In grand underdark caverns the dark elves build their cities. The oldest families establish themselves in the more defensible positions and as close to the centre of the cavern for defensive advantage against invaders.

(Note that this map was updated – the original had the top level rotated 90 degrees from its proper orientation.)

Drow Spire Fortress

Today’s map is a fairly small stalagmite spire fortress. The spire is surrounded on three sides by a small fortress with a spiral ramp leading up from the fortress into and around the stalagmite. The arrows on the ramp lead upwards with a fairly aggressive angle.

One chamber dominates the interior of the spire – Accessed by visitors from the lower portions of the spire ramp, the family head receives guests and talks to them from the balcony on the next level, a good 40 feet above the floor of the chamber. Further up again are a set of galleries for other family members or assassins to listen in on conversations…

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 this 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.

Burial mounds are a staple of fantasy games and stories. Today’s offering is a collection of nine different burial mounds for those occasions when you really need to loot a a small tomb right now.

Barrow Mounds of the Lich and Famous

The four lower tombs have Greek “Dromos” entrances – an “avenue” cut into the barrow hill leading to the door to the tomb itself. These avenues would be built up in stone to hold back the earth of the mound and to provide a clear route to the door. Often the end of the dromos furthest from the door would be decorated with columns or other decorations, often long gone by the time would-be tomb robbers arrive on site.

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

Based on the cave work I did for the Descent into the Depths of the Earth tunnels and passages, here are five cave geomorphs that can be used to link up to any existing tunnels. They are all 2 squares wide at the entrances just like the existing encounter area maps for that adventure, so they mesh best with the secondary tunnels but can be used as constrictions in primary passages or widened areas in tertiary tunnels.

Vault of the CaveMorphs!

These were my first experiment using a sharpie marker as the foundation of my map drawing – for a number of these geomorphs the outer walls were drawn using a dying marker instead of my usual felt-tipped technical pens. They were drawn using a 07 gel pen for most details and hatching (the same pens I used back when I first started drawing maps), and the sharpie marker for the walls. I used a Squarehex PoGI (Pad of Geomorphic Intent) and drew them while watching “The New Girl” on TV with MissGladiator (and while digging through my Twilight 2000 materials, as you can see in the photo below).

This experiment with a sharpie marker in February (I drew these in February and am finally posting them now? WTH?) is what inspired me to buy a bunch more Sharpies which has lead to my current line of “Daily Doodles” that you can follow along with if you follow any of my social media feeds (on Twitter, FaceBook, or Google+).

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

Pushing out of the cliff face like a partially exposed egg, this small dungeon complex was evidently not built here but transported in some manner. Either that, or the craftsmen were purposefully annoying in the design as the whole interior structure is at an uncomfortable 7 degree angle with the right edge of the map being slightly more than 36 feet above the height of the entrance doors.

Lair of the Golden Wolf

In addition to the awkward angle, the interior of the structure bears a strong scent like a mix of musk and nutmeg. The walls and floors are painted gold, but are scratched up badly enough that most floors and west walls appear to be grey stone with gold streaks on them. Doorways, where open, have golden hair on them from some mighty beast having to squeeze through.

Prowling this space, of course, is the Golden Wolf – an extraplanar beast that must squeeze to push through the 4 foot doorways and is much more comfortable in the wide circular hall of the complex. All doors here open as it approaches, but are often stuck for others. The Golden Wolf guards its treasure jealously – the carcasses of seven platinum geese, each with its neck snapped.

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

Nestled into the Shadow Woods is Guimond’s Tower – a crumbling multi-story stone and wood structure that looks ready to slide down into the woods at a moments notice. Up on the top of the aged stone is a wooden house-like construction looking down on the tree tops in the area. Some believe that the ageless druid-lich (who goes by various names in various stories) of the Shadow Woods lives in the small house at the top of the tower – which explains both how the wooden structure seems to be outlasting the stone tower, and why the stone tower has not collapsed yet.

Guimond’s Tower and Lair of the Druid Lich

Like most rumours and sage’s tales, there is more than a small kernel of truth to this. The wooden house is indeed maintained by an ancient nearly-blind hermit who lives here unmolested because the druid-lich lives quite nearby – under the tower in fact.

The tower’s dungeon cannot be reached from within the tower, but by a secret trap door in the grounds just outside the tower. The druid-lich keeps the trap door well hidden by controlling the growth of grass over it, so it is always entirely overgrown and concealed.

The secret door leads to old stone stairs, and in turn to the crypts under Guimond’s Tower. From the old crypts, caves lead deeper underground towards the sound of dripping water and to earthen and stone caves with tree roots hanging from the ceiling and working down the walls. A small pond is back here, and a smaller altar where the druid-lich worships and works in darkness and near-silence.

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 this 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 ruins of Saurguard Haunt are but burned stones and bits of rain-cleaned charcoal. But it is a harder task to burn down the small dungeon that sat beneath it.

The Savage Caves

Used as a traditional dungeon to hold prisoners under Saurguard – the dungeon was being expanded to include a temple to the proscribed lords of damnation when construction breached into a a cave slightly beneath the level of the temple and proceeded down through the limestone to the hillside beneath the Haunt.

Of course, you can’t just leave places like this open and unguarded and not expect foul things to move in… The lower entrance to the savage caves has been claimed by giant spiders who have killed off the entire bat population that once lived here, and who knows what foulness has taken over the ancient dungeons?

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 this 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.

On Wednesday, I decided to give myself the “day off” to just play games and ignore any work or chores or whatever. Ordered out for food, and pulled out “Four Against Darkness” for the first time.

It is a solo dungeon-delving game and this was my first run through it. The book says your first run should take about an hour, with later games taking about 45 minutes, but I found my game took about 150 minutes to play through – with lots of flipping through the book. But it will definitely get quicker now that I know most of the systems in play.

Temple of the Jade Gorgon

I’ll be honest, this first delve felt a little too easy. Maybe I was just really lucky, so we’ll have to try a second game to be sure. But part of the problem I foresee is that as characters gain levels, the dungeons (at least in the first book) don’t – so once you’ve survived a few dungeons, you should be hell on wheels.

But I’ve got a lot of adventure modules to try out also. I’ll take the base game for another spin or two, then move on to the modules.

Highlight of this session was the Jade Gorgon. At the beginning of the encounter she turned everyone in the party to stone except the cleric. Which was good, as the cleric has the Blessing spell which reverses petrification… So I guess just one different roll would have massively changed the whole climax of the adventure.

Back for another game of Four Against Darkness!

One of the things I noted after last game is that they recommend what is effectively a half-page of graph paper as the maximum size for a dungeon (whereas the Temple of the Jade Gorgon took up most of a full page). The reduced page size makes for a more dense feeling dungeon, and also means you run out of room faster thus precipitating the battle with the final boss monster.

Crypt of the Queen of Bones

This session involved fighting a LOT of undead – skeletons, zombies, skeletal rats, more skeletons… and the final encounter was once again the terrifying Medusa. This time she only managed to petrify two party members, and I’ve armed myself with insurance against future medusa encounters as I’ve found two blessing scrolls throughout the dungeon – so the elf and the rogue both carry one in case the cleric gets petrified.

The crypts also included my first run with a secret door and a puzzle/trap that we easily defeated. I used my methodology from running many games using the AD&D random dungeon generation tables to mash areas together when they collide, so the dungeon layout has more loops in the overall design – if a room comes really close to another doorway, just link them together and make it easy on yourself.

At the end of this session, the party was a mix of levels 2 & 3, so we’ll need to head down again and try to even things out. Or I could just keep emphasis on the Jale Man Barbarian to make him a slaughtering machine – his rage attack killed the Medusa in this dungeon in a single round of mashing and smashing.

Old Wharton Mine was a small local source of onyx in its prime, but its location deep in the jungle made it nigh impossible to maintain supply lines or defenses. In the end the mine was abandoned because of prowling beasts and the difficulty in maintaining a workforce out here.

Wharton Mine

But onyx is a troubling stone. It is the standard material component for animating the dead, and it seems some dark magic is present in the old mine as well as many chips and bits of black and white banded onyx. Now the dead crawl the mine, waiting for prey to kill and try to consume. Animals that came here to get out of the heat were the first victims, but the other beasts of the area have learned to avoid it.

Now the dead wait for those foolhardy enough to try to reopen the mine, or to claim the onyx that remains.

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 this 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.

In my efforts to level up my Four Against Darkness party to level 5 to try out the “Four Against the Abyss” book, I played what ended up being my shortest game to date at just under 20 minutes.

The Dragons Nest

In the first room of the dungeon we ran into our first-ever dragon. As a level 6 boss monster, this would have been ruinous for a low level party. But right now our Barbarian is packing a +5 bonus in combat, the elf lays out a nice +3 (+4 with his bow), and the cleric and rogue are essentially there as meatshields / healers (the rogue’s high defense means he’s almost always the first thing that monsters attack).

If anything, the dragon’s breath weapon is a welcome attack form, as it spreads its damage over the whole party, grants a saving throw of 3+ (2+ for the barbarian) and keeps the dragon from clawing at us. The battle ended up running for a few rounds as the barbarian beat the beast to death, with the rogue never landing a single blow.

An encounter with a firebreathing chimera awaits us in the next hall, and then we meet the white lady who tasks us with a quest to bring back the next dragon we find… alive.

And in the next room, we meet the Dragon. And this one is also the “boss monster” of the dungeon. This battle is a lot harder – we are fighting at -1 because we are trying to subdue the beast. This means the rogue needs to roll a 7+ to hit it, the cleric a 6+ (effectively the same thing), the Elf a 4+, and the Barbarian a 2+. And it has extra toughness. And an extra claw attack. And the alternate to beating it unconscious at -1 to attacks is to knock it out with a sleep spell… which dragons are immune to.

The fight took many more rounds than I expected. I gave the boss dragon its extra claw attack even on rounds where it breathed fire, and neither the rogue nor the cleric ever landed a blow on the beast, leaving the battle to the elf and barbarian again. But the Barbarian’s Rage helped a lot, and the dragon was beaten bloody, thrown in a giant dragon-dragging-sack, and hauled back to the White Lady who rewarded us with The Book of Skalitos – a full spellbook for the elf that can be used as six individual scrolls, or to add spells to his spell selection. Plus dealing with a dragon as the final boss gives 2 XP rolls, and completing the quest for the white lady gave us another, bringing the Barbarian to level 5, and the rest of the party to level 3.

While much of the city is served by “surface sewers” to move waste and water, in parts of the old town there exist proper underground sewers that date back to the previous empire’s attempts to clean up the city as a whole. Basements in these neighbourhoods occasionally incorporate parts of the sewer construction, or vice versa. And of course, in the trope of D&D sewers, they have become home to wererats and other foul creatures that represent the decay and seedy side of civilization.

Delren Street Sewers

This map focuses on one of the more interesting parts of the sewers under Delren Street. The central location (top centre of the map) is an old basement that is no longer connected to the structure above it and that is linked into the sewers by a secret door. This basement is currently in use by Skittler, an old wererat sorcerer who maintains a small study and bedroom in a side chamber. The rest of the basement is kept fairly clean, with Skittler sweeping it out regularly (and leaving a small pile of dust right outside the secret door).

South of Skittler’s lair is the lair of a couple of less “human” wererats. The entrance to this lair are a pair of large rat-holes in the walls of the sewer – however recently they’ve taken to bringing in larger items to make themselves more comfortable, and have had to enlarge one of their holes to do so – meaning that it is only a matter of time before someone discovers this hiding place.

To the right we have a maintenance access to the sewers (a hatch leading down stairs to the sewers themselves. Extended sections of this area have been barred off with a permanent portculis-type wall. At the upper-right edge of the map we have a section of these structures that has been sealed off from the sewers proper and converted into the basement of a small inn above.

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

When activated through specific rituals “when the stars are right”, the three pillars of Ssa-Tun act as portals to anchor points in the Alabaster Hells. One of the three pillar-gates leads here, to a small cavern containing a lake of milky-white fluid. As with most things in the Alabaster Hells, everything here is not-quite-white in colour – from the pale grey walls to the heavy quartz pillars that seem to hold up the ceiling of the cave, to the milky-white liquid that seems to be slowly filling the cave.

Ssa-Tun’s Lake of Milk

Guests here quickly discover that the pillar in the centre of the alabaster node doesn’t act as a return gate – and instead they must return through one of the four other gates that can be summoned. At the end of each row of quartz pillars a gate can be called with a quick ritual and splashing the milky waters on the inward faces of the two pillars in question. The ritual, fortunately, is inscribed on the walls of the hall to the “west”. The waters, unfortunately, are both toxic and strongly alkali.

And most importantly, it would be foolish to think that nothing resides under those waters…

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

A number of townfolk head out to the Old Grant Farm about once or twice a month in a semi-secretive manner. They are a motley crew, a mix of the well-to-do and grubby farmers and the woodswoman ranger.

It turns out this town has a very draconian “legal system” where punishment for not fitting in or disturbing the way things are involves the cockatrice pit.

The Cockatrice Pit

Behind the barn at Old Grant’s farm is a deep square hole dug into the ground. At the bottom of the hole is a small cave, home to “the chickens” – a pair of cockatrice that are used to dispense a very final “justice” to those who fall afoul of the locals.

Most people are just thrown in and left for the cockatrices to petrify and consume, but some are instead lowered on ropes to be fished back out afterwards and used as displays in some of the finer establishments in town.

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

Beneath the Immortal Fortress are a number of small dungeons, tombs, crypts, and oubliettes. As the fortress itself is still inhabited and the residents know better than to explore these lower areas, they remain generally unmolested, with the entrances of the more dangerous areas under guard in case anything should creep out.

Crypts of the Immortal Fortress

These particular crypts were considered inconsequential until a planes-hopping sage showed up with a map indicating something important within – so if you can get into the fortress, getting to the crypts themselves shouldn’t be too hard of a task.

Behind the scenes, this is actually a redraw of a small crossword puzzle posted during the Alternate Reality Game that was played online leading up to the Stream of Eyes event where they announced the upcoming release of the two 5e Waterdeep books this autumn.

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

The Iron Obelisk weeps in near silence – the pools of ichor growing around it, fed by its melancholy nature. The ichors seep down and flow where underground waters should, tainting the darkness with the ennui and melancholy of the pillar of iron. Slow grinding noises are heard nearby, as if the world is changing itself – pulling away as far is it can from the source of this ichor. The wound where the Iron Obelisk sits has grown forming a cave nearly 200 feet across where the world tries to isolate the rusted spike within it.

Black Ichor of the Iron Obelisk

The Iron Obelisk has many powerful uses. Flakes of rust taken from the area around it and ground to dust make sleep spells incredibly more potent, whereas rust taken from the Obelisk itself can be used to counter most forms of mind control and charms. Bits of iron taken along with this rust can be worked into somber weapons and armour that spread their melancholic nature to their bearers, but also to their foes.

But those who touch the iron obelisk itself or the black ichor are cursed with the yearning sadness of the device. They will seek out places underground where the ichor can be found, and while the ichor does nothing to sate or alleviate the sadness, it calls to the cursed and bathing in it will indeed remove any other curses or diseases the target is afflicted with.

In fact, when adventuring underground, those cursed by the obelisk or the ichor will often find themselves in proximity with the ichor – even if it shouldn’t be there. There is a 25% chance that any adventure leading them underground will lead them to the black ichor in some way. It will replace water in dungeons and adventures, and will seem ominously ever-present until the curse is broken.

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 this 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.

Those cursed by the black ichor find themselves unable to avoid it – as if drawn to it. For those seeking to break this curse there are esoteric sages who will recommend remedies of drops of the sun’s ocean consumed on the warmest day of winter, or of travelling to the Empire of Locusts and consuming the head of their king and so on – but there are several who will finally point them to the mountain home of Onninhil Reconciler, an ancient hag who guards a passage to the underworld where the black river flows.

Further Delves for the Black Ichor

Somwhere behind her home, surrounded and guarded by the melancholic black ichor, is a small font of pure water that resists contamination and that when drunk from can finally break the curse of the Iron Obelisk.

Beyond Onninhil herself, there are a number of guardians within the caves. A cairn contains the remains of the warlord Arvuk Vuldag who died here rather than drink from the font and cure himself of the taint of the Obelisk and who will rise to slay any who dare to follow through where he failed. Small humanoids live in a secret cave near the entrance, hiding from their own shadows that have left them and now guard the caverns. One of the caves also holds the throne of Furykeeper Javzatu with her mighty axe “Reclaimer” – a queen of the old tribes, her skeleton is nearly twice as tall as a modern human and her axe is of the same scale.

Finally there is the font – a small trickle of fresh water down fungus-covered rocks to a fountain pool that is fouled with scum, bubbles, and slimy growths. Drinking from this font is extremely unhealthy, but is indeed one of the few ways to break the curse of the Iron Obelisk.

(With apologies to Zzarchov Kowolski, who ran a great Neoclassical Geek Revival game recently from which several elements of this map were drawn.)

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 this 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.

Up on a steep face, by the northern fire mountain, we found what we had been looking for – a cleft into the mountain that lead not to a natural cave, but to a construction of the ones we call the morlocks.

Tombs of the Steel Makers

The narrow cleft lead to a trapped chamber that struck us with an invisible force from all sides, snuffing our torches and forcing us to rely on the light granted by Zuul, opener of the ways, to progress. The main passage within was round in cross section, but with a flat floor. Metal doors blocked further access within. (Who has such steel that they might use it for doors? surely these are the tombs of the steel makers who already know the riddle of steel – our kin have only just learned the art of iron working!)

The steel makers are probably the ancestors of the degenerate morlocks. Within these tombs we found a number of funerary urns of finest steel and absconded with them to bring back to the people. There were other marvels too – strange gems strung together on copper wires, vast vats of strongest wine, and glass pillars reaching from floor to ceiling. We believe that perhaps the smallest room is a magical access to areas above or below this one – but tomb robbers who explore too much instead of running when they have found the riches they can carry quickly become the entombed, so we left before exploring more.

(Being the description of finding a small and seemingly abandoned high tech structure in the mountains – we are tribesfolk on the cusp of the iron age in Zzarchov Kowolski’s Neoclassical Geek Revival RPG, and find all this exciting and yet mystifying.)

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

Burial mounds are a staple of fantasy games and stories. Today’s offering is a collection of six more burial mounds for those occasions when you really need to loot a a small tomb or small tomb complex right now.

More Barrow Mounds of the Lich and Famous

This set of tomb maps go from simple single-chambered mounds to multi-chambered mounds and finally to a pair of mounds that incorporate multiple crypts and passages such as “Shadow Dragon’s Tomb” on the lower right.

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

Venture with me to 1979 and my first encounters with kobolds and other darstardly goblinoids. For today we are investigating six caves (some interlinked) in the dreaded Caves of Chaos.

Kobold Caves (A)

The Kobolds keep themselves in a small set of caves with long tunnels – better for guerrilla engagements and to be honest, it is frightening for many low level characters to see tunnels leading off into the darkness well beyond the limits of your light sources…

Orc Caves (B & C)

The two orc tribes live next door to each other, although the tribe on the right has significantly more living space within their caves. They also have the distinct downside of being closer to the floor and to the entrance of the box canyon, making them one of the most likely lairs to be attacked by raiders or adventurers. The leaders of the clans also have a secret meeting space because sometimes being orcs is enough to keep you together when things are getting rough.

Goblinoid Caves (D, E, & F)

On the south side of the box canyon are three goblinoid caves. Inhabited primarily by goblins (down near the entrance of the box canyon) and hobgoblins (higher up and deeper into the canyon), these two labyrinthine cave complexes link to each other and a third – the small cave of the local ogre, one of the more frightening and potent humanoids in the area.

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!

Last post I put up six of the various caves of the legendary Caves of Chaos, a cavern-infested box canyon overrun by vile humanoids northeast of the Keep on the Borderlands. But Five is the true number of chaos (ignore the fools who claim it is 8), so here are five more caves of chaos, including the dread Shrine of Evil Chaos!

Bugbears and the Shunned Cave (Caves G & H)

The residents of these caves are significantly stronger individually than those of the earlier caves in the set. This set includes the lair of the foul bugbears who are fortunately few in number, as well as the wet “shunned cave” which is home to an owlbear and a foul ooze.

Minotaur’s Labyrinth (Cave I)

As if to drive the point home that the end of the box canyon is dangerous, it also includes the labyrinth of a mighty minotaur – enchanted of course so that the intersections are always in the wrong directions and it becomes ridiculously easy to become lost and confused.

Gnoll Lair (Cave J)

South of the final Shrine of Evil Chaos (and connected via secret passage) is the lair of a small number of the fierce hyena-warriors that some call beastmen and others call gnolls.

Shrine of Evil Chaos (Cave K)

And finally, the Shrine of Evil Chaos itself – the centrepiece of this collection of caves, ominously looking down over the box canyon from the back. This extensive set of caves has been finished and cut and most of it bears little resemblance to the natural caves that were once here. This is the home of the evil that is bringing the many humanoids of the caves together in one place and keeping them from each others’ throats.

The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!