Dyson's Inktober & Mapvember

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#Inktober2017 - Map 20 - "Deep"

Another piece for the "Heart of Darkling" series of maps I've been posting to the blog for a few months, this small fortress is one most people traveling down the undergroun Darkling river will avoid. While several of the stops so far have included methods of getting to the surface, this fortress instead links up to the underdark proper.

The drow who guard this fortress call it "The Weeping Outpost" and while assignments here are important (as it guards a "back entrance" into the heart of their deeper territories, most dark elves have no love for the damp and cold place - too close to the surface to be comfortable and too far from the strange comforts they enjoy in the depths.

[arsheesh]

Inspiring work, as always Dyson.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Dyson Logos]

Falling WAAAAAY behind here:

#Inktober2017 - Map 21 - "Fury of the Emerald Hawk"

I often get asked to draw non-ruined versions of ruins that I have drawn over the years. So instead, here's a ruined version of a building I drew during #Mapvember last year.

Someone summoned something furious and powerful within the "secret" headquarters of the Emerald Hawk Society. The building is now scorched ruins, the roof blown off the secret library, the grand hall torn open, and the front entrance reduced to rubble.

[ThomasR]

From my point of view, you're six days ahead

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Day 22 - "Trail"

A very rough and quick map of Vigilance Trail as it comes down from Raven's Pass in the Eastern Diamond Range. Not many use Raven's Pass anymore - the major towns on each side of the pass have mostly died out and most trade now runs south of here to take advantage of routes through Yoon-Suin and the City of Copper Bowls.

Vigilance Trail still sees a few travelers every month - not even enough for banditry to be successful along the route.

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Day 23 - "Juicy"

We never did figure out exactly who built "the juicer". A clever contraption using the water pressure of the underground river next to it, we did discover that the main chamber of the juicer could handle 16 myconids easily, and if you had someone to really pack them in it would probably "juice" two to three dozen at a time.

Honestly, with how foul Myconid Juice tastes, I'm sure it was used for something else when it was built. One of the local pech claims it was used by illithids to juice large quantities of brains - but it boggles the imagination that anyone would have that much grey matter at a time to juice; and Jortex points out that flayers would have used vertical shafts to travel up and down instead of the twisting staircases of the juicer.

But, there's a market for Myconid Juice... supposedly it is important both in curing olive fungus infections as well as for making some more bizarre hallucinogens. So here we are, running myconid slave pens and "the juicer"...

[Blaidd Drwg]

Dude, everyone knows you need to sauté the Myconids with some onions first

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Map 24 - "Blind"

The tower of the blind seer.

Seriously, 50% of the time when I sit down to draw a map and don't know what I'm going to draw, my pens yell "TOWER!!!" at me, and next thing we know, there's another tower map to go on the blog.

At this point, I think I have enough towers to run a campaign of JUST tower-crawling.

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#Inktober2017 - Map 25 - "Ship"

Some people do love the sea. But instead of being "buried at sea" or even having a tomb built big enough to hold a boat within it, Lord Seruviar Eld XVII had his tomb made to be a replica of the interior of a ship, done in stone instead of short-lived wood.

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#Inktober2017 - Map 26 - "Squeak"

This is the first time I've redrawn another map as part of this Inktober run. The cue of "Squeak" reminded me of the squeaky floorboards in the porch around the Master's home in Dwellers of the Forbidden City. I can't even remember if the nightingale floors of the porch are part of the module or something I added to it ages ago... but it is always the first thing I think of when nightingale floors are brought up.

I believe the original version of this map was drawn by Steve Sullivan as map "H" in the 1981 D&D adventure.