UTC View Post
The ruins of the Absent City sit over a significant labyrinth of understructures – a mix of the lower levels of the ruined structures and various bits of supporting infrastructure.
Parts of these understructures are very well maintained and swept clean of vermin and debris by the Absent Scions – wispy amorphous crea...
2019-12-14 21:04:14 +0000 UTC View Post
