City of the Dragon Lords

A little Turkey day bonus post (btw a belated Happy Thanksgiving to all). Here's a concept sketch I did while waiting for the turkey to cook, after spending the night before looking at maps of Crater Lake. It's the fabled City of the Dragon Lords (read my Dragon Armies posts for more information) where commands for the Dragon Armies issue forth. My players have picked up a teleport card to this spot while raiding the Fortress of the Black Dragon pirates. Therefore I need to be prepared before some fool ranger decides to bring matters to a head by launching a frontal assault on many thousands of spawn of Tiamat backed by dozens of dragons on his own.

Cliff Top Battle Map

The next battle map. This is the top of the crashed earth mote. It connects to the stones map via the slope in the lower left corner. Key terrain features include the octagonal pyramid, the sinkhole, the rope bridge to a still floating earth mote, and a 40' high cliff on the north end. Assess to the cliff top is via the large boulder in the upper right. The map was also to include trees but these are not marked as I have a very nice set of plastic ones from GW. One tree is of course close to the cliff to provide an alternate route to the top of the cliff

P.S. I left the dragon minis I used as paperweights in this time so you could see them too :)
P.P.S. The tree have become legend, after several sessions of She-who-must-obeyed saying "Did you bring the trees"and me saying "No, you didn't pack them for me". We finally brought the trees to a session, at which point I criticaled three times in a row. Now the current player response is "Oh no! Not the trees!!" so of course I have to bring them every time.

The French connection

*** UPDATE/WARNING weekly spyware checker turned up the main page for world of Selandia as a KNOWN BAD WEBSITE. I am not sure the spyware checker is right and it does not explain itself further, but as a favor to my followers I have taken the imbedded links down. Good artwork,Bad people *sigh* ***
Was catching up on my geomorphs over at dysonlogos where he reminded me of Pascal Faeriss' blog which I forget to check because it is not a Google blog which links to my dashboard. Once again I decided to life on the edge and give my High School French a whorl. After a brief detour where I discovered that jeu de role means roleplaying game and some French sites sell their stuff for cash just like us Americans, I stumbled on a site for the world of Selandia. The language of jaw-dropping artwork for maps is universal. Pascal has even written a few modules for the setting, which I downloaded even though they are in French. C'est bon!

P.S. working on translating the key to Locnerac (on the french side of the site), but since I am to entry 5 of 212 after 1.5 hours don't expect it anytime soon.

Ancient Temple Plaza Map

Ancient Temple Plaza within the ruined city of Imrataxi. An evil temple which controls the characters minds combined with a Elder Brown Dragon lurking in the sand. The buildings surrounding the Plaza filled with the dragons lackey minions as well. Rock pile in the North East corner is the start of the Stones Map. Not as much color as the stones map (Hey, what can I say? my hands get tired these days). Should have colored this one first, since it was where most of the battle was fought. If I'd have known someone was bringing a Swordmage who could not only chase down a dragon from 21 squares away, but teleport them both back to where the Swordmage started as well, I'd of planned different. I brought encounter 2 in as reinforcements. When we started to run low on time I brought encounter 3 in as reinforcements as well. A real donnybrook and great fun, but one that only used one of the three battle maps I'd drawn as well. As they say the plan seldom survives first contact with the player characters.

Stones Battle Map

I used my 27"x34" gridded flip chart paper and colored pencils to draw a huge pile of boulders from a crashed earth mote. Starting at 30' high and rising to over a 100'. Sprinkled with some monsters that push people off ledges. Of course my players sneaky gits that they are bypassed it with fly spells and teleports.

Battle maps coming soon

Sorry no old school maps this week. I have been hard at work cranking out battle maps for my 4e 14-17 adventure this week and have not had time for much else (well maybe a little Starcraft 2). I think the rock jumble is one of my best ever. I'll try and get a picture of it up after I see how it plays tomorrow.