# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > General and Miscellaneous Mapping >  Dyson's Inktober & Mapvember

## Dyson Logos

Hey folks, it has been almost a year since I was here last, but this year I'm combining #Inktober with #Mapvember and aiming to draw/ink 61 maps in 61 days. And that reminded me that I chronicled my Mapvember progress on here last year, so I thought I should try it again!

#Inktober2017 - Map #01 - "Swift"

I need a map for the "Heart of Darkling" series I'm posting every month, so here's another location along the Darkling river - the Swiftwater Monastery.

This map is almost a full legal sized page in size. If I'm going to make it through Inktober & Mapvember, I've got to remind myself that it is ok to draw nice small maps too.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map #02 - "Divided"

Like yesterday's map, this one was heavily influenced by what I need - which is another map for the "My Private Jakalla" megadungeon project (last month had me so floored with work that I fell behind on the maps for posting to the blog in October).

So the focus on this map is a massive hall that is partially collapsed and flooded that breaks this map region into two different areas. From the edge of one of the two galleries looking down into the flooded hall, you can just barely make out the other one under most dungeoneering light (there's a 60 foot gap between them).

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map #03 - "Poison"

For today's prompt, I went with the tower/house of an assassin who specializes in poisons & venoms. The structure contains large window boxes for growing poisonous plants (and a few pretty and harmless flowers that the poisoner just enjoys looking at and nurturing), some lab space to work on the poisoner's craft, and the usual things you'd expect to find in an odd home (bedroom, study, secret basement with even secreter basement with a nice sturdy locking closet for keeping people against their will, or for locking yourself into to pretend to be someone needing rescue, etc.)

I don't often say this about my work, but I love this map. This map looks good. It is the level of map that I would want to buy when writing an adventure. I'm proud of this piece.  :Smile:

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 04 - "Underwater"

Based on an adventure I've been running (but totally a different floor plan than the actual shipwreck the adventure has been using) we have the wreck of the pirate sloop "the Wight's Shadow".

Because once you get magic to breathe underwater, exploring shipwrecks seems like a natural next step.

Now I need to start practicing my hand-lettering.

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## ChickPea

Wow, I salute you! You're off to a fantastic start.

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## Arivinah

I agree. These all look amazing!

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 05 - "Long"

One thing you saw in a number of classic D&D adventure modules were crazy long hallways to break parts of the dungeon apart. Part of it was so we could have more wandering monsters. Part of it was so the rest of the place wouldn't rise up when adventurers noisily executed the guys in room 3. And part of it was so you could slip in the occasional sloping passage so characters wouldn't realize they had transitioned between dungeon levels (and thus difficulty levels).

Today's inktober map is on a legal (8.5 x 14) page to give me more room for those long passages that stretch 200 to 300 feet.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 06 - "Sword"

They call it "The Strike", the place where a massive longsword of a magical material sits embedded in the stone, surrounded by a small crater. Over the years a small church and a few buildings have been built up around the strike, and a temple dug underground where the faint glow of the magical material can be seen. Some come down here to establish their vows as paladins, others to take in the essence of the blade to supposedly increase their martial prowess.

(Not really happy with this one in execution, but love it in concept)

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## Mouse

I really like the way you make ordinary square rooms look interesting just by twisting the corridors to change the angle in map 5.

Map 6 is amazingly well conceived, and very well drawn  :Smile:

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## Dyson Logos

Thanks, Mouse, ChickPea, and Arivinah!

I'm hoping I can maintain dedication to this project for 61 days in a row. My track record on projects like these isn't very good.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 07 - "Shy"

I caught a mental block on the cue for the first hour that I stared at it, with my various papers and pens laid out about me waiting for that next map to show up.

Then the marmoset savant came calling. The marmoset savant is a recurring low-level NPC wizard from an old campaign. 8 times out of 10, when the party needed to pick up some new information or were heading in exactly the wrong direction, they would come across a jumbled collection of blocks that had been converted into the marmoset savants' latest home.

A shy little bearded marmoset, he would have to be lured out of his blocks with interesting trinkets, new magics, or exotic nuts.

So here's the latest lair of the marmoset savant.

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## ThomasR

Impressive as always !

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 08 - "Crooked"

How better to hit the "crooked" prompt than with the basement of a thieves' guild that is in turn connected to a bunch of irregularly shaped ruins under the city that have gradually been partially converted into the sewer system?

A couple of years ago I drew an undercity map for an unpublished city. The maps are at city scale, so roughly 1" = 400 feet or so. For this map I did a closeup on a space about 1" x 3/4" in size on that map.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 09 - "Screech"

Today's prompt made me think of the wail of a banshee, and classic images of the banshee in Irish folklore often includes an old castle or other ruins in the background. So here we have the banshee's tower - a mid-sized adventure site around a small ruined keep.

The banshee's home is in the second floor of the tower in the room open to the sky because of the partial collapse of the third floor. However, this is not where she died - as the red-haired elven daughter of the lord of this tower, when it fell she was imprisoned in the dungeons below where she was later forgotten and died of deprivation pining for her father, her home, and her people.

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## Dyson Logos

> Impressive as always !


Thanks. 

When comparing this year's work with last year's there is a distinct improvement in my overall work - from my perspective at least I'm loving that I'm more flexible and much faster with my pens this year, and am producing a large number of much larger maps than last year. By the end of Mapvember last year the quality of my work had visibly improved from the beginning, taking on more daring works and really getting into isometric work by the end - I'm hoping that this extended doubling of Inktober & Mapvember into one big push will do that again, helping me level up my skills to the next level. 

This whole geometric progression of XP for leveling up is a lot of work.  :Smile:

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## tilt

Looking great as usual, love your style. But especially love the little non-traditional maps - like the stacked building and the huge sword - keep up the good work  :Smile:

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 10 - "Gigantic"

Presenting the... "Headquarters"... of some evil group or another (or maybe just some poor post-apocalyptic bastards just trying to survive the wastelands?)

The shape of the skull is off - cartographer, not an illustrator, but hey I can say it is the skull of some strange missing link between Titans and Titanic Orangutans.

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## ChickPea

Oh man, I looove that skull!  :Very Happy:

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 11 - "Run"

After a few too many games of Assassin's Creed, or just lovely flashbacks to the starter adventure scene in the original Warhammer Fantasy RPG, sooner or later you are going to want to run a rooftop chase scene.

Dashing on a 30 degree slope can be difficult, might take a few rolls. And the general rule of thumb for a snowy climate is that roofs slope up six to nine inches for every foot they cover, so assume that the peak of a roof is 1/4 to 1/3 the total width of the building above the level of the edge of the roof. So on a 20 foot wide building, the roof slopes up to 5-7 feet in the centre.

(numbers on the roofs indicate the height of the building in storeys)

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 12 - "Shattered"

Originally I was planning to make a whole set of these islands instead of just one, but a map of this detail level doesn't lend itself well to being made huge during an event like Inktober.

So for now I'm settling with the one. But there are more of them waiting in my head.

To most seagoing vessels, the Shattered Isles just seem like an unlikely collection of very close islands with unusually straight waterways between them. It doesn't take long to figure out that they were once a single larger island. But it takes a bird's eye view to get a real appreciation for the way the island has been shattered - quite precisely into 2 mile hexagons. Evidently some strange magic was afoot here in the untold past - powerful magic that was able to tear the island apart methodically, as if for some massive wargame.

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## tilt

still looking good, love that skull .. that's just a great lair  :Smile:

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## Dyson Logos

Thanks for the compliments on the skull. Unfortunately I can't stand that it has a mathematical / placement error that isn't immediately obvious, but that I can't miss when I see it.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 13 - "Teeming"

Since the Day of the Green Sun three weeks ago, the catacombs of Olik Gullar have been teeming with the undead. A sanctified necropolis, Olik Gullar contains untold numbers of the dead from the city above. The catacombs have been locked down now, but some worry that it is only a matter of time before the restless dead claw their way through to the cobbled streets of the city proper...

This map is a "proof of concept" of what I wanted a previous catacomb & sewer map to look like. I just didn't have the skill at the time to pull it off. This will still require some amount of post-production to make it more legible - moving the closeup of Section A further up to make space between it and the catacombs, and making a bit more room between the closeups of sections E & G. Basically a full reshuffling of the closeups can be done in order to make the map easier to layout and parse.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 14 - "Fierce"

The Manticore Peninsula wasn't named at random. Many explorers of the region looking for the ancient temples and treasures of the Tauvec have encountered the fierce beasts. The Manticores' Teeth is a cavern on a cliff face that peeks out over Hadrow's Woods where a small family of manticores are known to roost. The cavern is or particular note because of the two natural-looking pillars of stone that cut across the entrance (thus the "teeth").

The cave beyond isn't actually a natural cave, but an old Tauvec temple of the Lord who Listens to the Winds. The lower entrance to the temple has been completely covered by scree that has fallen from the cliff face, making the upper gallery the only viable entrance - which is of course the home of three manticores.

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## Dyson Logos

And I'm caught up!

 #Inktober2017 - Map 15 - "Mysterious"

The eight stones loom around Prior's Hill. Grasses never grow tall here, and the druids' paths lead here according to those willing to track their travels through the forest.

On the right nights, with the right rituals, you can open the portal on Prior's Hill and climb down the stairs to the black dungeons below.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 16 - "Fat"

I'm not sure how my pens wandered from the prompt of "Fat" to drawing what is distinctly an alternate Village of Hommlet, but I try not to second guess them and will instead write up a connection after the fact. Like this:

Rosnar Hill is named after the first mayor of the small settlement, who's family still owns the inn at the crossroads bridge. The settlement is home to Lord Veleydem who owns the small stone tower on the hill and who tries to make himself important to the Cities of the Lords by keeping a close eye on Satrapy merchants and others travelling along this border region. Most think of Veleydem as a bloated parasite, a massive man of not insignificant girth and appetite. However, he is actually quite clever and significantly more skilled than most would believe as he hides his history as a successful adventurer in his youth who has decided to settle here, spend his money quietly on good food, and still keep an eye on things for the Cities of the Lords where he was born.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 17 - "Graceful"

I don't think the "grace" really came through at all - in the end this became a practice session for crunchy crumbly isometric stone ruins. 

The Pillars to the Temple of Rains

At the edge of the Falleck Promontory overlooking the Dry Badlands of Korush, a series of bizarre (and probably unnatural) stone pillars reach 60 feet up from the dry floor of the land and support a series of small bridges that in turn lead to the ruins of the Temple of Rains. Some say rebuilding the temple will bring water back to the badlands, but most believe the temple was built here in the first place because water is so rare.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 18 - "Filthy"

Since I had just released my redraw of the Dungeon! boargame map today via my blog, I decided that the obvious choice for "Filthy" (sewers) should combine with the Dungeon! map into something more. So here we have the underdungeon that is connected by a number of grates to the chambers above.

Right in the middle we have the upper drainage area, linked to the Main Gallery above (and designed to keep the rest of the dungeon from flooding from rains above by moving the water down beneath the corridors as soon as it reaches the bottom of the gallery stairs). The water flow continues down to chambers underneath the guardroom (where the water generally gets... less pleasant) and then to the kitchens. A long run brings the waterflow to the torture chamber where it picks up whatever is washed out of that chamber and brings it down to the Queen's Treasure Room Annex which in at least one more recent edition of the boardgame is illustrated with a large hole in the centre - this is where the resident Otyugh lives and leaps up to try to snack on adventurers in the treasure chambers. It then flows down beneath the king's chambers (but is not connected to those chambers where it meets the flow from the wizard's laboratory before flowing out to the river outside.

On the northeast side we have the ghouls' runs, a set of corridors dug out by the ghouls and other foul creatures living beneath the north side level 4 crypts.

(All the grates in this map are actually the grates set in the floors above when mixed with the classic Dungeon! map - there's also a small stair error in the ghoul crypts that has to be reversed when I finally scan this for release)

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## ThomasR

I like the messiness of it  :Smile:

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 19 - "Cloud"

ThunderHead is one of the rare cities on the elemental plane of air, near a boundary of the plane of water. It has become home to many expats from the Prime who have found themselves here - crime is low, magic is plentiful, and the birdwatchers find the place incredible.

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 20 - "Deep"

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

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

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## arsheesh

Inspiring work, as always Dyson.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## Dyson Logos

Falling WAAAAAY behind here:

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

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

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

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## ThomasR

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

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Day 22 - "Trail"

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

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

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Day 23 - "Juicy"

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

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

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

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## Blaidd Drwg

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

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 24 - "Blind"

The tower of the blind seer.

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

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

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 25 - "Ship"

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

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## Dyson Logos

#Inktober2017 - Map 26 - "Squeak"

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

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

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## Dyson Logos

So, I only managed to get 26 out of 31 maps done for #Inktober. Maybe I'll go back to #Inktober if I ever get ahead on #Mapvember, but here we go!

#Mapvember2017 - Map 01 - Goblins, Hobgoblins, and an Ogre

Six years ago I worked on a project to redraw this particular map and the maps that go with it. I never finished them, and n top of it I long ago lost the original drawings.

But with Keep on the Borderlands coming back soon officially for D&D5e, I figured it was about time I redrew them again, this time with the goal of making a vector format version that can easily be blown up to any size needed - I'll even add in a 5' sub-grid in dotted lines for the final version for everyone wanting to have battlemaps for the module.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 02 - Bandit Tower & River Outpost

I needed another map for the "Heart of Darkling" series of maps to post tomorrow, so I took today's prompt ("Bandit") and drew up a tower on the surface and the dungeons beneath that lead in time down to the Darkling River deep underground.

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## Meshon

Fantastic maps as always! I've always wondered, how do you do your grids? Do you have an underlay or some other cool solution? I've seen some of your maps where the grid is aligned to the spaces, and the orientation of it shifts from area to area, which is brilliant.

Cheers,
Meshon

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## DanielHasenbos

Very nice work, Dyson. Your work is always superb.

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## Dyson Logos

> Fantastic maps as always! I've always wondered, how do you do your grids? Do you have an underlay or some other cool solution? I've seen some of your maps where the grid is aligned to the spaces, and the orientation of it shifts from area to area, which is brilliant.
> 
> Cheers,
> Meshon


Depends on the map, but lately for most of them I have a sheet of graph paper printed out that I set underneath the page I'm working on - makes it easy to do the alignment shift.




> Very nice work, Dyson. Your work is always superb.


Thanks!

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 03 - "Cultist"

While large stretches of the Jakallan Undercity are technically the domain of cults of the various gods of order and change - this stretch focuses on a small cult of one of the Pariah Gods nestled beneath the streets of the fine city. The cult's ritual space is at the lower right here, and they access the area via a secret door from a building basement in the central portion of the map that then leads almost directly to their worship space without crossing into areas of the undercity controlled by the approved temples.

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## arsheesh

Lovely work as always Dyson.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## Redrobes

These are all nice - but id like to say that I particularly like that juicer. Such a complex construct rendered in so easy to visualize map with your crisp lines. Wonderful stuff.

Long long ago I used to do some inkwork with indian ink and a nib pen rather than these tipped pens now. When I did it I found that the paper had to be a bit special or the ink would run into the weave of it and blur. Also, long ago I used to make blue prints for work with an ink plotter (before the advent of laser printers...) and it had to have special paper which was more like a thin vinyl. Your lines are very crisp, and if you can see the printed grid underneath then do you have any special paper that you use ? Is it coated, shiny and not blotting type ?

I think I found the pen on amazon tho. I may have to try one of these out in my ham fist.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 04 - "Basilisk"

The Basilisk's Caverns were so named because of the many stony pillars within the extensive stony fissures and chambers cut into the rock. The pillars could be seen as people reaching up for the breaks in the caverns above them. Many of the larger chambers have tall ceilings with natural chimneys and cracks leading up to the badlands above, allowing the local lizards (even basilisks) to clamber down here on occasion.

This was mostly done as an experiment with changing orientation of the grid to match the structures being drawn.

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## Dyson Logos

> These are all nice - but id like to say that I particularly like that juicer. Such a complex construct rendered in so easy to visualize map with your crisp lines. Wonderful stuff.


Thanks!




> Long long ago I used to do some inkwork with indian ink and a nib pen rather than these tipped pens now. When I did it I found that the paper had to be a bit special or the ink would run into the weave of it and blur. Also, long ago I used to make blue prints for work with an ink plotter (before the advent of laser printers...) and it had to have special paper which was more like a thin vinyl. Your lines are very crisp, and if you can see the printed grid underneath then do you have any special paper that you use ? Is it coated, shiny and not blotting type ?


Nah, it is a mix of paper from my printer and some pads of graph and isometric paper from various sources. Nothing spectacular.

For pens I mostly use Mitsubishi Uni Pins - fine felt-tipped markers - except for the 005 size where I go back to the Sakura Microns.

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## DanielHasenbos

The last one looks great. Aligning the grid to the rooms instead of the other way around really gives the map a more natural look.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember Map 05 - "Ghost"

This one was a bit rushed, because I want to catch up and get today's map done in addition to this one.

A classic abandoned and haunted house in the woods, with a collapsing shed in the old garden.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 Map 06 - The Gnoll Lair

One of the smaller lairs in the Caves of Chaos, I had forgotten how this lair only connects to the lower level of the Shrine of Evil Chaos (via that secret passage).

My intent when I release the full redraw of the Caves is to release it as a vector image so it can be scaled as needed for miniature play and with a sub-grid of 5' squares in addition to the 10' flagstones in these drawings.

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## Domino44

WOW! This thread has so many incredibly maps! Really fantastic work! I love map 17-Graceful. The texture on that map impressed me a lot.

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## damonjynx

Awesome as usual Dyson.

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## Mouse

I think its incredible that you can just keep pumping out all these attractive high quality maps, one after another, and it amazes me that you manage to get anywhere near the rate of 1 a day.  I think it would probably take me about 3 days to copy one of yours by hand, and I wouldn't be having to do any of the working out that you must have done each time!  :Very Happy:

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## Dyson Logos

> WOW! This thread has so many incredibly maps! Really fantastic work! I love map 17-Graceful. The texture on that map impressed me a lot.


Thanks! And yes, Graceful is a pretty awesome one. I should do more isometrics, but they really do suck up a lot more time, making them a serious challenge when working towards a 1 map/day target.




> Awesome as usual Dyson.


Thank you!




> I think its incredible that you can just keep pumping out all these attractive high quality maps, one after another, and it amazes me that you manage to get anywhere near the rate of 1 a day.  I think it would probably take me about 3 days to copy one of yours by hand, and I wouldn't be having to do any of the working out that you must have done each time!


I do have the advantage of doing this full time, and Inktober started just as my biggest commissioned work to date had finished (24 maps for one book / company), so I was in high gear to keep working.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 07 - "Griffon"

I'm not exactly sure why, but I've received a LOT of requests for a version of The Griffinwatch Ruins that is not ruined. The original was drawn in a doctor's waiting room as we... waited... for some major news that would change a lot about what we were doing with our lives. So I've resisted revisiting this map until now.

Today's cue is Griffon, so I finally went back to the old Griffinwatch Ruins and redrew them. It should come  as little surprise that the fort is naught but ruins now - the fort layout is subpar at best, and not well suited to defense except by the very fact that it has walls (some with places to shoot from).

But here it is, good old Griffinwatch before it was overcome and partially destroyed by team of elven and stone giant mercenaries searching for two of the three sapphire rings of Telleen.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember Map 8 - "Hag"

This prompt immediately made me want to try drawing a swamp with "cutouts" of important encounter areas.

In the end, I didn't create a new swamp - I'm sure a lot of you will recognize the swamp in question as soon as you see the map. I've added additional encounter locations (because the swamp in question only had two initially).

And I REALLY need to get better at drawing circles. These are a weird collection of ovoids...

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## Eri

Can I ask what pens you use for these.. Size and brand and all that. Currently using some cheapies from the newsagents and wanting to get some decent pens.

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## Lukc

Wooo! Keep going, Dyson!

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## Dyson Logos

> Can I ask what pens you use for these.. Size and brand and all that. Currently using some cheapies from the newsagents and wanting to get some decent pens.


First of all, here's my standard response to the Pen Question.



I tend to use Mitsubishi Uni Pins primarily, occasionally defaulting back to my large pile of Sakura Microns.

For most maps I use a 05 or 08 for the heavy lines (walls), 03 or 02 for the hatching, 02 or 01 for details, and 005 for the floor and similar tiny details.

I prefer the Uni Pins because they have a slightly softer tip than the Microns, giving me more line thickness control. Except in the 005 size, where the opposite is true and I revert to the Microns.

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## Dyson Logos

> Wooo! Keep going, Dyson!


Thanks man!

I didn't know you hung out around here too. 

I remain an unabashed fan of you and your work.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 #DnD map 9 - cave of the Minotaur.

While a small cave, the Minotaur cave in Keep on the Borderlands is listed as "Cave I" where the I stands for "Incredibly Difficult to Map" - because it ignores the grid completely AND has strange magics to confuse adventurers.

I have NO IDEA how people will be able to use this with a VTT, since the caves require that you purposefully indicate other directions for intersections. Nonetheless I'll scan this one with both a 1200dpi scan and a vector version with a 5' grid added between the 10' grid marks.

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## ThomasR

I hop in to say that the thread keeps getting better and better  :Smile:  I'll also ask your opinion on pens. As fineliners, I used Staedlers (two types with mixed results), Faber-Castells (very good grip and pretty soft tips) and sakura microns. I was wondering if you had any experience with copic multiliners ?

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## Dyson Logos

> I hop in to say that the thread keeps getting better and better  I'll also ask your opinion on pens. As fineliners, I used Staedlers (two types with mixed results), Faber-Castells (very good grip and pretty soft tips) and sakura microns. I was wondering if you had any experience with copic multiliners ?


I have very little experience with pens, TBH. I only started using technical felt-tips instead of plain old gel pens in December of 2013, and have only really worked with Sakura Microns and Mitsubishi Uni Pins.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 Map 10 - "Naga"

Falling behind already! I took too much time yesterday jawing with a bunch of friends and then buying and modifying my copy of Xanathar's Guide.

So here we go, a rushed "Lost City of the Naga Queens".

Turns out the Nagas never lost it - the defensive energy screen is still in effect, held in place by the pylons their servants maintain to keep the city safe. They just prefer that everyone else forget about the place so they can go about their business.

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## J.Edward

> #Mapvember2017 Map 10 - "Naga"
> 
> Falling behind already! I took too much time yesterday jawing with a bunch of friends and then buying and modifying my copy of Xanathar's Guide.
> 
> So here we go, a rushed "Lost City of the Naga Queens".
> 
> Turns out the Nagas never lost it - the defensive energy screen is still in effect, held in place by the pylons their servants maintain to keep the city safe. They just prefer that everyone else forget about the place so they can go about their business.


It's almost funny to have you say about falling behind. 
You are prolific in your output, so.. you'd only be falling behind your own level.  :Wink: 
I'm definitely cheering for you to keep at it.  :Smile:

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## Dyson Logos

> It's almost funny to have you say about falling behind. 
> You are prolific in your output, so.. you'd only be falling behind your own level. 
> I'm definitely cheering for you to keep at it.


I ended up 5 short for #Inktober, and I don't want to fall into that kind of deficit this month. Especially since I have a game to run tomorrow so I probably won't get around to drawing one then...

So, that said:

#Mapvember2017 Map 11 - "Medusa"

Well, this isn't a medusa's lair by an stretch - but there's a rumour that a fair maiden has been imprisoned within the caves and you should definitely go in there, find her and rescue her. She's in the 20' x 20' room on the lower left-ish part of the map, chained to the wall, and definitely not a medusa. HONEST.

Once again, one of the maps for my full redraw of the Caves of Chaos - when I'm done I'm planning to scan them all at uber-high resolution, and then release them in a vector format so they can be printed even as battle maps (and I'll include a 5' sub grid to further divide the 10' squares of the original).

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 12 - Kobold

While Tucker's Kobolds get played up a lot, for many of us the first encounter with Kobolds was within this cave. And while they weren't the master combatants with split-move-and-fire tactics, they did leave guards hiding in the trees outside of the cave, and had a pit trap on the way in.

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## Dyson Logos

Ahhhhh!

Falling behind... still working on Mummy... several levels left to ink!

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 13 - Mummy

The Great Pyramid of Tauneskalis III, grand emperor of azure beacon.

Why stop at "mummy" when you can go to "grand emperor mummy who rules the lands through magic and minions"?

This one took too long for an endurance run like this. It is spread across four pages. Sorry for the low photo quality, my workspace isn't all that well lit in the middle of the night.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 14 - Lich

Tzog'vogudh Thrice Returned maintains a number of hiding places for her phylactery - some are quite "visible" like this one. She figures the more sages that "know" where her phylactery is hidden, the less likely anyone will find its true hiding place.

Not one of my better isometric maps - this one just didn't want to "pull together" properly, and I lost the perspective in a few places as I was drawing.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 15 - Rust Monster

Duke Dorian (although our party always called him Duke Eyebrows because... well... it looks like he has a pair of dire caterpillars arguing over which one gets to eat his eyeballs)...

Let me start over.

Duke Dorian isn't really a "duke", more of a "guy who has a small private mercenary force, a lot of skill with a blade, and enough underground contacts to buy a real title if he wanted one". He handles most business at his "cottage" -  a squat and well defended stone structure back on Iron Chimes Lane. In front of his dais where he holds audiences is a pit trap that slides the unwary down into his fight pit where he keeps a quartet of rust monsters and a naked and violent hill giant with some serious brain damage.

There's even a little room set aside to watch the festivities in the pit below, with wall made transparent through some strange alchemy or magic.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 16 - Phase Spider

The Skittering Caves? Really folks? The only way from here to there is through the Skittering Caves? You know I'm arachnophobic, right? Yeah, we're going to take a break out here and prep every fire spell known to man and god alike.

This was a fun little gridless cavern set to draw. A bunch of giant spiders live here, but the scariest are the Phase Spiders who actually live in that small cave on the left, unconnected to the rest of the complex... 

I also experimented a bit with the hatching.

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## ThomasR

Oh yeah !!!

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## ChickPea

Great work and a consistently high standard. I applaud you!  :Very Happy:

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 17 - "Two Tribes"

The "Magmin" prompt was throwing me off (I swore off lava based maps after a drunken evening drawing magma filled caves - true story!), and I noted that there is no "Orc" on the prompt list.

So I finally broke my magmin block by drawing the two orc tribe caves from the Caves of Chaos. The tribe on the right certainly have a much roomier home than the tribe on the left.

The tribe on the right are known as the Sharks because they all sharpen their teeth. The tribe on the left are known as the Jets because their leader's sword has a 100gp chunk of jet as the pommel.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 18 - "Giant"

As in... "Giant Hole in the Ground"

Seriously folks, wasn't there a castle here last time we adventured out this way?

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 19 - The Golem Crypt of Ul-Vir the Mad

Somewhere beneath the Machineries, Ul-Vir built a crypt where he keeps his failed golem and automaton designs. This is of course the perfect place to find he MacGuffin that will reanimate the old warforged paladin the party is trying to work with.

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## DanielHasenbos

Great map again, Dyson. Mapvember (and the GuildDungeon) made me discover the fun of dungeon maps and yours are very inspirational (:

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 20 - Zombie Island

Merchants have spread the word that Zorus Island has been overrun with zombies. Sensible people are avoiding it, but clever people have pointed out that it is far too close to the mainland to leave it alone if indeed the tales of zombie contagion are true.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 21 - The Troll Hole

On the west side of the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams the stony roots of the Highspear Mountains are exposed right down to the waterline of the swamp. Most fear to travel on this side of the swamp because of tales of trolls that seem to crawl right out of the mountains. 

This Troll Hole is home to a few such loathsome creatures - a small stone chimney that reaches down at least a hundred feet to damp caverns below. Water still dribbles down the chimney, a constant rivulet that the trolls drink from. 

But don't make a sound here, for what comes up the chimney is far more ferocious than smoke - troll after troll seem to just explode out of the top of the chimney as they climb out seeking prey.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 22 - The Swamp Shark

They tell you that there aren't sharks in a swamp. That the water is too shallow, too brackish. They forget that not all sharks swim. The Swamp of Forgotten Dreams is home to a burrowing beast of incredible scale that crawls not only through the swamp looking for food, but through the forgotten dreams themselves. It is one of the gateways to the dreams - climb into its back and it may burrow into the dream you are looking for...

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 23 - The Cockatrice Pit

I'm way behind on Mapvember, and as usual I'm not happy with how this looks on paper because it is a semi-rushed isometric piece... but not that I see it in front of me here, I kind of like it.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 24 - The Wyverns' Temple

We trekked through the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams and into The Jungle Beyond to find the old temple ruins. It turns out there's a good reason to stay clear of that whole part of the Jungle Beyond. Wyverns. A whole damned family of them roosting on the temple ruins. Their claw marks cover the whole structure, the stones scratched, gouged and torn down not by the erosion of weather, but of generations of wyverns.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 25 - Will-o-the-Wisp

The only "true" settlement in the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams, Will-o-the-Wisp sits on the edge of the swamp on the shore of Dreaming Bay. The settlement has gone through several names, but one tavern name ended up sticking to the whole settlement through location and it being the primary watering hole for many travelling here. Now the whole settlement uses the name and, tragically, the namesake tavern burned to the ground years ago.

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## ThomasR

> #Mapvember2017 - Map 24 - The Wyverns' Temple
> 
> We trekked through the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams and into The Jungle Beyond to find the old temple ruins. It turns out there's a good reason to stay clear of that whole part of the Jungle Beyond. Wyverns. A whole damned family of them roosting on the temple ruins. Their claw marks cover the whole structure, the stones scratched, gouged and torn down not by the erosion of weather, but of generations of wyverns.


I really love this one, especially the elevation of the second level.

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## Dyson Logos

#Mapvember2017 - Map 26 - Stirge Rock

Still thinking of swamp settlements, Stirge Rock is a small fortification and associated town in the bayou. An outcropping of rock that has pushed up above the swampland (or at least not been completely drowned in it), Stirge Rock has always had a problem with the damned bloodsucking beasts it shares a name with. The folk of Stirge Rock are quite capable and hardy from generations of living in this hostile swamp environment.

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## Eri

Stirge Rock is an awesome name for a little town haha.. Might steal it for my campaign if you don't mind.

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