After a few requests and then a discussion about format, I hunted through my stuff to see if I could find any of the business card sized maps I had done a few years ago. I had taken traditional laser printer business card stock and started drawing dungeons on them, each with a single connection in the centre of each face of the card.

I drew up about a score of them and handed them out at various events and mailed a few off. Each was unique and I hoped people would get together and assemble them into small dungeons.

I also never scanned them.

So, this time around I decided to make another series of these business card geomorphs (business card-ography?)

Each card is the right size for a business card, with about a 1/8″ over-run at each exit so that you can use them with business card printers that accept bleed in the card designs (so the drawing will go right to the edges of the cards).

Dungeon Business Cards

For printing, here’s the cards one image at a time – each is 2.25 x 3.75 inches in size (2 x 3.5 + 1/8 inch bleed in each direction)

And, since the intent is for you to be able to make these into business cards, I’m obviously releasing the whole set (and the next set of five that I’m releasing on Tuesday) under the free commercial license so you can do whatever you like with them!

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Nearly 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

As our second month at the “Release the Kraken” level of funding, a vote was taken by the many patrons of the Dodecahedron Patreon Campaign to decide what map from the blog’s extensive back-catalog would be released under the site’s free commercial license this month. Just edging out Axebridge over Blackbay was a true classic map from the history of the blog, The Roots of the World (which was posted almost exactly 5 years ago and drawn a year or two before that).

Since this map was drawn in pencil, I had to take a bit of extra work to get it up to the level that I am comfortable releasing commercial projects at. So instead of just opening up the classic scan of the map, I took the time to clean up and fix up that old scan and thus to give you these new versions of the map to work from.

Roots of the World

The Roots of the World were where the party had to collect a water-based artifact (they got the fire artifact in Ember Crag and then proceeded to get an earth artifact elsewhere). The majority of the structure is flooded knee-deep in water (with the massive central area having much deeper sections), and the central chamber is a massive cavern with regularly spaced stone columns.

The name of the site is not mere allegory however – these columns are indeed the “Roots of the World” and any attack that strikes them makes the whole place shake and rumble (everyone in the dungeon makes a save versus Petrification / Paralysis (or a Dex or Reflex save) or they cannot move for one round  those making the save still treat the dungeon as difficult terrain for the round).

The Roots are home to a lot of Toads (see the racial class I posted way back in 2010), along with some massive toad ogres (using Ogre stats, except they can make a special attack once every six rounds that stuns everyone within 120 feet who fails a save versus paralysis – this is usually a massive bellow, but could also be slamming the ground with their massive clubs or something similar). The southern section (the old fort on the southern plateau) is currently home to a small team of hostile gnomish explorers who got here before the party but who are finding the guardians of the main areas to be too hostile to deal with.

Roots of the World (no grid)

When I ran this, that’s basically all the notes I had, the rest I made up as I went along. So I recommend you do the same. Alternately, you could actually take the time to stock the Roots of the World and I’ll post your version (or link to it if you post it to your own blog).

Parts of this map made a return visit to another campaign I ran a few years later, where a race of giant dwarves were protecting (and destroying) the roots of the earth.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use under the “RELEASE THE KRAKEN” initiative thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Over 400 awesome patrons have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make this map free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $400 mark, we choose a map from the blog’s extensive back catalog to retroactively release under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Nested in the mountains above the Ironflow River is a temple consecrated to a water goddess – a path leads up to the temple from the west, but from the south face you can see not only the two temple structures cut into the face of the mountain, but also a long section of stairs leading between the lower and upper temples.

The Corrupted Water Temple

The temple is essentially divided into three sections – the lower temple, the upper temple and the secret temple.

The lower temple is all that most people who make the climb into the mountains will get to see. Statues of three incarnations of the water god look over a reflecting pool that is constantly fed from the upper chambers before overflowing down into a stream that crosses the mountain path to get here. A second elevated niche contains a smaller statue of another sacred figure of the water god as well as an altar for ceremonies.

Behind the altar is the access to the upper temple. Stairs lead up from here into the open air, past a second pool that is used to consecrate pilgrims making the climb, and finally end at the upper temple area where the waters pool and burbling can be heard from the chamber beyond and above where the waters originate from a magical spring.

Behind the spring chamber are the main chambers of the temple where acolytes spend their days and nights and the senior priest manages the temple affairs.

Linking the upper and lower temples is the secret temple and source of the corruption here. Many years ago someone transported a young aboleth to the secret temple where it has lived in the secret pool since. At one point it was the secret tool of the priesthood and the temple, but as it has slowly grown and outlived the people who trapped it here, it has become the power behind the temple, pulling the strings from (quite literally) behind the scenes. The beast is too large to exit the temple except magically now, and while it controls the residents and priests, its mood is ever fouler as it longs to be anywhere but in this 70′ by 30′ chamber it is trapped within.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Nearly 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The Warden is a master of the wilderness east of Grant’s Town – some would call him a ranger or just a guardian who keeps the humanoids and monstrosities of the wilds from infringing too much on the commerce and lives of more civilized folk.

The Warden’s hold is roughly two days on horseback east of Grant’s Town; dug into the side of an unnamed estuary of the Holden River. Not much of the structure is visible initially to those traveling past – the front  shows a two-tiered stony structure that has been build into the hillside with some defensive arrow slits by the entrance on one side and above it on the other. From the back a small stone structure is embedded in a curve in the hill with a single door in the middle of the wall.

The Warden’s Riverside Hold

Because it is the only structure within a few days ride, the Warden designed the hold with the entrance area specifically big enough that people and animals can seek cover within during bad weather even when the Warden is not around – although he keeps all three doors under very secure locks as they lead both into the defensive structures and into the hold proper. The hold itself is a multi-chambered affair over two levels with a secret room hidden off to the side where the Warden keeps odd treasures and critical supplies.

The room is accessed by a secret door that slides into the floor initially exposing a small niche above the secret room that usually has a few hundred gold pieces and some local maps within it. However, a secret catch inside the niche can be held and the secret door lowered even lower into the floor, exposing the 30″ tall entrance into the secret chamber beyond.

Although this map is lacking in the tiered farmland I would usually include in-game, it is definitely based on some structures I have built while playing Minecraft over the years.

A pair of the foulest harpy sorceresses ever to fly the badlands settled into these caves and excavations about 20 years ago. The rocky mesas and shattered stones of the badlands extend for days in every direction – a mix of natural erosion, heaving land, and the warring of ancient titans creating the plains of shattered rock, gullies, and canyons.

Although not obvious from above or from the entrances to the lair, these caves were also once home to someone who took the time to fix them up and smooth floors out and generally upgrade them from shattered caves and crevasses into a functional lair with multiple areas and access points.

Habret’s Lair (with grid)

Originally, the Harpies left the structure as they found it, with the old bridges rotted out making access very difficult for non-fliers. But foul magics and the years have taken their toll on the beastly sorceresses, and in the last five years they have had the bridges rebuilt to help support foot traffic in and out of the structure – mostly for transporting provisions and prisoners, but also because both feel their age in their wings and one can barely fly except in the most exigent of circumstances.

Most of the areas of the lair are foul with harpy feathers and excrement and both crevasses sport mounds of bones from prior prey at their bottoms. A large flock of vultures circle the shattered stone of the lair, attracted to the foul smells of the inhabitants and their even worse eating habits.

The only sections that are even remotely clean are the two levels in the centre of the lair which are home to the sorceresses proper. The upper level of these two sections is only accessible by stairs and through a small niche window overlooking the crevasse and is generally used to hold “guests” of the twins and for their own foul research and magics when they feel the need to be far from their kin. The lower of these two levels is their home, while the rest of the clamor of harpies and a few hangers-on and slaves live within the various caves.

Habret’s Lair (no grid)

The dead stir.

Investigations at the graveyard and nearby give no reason, but the dead refuse to remain where they belong. Guards have been posted, brave souls have spent the night watching for the foul necromancer that is bringing them back… but to no avail.

The Orcus Pit

If anything, the constant paranoia about the graveyard and the local undead makes things easier for the ancient Orcus cult in the city. They gather nightly now in the basement of the Travenis Estate under the guise of a group of concerned citizens who are trying to figure out what to do about the problems – while not condoning the “horrendous and blasphemous” demands of the citizens who want all the dead to be burned instead of buried.

In the depths of the basement of the estate is the Orcus Pit, a massive shallow pit around which they conduct their rites as they drop dead bodies into the pit demanding the powers of the demon prince of the undead.

Evidently the rituals are working.

Because the dead are stirring.

Cut into the old quarry hills east of Javelin Hill are a pair of stone faces that glower sternly at those who come this way. The faces are of the Sorceress of Javelin Hill who’s name has been forgotten, and her husband Jethrun Dugan who was the reeve of Javelin Hill. Between the faces are a set of doors, now in poor repair, that lead into Dugan’s Hold.

Dugan’s Hold

Built a generation later than the faces were carved, Dugan’s Hold was a small military command base cut out of the stone of the quarry hills with the magics of the earth temple. It was used as a rallying point for dwarven and human military forces during the great war, and was also home to the birth of the Prince of Aleath while that city was under siege.

The new Duchess of Javelin Hill has interest in both the history and military uses of the hold and has intended to go clean it up for a few years now, but is constantly finding herself overwhelmed with the day to day work of both the priesthood that she is a member of as well as the management of the ever-growing small city on the edge of the economically aggressive Satrapy next door.

Perhaps if other adventurers were nearby, she could send one of her dwarven companions along with them to search the place and clear it for her eventual use.

Of course, as I drew this I was TRYING to draw two faces from above… but the result looked less like faces and more… chesty.

The Paladin Vansho may have been an oathbreaker and fallen from the path of his noble benefactor, but none can claim he wasn’t blessed by some entity that gave him the might and motivation to strike down several lords of other worlds in his quest to break free from the bonds of outsiders. After his death, split asunder by a soul-feeding blade wielded by unknown assassins, the Vansho Reliquary was founded on the site where his body refused to be reanimated. Within the reliquary are not only remains of Vansho himself, but other pieces and fetishes left over from some of the potent enemies he had slain prior to his fall.

The Vansho Reliquary

But there are not that many who remember his exploits beyond him turning his back on the church and priesthood who gave him his paladin status in the first place. The Vansho Reliquary has been slowly declining into ruins for who knows how long. Not exactly hidden away, it has merely fallen from anyone’s attention, leaving the caretaker without the funds, the skill, the assistance, and often the will to keep the structure from its eventual collapse.

But of course, there are still relics within the reliquary – pieces and reminders of potent extradimensional beings that some would even call gods, not to mention Vansho’s own relics including his sundered armour, helm, and skull. And of the fell power that killed him? It would probably not be amused to see Vansho’s legacy returned to the world.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Nearly 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Obscenities have taken over where noble men once battled against the oppression of the Kale empire. Something is said to have entered into Emberpike Hold’s water supply, hidden deep within Emberpike Hall, and the once-noble Fellen clan have abandoned their fiefs and the old hold structures outside the hall were put to the torch by parties unknown (although the destruction is commonly attributed to the Fellen clan itself, gone mad due to the contamination from below).

Emberpike Hall

Emberpike Hall was the “foundation” of Emberpike Hold – a set of limestone caves that were expanded and cleaned up to create the existing hall structure, with the backmost caves opening into a massive underground water reservoir. Because the Fellen clan was very security-conscious during the wars, maps of the interior of Emberpike Hall are rarely even close to accurate except for the basic routing from the front doors, through the pillared hall and back to the reservoir chamber – the chambers that spread out from these points are relatively unknown to outsiders except that they exist and can be confusing to explorers.

Emberpike Hall, like the Corrupted Water Temple posted last month, is an attempt to harken back to many of the classic D&D adventure modules which had long halls connecting various areas separated by large amounts of stone.

Anxiety Brain:

“Alright Dyson, it’s been a tough month with the family obligations and then the infection and illness all packed together, so we need to get these maps DONE – it’s almost end of month and the maps for the adventure we’re running in the 5e group can’t be posted this month as planned since they are still on level 1, so let’s knuckle down and draw 8 maps, pronto!”

Map Brain:

“LETS MAKE MULTI-PAGE MAPS!!!! WHEEEEE!!!”

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Nearly 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Twisted things grow under the dome of the copper sun…

Illuminated by the eternal glow of the copper sun embedded in the ceiling of the dome, foul things have taken root. The glade seems healthy and abundant, although the orange lighting makes everything look a little brassy. The trees are healthy, the grass lush, and birds sing – a distinct difference from most underground lairs.

But the only healthy thing under the copper sun is the water that flows through the dome. The large juicy fruit that always seem to be ripe upon the branches of the trees are strongly poisonous and the sap of the trees is a powerful acid. Even the grass, when disturbed, weeps a caustic green fluid that eats through leather and causes gangrene and neuropathy in creatures that come in contact with it.

The birds are mechanisms hatched from the copper sun itself – little copper spies that track the comings and goings of those who visit this serene little hell.

Under the Dome of the Copper Sun

Ubrath of the Copper Sun, the wizard who helped build this structure around the strange artifact that it is named after, can still be found sitting under a tree by the small pond. He has been dead for decades but the copper sun has created a new spine for him that props him up and occasionally has him stand and speak to tell others that he is fine and that they must leave and respect his privacy and studies.

It turns out that the copper sun’s mechanisms are quite effective, and Ubrath’s corpse still wields much of the magical might he had in life.

As a teen I ran a campaign centred around a set of dungeons where each contained one or more octagonal chamber and at least one was a greenhouse of sorts inspired by the Tree of Life room beneath the map of Mars in the Ringworld. Some had many such chambers, another had but a tiny one more reminiscent of the fountain gardens found within the richest estates of Arrakis.

If you like this map and would like to get a collection of my maps in one place, the 2014 Cartographic Review is now available which pairs up perfectly with the 2015 Cartographic Review, each with over 80 pages of maps and commentary curated from the collection posted to the blog.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Nearly 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down in a Google Hangout with a couple of beers and a bottle of blended Irish whiskey (2Gingers – I heartily DO NOT recommend it). I aimed my camera at a blank piece of graph paper and started to draw straight to ink with no pencil work first.

And I drank. Quite a bit.

And yet, the finished map looks pretty decent! At one point I asked the people in the hangout what I should add to the map and next thing I knew I was adding in an underground river. No, a LAVA RIVER.

Personally, now that I’m not drunk anymore, I would probably skip the lava part and just make it a regular river.

Ginger Hall

Ginger Hall is a small warren of subterranean passages and rooms around a significant central chamber (Ginger Hall itself). The central chamber has been used as a church in the past, but later tenants worked hard to remove most of the evidence of the faith that originally had the hall cut to the current dimensions – removing decorations, pews and even cutting the walls back an extra couple of inches to remove religious mosaics and bas-reliefs.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Nearly 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The stony plains of Hesten are pierced here and there with deep near-vertical holes that reach down up to a few hundred feet and are almost all partially filled with stagnant water. Tales of antiquity tell us that these holes were created by drops of acidic blood sprayed from the near-mortal wounding of the godling Askullag when he was struck through the heart by the spear of Wygralak the Slayer. Unfortunately for Wygralak the Slayer, one of these droplets also struck him clear in the centre of his forehead, slaying him and forever tainting and destroying his soul, so foul was the ichor in question.

Wygralak’s Hole

Several of these pits have caves or other underground accesses to them, but the most important for today’s post is the one named after the Slayer himself – Wygralak’s Hole.

A ramp and stairs have been cut into the walls of the hole leading down into the shade beneath the plains of Hestern, past ta cave and a set of doors, and then bridges across the narrow end of the hole to access two more doorways. These caves and doorways lead to interior spaces that are a mix of natural and worked stone, and are said to be home to the head of Wygralak’s Spear (or his actual head, depending on the story).

Of course, the caves are trapped and home to sinister magics, further encouraging the tales of the treasures hidden down here.

We razed the Temple of Three Dragons little over forty years ago. Our villages have been free of the depredations of the fell monks and clerics of the order as well as their three masters or pets since. And now you come to this place seeking the treasures of the order, actually hoping to find evidence that one or more of the Three Dragons may have escaped elsewhere with its treasure.

Your explorations are unwelcome, our villages are closed to you. May the remnants of the order feed your organs to the lizards they would raise into new dragons.

Beneath the Temple of Three Dragons

The Temple of Three Dragons is a weather-beaten ruin, not even worth mapping. It was razed so effectively that the stones of the walls have been spread over acres of land.

But enough digging through the treeless plateau where the temple stood will find one or more stairs leading down beneath the ruins to the deep chambers below.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Over 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Deep growls and grinding noises come from these stairs leading down beneath the old watch tower a few leagues down along the shore of Green Shallows Lake. A constant draft brings the smell of stone, earth, and a hint of rot.

Vault of the Granite Ogre

Within the chambers there are uncountable signs of violence – broken and rusted weapons and armour, shattered bones, smashed doors and furniture and statuary. Brown stains show where bleeding bodies were dragged ever deeper into the vault.

The ceilings are tall – twenty feet in most places and even higher in the larger chambers. The stonework was probably fine at one point, and the higher areas still show some bas relief carvings and fine work, but the walls are scraped, scratched and pitted. The breeze comes up from the deepest part of the vault, unhindered by the doors – some torn from their hinges, others with large chunks missing from them.

And the granite ogre in the depths sits there, water dripping upon her head, waiting for the next moment of bloodlust and carnage when new fools explore her realm.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Over 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Every month that we are over the $400 funding mark on Patreon, I put up a list of eight maps for patrons to vote on. The map that gets the most votes at the end of the month is released under a free commercial license.

This month we are bringing back the Three Tombs of Acker.

Three Tombs of Acker

Really, it has very little in common other than the start point being a set of three tombs (in this case all three are “real” tombs, but two of them hide access to deeper and darker secrets). There are also more traps clearly indicated on the map than I usually include – a massive sliding block sealing off a section of the dungeon, several pit traps, portculli, etc.

There is also an apparent elevation mis-match around the central secret room. This is because the southern secret door is mounted 8′ up on the wall of the room it attaches to, and the northern secret door is a climb-up crawl-way into the northern room.

I tried to keep this very non-linear, with multiple entry and exit points and looping circular paths through the construction.

When I first found the map it looked more like this:

Three Tombs Snapshot

And then slowly grew into the map above.

The Three Tombs of Acker was drawn on standard commercial 4-quad graph paper using a 0.7mm Zebra Sarasa Gel Pen.

Since this is being re-released under the free commercial license, I figured I’d go back to the source file and add a grid to it, something I didn’t do back in 2013 when this was posted.

Three Tombs of Acker (with grid)

The Ascent of the Scarlet Queen looks out over the west shore of Green Shallows Lake. The red stone cliff face has obviously been roughly worked by ancient hands leaving an ascending path along the face of the cliff, past a set of arrow slits and to a pair of brass doors decorated in the likeness of the Scarlet Queen barring the way forward.

Ascent of the Scarlet Queen

The Scarlet Queen is a repeating motif throughout the areas behind the doors – appearing in various paintings and carvings, and also as a statue in one chamber and a caryatid column with three scarlet knights as buttresses surrounding her in another.

A series of secret passages lead to a small library containing a tapestry that both details the death of the Scarlet Queen and the text of a spell that can bring forth aspects of her power for those who would dare to deal with her spirit. But that chamber is really a fake treasure chamber, and a further secret chamber contains the Scarlet Queen’s hat, shoes and bracers as well as a small part of her massed hoards of gold.

===

Both this map and the previous map posted this week were drawn while I was off in the “wilderness” camping with some great friends in wonderful surroundings. I expected to draw a few more maps, but instead I managed to run a pair of 1981 B/X D&D games where we explored the wonderfully twisted “Gnomes of Levnec” adventure by Zzarchov Kowolski.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Over 400 amazingly generous people have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This map is a companion to the map of the Octagonal Station that I posted back in May. The Octagonal Station at first feels like an old temple of some kind, but at the back of the structure is an old elevator that goes deep underground. For most adventurers this will mean nothing, as the elevator is ancient and the technologies to make it work have long ago lost power. But with the right tools, tricks, or know-how, a group of explorers might make the platform descend…

Tube Car Station

Part way down the descent is a small sublevel that the platform will skip if not specifically set to stop there. This structure is a mix of technical, repair, and control facilities for what lies below. While the control panels have no current function, there are many shelves and stockpiles of ancient hardware that were once used to maintain the structure and machineries, some of which might turn out to be useful (and many which are not… like boxes of 60 thousand year old detergent).

In the depths below is the true purpose of the structure – a large round chamber with six round tunnels leading into it. This is a rare tube car station where multiple tube car lines meet and can change routes in order to travel throughout the underworld of Tekumel. Sure, many of the ancient tunnels have collapsed or been sabotaged, but the network still exists in chunks and sequences, and nodes like this are essential to getting around the areas that were destroyed by disasters both natural and planned.

This map (and the map of the Octagonal Station above) are my interpretations of the areas we have explored in our Empire of the Petal Throne campaign – and as such much of the credit has to go to James Maliszewski who has been running this excellent campaign.

In the classic Empire of the Petal Throne setting, the original author and man behind the scenes (Professor Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker) ran a huge megadungeon under the main city of the setting (Jakalla). The Jakallan underworld was a massive structure that took up a desk-pad-sized sheet of 10 square per inch graph paper.

While I’ve done some work fiddling with the original map of the location (thankfully the Tekumel Foundation has a lovely 600dpi scan of the original map in question), it also inspired me to take another poke at drawing a megadungeon in a distinctly different style than the Dyson MegaDelve I drew at the end of 2014 & beginning of 2015.

My Private Jakalla (Map 1A)

This dungeon I hope to put together as a massive sprawling series of maps that can underpin an entire city map – mixing crypts, sewers, dungeons, basements, and old construction into one massive underworld structure that is accessible in various parts from places in the city above.

This particular map contains two access points from the surface, both on the bottom edge of the map – basements with stairs leading down to a great hall on the left (probably linked to a clan house or similar structure, or perhaps the doorway has been boarded off, bricked over, or otherwise sealed to prevent whatever lives in the dark recesses from coming up), and a set of stairs and doors leading into a series of crypts on the right (probably linked to a temple that stores the revered dead in crypts, tombs and so on).

And of course, to suit the sprawling style of this dungeon, there are four exits that will lead out to new maps – hopefully one or two published every month for the next while.

My Private Jakalla (Map 1A) (without grid)

We hadn’t seen the Queen of Isthen for seven days and seven nights, and thus we finally braved her ire and broke down the doors to her quarters. They were disorderly and bloodied and the mahogany bookshelf holding her most prized codexes and scrolls was pulled away from the wall exposing a passage down beneath the main chambers of the castle.

Chambers of the Vanished Queen

What we would find there, beneath the throne room and guards quarters, would mark us forever. Prowling through those rooms was a bloodthirsty creature terrifying in its familiarity.

We had found the vanished queen, and wished we had not.

Last week I posted the first map [link] of a massive undercity project I am taking on. The goal is to produce a large set of maps that interconnect to produce something akin to, but very much different in style from, the original Jakallan Underworld map that M.A.R. Barker used in his Empire of the Petal Throne games.

While the first map in the”My Private Jakalla” set was primarily influenced by the classic Jakallan Underworld map combined with my own personal idioms and stylings, this second map is more firmly rooted in the “feel” I got from some of the underworlds we’ve explored in James Maliszewski’s EPT game combined with the design concepts of some sewer maps I drew for Alexander Macris.

My Private Jakalla – Map 1B

With the additional sewer structures, I aim to also make this map link up with the much older sewer map I posted to the blog – the Sewers of Travon [link]. (Seriously, I posted that seven years ago? This blog keeps getting older and older on me… Maybe I’ll even redraw the original map…) 

To see where this map links up with the previous map in the “My Private Jakalla” project, I’ve put together a little index card that I’ll update as I add new maps to the set.

My Private Jakalla Connections Map

This area of the underworld contains the aforementioned sewers as well as the basements of several buildings that have been repurposed along the way. Two surface access points are included on this map, both towards the left hand side.

The upper entrance is a ladder that leads into a small section of the sewers and to a set of secret chambers – remaining fairly isolated from the rest of the underworld unless one should trudge down along the very narrow and low-ceilinged sewer ways to the larger sewers.

The entrance on the bottom side of the map leads into a series of old basements that have been refitted as a sort of “underground shopping plaza” with holes cut into the walls between the structures on the left and a larger chamber on the right used for larger auctions of goods.

My Private Jakalla – Map 1B (no grid)