Tags
City, Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Five Minute Maps, Labyrinth Lord, Maps, RPG, Urban
My latest attempt at a five minute map wasn’t as much of a success as my first one (and I didn’t cheat like I did with the second one by using Dave’s Mapper to draw one of my own maps for me).
Five Minute Map #3
So, it turns out that five minutes isn’t enough time to draw a small borderlands city. So, either we have an incomplete map of a border city… or we have a complete map of an incomplete city – which is the way we ended up looking at it on google+. If taken as the completed map, then we have a fully fortified compound, a partially fortified compound, a small set of docks and dockside buildings completely outside the fortifications, and a set of farms behind an incomplete wall on the opposite side of the river from the major fortifications.
This map is actually very useful as a fortified river village – that’s how I intend to use it. Thanks!
That’s actually very useful. It can work as a place still under construction or one where construction was abandoned a long while back–maybe the whole place is abandoned now.
I may be going out on a limb, but I am looking at it as ancient ruins (possibly cursed) and a recently re-established farming/trading community along the river. The heavily fortified area to the north, with lichen-covered walls, crumbling towers, and ruinous buildings of people long deceased, could be centuries old; a powerful denizen of evil ( a Lich, a Vampire Lord?) lurks in the shadows and the terrifying howls of a beast unknown haunts the long, mist-shrouded nights. Prophecy states that the arrival of a comet heralds a chance for the curse to be broken (or even amplified) with the casting of a ritual with the aid of one of the party members.
All in all… another fine 5-min map you have created, Dyson!
Awesome!
Methinks I will clean up this drawing a bit, add a bit of detail, and then expand on that write up of yours. From an incomplete five minute map to a mini setting!
WOW…. I am honored that you wish to use it!!! Your maps are truely inspiring and I just burst forth with ideas. If ever you need more please let me know
The ruins idea is great. What occurred to me on first seeing it was a “Marcher’ castle under construction on a frontier, say like Edward I’s castles in Wales. The buildings represent mostly the housing for the workers, with a village gradually growing up around it. The docks at the “southern” end lead me to think this is along a sea coast, too. Great work for such a quickie map, kind of like a Rorschach test for gamers.
Maybe not a sea but a lake, a mill on the outflow to take advantage of the river. Anthony had a cool idea with the Marcher Lords; add the wall ruins, being scavenged for stone to build the new keep.
With the new keep built with the haunted stones of the old ruins; how long before ghosts, curses, and specters appear? Or the new Lord is possessed with the tortured soul of some fiend better left forgotten?
Maybe the existing people living here are the remains of the garrison left to watch over the ruins; thier mission long forgotten. They are considered “odd” or “queer” by the neighboring hamlets and villages. In part because of their insular ways, customs and traditions held over from their ancestors. With the influx of workmen and crafts people tensions are running high. The one inn/tavern serving as cruicible for the raw emotions feeding the malevolent energy of the haunted stones.
All of this to culminate on the anniversary of the fall of the necromancer/ summoner/ flesh crafter or BBEG’s ancient castle. When the seigers and defenders of the ancient castle walls rise at sundown to reenact those fateful days. The defenders rise as ghouls, starved while under seige, they were reduced to eating their fallen comrades. The attackers rise as zombies, skeltons, ghosts or specters.
Was the new keep built on the land that once held the funeral pyres of the fallen? Was it built on fields left fallow and undisturbed in the centuries that followed the fall of the ancient castle as one of the “queer” customs held by these folk.
Tl;dr: haunted stones = haunted keep + anniversary date of doom and weird neighbors.
I like the “huanted stones of the old ruins” idea and the background story of a once powerful Necromancer/Fleshcrafter. Seems like this is going from an incomplete five-minute map to a mini setting to something grander (wonders if royalties will be given out). Just kidding!!