I drew this little map the other day during a session of Hill Cantons where during the sack of a minor city state by an army of aggrieved war bears the party ran down the city's recently deposed Czernobog/demon worshiping ruler along with a cadre of his fanatical warriors (dressed in absurd bronze and black iron harness, horned helmets and fur topped boots) in the ritual caves beneath the city.  The party was blasted with a fireball, and had terrible luck with initiative, but eventually stabbed, choked and hacked the wizard king to death without losing a member (though there were some rolls on the unforgiving death and dismemberment table).

Here's the map...

or if one likes a more classic feel...




This is Ironspire Island - a mysterious outcropping less then two miles long (hexes seem useless to me here - but hey, tradition) in the balmy seas off the Feral Shore.  It has not been explored as despite its interesting features, including the mysterious iron spires on its Eastern hill, the island is infested with zombies in the swarming hundreds - maybe even thousands.  A mystery of the Hill Cantons that I hope this map will encourage its players and Gm to explore.

Anomalous Subsurface Environment is still a setting I think about and that I hope to run again some day.  In the last ASE campaign I ran the party ended up getting tired of Morlocks that screamed "Mheeeet!" at them constantly and had started setting traps and left behind the megadungeon in favor of the bruise colored marshes to the South - The Livid Fens.  This is an area directly South of Denethix that is mentioned in ASE 1 and included on the largest regional map within.  I've written a couple of small ASE adventures for the Livid Fens (Red Demon and Wreck of the Anubis) but until now haven't drawn a full map of the place in the style of the map I did for the area around Denethix and containing Mt. Rendon (home of the ASE itself).

The map here is a black and white version, hopefully in the next couple of days I will get it together to ad some contrast and even an acid orange version in the style of the 1st map.

Here's a Map I won't be using for anything.  Have at it.


If it looks familiar perhaps it's because it's a version of the 'fill in' map by Matt Jackson (Lapis Calumni) for Tenkar's Tavern's OSR Superstar Contest.

Sure ASE 1 by Patrick Wetmore has some nice maps in it, but I went and decided to draw the area map around Denethix (ASE's 'point of light') in my own overland style.  Use it how you will - player map immediately comes to mind.  It's only vaguely to scale, but that's part of the fun.

Use them however you like.

Black and White

A Psychedelic Sepia Sort of Version

Sort of a space filler that I did up for this.

I've been working on a One Page Dungeon for the Contest of the same name, and yet being a verbose person, despite my best efforts, I couldn't cram this concept into anything less then two page.  It's almost a dungeon generator of sorts - kind of like what I've been doing for the wreck hunting in my current ASE campaign.  Anyhow since it was 90% done before I gave up on fitting it onto a page, I give it to the public as two!  I sort of envision it in the same world as Brittlestone Parapets or The Prison of the Hated Pretender - a post-apocalypse of a purely magical variety.

STONE SHIPS - PDF

Maps are what really takes up space

Take a look at the PDF and download yourself a way to generate dying earth style abandoned vessels that might make an astute player think of the German High Seas Fleet, and it's scuttling at Scapa Flow.

So I drew up the map below because I was thinking about cloud castles, and I think it turned out to be an interesting lair style dungeon.  I figure it's a strange sight spotted floating about the wilderness sometimes, a dark permanently storming cloud, with a pair of gleaming white towers visible perched atop and within it.  Rumormongers might know that in ancient times (or only a few years ago - doesn't matter) it was used by a powerful wizardly overlord as a traveling feast hall, with which he would circle his domains, bringing rain and accepting tribute from his floating palace.  More like a pleasure barge then a home, it was known as "Thunderhead Manse" and richly furnished to impress yokels and other visitors.

I can think of a couple things that could make it an adventure area.  The first scenario involves a renegade gang of the (now vanished) wizard's flying monkey guard, who float around at random, ransacking towns, demanding tribute and turning the Manse's lighting cannon on those who resist.  The monkeys are armed with Arcquebus' - odd mechano-arcane weapons that fling arcs of electricity at their enemies, but otherwise they're basically a band of flying buccaneers putting on airs. Led by a monkey captain claiming the name "The Storm King" this might make a pretty funny (or extremely deadly - because 20 - 30 2nd level flying humanoids that have some military discipline and strategy can be pretty tough) adventure.

Otherwise the place would make a good lair for a dragon.  I'd go with a blue dragon, or better phantasmagoric wyrm.  A long ribbon of magic and madness, coiled in the library atop the manse and served by the phantoms of the cloud castle's former servants and guards.  the whole place could be infected with the dragon's madness, with dream beasts materializing out of the cloud to strike an threaten.

Air elementals or a young cloud giant dandy see like possibilities as well, but less exciting. The map itself would need some processing before being useful - a key of course, with the levels named, and all the excess grid removed.  I've presented the raw version here because I haven't decided what to do with this (if anything yet). I think for any PDF, I'd also break up the map into sections for the tower, cellars and manse, all tied back into the elevation.

Dyson, over at Dyson's Dodecahedron is running a small contest to finish a map he began and fill in the empty areas.  Now Dyson's technique has become something of the standard for hand drawn dungeon maps in the past few years, but what makes his maps great is the way they are constructed with a great deal of verticality, looping and extra entrances - so they're not just well drawn, they're well designed.

Lost Copper Isle

Anyhow, I figured I'd draw up a Dyson style map for his contest.  I have tried to make the vertical element important and use it as a way of splitting up nearby areas while offering hints of thier existence.  I've also tried to use a fair amount of water both as obstacles and to maintain the maps nautical flavor.

The map turned into some sort of fantasy version of El Fraile Island, a sea fort carved out of a rock outcropping.  Now the way I figure it the fort is relatively new and recently occupied by pirates who made a few improvements before being driven off.  Prior to that the whole island (let's call it "lost copper island" was some of temple complex or ritual site for a sea deity and its best if it's some kind of icky Cthulhu style sea deity I think.  The abandoned pirate fort fills only a third of the space with  set of sea caves, a flooded shrine and perhaps some crypts filling out the island.  There's even a little cave for a creepy old hermit in a battered coracle who might be able to impress upon characters the danger or potential glory of the island.

Rising from a peculiar stretch of foothills, just North of the Livid Fens and only a mile from the River Effluent, the Tower of Flints takes it's name from the hills around it, where the turf has been cut down to the grey flint of the hills beneath.  The Tower itself is built of the same grey stone, though oddly decorated with crude lumpy statutes of with niches where their faces should be.  These niches at one time held white stones or skulls, but most are empty now.  The tower is universally shunned as the Witch Queen of the Livid fens has made it known that she will take a personal interest in any who attempts to take up residence within. The tower crumbles into ruins, and it's upper stories have fallen to the North of the base as if torn away by great forces.



The Tower of Flints is a deserted tower once home to one of the megalomaniac victims of super-science who call themselves 'Wizards' and haunt the Land of 1,000 Towers.  It marks the unofficial line between the marches of Denethix and the domain of tribes beholden to the Witch Queen of the Livid Fens.  In the South it is known as the Lichethrone rather then the Tower of Flints, though no explanation is given for this difference in convention.

Caw caw.

Was thinking about buried vaults from before the collapse of a Science Fantasy Society and what great dungeons they might make.  Below is a small one I call Shelter Antere.  We have nuke plants and robot repair stations, a dome of green crops (or not if the light went out) and plenty of space to fill with undead, mutants, ghouls, upstanding citizens or degenerate horrors.

As a map I am not so sure. I added too much fiddly detail I think - in the engineering sections and medical sections only.

Level One - is an Engineering shop section, and there's even an abortive escape tunnel.  I'd run this as a mutiny, trapping the vault closed behind the door to this upper section, where no one survived to let the majority of the dwellers out once the safety interlocks allowed outdoor access.

Level Two - Administration, Security and Medical/Carniculture around a central growing area with artificial lake.

Level Three - On the right, living quarters, on the left reactor and robot shops.  One might note a lack of supply rooms.  This is because the large covered pit leads to a robotic supply pit, an acre of dusty crates superintended by angry robots (or maybe balrogs, because that's what happens when you dig too deep).

Well something like that at least. I mean most likely it's filled with radiation ghouls and insane AIs anyhow.  I note (as referenced in the comments with Garrison James of Heriticworks) that this dungeon is full of choke points and has very little in the way of alternate routes.  Some would suggest this makes a bad dungeon map.  This was drawn on a whim, and as is my way, drawn with an effort to make something logical and organic (i.e. things are in the space that make sense).  Yet this is unsatisfying - as a dungeon map.  If one were to fill this with vault dweller of any intelligent variety, it would be unassailable by a party unless they had a few area effect attacks at least (and the vault dwellers didn't).  Could be good still for undead - or robo undead, which is sort of the science fantasy variant, along with plain old robots.  Anyhow it's a map.  I bet the initial population of the vault was somewhere in the 25 - 50 range - too small really.  I kind of envision it as a private vault built for a pack of rich folk.  This of course seems like it would be the perfect set up to devolve into necromancy or ghoul packs.

More for "The Pretender's Dread Machine".  Another map.  Not all cool and old school, an outdoor map, of the "Autocrat's Tear", a canyon in the midst of the accursed halfling infested (Yes halfling rustics with curare - don't say you weren't warned) Yellow Lands.

What we're looking at is a canyon, with a cavern at the East end.  I'm not sure how well it played out, but this is the trouble with drawing and drinking. The walls of the canyon are black rock, and the vegetation grey.  The milky water flowing within is poison, death by slow petrification.

A) An ancient watch tower of arcane weapons, blasted to rubble.  Formerly the den of Skip Lions.

B) A blasted crater - where a Wizard met his end when faced by Desolate Crusaders and Wire Ghasts.

C) Pubelo religious center of the ancients. Empty, dusty, gold here and there.

D) Vile Marsh where the milky water pools in stinking sludge, and Wire Ghasts roam.

E) The Cavern of the Machine, A  huge arched cavern, with cenotes dotting it's floor,  the cenotes vary in color as they have been permanently dyed by the pigments that coated the sacrifices made by the ancients, or possibly by the industrial effluvia of the Pretender's Machine.  Wire Ghasts, Rusted Sentinals and Desolate Crusaders emerge from the pools and stalk the cavern.

Updated with a bit of a fix to make the cave clearer and the letters more functional