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The Necromancer's Garden - Surface Level
More maps! And it’s not Friday?
The Necromancer’s Garden is a fairly complex dungeon environment designed for some serious looting efforts. Not so big as to be a mega-dungeon, but definitely more than a party can handle in a single smash-and-grab. It was initially inspired by the adventure in the back of the Palladium RPG where multiple delving groups are working to look a set of recently discovered tombs.
This series of maps are ones I drew up at a variety of events over the past month. They were done in black pen in a small 6-quad graphed notebook, so the images you are seeing on screen are actually bigger than the original maps as I drew them (so some of my mistakes are more visible than normal).
You can click on each map to go to a much larger version of the map (suited for printing). In time I expect to write up a small adventure using these maps to publish to the blog, but in the meantime I just want to post them before they get lost on my hard drive.
The Surface Level
The Necromancer's Garden - Surface Level
This is the actual “necromancer’s garden”. It was a small fortress on a hilltop with a set of four crypts built within the fortress walls. The crypts have been vandalized and in the case of two of the crypts, smashed wide open by some potent force years ago.
Two of the crypts have secret stairwells that lead to the underlevels. One is exposed from the damage (although the secret door remains secret – the walls around the stairwell are missing). There is also a stairwell to the dungeons under the fortress.
This was the original map of the set that went on to inspire the side view and sublevel maps.
Side View
The Necromancer's Garden - Side View
This was the smallest of the illustrations in the book, a side-view of the catacombes to explain how they link together. The secret exit from the second dungeon level on the right hand side of this illustration almost didn’t make it into the actual detail maps…
The Family Crypts
Necromancer's Garden - Family Crypts
This area is the ancient family crypt who’s once-secret stairs are revealed by the damage on the surface level. There is also a secret door on this level that leads to the other secret stairwell from the crypts above and from there deeper into the dungeons.
The Dungeons
Necromancer's Garden - The Dungeons
These are the two levels found directly below the fortress proper. The upper map is the upper level, and the lower map is the lower level.
Entrance to the upper level is the stairwell in the upper left hand side of the map, and the stairs in the lower right hand side lead down to the lower level.
Entrance to the lower level is the stairs on the left side of the level, and access to the lowest catacombes level is through the spiral stairs just to the northeast of the entrance stairs.
The Catacombs
Necromancer's Garden - The Catacombs
Access to this lowest level of the Necromancer’s Garden is via one of two spiral staircases. The stairs on the left are the secret stairs down from the crypts above, and the stairs on the right link to the fortress dungeons.
Nice maps, especially the side view! Great combination of techniques…
I love this site!
It and Labyrinth Lord is the two reasons I´m putting together my first D&D-session since the 80´s.
I´ll be DM-ing for the first time ever!
Now this particular map looks very promising. It´s the right size, and the short backstory is just enough to get my mind working.
The title itself makes me think there´s a level missing though.
The PC´s will no doubt believe, as the text says, that the ruins are the actual garden, but could that really be true?
Would a real necromancers garden be just some tree´s and flowers in a yard? Isn´t it more likely that the actual “garden” is the deep and dark last level, and who knows what kind of unspeakable terrors the necromancer “grows” there… not to speak of the garderners!
Again, I really love this site, thank you very much!