No, no, no, no, let me ask you a question. When you came pulling in here, did you notice a sign out from of this cave that said “Dead Dwarf Storage”?

Oh, never mind, my bad.

Dwarven Crypts (with grid)

The Dwarven Crypts are the last map of level of the Dwarven City in the Mega Delve. This map is linked to the Marble Hall map and is found on the far side of the collapsed bridge. Once a small mithril mine, these tunnels were later converted into crypts for several dwarven clan and families from the city.

There are three types of crypts in here – in decreasing order of importance they are Tombs (with sarcophagi and typically with doors), Vaults (with doors), and Crypts (open-air niches where the dead are placed).

The entrance to the dwarven crypts is home to several massive spiders who took up residence here to avoid the over-crowded environs of the Venomous Hall below. Further into the crypts and we enter the domain of rot grubs, ear-seekers, and everything except for the expected undead. The dwarves buried here left this world content, entombed within their family city, in the very mines that they worked. They are not restless in any way.

However, a long sinuous beast does live here, occasionally snacking on a giant spider, otherwise subsisting off the treasures of the dwarves buried here. This foul dragon is treated as a black dragon in all respects, but is very long and thin and thus able to squirm through even the narrowest of openings.

Dwarven Crypts (no grid)

I figure that instead of random tables to determine what’s in each crypt, I’ll go with a die-drop table and the number / size of dice dropped are based on what kind of crypt you are investigating (1d12 for a simple crypt, 1d10 & 1d12 for vault and 1d10, 1d12 & 1d20 for a sarcophagus). Maybe I’ll get a chance to work on them over the next few days…

Once the Hall of Song where the local dwarves celebrated their family ties and recorded their lineage, this hall is now home to monstrous spiders of foul intellect and ancient hunger.

The Venomous Hall is the first map of level 3 of the still nameless dwarven city that is the centrepoint of the Mega Delve. This map sits directly below the Marble Hall map and can be reached either using the stairs down into the ravine from the Marble Hall, through the hallway from the Hall of Iron (on the right side of the map) or via the stairs from the mines below (hidden by a massive secret door that wasn’t really intended to be a secret by the dwarves who made it, but they ended up making it so ornate that it appears to be a relief carving of dwarves at work that spans two walls of the room it is in.

The Venomous Hall (with grid)

The chasm that wraps around this part of the delve is filled with a heavy fog of presumably magical origin that never seems to burn away. Crawling through this fog and in and out of the massive windows of the Hall of Song and the Planner’s Hall just above and beside it are the foul spiders who have made this their home.

This hall can also be the target for a quest given to explorers, for within the Hall of Song the dwarves kept their genealogical information and this could be of vital importance to a young dwarf scion seeking land or noble rights among his kin.

Venomous Hall (no grid)

I’ve also been talking to a bunch of people about how to put together the whole Mega Delve when it is done. I’ll talk about the various options later this week.

On the same level as the Venomous Hall (or the Hall of Song to the dwarves who lived here) and sitting below the Hall of Bronze, the Iron Halls served as the forge and foundry for the dwarves here until they climbed back into their great Earthships and left our world to attempt to return to their own.

Iron Halls (with grid)

While the forges have not been relit yet, it is likely only a matter of time before the brotherhood who have started working the mines again bring fire and life back to these halls. The brotherhood are strangely near-identical hairless humans who are exploring these chambers seeking whatever the dwarves left behind that can be of use to their mining endeavours deep beneath this area.

Iron Halls in Progress

The brotherhood accesses the Iron Halls via the stairs on the lower right of the map that lead down to the mines. They have not yet used the dwarven elevator room that leads from the mines to this level and to the Hall of Bronze above (although they are aware of it). Occasional spiders venture here from the Venomous Hall along the wide passage that exits to the right of the page. The Descent also ends on this level, the 90′ wide circular chamber with stairs leading up to the Hall of Bronze and even further to the collapsed gates of the city.

Iron Halls (no grid)

When the dwarves left this world in their Earthships, they sealed this city by bringing down the front gates and burying the cisterns that provided water to the multiple levels of the city. Other access points remain (for they had built the city with more than one way in and out), but without the water, it could never again thrive.

The Gates (with grid)

Directly above the Hall of Bronze, and connected to it via the Descent (the large cylindrical chamber that links the Gates, the Hall of Bronze and the Iron Hall), The Gates were a much larger area prior to the departure of the dwarves. (I’m thinking I might draw a quick map of the original Gates that can be used as a player handout – something the local thieves’ guild had done up prior to the dwarven exodus).

Once these great halls were lit by sun and hundreds of massive bronze lanterns, and were home to parades and pageantry. Today the gates are a place of somber dust and debris, lit only by trickles of sunlight that reflect down along with feathers and other detritus from the harpies’ domain above.

The lower right corner of the great hall has a collapsed stairwell leading up to “The Tall Watch”, a tower carved into the mountain above. That tower has been taken over by foul harpies who occasionally travel this level and have even been known to fly down the shaft of the descent seeking victims and adventure.

The Gates (no grid)

Once home to 10 mithril statues of the elders of the clans who founded this city, the Mithril hall now appears barren and empty, showing the damage from the destruction of the city gates and cisterns.

Mithril Hall (with grid)

At two places along the 35 foot tall mithril hall stone bridges cross over at a height of 20 feet. The first of these collapsed during a battle here between scavenging groups shortly after the demolition of the gates, but the second remains intact. More importantly one of the great cisterns of the city is reachable through these passages and is only partially collapsed. A trickle of water permeates the old stone here, and the floor of the cistern has been overtaken by a forest of giant fungi.

But the fungi here are different than those in the Mushroom Caves in the distance, for strange intelligence has grown here, and fungal hunters stalk these halls – deadly and poisonous creatures of the dark.

Mithril Hall (no grid)

Both exits from this map lead to the City Gates map. But several other exits can be added to both this map and the City Gates map to expand the dwarven city (typically on later visits into the dungeon when you want to spice things up). I would place a secret magical entrance in the floor of the far end of the Mithril Hall itself that opens to stairs down into many living quarters or lost workshops of the dwarves. And there are definitely larger living areas to the north of the City Gates map that have been cut off by the collapsing of the gates that could be dug out by other forces between visits.

These kinds of changes to the maps as the game progresses is something that I feel is important to a “mega dungeon” experience – not only are the factions within the dungeon not static, but the map itself evolves over time, producing it’s own challenges and secrets.

Beneath the Venomous Hall lie the Hematite Mines – source iron ore for the dwarves who helped to equip armies to fight in the war against the elves. Also known as the East Mines, these passages link to Venomous Hall via the stairs at the lower left, to the West Mines on the left and to both the Giant Citadel and the secret dwarven camp to the right. Finally, a small 6 to 8 foot wide natural chimney descends from the lowest point in the Mushroom Cavern to the sump room in the lower right side of the map (indicated by a small dashed circle).

The Hematite Mines (with grid)

This map is drawn at a larger scale than most of the recent maps – 1 square is 20 feet, like the maps of the Lost River Cave or the Mushroom Cavern. The dotted lines that lead to the deep crevasse (the same crevasse from the Marble Hall and the Venomous Hall) are small airways that were added to provide fresh air to the dwarves working down here. Now that the crevasse is home to the malevolent Gimchak Spiders, they use the airways to send scouts into the mines – watching to be sure that they will not be disturbed by the return of dwarven industry, or at least that they will be warned before it becomes so prevalent that it affects their society.

Hematite Mines (no grid)

We’ll return to the mines on Friday with the West Mines and then probably again on Monday with the Flooded Mines.

Also known as the West Mines, the Thunder Mines are named after the sound of the waterfall that crashes down into the chasm these mines were built up around. Invisible from up here, the bottom of the chasm is actually where the dwarves who built this city first arrived and had left their Earthships during the war against the elven empire.

Thunder Mines (with grid)

Like the Hematite Mine posted on Tuesday, Thunder Mine is mapped at a scale of 1 square = 20 feet or 1 inch = 100 feet.

This section of mines is currently home to the Brotherhood, a group of nearly mute humans (?) who all look almost identical (except those who have visible scarring or other environmental deformations). The brotherhood seemingly crawled out of the mud one day and began attempting to reopen these mines and are moving the small amount of ore they have collected so far up to the hall of iron where they intend to smelt it down.

Exits from this level are to the right (leading to the East Mines / The Hematite Mines), the top of the page (leading to the Flooded Mines), a set of stairs and an elevator in the upper right side that lead up to the Hall of Iron (and the elevator leads even further up to the Hall of Bronze and the City Gates) and the chasm which leads down to the Earthship Docks.

The Earthship Docks (and the bottom of the chasm in the Hematite Mines which are home to the Gimchak Spiders) will probably not get detailed in this series of Mega Delve maps – the goal of this set is to detail everything at the level of the dwarven mines and above leaving the lower levels for their own development once this is complete and I’ve taken a rest from the whole Delve for a bit.

Thunder Mines (no grid)

While the Hematite Mines were designed to feel like a real-world coal mine with large straight tunnels and many side branches dug out into the rock to harvest the main ore veins, the Thunder Mines are meant to bring home a different vision of mining more like that shown in the Hobbit movies when they show the dwarves mining along deep natural vertical shafts seeking precious stones.

This level also finally shows us hints at how the elevator room that accesses multiple levels of the dungeon operates – powered by a water wheel and a series of huge gears. Anything more detailed is up to the DM to determine as it is basically dwarven magic beyond that.

To the north of the Thunder Mines and down the long twisting stairs from the Hall of Bronze are the flooded mines. These were the first set of mines worked by the local dwarves and were mostly worked out when the dwarves partially sealed them off in favour of the hematite mines.

The Flooded Mines (with grid)

Originally built around the river that creates the falls in the thunder mines, the water flow in said river continued to increase while the dwarves were working these mines. Eventually it overflowed into the lower areas of the mines themselves. Through most of the wet areas water is roughly two to four feet deep, with the most northern room and associated tunnel being completely submerged.

Like the two other mine maps, this map is drawn at a scale of 1 square = 20 feet (or 1 inch = 100 feet at 300dpi).

Initially the danger of this level would appear to be the slimes and molds that are found within the dank environment. But dark things have crawled in from the waters. A foul mastermind of a beast crawled in along the Lost River cave and into the mines and has settled into the chamber just north of the waterfall and source of the smaller river. From this location it has sent it’s minions out to collect materials and based on the genetic materials collected (from an unlucky adventurer) has birthed a collection of nearly identical human-seeming creatures under its control. As they don’t speak, they have been named “the brotherhood” by those other factions that have encountered them.

Also swimming the waters of this area are the true children of the mastermind beast. These little non-sentient monstrosities swarm in the water wherever they encounter food or blood. Any serious adventuring in this area will first require wiping out the thousands of these little toothy bastards, or keeping the whole party above the water at all times.

Flooded Mines (no grid)

Entrances and exits from this map are:

• Stairs in lower right lead up to the Hall of Bronze
• River and mine passage at the bottom of the map lead directly to the Thunder Mines
• River on the left side leads to the Muck Dwellers node
• River at the top of the map leads to the Lost River node

Here’s the current node map of the Mega Delve – only nine nodes left to map!

Node Map January 27th (click to enlarge)

Now we head southwest from the Flooded Mines, along the Lost River to the home of the Muck Dwellers. The muck dwellers actually consist of a few different amphibian races who worked together to build these strange ovoid structures.

Home of the Muck Dwellers (with grid)

Currently, four different races make this area their home. They can be broken up into “fishfolk”, “frogfolk”, “mutant frogs” and “the jellies”. While they are seen as a single faction to most outsiders, there are heavy tensions between the races.

The frogfolk and their genetically manipulated mutant frogs live in the south end of the structures. They are also the priests of the dark shrine further to the south. They are a very religious and xenophobic group, trying to figure out how to rid “their caves” of the other species sharing space with them.

The fishfolk are warriors and hunters who pay lip service to the frog god, but honestly care little for the faith or the frogs that run it. They are also mostly oblivious to the interspecies issues at work in the caves, or perhaps they pretend they are in order to cultivate favour with both other groups.

The jellies are a race that seem like sentient hovering jellyfish. Many of them are sorcerers and warlocks, bargaining their souls and the souls of others for arcane power. This obviously upsets the frogfolk who see this as a horrible heresy – but then again, they also think the jellies are probably heretical just because of their lack of bones. They live primarily in the “palace” structures built into the northwest side of the large pool.

As I drew this map, I was loving the feeling of being free of both the 20-foot grid of the mines and even more importantly the strictly square and grid-conforming architecture of the dwarven city I drew before drawing the three sets of mines.

It has definitely become my second favourite map in the whole MegaDelve, just behind the Mushroom Cavern (which is definitely the high point of the set).

Home of the Muck Dwellers (no grid)

Persons riding the current of the Lost River not lucky enough to catch themselves in the slowing current at the Lost River node (or fished out by the otyughs there) or able to grab a bridge or abutment passing through the Flooded Mines will find themselves caught by the nets placed by the fishfolk between “the teeth” – where the Lost River is compressed into the narrower section and two mighty pillars of natural stone jut up out of the water. They maintain a set of nets that hang in the water behind the teeth to trap whatever makes it downriver.

Around the teeth and after them the Lost river becomes a white-water torrent crashing through the caves beyond, drowning out sounds and likely anyone foolish enough to try to brave the current.

I’ve talked before about how much of a fan I am of the classic adventure In Search of the Unknown.

But there are times when the convoluted and bizarre map just doesn’t work the way I want for a game. As it stands, the potential exists that a lot of the game time can be spent exploring the hallways of the adventure instead of the far more interesting rooms that those corridors lead to. It also includes a LOT of areas where the walls a “a pencil stroke thick” (or as I generally play them, 1″ thick masonry walls).

Generally I’m cool with the original map because it encourages exploration play and you can make various areas of the dungeon feel isolated from each other (like the throne room on the lower right which certainly feels like it’s own “sector” of the dungeon.)

But a thread over on Dragonsfoot turned me on to this alternate map for the upper level of the dungeon. It keeps all the numbered rooms from the original, but cleans up the design to make it more consistent and also a lot easier to explore. I’m not sure I like the throne room being right as you walk into the main intersection, but it makes sense in it’s own way.

Quasqueton Upper Level (Alternate)

I’ve printed it off and put it inside my copy of B1 in case I want to pull it out with a different floorplan for a faster exploration experience.

A little bit down the river from the Home of the Muck Dwellers is the Water Temple – where the Frog Priests cultivate their mutant frogs and worship foul gods of the depths.

Water Temple (with Grid)

Guarded by a few elite mercenaries of the fish-people, and only rarely visited by any of the strange jellyfish beings from the node to the north, this node is almost entirely given over to the frog folk, their spawn, and a pair of spirit naga who have placed themselves as the intermediaries between the frog folk and their squamous deity.

Having seen the frog folk experiment on their giant frog companions, the spirit nagas have hatched a plan for expanding their sphere of influence further into the Delve. They have collected young from the otyughs in the Lost River node and have begun experiments creating neo-otyugh that are under their control, which they will have seeded into other areas by fish folk mercenary units.

The young otyughs are cared for on the backs of specialized mutant giant frogs who glue them there in their eggsacs from whence they eventually hatch and are fed by the frog priests.

Water Temple (no grid)

The two elder jellies who live in this area are magically enslaved to the naga, and rarely if ever venture back to the home node, providing their spellcasting expertise to enhance the genetic programs of both the frog and otyugh breeding operations.

South of this node the Lost River falls down a mighty underground waterfall at least 600 feet tall. What lives beyond those falls is subject to rumours, speculation, and the nightmares of frogs.

(With thanks for ideas from Andrew Shields for the nagas and otyughs).

When the dwarves loaded up their Earthships and abandoned the city above, they intended to take all the clans that lived here with them. But in the months leading up to their departure there were disappearances from the city. Religious fanatics, young idealists, and some struck by pure greed from their time in the mines were among those who went missing.

Dwarven Outpost (with grid)

These self-exiled dwarves hid themselves away in the deep mines where they built a small outpost to live in. In the years right after the departure from the city, they went back to the sprawling empty halls, but eventually returned here where they were less haunted by the echoing empty halls of their decisions, and where they had a small enough settlement to be able to defend properly with their restricted numbers.

For that is what they do now – they defend. Their settlement is besieged by thin and loathsome humanoids with pitch black skin and not a hair on them. Foul rubbery and cold-blooded things that haunt the darkness and are invisible to infravision / darkvision, requiring lamps and torches to be kept lit to find them. They have formed some sort of nest or hive just south of the dwarven settlement, but the dwarves lack the manpower to clear it out.

At least the exiles have food. The mud that slides down here from the mushroom cave far above is rich with fungus, and a unique breed of mushroom grows in the depths – the black cap mushrooms that provide all the nutrients needed by the dwarves and also tastes like a rich and sweet chocolate steak.

But it is these magically psychotropic “Black Cap” mushrooms that have given the Dwarven nightmares flesh and form. In the dark unwatched areas, the stalkers crawl out from under the caps of the mushrooms. They are everything the dwarves fear – they cannot be seen, they never speak (and seem to communicate with each other telepathically), they care nothing for gold or ale, but instead crave the flesh of dwarves. They stalk the tunnels and threaten to overrun the small encampment that subconsciously brought them into being.

And who knows what forms the mushrooms will bring forth once the adventurers have been here?

Dwarven Outpost (no grid)

The exit to the left of the map leads to the Hematite Mines (and the northern of the two eastern exits from that map node). The three exits at the bottom of the map lead south to the Giant Citadel. And the passage to the right leads up sharply through mud and twists and turns to the sinkhole at the bottom of the area under the mushroom cavern.

- – -

There’s also big news today about the Dodecahedron Patreon campaign. As of last night we have crossed the $300 funding mark. This means that every map that gets $300 of funding will be released under a full free commercial license. The full announcement will be posted tomorrow regarding how I’ll be keeping everyone up to date on the funding levels and which maps will be released under this license. What it does mean for now is that the first map released next month will be released under this new license. Which means I’m going to try to pull out all the stops and produce something impressive for this one (which will also be the first map that isn’t part of the Mega Delve in quite a while).

To the east of the Hematite Mines and south of the Dwarven Outpost we arrive at the Giant Citadel. Originally listed in the node maps as a single map, I realized I really wanted this node to be about “big” – so large halls, large chambers… and thus more than one map.

Giant Citadel – North (with grid)

I’ve also got a love for little caves and cracks in big areas, so I included to sets of passages that are entwined into the area – the caves that lead here from the dwarven outpost to the north. In this case one set (the ones where the strange fungus-born nightmare stalkers live) leads to the mines outside of the citadel, and the other passage (that the dwarves use on occasion) leads straight through the citadel and on to the next map. The highlight of this is the section almost in the middle of the page (above, not the picture below) where the dwarven tunnel is basically a big crack in the floor of a passage in the giant citadel – a way for sneaky dwarves (and adventurers) to see how terrifying the giant controlled node can be without having to directly interact with it.

This node is home to a large clan of stone giants and their assorted henchmen, lesser giants, and hangers-on. Most of the stone giants live in the southern portion of the citadel, and this area exists mostly for water access and the clothes washing room, as well as a guard room that looks out onto the dwarven mines beyond. The dwarves occasionally run through here in order to get to their alternate exit from the mountain, a small door in the southern part of the citadel that is not too far from the giants’ own great gate.

Giant Citadel – North (no grid)

Today we are taking a quick break from the MegaDelve to post up my most recent isomorphic dungeon map.

Temple of Greed (with grid)

I received four pads of isometric graph paper from my girlfriend for Christmas (three letter-sized and one ledger – which is too big for my scanner). Over the next few months I’ll be posting some of my various trials with the paper in question. One important trick I’ve learned though is to avoid “overlap” between the areas on the map, which generally means making sure that stuff on the upper left is at higher or equal elevations to areas on the lower right.

Also, adding a grid is not as simple as with my regular maps. In the end I had to take the original map, draw the grid directly onto the temple floors, and then rescan it to get the version above. This version (below) was from the original scan.

Temple of Greed (no grid)

This Friday we return to the Mega Delve with the second half of the Giant Citadel before we start exploring the depths of the necropolis and crypts on the opposite side of the mountain.

Giant Citadel – South (with grid)

Today we return to (and complete) the Giant Citadel. There’s a valley in the mountains that is avoided by sensible people and even adventurers (who are notoriously not in the sensible category most of the time) because it is home to a Stone Giant warlock of immense girth and supposedly immense power. Regular trade caravans run here however in order to meet his appetite for food and drink to complement his own herding operations that provide him with most of his meat. After all, keeping him fed and getting coin for it is a lot more appealing to most than having a kingdom of stone giants and assorted kin trampling around the area looking for free food.

These halls are where the stone warlock holds court. His throne room and feasting hall are immense and impressive and designed to accent his already incredible size compared to his petitioners. He surrounds himself with ettins and also employs gnoll and flind herders to maintain and protect his bison herds.

Giant Citadel – South (no grid)

Recently he has gained a flight of gargoyles who have pledged allegiance to his kingdom. They now lurk in various nooks and crannies about the area as quiet and often unseen guardians. One of these gargoyles has discovered the comings and goings of verminous dwarves from the northern pantry attached to the kitchen and has killed and eaten one such intruder and now waits silently to figure out exactly how they are entering the pantry…

These bi-weekly map posts are brought to you by the many awesome patrons who keep the site and maps coming thanks to their pledges to the Dodecahedron Patreon Campaign. If you like these maps and would like to see more of them and have the money to spare, please check out the campaign that keeps these free maps flowing to everyone.

We head back to the top-left side of the Dyson Mega Delve node map for the next three maps (although the last of the three may be delayed by a week or two as I post commercial-licensed maps at the beginning of March – see below for more information).

The Crypts (with grid)

The Crypts are carved out of old mines under the necropolis of Bryn Mynnyd. Many niches and alcoves have been dug into the walls of the old mines to house the many dead here. The whole expanse smells of dampness and death, with old bones occasionally underfoot as likely as old stones from the mining.

Exits from this map lead to the Lost River Node to the right, the necropolis of Bryn Mynnyd to the left, and the death cultists to the north.

The Crypts (no grid)

There are a few tombs in the catacombs, but none harbour the undead that adventurers would likely expect. These tombs are quiet and still, appropriate resting places for those who have passed on into forgotten history.

The real threats down here are corpse-rot, a few traps, some strange oozes, and strange humanoids who seem to feed off the darkness itself… Only should someone be foolish enough to raise the ire of the death cultists north of this area will the dead rise under their command – even they respect the dead enough to not bring them to the mockery of life that is undeath except in times of true need.

These bi-weekly map posts are brought to you by the many awesome patrons like David Magill, Michael Galle, Duane Sibilly, and Sasha Bilton who keep the site and maps coming thanks to their pledges to the Dodecahedron Patreon Campaign. If you like these maps and would like to see more of them and have the money to spare, please check out the campaign that keeps these free maps flowing to everyone.

Speaking of the Patreon Campaign, while this Friday’s Map will be of the Death Cult map to the north of this one, we’ll then have a week or two break from the Mega Delve when March rolls around. The campaign reached the target goal of $300 this month, and that means at least one of the March maps (likely two or three) will be released under a free commercial license. So instead of sticking publishers who want free maps from me with partial areas from the Mega Delve, we’ll be posting some other cool maps in early March before posting the last two maps of the Mega Delve (the necropolis and the harpy tower) later in the month.

Death Cult (with grid)

Buried in the crypts and tombs under the ruins of Bryn Mynnyd is the Church of Silence (known be the few outsiders who know it exists as the Death Cult of Bryn Mynnyd or the Assassin’s Cult of Bryn Mynnyd). This group isn’t a “Mwah ha ha ha, look at my undead minions!” type cult, but are more the “heh heh heh… Murder, murder and murder, my pretties” type of cult.

Ensconced in a massive tomb in the crypts, the assassin-priests of the cult have trained most of the creatures that live down here to keep their distance from them, using alchemically-treated blue torches to remind them to stay clear. Priests of blood and murder, they prefer their corpses on the truly dead side and do not surround themselves with zombies and other undead as many necromantic cults do… but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the means to raise the dead when the shit hits the fan.

Death Cult (no grid)

In fact, should someone make a concerted effort to eliminate the church, odds are they would find themselves surrounded by hundreds of skeletons and zombies crawling out of the many niches in this node. Both the high priest and his right hand man know how to use the dark heart in their temple to unleash a wave of animating force through the complex to awaken the many corpses they have prepared over the decades.

This map is provided for your personal use by the many awesome patrons who support this website through my Patreon Campaign. In fact, support has been so awesome that we’ll be taking a break from the Mega Delve for a week (or maybe two) in order to post some maps that are being released under a full free commercial license starting on Tuesday. We’ll have more information on how many maps will be released under this license once March begins and we can see the totals for March funding. Once these commercial maps are all posted, we’ll get back to the Mega Delve and post the last two remaining maps (the Necropolis under ruined Bryn Mynnyd and the Harpy Tower)!

There is a stout tower along the Akkedis Trail that is decorated with massive white chunks of stone along its battlements. To those who pass through its shadow on the trail it has become known as either the Crown of Teeth, or the Titan’s Teeth.

Titan’s Teeth (with grid)

It is said that the “teeth” were pulled from the ancient corpse of a primordial titan of wind and sight. The same tales would claim that the teeth confer some of the titan’s powers to those who stand atop the tower, granting the ability to see incredible distances and to accurately shoot at twice or three times the normal range of a longbow.

Titan’s Teeth (no grid)

The Titan’s Teeth has four levels above ground (plus the battlements) one level half underground and a final “dungeon” level underground that contains a secret passage to the surface some distance away.

This is the first map released on the blog under a fully free commercial license. This map is posted as a PNG format file (instead of my usual JPG) so you can download it and use it at home or in any personal or commercial project. 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.

Again, this shouldn’t need repeating, but this only applies to these two maps in this post!

This free license to use and abuse this map is courtesy of the many awesome patrons who have supported the Dodecahedron through my Patreon Campaign. This past month we saw a surge in patrons that brought the campaign over the $300 mark. Awesome people like James, Josh (who has his own Patreon campaign here), Barry Fujii, Brandon Kern, Phill Everson, Ryan Stoughton and Pablo “Hersho” Domínguez have all contributed to making this map not just free for your personal use, but for anyone’s commercial use also. Not to mention paying my rent and putting food on my table.

Even better, the more we bring in each month, the more maps will be released under this free commercial license!

So, once again, click on those maps, download them, and have fun remixing, reusing, abusing, stocking and doing whatever it is you want with them. These maps are yours now – I have sent them out into the wilds and look forward to seeing them again.

While there will always be wizards who are popular due to their fireworks and other magical manifestations, there are others who find no solace in civilized society. Necromancers, demonologists, witches and practitioners of foul arts.

The Summoner’s Lair (with grid)

This small hillside excavation is the lair of such a wizard, witch or warlock. One who keeps generally to themselves, along with perhaps an apprentice or a skilled swordsman along with a few additional toughs who can handle most problems should they arise.

The Summoner’s Lair (no grid)

This map was drawn using Sakura Micron pens (a 03 for the walls, a 01 for doors and crosshatching and such, and a 005 for fine detail work) in an A6 wiro-bound gamer’s notebook from Squarehex (a really lovely and tough notebook perfect for carrying around and drawing in while at meetings, in waiting rooms and so on).

This map is made available for your free use thanks to the patrons of the Dodecahedron Patreon Campaign that keeps me fed and sheltered while I draw these fancy doodads for your enjoyment.

One step further – 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 $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.

Again, this shouldn’t need repeating, but this only applies to these two maps in this post!

So enjoy! This map is yours to do with as you please, personally or commercially!

One of the first maps I posted to the blog was the Lair of the Frogs. Unfortunately I have long ago lost the original drawing of the map, as well as the hard drive that had the only high resolution scan of it (back then I was posting low resolution scans to the blog with the eventual hope of publishing a book with the high resolution versions).

Lair of the Frogs

So I elected to take another stab at the map and see what could be done in an isometric perspective. The end result isn’t great, but at least it is in a higher resolution, right?

After a clumsy and abortive failure at destroying the Temple of the Frog in old Blackmoor that ended in a near TPK and the one survivor leaving the region to find work as a short-order cook (seriously!), the frog-like humanoids and their giant frog companions became something of a nuissance critter in one campaign.

The Lair of the Frogs was a low-level adventure to launch a new campaign for those same players that flubbed the Temple of the Frog. It’s an old hill fortress and temple that has been long abandonned and now taken over by the frogs. The upper level is mostly abandonned, even by the frogs, except as a guard post (most of the guards end up being more concerned with catching flies and entertaining themselves than actually watching for people approaching the main entrance to the temple.

The main level of the temple is lived in by the lowest-ranking of the frogs. It’s the lower level, accessible through the main level or through the secret entrance in the roots of a rotted-out tree in the swamp that contains a majority of the frogs. The lower level is very damp and nasty, and the doors have either rotted away or are stuck so firmly that the frogs can’t be bothered to open them.

In the original adventure here, the frogs were keeping their prisoners on the ground level of the temple (near the well room in the North West corner of that level), so the party didn’t have to go into the heart of the frog-infested basement.

Lair of the Frogs 2

The side view of the first version of the map is still important to make full sense out of this version of the map, and I realize that I should have reproduced it in the new version.

In the end, I’m not all that happy with this remake. I think the lesson in this for me is to not go back to maps I’ve already drawn and try to remake them, but instead to keep striving forward.

This map is available to you for free for personal use thanks to the awesome patrons of the Dodecahedron Patreon Campaign. The awesome outpouring of support from Kyle Maxwell, Jeff, Jesse Butler, Wayne’s Books and over 200 other amazing patrons keeps these maps flowing for your use.

If you do find a use for one of these maps in your games, I would love to hear about it!