Yllarel Mountain cavern crawl

[aeshnidae]

Working on a campaign during which the PCs will need to go through the Yllarel Mountains, starting in a silver mine on the southern slope, near Brynehall, and eventually exiting in faerie territory on the northern slope. Basically it's one giant dungeon that is a small piece of a larger campaign. There's a lot of elevation gain and loss, so the trip through the mountain will take a while. In places, our fighters will have to remove armor to squeeze through. I've been meaning to get this on paper for a couple of months, and was inspired by Randy M's dungeon delve and my cousin's Instastories from Luray Caverns.

I need to change up some of the cave-ins and make some other adjustments. I think I'm going to ignore scale (in terms of distance) because it's hard to measure that inside a mountain anyway. The Rocky Mountains, for example, range in width from 70 miles to 300 miles. I basically just need this cavern to take up a full gaming session, which won't be an issue.



Same thing but with grey to make the tunnels and caves stand out more. I'm not sure if I'll use the grey version in the actual game.



Here's a close-up of the faerie cave, where the PCs will have to battle an evil faerie to escape the room. Even then, they're still not quite out of danger because the Lady the Lake awaits if they choose the wrong tunnel after getting out of the faerie cave.



Question: If you were the DM/GM, how would you best use this map as the PCs make their way through the caves? I was going to use trace paper but I don't think I can trace quickly enough and also capture all of the details.

As always, feedback is both welcome and highly appreciated!

[gtwucla]

No criticisms or much helpful feedback just wanted to pop in and say it looks great. Reminds me a bit of Ocarina of Time and the world map. The maps are evocative enough for me, so I would use it as inspiration as much as I would use it as a visual aid and to keep my bearings as the adventurers moved through it.

[aeshnidae]

No criticisms or much helpful feedback just wanted to pop in and say it looks great. Reminds me a bit of Ocarina of Time and the world map. The maps are evocative enough for me, so I would use it as inspiration as much as I would use it as a visual aid and to keep my bearings as the adventurers moved through it.

Thank you! Yes, I'll use this as inspiration as well as a visual aid. It's funny, I only played the first two Legend of Zelda games and I've never played Final Fantasy, but my wife is a big fan of both and says my maps reminder her of the world maps in those games. Must mean I'm doing something right.

[aeshnidae]

Finally got back to this one, as it was needed for a game.

[Bogie]

That's very cool.

[acrosome]

Yeah, that's pretty. The spiral staircase doesn't look quite right- that's the worst thing I can say about it.

[aeshnidae]

Thanks, guys! And yeah, spiral staircase is definitely not quite right. I fiddled with it for a while and then figured it was close enough. ;-)