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December 2025 Cartography Collection

As always, thank you so much for your support. I've actually been offline since the 19th, and won't be coming back for another few days (this post is automated). There's been a family emergency which has, well, taken over Christmas & Solstice.

But I'll be back!

The final Kraken of the year!

Here we go!

Here's the last two maps for 2025 to be re-released under the patron-exclusive commercial license.

After counting your votes, we've packaged up a pair of maps from late 2023 for this release: The Lordling's Hall and Gorgonmouth Mine.

These are available exclusively to patrons for their commercial use.

Thank you once again for your support; you make this all possible.

I hope you had a merry Christmas and the best of the season, and that tonight brings...

Twin-Thread Grotto

These limestone caves contain the confluence of a pair of small streams that have cut through the rock for untold ages. The streams connect in central cave and then flow down through the wall to enter the southern cave in a narrow deep ravine with narrow and thin natural stone bridges spanning it in a few places. The whole site would be nothing more than a curiosity to spelunkers if it weren’t for the strange creatures that now dwell along the banks of the streams.

Spudlings live alon...

The Final Kraken Poll of 2025

The season's upon us, it's that time of year /
Brandy and eggnog, there's plenty of cheer /
There's lights on the trees, and there's wreaths to be hung /
There's mischief and mayhem and songs to be sung!

AND we need to find out where the Kraken will strike for the last time this year.

Every month, you vote on a selection of maps from the blog's archives. The two th...

Saryer’s Overlook & the Sirenhearth Docks

In 2017 I needed a small fortified community for a game set on the Manticore Peninsula. A small fortification that looks down on the ocean to be the first sign of civilization for those arriving to explore the ancient ruins in the deep forests further on to the peninsula.

This became Saryer’s Overlook which I quickly doodled together in 2017 and which I’m revisiting today as I needed it again for a more recent game.

At first the name of Saryer’s Overlook applied only to the...

Madrek’s Descent

This map was drawn as a set-piece for a climactic encounter where the PCs either rush for the ending while being pursued, or their enemies are the ones rushing while the PCs pursue them (in my game, it ended up being the enemies that were in pursuit of the very pro-active party). The Descent itself is a remnant of an earlier civilization and it thrums with magical energies (in reality, it thrums because it sits above a major power plant and controls the energy output to the underground terraf...

Scavengers' Deep - Map 26

The Scavengers' Deep is a reminder of the amount of work that went into underground structures during the great war. Generally, the elves only built underground when hiding their breeding and research facilities, whereas the forces of the kingdoms, assisted by the dwarves, were constantly building underground as the elves were unrelenting and would completely raze any surface defences that they defeated.

But the structures now known as the Scavengers' Deep are atypical, an elven complex...

The Greystone Ruins

The Greystone Ruins stand on a weathered rise above a wide, rocky plain, several days travel from any settled road. Beyond the rise, the land rolls away in low, scrub-covered hills punctuated by pale boulders, with only scattered trees clinging to the more sheltered hollows. At dawn and dusk, mist crawls up from distant ravines, filling the dips in the land and leaving the ruins like an island of stone adrift upon a gray, rolling sea. Travellers approaching from afar see the place as a jagged...

The Muster Gatehouse

The Muster Gate, on the south side of the city, is where the troops of the Satrapy traditionally mustered when called upon to take action outside the city – such as for the assault on the Knave’s Spire in 1488 or the search for chancellor Kelem last year.

The gate is also one of the main access ways into the city for those coming from the south or east (as the eastern roads avoid the Basilisk Marshes). The twenty-foot-wide gates are a chokepoint for traffic, making it easier for gua...

Fallen Temple of Sekhmet

The old temple of Sekhmet claws at the barren earth like the ossified remains of a primordial beast, its stones worn pale. Approaching from the south is a sea of ruin where great columns lie in chaotic sprawl across what was once a ceremonial entrance, their broken faces still bearing faint hieroglyphs that speak of a grandeur now lost. These limestone sentinels have created a labyrinthine obstacle course of sharp-edged stone and treacherous shadow to the entrance proper which stands half-obs...

Blackglass Vein – South

This is the second of two linked maps exploring a small abandoned mine. Known as the Blackglass Vein, this was a prosperous obsidian mine abandoned after it was mostly mined out.

The southern map details the areas of the mine that have been made mostly inaccessible by the collapse of the bridges across the rift, and the subsequent cave-in just past the bridge. Accessing this area now involves either climbing through the very small gap left by the cave-in or somehow crossing the rift to ...

Blackglass Vein – North

This is the first of two linked maps exploring a small abandoned mine. Known as the Blackglass Vein, this was a prosperous obsidian mine abandoned after it was mostly mined out.

The northern map details the entrance to the mine and goes as deep as the “rift”, an underground ravine that only opens to a six-inch wide gap at the top. The gap allows water to enter the rift when it rains, and this eventually rotted away the wooden bridges built to span the rift for the blackglass vein. 2025-12-09 01:22:57 +0000 UTC View Post

The Serpent Lands – Map 3

The Serpent Lands are immediately south of the Autumn Lands. There’s no set scale for these maps, and the items on the maps are not to scale with each other so we can see points of interest like towers, cities, and caves. If you really need a scale for this and don’t want to pick one yourself, go with six miles to the hex.

As hinted at in the Autumn Lands, this region was once the heart of a lizard-folk empire lost to antiquity. Many strange ruins can be found around these regions, ...

December Backstage Pass

Here is this month's backstage pass with all the maps that will be released on the blog this month.

Thank you again for your support, you make these packages of maps possible.

Release the Kraken!

Here are the two maps that won the voting this month. They are both released under a patron-exclusive commercial use license. We have "An Alien Tower" and "the Deep Vaults of the Lost Queens" this month.

Thank you again for your support. Keep on kicking ass, friends!

Scavengers' Deep - Map 25

The Scavengers’ Deep is a reminder of the amount of work that went into underground structures during the great war. Generally, the elves only built underground when hiding their breeding and research facilities, whereas the forces of the kingdoms, assisted by the dwarves, were constantly building underground as the elves were unrelenting and would completely raze any surface defences that they defeated.

But the structures now known as the Scavengers’ Deep are atypical, an elven com...

November Cartography Collection PDF

And here we go, the collected maps and descriptions for this month. This is a Patron-exclusive for at least six months. Please enjoy and thank you again for your support!

The Prism Burrow

Down deep where the miners refuse to return, light seems to take on different forms; to puddle, to glimmer in mid-air, to be colourless, and yet to shine too brightly.

These mines have long been abandoned, and they grow stranger with every passing year. The few miners who worked here in their childhood won’t remember these chambers beyond the old shrine. The rest has warped and changed. Wooden supports have fossilized, reflective salt crystals forming on them to glitter in the dark. E...

November Kraken Action!

Every month you vote on which maps we will release from the archives under a patron-exclusive commercial use license.

Here are this month's choices:

https://forms.gle/FfxUw4px7kKGkQb59

Dreamspinner’s Nest

A place of velvet and rot, a palace of sleep where dreams are both banquet and battlefield. Corridors and galleries that breathe like lungs, tapestries that unweave themselves when looked at too long, and a hush so thick it presses the teeth together. The prose that suits this place is elegiac and baroque, a voice that lingers on the scent of incense and the metallic tang of fear; stories of faded grandeur and inevitable decay, of beauty that seduces and betrays. This is a loom of dreams; a p...

the Ossuary of Whispers

They built the ossuary where ley-storms gather, in a hollowed cleft between two black spurs of rock, lest the wind carry their voices to more pleasant lands. From the road, it looks like a church of broken teeth rising from the stone, built of bone and carved stone. Its outer walls are banded with funerary reliefs, all worn to the grain of the rock, and the few windows are narrow and seem to drink all light and only whisper back.

The bones are not laid neat as in pious necropoli. They a...

The Umbral Hatchery

The Hatchery is a wound in the rock. Light dies here by slow degrees. Torches gutter as if breathed upon by winter. Sound comes hollow, like footsteps in a skull. Those who linger feel the edges of themselves go blunt. Shadows do not merely fall. They test.

This place was grown, not made. Shadows pulled out of the earth through seams of stone until hollows opened like mouths. Men came and tried to seal the place with seals and prayer. Seals rotted, prayers frayed. The brood filled the d...

The Mycocrypt Museum

A subterranean marvel curated by deep gnomes to preserve wonders of the Underdark, the Mycocrypt Museum now lies in ruin – a victim of one of its own exhibits. The other exhibits have decayed, the museum’s halls overrun by creeping molds, sentient fungi, and acidic oozes that digest memory as easily as flesh.

When using this map, pick a distance for the various connectors (A, B, and C), this will determine how sprawling of a complex the museum is. A very long B will also make the ma...

The Font of Violet Flames

In the twilight of the Third Age, when the small gods walked the Prime and the blood of mortals could stain the weave of fate itself, there stood the Church of Veyl-Karash.

Its curtain wall, now crumbled and moss-choked, once bore the sigils of the Fourfold Concord: a cabal of warlocks who bartered with the small gods for dominion over flame and soul. Within the temple’s shattered nave lies the Font Eternal, a basin hewn from obsidian and veined with veins of amethyst, perpetually bur...

The Spiral Sink – Map Set 2

We descend further into the “Spiral Sink” – a dungeon built around spiral stairs down a central shaft. The Sink has been modified multiple times by groups since it was built, and now it has fallen into decay from disuse. This is the second (and last) map in the set, detailing levels 4 through 7.

Level 4 is where the spiral tightens – the walls encroach in on the central column and beyond this point the stairs are set with the outside of the shaft on one side and the central col...

The Spiral Sink – Map Set 1

The remains of a low stone structure perches on the edge of a deep shaft. Spiral stairs descend as the shaft gradually becomes narrower. The “Spiral Sink” has been modified multiple times by groups since it was built, and now it has fallen into decay from disuse.

The first level of stairs circles the open pit, with a wide step and an accompanying alcove every 45 degrees around the route. Once we enter the second loop, the alcoves continue, except that the alcoves to the North, South...

Serpent Lands – Hex Map 2

The Serpent Lands are immediately south of the Autumn Lands. There’s no set scale for these maps, and the items on the maps are not to scale with each other so we can see points of interest like towers, cities, and caves. If you really need a scale for this and don’t want to pick one yourself, go with six miles to the hex.

As hinted at in the Autumn Lands, this region was once the heart of a lizard-folk empire lost to antiquity. Many strange ruins can be found around these regions, ...

November's Backstage Pass

Here is this month's collection of maps to be released on the blog. This package includes Dreamspinner's Nest again (which appeared in last month's, but ended up being replaced with the village map of Neu Grafvenhusk at the last minute).

Release the Kraken!

And here are the two maps re-released under the patron-exclusive commercial use license this month. These maps are available for you to use in commercial works.

This month's maps are: The Mountain Temple (Nov 2020) & The Old Fighting Pit (Oct 2022).

Thank you again for your support!

Cartography Collection - October 2025

Here is this month's cartography collection. As noted earlier, I didn't include one of the maps that was included in the Backstage Pass this month (Dreamspinner's Nest), which will be released next month instead. In its place, I released the map of Neu Grafvenhust (the third map for the Ossuary Masquerade adventure).

Thanks again for your support and please enjoy!