Dyson's Mapvember 2016

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Another one scanned, cleaned up, and released:



When the curse of the Naga Reborn was revealed to be creeping through the regions around the Black Mire, sages and dwarves alike brought out the archives of the Ghost King - the warrior-lord who sacrificed even his name in order to end the curse last time.

The problem in replicating his feat, however, is that his ancient palace is lost, his bloodline destroyed, and his tomb lay ever empty.

But Helbret, apprentice to the local sage, is sure that he's figured out where the Ghost King originally found the means to end the curse. Further, he believes that the Ghost King had only figured out part of the process which is why the cost he bore was so great. But who would believe Helbret, a mere apprentice? So he took the map and his ideas to his friends who had gone on to more interesting and less sagely pursuits - the party.

According to Helbret, the Vault of the Ghost King was recently being used by a clan of dwarven brewers to store their kegs. Not knowing how to activate the descending chamber, they sealed off the door to the stairs into the deeper areas and have happily piled the rest of the space up with now leaking barrels of stale brew. So Helbret figures the more charming of the party can convince the dwarves to let them hang out in their storage space for a bit, and he can activate the descending room to explore the lower chambers where he believes the ritual the Ghost King used is inscribed into the walls themselves.

The Vault of the Ghost King was originally drawn as part of the Mapvember challenge. The theme for the day was "Elevator" and I was reminded of the dungeons of old when elevator rooms were a fairly common "strange trap" to insert into a dungeon. The rooms would rise and descend on their own schedules, dropping characters into deeper areas than they intended to travel to and then refusing to rise again for hours or even days.

You can download the high resolution map of the Vault of the Ghost King for personal or commercial use from the blog post at http://wp.me/psUVp-2r4

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And another Mapvember map gets touched up, scanned and posted!



The old “Goblin Cut Gold Mine” is up in the hills, verging on what would traditionally be dwarf territory. But the lack of dwarven interest was appealing to the local lunatic when he found a small gold vein when hunting for some odd minerals required by the local apothecary.

These days the vein is getting harder to trace and the mine has grown from an open pit mine to a three different levels and lines where the vein has been worked since it was found.

The three levels of the mine are the Goblin Line (the original dig after switching from open pit mining) which extends from the original shaft to the new shaft and beyond. Above the Goblin Line is the Goblin Gallery, and below it is the Deep Line (which has a small room off to the side to store goods and to eat and drink when miners don’t have someone to winch them up for a break).

There are of course multiple stories about the origin of the name of the mine – the main one being that a number of defenses had to be staged at the mine by the two to five miners who work here against goblin incursions. These stories are told and retold and exaggerated beyond belief by the miners when they return to town to brag of their exploits and spend their gold.

Sadly, the true origin was that the local lunatic who first found the gold vein originally claimed that the gold nugget he pried from the earth here was actually cut from the nether regions of a strange “golden goblin” that he had run down and captured.

Any number of adventures could be staged at this location – such as recovering missing persons, exploring the now-decrepit shafts and lines for a lost MacGuffin, or even an actual invasion by the titular goblins who then chase the remaining miner down the hills and into town.

You can download the Goblin Cut Gold Mine map for your personal or commercial use from the blog post at http://wp.me/psUVp-2r7