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The Deep Spire: The Grotto - Also, the next big project: The Black Loch
🕑 Added 2021-02-13 17:47:12 +0000 UTCThree maps in nine days feels like a pretty good pace. Although, to be fair, all three maps are actually part of a larger map of the Deep Spire. Which is, itself, part of an even larger map of the Black Loch. Speaking of which, I haven't mentioned the loch in a while, so let's go over it again for anyone who isn't aware.
After finishing Brazenthrone, an enormous dwarven city that took two years to draw, I said I had plans for another huge project. That project is the Black Loch and it will involve mapping out an entire campaign setting.
The Black Loch is a small sea in the Underdark, maybe 100 miles (160km) across. My plan is to make a regional map of the loch, with around 15-20 different locations marked on it. There will be towns, caves, ruins and so forth. For every place marked on the map, I will draw a 5' scale battlemap of the location itself.
Once it's finished, you'll have a map of an entire region of the Underdark and, for every place in that region your players might want to go, there will be a battlemap. If they head to the kuo-toa village, you have a map of that. The island with the ancient ruins? You have a map of that too. The duergar outpost, the underwater temple, the abandoned illithid settlement? Complete maps and DM notes for all of them, ready to go.
While I haven't drawn the regional map of the Black Loch yet, there are maps of two of the locations that will be on it. One is the Deep Spire. The other is the The Drow City of Vlyn’darastyl, which is the only place that will have a city map instead of a battlemap.
I intend to draw the regional map of the loch in the next month or two. Once that's finished, I'll start working on maps of each of the locations. I don't have a specific schedule planned, but I want to do at least one Black Loch location per month until it's done. Like Brazenthrone, it'll be a big project and I want to make steady progress, but I don't want to draw it exclusively from start to finish.
Anyway, that's the plan. It's completely insane and it'll be a ton of work, but that's what makes it my kind of plan. I hope you're looking forward to it.
Comments
Milby's Maps
Yeah, I really want to get to work on that. If there's one thing I've learned from drawing really big, complicated maps, it's that you have to plan things out first. Drawing a location without knowing what the rest of the area will be like feels kind of backwards.
Amazing. My players just snuck past that drow city and I have plans to send them back on a diplomatic mission. Very excited to see the regional map.
