International Anklebiter Illustrator Day

Zak from Playing D&D with Porn Stars declared today to beInternational Anklebiter Illustration Day. Since I have a 6-year old gamer running around the house, I put him to work.

The first drawing I commissioned was the obligatory drawing of a displacer beast. Mathijs also drew the castle it lives in.

For the other drawing, I asked Mathijs to design a sub-level of the castle for me. The way he went about it was fun: He drew the first room, and asked me: ‘What do you do?’ When I went west, he drew the next room, and there I encountered either a monster or a statue. So I played through the entire dungeon, and he stocked it in the process. So this will be the Displacer Beast Level of Castle Verge:

The black squares are statues. At the foot of the statue in area #5 is a healing potion, in area #10 there’s a note saying ‘go to area #8’. The little sun symbols are treasure chests containing gold pieces.

In area #6 there’s a statue that is actually a troll with stony skin. There’s another troll in area #13. There are displacer beasts in areas #2, #7, #10, and the big room without a number in the south. Area #9 has a sugar monster (variant rust monster), #11 has a dust monster (another variant).

The very long corridor between areas #10 and #15 is an underground stream with a bridge and treasure in the water. My favorite feature of the dungeon is area #14, which is just the negative space between rooms with doors leading to it.

In area #5 there’s a trodon, a giant humanoid with two bellies, so it can eat two people:

Trodon (1d4): AL C, MV 90’ (30’), AC 4, HD 5+2, #AT 3 (1 bite and 2 claws, or 1 weapon), Dmg 1d8 (bite), 1d10 (claw) or by weapon, SV F5, ML 10, XP 500.

Swallow whole: On an attack roll of 19-20, the trodon swallows the target whole. There’s room for one medium-sized creature or two halflings in each of his stomachs. A swallowed creature takes 1d10 damage each round.

Precision spit: After a swallowed creature is digested (brought two 0 hp), the trodon can spit out its remains as a ranged attack (short 20’, medium to 40’, long 60’, Dmg 1d6).

After I left, Mathijs apparently continued playing with his mother, because later on I found this map. The ‘)’ symbols on the map are cupcakes.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess Art Challenge

James Edward Raggi IV of Lamentations of the Flame Princess posted the entries to the first LotFP Art Challenge here: March Art Challenge Entries + April's Art Challenge!

Below is my entry. It depicts an area that will be found on level 4 of my Castle Verge megadungeon, simply called "The Maw".

Castle Verge: Dungeon Level 3

I finally found the time to draw dungeon level 3.

This level is the first of two cave levels, consisting (mostly) of natural caves and caverns. I wanted this to be a big, sprawling level, with some interesting encounter areas in the south, far away from where the characters would normally enter.

Areas #75 to #84 aren’t connected to the main level proper, but characters taking the stairs to level 4 can climb up the hole in #49 to this level.

Castle Verge: Dungeon Level 2

Here’s level 2:

The south of this level was part of the original castle dungeons. In the north it connects to natural caves leading outside. There is an elevator at #70, which can take PCs to levels 3 and 4 (mostly natural caves) and level 5, the Locked Level.

The cave at #37 is a Chaos temple. It contains a sem-sentient idol whispering evil secrets to those present in the northern rooms (#2 - 26), driving them insane. The Temple was inaccessible due to the cave-in at #2, but the kobolds excavated it from the east, with the help of charmed pig slaves. The death knight's evil priest henchman practices his fool rites there.

Areas #102 to #105 can only be reached from level 3 below.

Castle Verge: dungeon level 1

I tried to build this level around circular routes, and to provide easy access to deeper levels of the dungeon. The stairs in #1, #5, #6 behind #11 are entrances leading up to the surface. The stairs in room #87, hidden behind several secret doors, leads to a smaller sublevel. The chasm is a large vertical sublevel in itself, and PCs can take the stairs at #13 to reach the lower levels of the dungeon, as well as some very, very dangerous treasure vaults. All other stairs lead to levels 2 or 3.

The well on the surface level connects to #29. The cliff/waterfall at #36 leads to level 2, but is also connected to a smaller cave complex leading to the surface and inhabited by morlocks. It could be used as another entrance to level 1, if the PCs enter the caves and climb up to #36.

The whole area east of #12 was built by the original inhabitants to control access into and out of the dungeon. Now it's occupied by kobolds, and I'm kind of hoping players will find the entrance south of #9 first, and approach the bridge at #12 from the east. Kobolds behind the arrow slits at #11 will prove interesting, I think.
Except for the kobolds, I really don’t know anything about the monsters on this level. The southern part exists of catacombs and tombs, but filling the area with undead seems a bit boring...

Castle Verge

I started work on my mega-dungeon “Castle Verge” about 2 years ago, when I was completely bored by the 4th edition campaign I was running at the time. Inspired by James Maliszewski’s megadungeon.net, Castle Verge was built by a mystical order of knights in a place where Chaos leaks into the world. The order was betrayed from within by a knight secretly working for an insane chaos mage, who wanted to use the dungeons beneath the castle for his own purposes.
Originally, I planned to place an abandoned dwarven kingdom beneath the castle, but right now I’m revising it for use in a world without dwarves.  Luckily, I was able to reuse parts of already completed maps in my new map of dungeon level 1.

The Castle: The castle itself consists of 4 levels. Often the above-ground levels of a mega-dungeon are smaller or less detailed than the underground dungeon levels, but I wanted to make the castle itself worthy of exploration, to give low level character more options. The southwest tower will be a sublevel for higher level characters, but I’m not sure what to put there yet.

The castle levels are occupied by a tribe of ratlings (re-flavored kobolds) working for a death knight, the undead form of the same knight that betrayed the knightly order.