Great Battle Map Drawing Tutorial

This video starts off as a review & discussion of some Pathfinder 2e module called "Fall of Plaguestone" but around 20:40 "Classic DM" (T. Elliot Cannon) begins showing you how to draw good-looking battle maps. I thought this was a very good tutorial and easily adaptable to non-Pathfinder purposes. I'm not great at drawing battlemaps, but I've always wanted to improve.

It looks like Classic DM might be making this a series - on Oct 1 he uploaded a second tutorial video focused on "the Indigo Oasis" module.

Determining What PCs Find When They Search Hexes

My overland exploration procedures typically allow for three possible activities. The first is resting, the second is travel, and the third is searching a hex. This article is about the third procedure, searching hexes, and in particular, how to execute step #7, "Referee determines whether the PCs find anything". I'm going to discuss this step from two angles - firstly, placing content in hexes and secondly, the PCs conducting their search.

 As a reminder, I use hexes with a 5 km radius from centre to edge (a 10 km incircle diameter or "10 km hex" for short). A hex this size contains 86.6 square kilometres of area. Here's a calculator that will tell you the dimensions of hexagons of various sizes (metric) if you want a different size.

The Placement of Content in Hexes

My solution here is very simple. Hexagons divide into six equilateral triangles.In my hexes, each triangle covers an area of about 12.5 square kilometres, with a maximum distance of 5 km from base camp (assumed to be in the centre of the hex).

I number the triangles from 1 to 6, and roll 1d6 to determine which subsection any particular piece of content is in. ktrey over at d4 Caltrops has a tessellation system that breaks hexes up into 12 lozenges of equal area if you would prefer that level of granularity, but in all honesty my hexes rarely have more than two items in them at a time to start (not counting wandering monsters) so I don't have much need for that level of granularity.

I also assign each object a Concealment Score that interacts with my group perception rules. When in doubt, I randomly roll a Concealment Score of 1d6+3, knowing that anything with a Concealment Score equal to or lower than the # of PCs is going to be automatically spotted when they enter the hex. I try to make something immediately obvious in at least a third of all hexes, sometimes as much as a half, depending on how aggressive and interested they are in searching hexes.

Searching Hexes

In step #1 of my search procedure, PCs break up into search parties and each search party chooses a subsection of the hex to search. The most common choice in actual practice is that they all stick together and make a random roll of which subsection they're going to search, but they have the option to split up if they're in a rush or feel confident.

PCs searching a hex counts as an active search, so they roll 1d6 and add the # of PCs in the search party, and if it equals or exceeds the Concealment Score of the content, they find it.

A single iteration of a search takes one watch to complete (typically 6 hours), including time spent returning to base camp. Multiple search parties searching different subsections do their searches simultaneously.

This means that if the PCs stick together and search a hex, they will clear it in one full day (6 watches) of searching (without rest), or 2/3rds of a hex if they do. My experience is that they tend to work to the 2/3rds level by spending a day searching before moving on.

I'm not sure of how realistic this is (probably not very), but it strikes a good balance between giving them a change to discover a lot of content and leaving a level of uncertainty about whether they've truly found everything.

Lazybones / No Prep Method

If you're in a rush and having had any time to prep, you can just roll 4d6, preferably of different colours, when the PCs search a hex. The first is the subsection the content is in, the second is the subsection they search, the third is the Concealment Score and the fourth is their active search roll.

If the first and second die don't match, the PCs don't find the content because they're in the wrong spot. If the third die's result is higher than the fourth, the content stays hidden.

I usually do d6+3 for an actually randomly generated Concealement Score, and the fourth d6 will be +# of PCs since it's an active search, but you only have to get to these calculations if the first and second die match.

Once you've rolled the subsection the content is in, I suggest mostly keeping it consistent across further searches because a) it means fewer die rolls and b) it makes things less frustrating for the players because they can whittle down the location by progressively searching all of the subsections.

The sole exception I can think of where it becomes more fun is if the content is moving (e.g. it's a fugitive trying to hide from them by running around the hex), and this will incentivise the PCs to break up into smaller search parties to search more subsections simultaneously. In this case, you should still only roll the first d6 once per watch of searching.

Conclusion

I find these methods allow me to quickly establish whether the PCs have found anything when they search. You have one roll for stocking, and one or two rolls to resolve searching. The level of risk and difficulty of this system can be adjusted using three factors - the granularity of subsections (more likely to miss things), the length of a watch (more resources consumed, esp. time), and the Concealment Scores of content (more difficult to ensure you've cleared a hex). I hope this helps you stock hexes more easily.

Making Rivers on Hex Maps

This post is so simple that it's almost cheating. In case you hadn't already thought of doing it, you can use the procedure outlined in my post on making paths through the wilderness to also generate rivers courses in hex maps. You can do this ahead of time or during play, as you prefer.

To make your rivers a little straighter, I suggest rotations of the d4 be to the second-next clockwise face that doesn't currently have a path on it (instead of just the next clockwise face, as per when you're creating paths).

I also suggest that any time you either generate something that looks absurd or that has 3+ streams flowing into a single hex, you make it a little pond or lake. Hexes adjacent to water-filled hexes count as having one stream flowing into them across the adjacent face if you're rolling for rivers. This will give you a handful of lakes and ponds of varying sizes.

I come from Canada, which has most (in the sense of a slight absolute majority) of the world's lakes,  so I always think fantasy maps don't have enough open bodies of water of significant size on them, but this is a bit of an idiosyncrasy. If you do this procedure a few times across the length of the map, you'll eventually end up with a nice hydrological basin with rivers and lakes all connected up.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Blackwater But Were Afraid to Ask

Here's the concise summary of everything your average adventurer needs to know about the Kingdom of Blackwater in 723AS:

They use a silver standard for coinage. Their main exports of interest to anyone else are cattle, horses, linen, dragonbone, magical toxic waste, ancient relics, gold, and murder hobos. You mainly want to steal the gold, relics, dragonbone and magical toxic waste. They speak Wyvish, as do the hippies (Upper Wyvs), weirdos (Lower Wyvs), conans (Ulthendish) and the folks in the factory city to the east (Marlechers) but they all sound silly when they do. Their government has nobles and stuff, but mainly exists to extract taxes. There`s two kings, one`s a lich, and they hate one another and are gearing up for a big war. They have good scientists, wizards and engineers, but they all leave to go get rich elsewhere, unless they`re evil and want the magical toxic waste for themselves. Everything's poor as hell and most people look like refugees from some Byzantine province (Armenia or Pontus or Trebizond). Summers are cool and dry, as are winters. Blackwater used to be run by the hippies and weirdos hundreds of years ago, until they summoned too many demons or something and went back to their island to be crazy by themselves.

The Treetombs Region and Map

This'll be the starting region for the campaign, near the town of Treetombs at the edge of the Deadwood Basin in the kingdom of Blackwater.

Alderspring (Pop. 1,250)
Points of Interest: Blood Keep (castle), Deepwater (village), Rightblood Ranch (ranch), Scrubthorn (village), the Sunstone (lighthouse)

Alderspring is cattle country. The sacred bulls slaughtered in temples across the Wolf Sea are calved in the great herds of red and silver-coated cattle in the uplands. Fuligin-robed Deadwalkers of the Dismal Land, wolf-robed Krovi tribunes and the sorcerer-overseers of the Low Wyvs can all be found lodged in Deepwater, despite direct orders from the New King forbidding Baron Alderspring to do commerce with them. The baron sells the cattle for cash in hand, and uses the money to pay mercenaries to keep the New King's men out of his business. He sells sacred cattle on the sly to the Old King to placate his undead warriors, though it's an open secret and only a matter of time before he's caught. He is plagued by cattle-rustlers and an unusually large number of wolves, both of which he blames on the baroness of Redcrossing. Rumours abound that the Low Wyvs are building a gate in the hills to directly transport the bulls home without the need of ships, though where they would get a sufficiently large supply of human bone to do so is anyone's guess.

The Cinder
Points of Interest: Baroness Redcrossing's Schola (shrine), the Boiling Sands (lair), the Bone Gate (landmark), the Cinder (Crater), the Corundrum Gate (landmark), the Hecatomb (lair), the Onyx Gate (landmark), the Reclusium of Arvil (tower), the Tomb of Justin IV (shrine/graveyard), the Weeping Tree Labyrinth (dungeon)

The site of the Catastrophe, where the Old King's attempt to attain divinity as an immortal lich released the Grey Death across what was once "Greenwood Basin". The air is pungent with befouled geomancy. Somewhere in the stone flats lays the circle of thirteen petrified sorcerers standing around the great crater. The Cinder has great nodes of the precious black serpentine created during the Catastrophe, and sorcerers are constantly hiring foolish adventurers to recover even a mere handful for use in their experiments. The Grey Death has mostly dissipated, but a few smoldering cracks still release gusts of it now and then. A few necromancers and witches linger in the area personally, as do various beasts twisted by the Grey Death into vicious monsters.

Deadwood Basin
Points of Interest: the Bastion of the Keen Ones (tower), the Burning Place (graveyard),  the Lair of Many-Headed Hythax (lair), the Mother's Tear (shrine), Hammerdell Keep (ruin), Lonely Keep (ruin), Oakbend (ruin), the Sleeping Hill (dungeon), Splitstone (ruin), the Trembling Ground (lair), Woodweir (ruin), the Wyvish Locus (landmark)

Deadwood Basin was once the country's breadbasket, densely populated with small villages and keeps. Since the Grey Death came nearly a century ago, the region has been unpopulated and almost nothing will grow there. The area is spotted with ruins from prior epochs - geomantic locuses from the Wyvish Synod, ruined keeps from the Weaver Kings, and buried remnants of the Dragontime. A few tribes of Bonewarped have come down off of Dead Dragon Mountain over the years, and survive by unknown means amongst the ruins. The Old King's hordes are mostly deployed holding ruins across Deadwood, though why he is focused on this instead of reconquering his kingdom is unclear to the living.

God's Eye (Pop. 1,000)
Points of Interest: Gib Hill (village), God's Eye Observatory (shrine), Marro's Grave (village), Tenbarrows (village)

The God's Eye Observatory will soon be the newest temple to the Divine Architect. Most of the villages and farms have sprung up in the past ten years from the construction, and the priests have purified the soil to the best of their abilities. The merchants in Treetombs have expressed an interest in the priests repeating the process in the barrens surrounding Treetombs, but the priests have refused to do so until they finish their temple. Controversially, the temple was built using black serpentine blocks for its foundation, making it a powerful geomantic node, but one that could easily become tainted without careful maintenance. The New King is a patron of the cult of the Divine Architect, and the new bishop has had to divert workers from finishing the temple to throwing up palisades and fortifications in case the Old King turns his attention from Deadwood Basin back to the coastal settlements.

Old Kingshall (Pop. 500)
Points of Interest: Beggar's Hill (village), Cattle Market (city ruin), the Eternal Keep (lair), the Fleeing Village (ruin), the Garden of Statues (lair), the Grain Market (city ruin), the Grey Palace (dungeon), Fatcoin Alley (city ruin) Kingshall College (city ruin), King's Lake (lake), the Late Seer's Village (ruin), Lord's Lane (city ruin), the Lost Man's Square (city ruin), the Man-Eater's Rest (lair), Old Markill (ruin), One-Girl Village (ruin), the Poor Quarter (city ruin), the Praying Village (ruin), the Sleepless Tree (lair), Smiths' Lane (city ruin), Stove's Waystation (village), the Tablet of the Grey Death (landmark), the Tomb of Theophora II (graveyard), the Vile Guard (tower), the Wailing Village (ruin), the Watchful Mother (shrine)

Once the capital of the kingdom of Blackwater, Kingshall is now a collection of petrified ruins haunted by the livind dead. The Old King attempted to ascend to lichdom a century ago, but the ritual went awry and released a magical force known as the "Grey Death" which spread across much of Deadwood Basin. It petrified thousands, killed thousands more, and created a vast wave of refugees whose settlement still determines the population distribution of Blackwater. Lingering traces of it in the earth have prevented the resettlement of Deadwood Basin. The Old King was thought dead, killed in the ritual, and a nephew ascended to the throne to rebuild Blackwater.

Two years ago, black-cloaked envoys went out across Deadwood Basin, announcing that the Old King's ritual had succeeded, and that he intended to return to his throne in Kingshall. His armies of wights and skeletons have mostly spent their time occupying the ruins across Deadwood Basin, and the nobility is split over whether to back him or the descendant of his nephew (now known as the "New King"). The coastal communities have yet to bear the brunt of his armies yet, but most expect it's only a matter of time.

Redcrossing (Pop. 2,000)
Points of Interest: Crowshine (lighthouse), Dunhill (village), Drybridge Keep (castle), Lair of the Lying Wolf (lair), Northcut (village), Redcrossing Ranch (ranch), Southcut (village)

Redcrossing mainly survives off selling produce and sheep to Treetombs. Drybridge Keep was built before the Catastrophe, but the barony is the result of a landgrab by the baroness' ancestors in the chaos immediately afterwards. The baroness of Redcrossing is a powerful sorceress of the Red and Bone Learning who keeps a schola with a handful of apprentices out closer to the Cinder. She pays handsomely for samples of black serpentine. Baron Alderspring blames her for the wolves that plague his herds, though no one knows what her motive might be. Redcrossing is the home base for the High Bailiff of the Stone Coast and his officials and mercenaries, and has become a strategically important site almost accidentally after the Old King declared his intentions. Redcrossing is nominally loyal to the New King due to the official presence, but sympathies amongst the peasantry are strongly in favour of the Old King.

Sharpwater (Pop. 3,000)
Points of Interest: Alderson's Ranch (ranch), Blade Valley (village), Burnt Barrows (ruin), David's Grave (village), Grass Hill (village), Kingshead (village), Pinebridge (village), Poplar Hill (village), Riverwatch (castle), Saltcliff (village), Storm's Sigh (shrine), West Reach (village), Whitebend (village), Wyvman's Rest (landmark)

Sharpwater is the most important barony in the area, both economically and militarily, but it hasn't yet declared for either king. Baron Sharpwater and the merchants of the port of Saltcliff were important local patrons of the God's Eye. He wouldn't want to see the temple razed, but his family was much more prominent in the days of the Old King, and the lich's envoys have promised him a return to greatness if he bends the knee. Popular sympathy is firmly with the New King, and he risks a revolt if he backs the wrong side. Sharpwater is home to the most prominent local shrine to the Unknowable Sea, and has two good ports, making it an important shortcut for merchants trying to avoid tolls on the Great Road and captains who want to avoid trouble at sea. The merchants of Saltcliff are the main rivals of the cartel that runs Treetombs, and they are always looking for ways to further impoverish the town.

Treetombs (Pop. 5,250)
Points of Interest: Blackstone (village), the Dragon's Stairs (landmark), Hulthar's Folly (ruin), the Oak Synod (graveyard), Treetombs (town)

Treetombs is still the economic hub of the region, despite its decline from the days before the Catastrophe, when it was a major city connecting Kingshall to its ports on the Stone Coast. The land surrounding the town is poisoned by the Grey Death, making farming difficult. Still, it survives partially due to its market charter, which negates the tolls and excises of anyone traveling to Treetombs along the Great Road. The town is run by a cartel of free merchants who unite only to crush opposition to their rule. They have bent the knee to the Old King, though he hasn't actually done more than send a small squadron of skeletal warriors into the hills around the town. Treetombs has small shrines to the Great Mother and Divine Architect, and most of the region's professionals and specialists call it home. It's also a popular place for exiles, bandits, mercenaries and ne'er-do-wells to lay low in, as the High Bailiff rarely comes to town. The town gets its name from the nearby (now petrified) Oak Synod, a graveyard from the days of the Wyvs, who entombed their magnates within the hollows of great oaks. The Old King's soldiers have recently begun cutting down the oaks to revive the bodies within, to great outcry from the residents of Treetombs.

Magic and Religion in the Wolf Sea

The small area of the hexcrawl continent I'm focused will be called "The Wolf Sea" just because it sounds kind of cool and so I don't have to keep on calling it "the western bay".

Anyhow, here's a map of how you learn magic in the Wolf Sea and surrounds. Blue squares are common institutions that teach battle magic. Red squares are schools of sorcery, orange squares are religions, and purple squares are shamanic groups. Each type of blue square has its own spell list of battle magic spells, while each religion and sorcery school does as well. Each shamanic school teaches you to manipulate certain kinds of spirits. All this stuff will get covered in the write-ups of each group.

The blue square are the starting positions for PCs on this diagram, unless you start as a priest or a sorcerer, in which case you start on an orange or red square as appropriate. The arrows indicate institutional access. So if you want to say, join the Sailors of the Dream Sea, you'd either better be an initiate of the Void Drowned or Unknowable Sea, or a member of a psionic dojo. The actual transitions can arise organically in game, they don't need specific rules covering them.

Here's a map that's somewhat messy, but covers the various churches operating in the Wolf Sea. It's colour-coded. Different bubbles of the same colour indicate independent church organisations.

Red - The Krovian Imperial Cult
Pink - The Idols of Hell
Orange - The Way of Peace
Yellow - The Divine Architect
Purple - The Ancient Dragons
Blue - The Unknowable Sea
Black - The Void Drowned
White - The Great Mother



From this you can see that the Void Drowned and the Idols of Hell are mostly marginal, except for that big city of devil-worshippers controlling the southern half of Wyvland. The Ancient Dragons are trucking along strong in the hinterlands, but are almost gone in the heavily settled areas except for a rump presence in the westernmost region of Blackwater, while the Unknowable Sea is fading in popularity except amongst port-towns. The Way of Peace is a missionary religion spreading itself over the sea, while the Divine Architect is mostly popular in the cities of Blackwater and Marlech. The Krovian Empire forbids all churches other than its own unified Imperial Cult and the cult of the Great Mother. The Great Mother is popular almost everywhere, but the church is fragmented.

Most of these religions will crop up elsewhere in the campaign setting, as will new ones, while a few will be specific to this area.

The Starting Map for Players

This'll be the starting map for the hexcrawl, more or less. I have a heavily marked up referee-only version with a lot more stuff on it (mostly dense networks of villages and castles too minor to note here, but also all the caves and dungeons). This area is about 1080km x 720km, covering an area about the size of Turkey, or about 20% larger than France, with four major polities and several minor ones at their periphery.

Also, Cole mentioned going down the language rabbit hole. Here's a diagram laying out the connections between languages. Purple language 1, as yet unnamed, is the dominant language in the area, but the Krovian Empire speaks blue language 5 (which will probably be named Krovian), and purple language 2's periphery is that dense forest in the north-east.

Maps of an Openquest Hexcrawl

I'm thinking my next campaign once Necrocarcerus finishes up will be to run an Openquest sandbox with a lot of hexcrawling. To that end, I've been preparing maps using Hexographer. The setting itself doesn't have a ton of detail. I'm holding off choosing names, feel, etc. for now until I have a numbered list of the various elements (languages, etc.) that I can flesh out. At last count there are 26 living languages, and somewhere around a hundred polities - almost as complex as Europe.

This is the continent it'll be taking place on. This map is using 30km / hex scale:

And this is the starting area, at 5km / hex scale. It's a "child map". This is the player-facing map (though they wouldn't start with it). I'll be filling in the referee-only material separately.

Labels will be forthcoming on both maps once I find a format I'm happy with. I've also got to populate the second map with GM-only locations, and then do some setting writing, both some large scale stuff and some detailed technical writing statting everything up.

Bonus maps!

I uploaded the continental map to Realtimeboard and did some doodling. Here's a sketch of the major polities and their areas of influence.

And this is a map marking out the linguistic boundaries of each region (the colours are meaningless, I just selected them for contrast and visibility):

Graphing Dungeon Connections

I'm going to show you how to use Realtimeboard to map a dungeon's connections.This is an introductory tutorial to graphing dungeons, rather than a depiction of the finished project.

This'll be useful whether you just want to pointcrawl, or whether you want to map a dungeon and need to figure out the relations between the spaces in it beforehand. This example from my Old Hua Danth dungeon in Necrocarcerus, which I ran using a Dyson Logos map. I'm thinking of distributing the module, which means I'll need to create a new map for it. But the dungeon was written with the connections from this map, so whatever I draw will need to preserve them.

For reference, the original maps I used are these two, which I grabbed off of Dyson's G+ and can't find a link to on Dyson's blog. I added the red numbers myself in MSPaint to key the place back when I ran it a few months ago. 

Step 1 is really simple. Use the sticky tool to make a bunch of stickies that are numbered with all the rooms in the dungeon.

Step 2 is to grab the link-arrow tool and start linking them. You click on one sticky, then the other. You don't need to sort your stickies out yet, the tool has no problem with intersections or crossovers.

When you're finished, you should have something that looks like this:

Step 3 is to sort them out. You'll need to do this manually, but basically pull any linear sequence of rooms that doesn't connect to the others into a straight line projecting off the larger mass of stickies, and then shift things around internally so you have as little crossover as possible. You'll end up with something like this.

Step 4 is to colour code the stickies and the link-arrows. You can mass select stickies by holding the shift-key, and you can theoretically do the same thing with link arrows, but I find it more difficult. Colour-coding helps visually distinguish the various sections of the dungeon and can convey other useful information to keep in mind.

The key I use for link-arrows is:

Red - Locked door
Orange - Stuck door
Green - Free door
Grey - No door
Purple - Secret door

You could use blue or yellow to indicate other types of connections, like magic barriers or teleporters or whatever.

Here, for the stickies, I used the following colour scheme. Linear paths that could be moved around get shaded purple.The secret path that flows under / between other rooms got shaded orange, since I can squeeze it in. The core rooms whose placement in the dungeon affects the placement of the rest got shaded yellow. Rooms with more than two connections, or rooms that connect to two or more yellow stickies, got shaded pink. 

If you're planning to create pointcrawls for dungeons, you can end at this point, though you might as well fill out the stickies with information about the individual rooms so that it's both map and key at the same time.

What I'm going to do is rotate all the stickies to give them a new orientation, while preserving the relations. This'll help make sure that when I'm drawing the new map, its look will be substantially different than Dyson's, and won't end up unintentionally influenced by his room forms and shapes.

What I suggest doing is generating all the rooms of one type at a time - all the yellows, then all the pinks, then all the purples. Fit the purple linear pathways into solid chunks or lines, and the pink rooms into clusters. I like to get a rough sense of how they're going to fit together here.



Next, I'm going to be using a variation of the "Dellorfano Protocol" to generate room sizes, starting with the purple and pink clusters.

Anything boring, like long one-square thin rooms, I'm going to turn into irregularly shaped rooms.

Next, I draw some larger black blocks representing the yellow stickies. I make sure the black blocks connect the same way the yellow stickies do to one another. I move the existing dungeon blocks over and attach them to the black block representing the appropriate yellow sticky. Red blocks, representing the pink connectors, will go on the connections between blocks, while purple ones will attach to a single block (most of the time). I try to make the black blocks large enough to attach a few coloured blocks, but not so large you can't set a sense of space. I also move purple and red blocks as close together as I can. You can number things in case it starts to get confusing.

From that point, you begin shuffling things around to compress them. The size and shape of the black blocks is totally flexible, so long as the attachment points are retained. You can also recategorise blocks - I shifted the colours and priorites of some of the blocks around as it became more apparent where they should fit. I also finished off by sketching in (admittedly crudely) the outline of the secret rooms.

From here, I'm ready to begin a freehand sketch, or I could keep fiddling with it. When transferring it to freehand, I'd add details to make it less square-looking with furnishings, cave-in rubble, altering the shape of some of the rooms further to fill in white space or more closely resemble their keyed function, etc. You can make the dungeon feel particularly convoluted by transforming the large black blocks into winding corridors with lots of dead ends, switchbacks, etc.

Necrocarcerus Campaign Map and Quest Notes

Here's some screencaps of the Realtimeboard that I use to run and track things for the Necrocarcerus campaign I'm running on Google Plus. Of the various whiteboard programs I've looked around at, Realtimeboard seems to be the best for my purposes. I use the free version, and if I could improve the program in any way, it would be for Google Hangout integration, so I could use it in real time while playing. As it stands, it's mainly a repository for campaign information.

This is the map of End-of-the-World and surrounds, out in the Far Lands of Necrocarcerus, where the campaign is set. It includes both areas the PCs have visited and explored, areas they've received some sort of direction to. The pictures may not show it, but there's a grid (though this map doesn't really use it).

I use the post-it notes to track quests. Purple is a quest-giver contact, orange are open contracts, and pink are leads, ideas, and tasks requiring PC motivation. This is the top half of the map with its quests. Also, it isn't shown here, but each of the locations has a comment bubble on the actual board that contains an update about what's happened there recently.

This is the bottom half of the map with its quests attached. This is a "player-friendly" map - everything on it can be seen by the PCs. I also have a hex map of this area which I use for calculating travel times and running hexcrawls, which is a DM-only document generated with Hexographer.

At other parts of this board (not shown), I've uploaded treasure maps, embedded a PDF of the Necrocarcerus 1.1 rules (and when 1.2 is done, I'll upload that in turn), and set up a map for a later adventure.

Necrocarcerus Rail Map

Completed my map for Necrocarcerus using AutoRealm. The brown lines are the rail lines, the big labels are regions, the small labels are sections of the macro-urban terrain inhabited enough to be cities demographically (there are many unmarked "towns" and "villages"). Click for the big version (it's pretty big). For scale, this map covers about as much area as Australia.

The Tellian Sector Returns!

The Tellian Sector returns!
The link has:

A big map of the Tellian Sector I created using Hexographer
An Excel 2007 spreadsheet with planetary profiles for 44 systems with 136 described locations
An Excel 2007 spreadsheet with stats for 15 espionage organisations active in the Tellian System (several are sector-wide)

This was created with the Stars Without Number planetary generator. This is the setting I created for my 40K games. I've used it in three campaigns using the actual 40K games (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch), and I'll be using it in future when I run 40K games using Stars Without Number.

The Tellian Sector is adjacent to the Calixis Sector, the basic setting for Dark Heresy. Specifically, it is almost directly below it, with its "top" side touching the galactic plane and extending downards. Proximity to the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse allows referees to repurpose material from their Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader books with a minimum of fuss.

Some of the tags in the above planetary profiles are different than in stock Stars Without Number. They are all direct conversions of existing tags - "Unbraked AI" becomes "Silica Animus", the term in the setting for AIs. "Regional hegemon" becomes either "subsector hegemon" or "sector hegemon", "preceptor archive" is "ancient archive", "aliens" become "xenos", "psionics" become "psykers", "pretech cultists" are "tech priest cult", "perimeter agency" becomes "inquisition outpost".

There's also a new tech level, "specialist 4", which is a world with Tech 4 in most respects, but Tech 5 in one or two.

The Tellian Sector tends to focus on the elements of 40K I like the most, and downplay or ignore those elements I least wanted to tell stories involving. There is a lot of malign technology, rogue psykers, Chaos cults, and inscrutable xenos. Orks, Tyranids and Necrons are not present in any great numbers, but there are plenty of Xeno-controlled worlds that could be repurposed to those ends, particularly Washout, Crux Ultima and the Devil's Egg.

The stories I've told using the Tellian Sector primarily focus on the machinations of an arch-heretic named Valentine Illst and his various cronies, particularly a Dark Mechanicus sect known as the Statisticians of Certainty, and a Nurgle cult known as the Black Dawn. Both Illst's core organisation, the Statisticians of Certainty and the Black Dawn are statted up in the espionage organisation section (based on the system in Darkness Visible). If there's demand for it, I can also stat them up as factions using the core rules.

Originally, this was all part of a mega-campaign ("The Navigator of Possibilities") where I would run one campaign / adventure in each FFG 40K system focusing on an interwoven narrative.

The first adventure was a Dark Heresy adventure focusing on a Black Ship that had dropped out of a convoy while transporting a former Interrogator turned heretic, a Mechanicus Magos working for the Inquisition, a dozen or so alpha psykers, and a mysterious artifact known as the Navigator of Possibilities, a communication from the residents of a possible future trying to invade their own past and cannibalise it. The cell managed to stop these foul psyker-vampire mutants from invading our timeline en masse and consuming all life in the galaxy.

The second was a Rogue Trader adventure in which a Rogue Trader crew was asked to find and pinpoint the location of the Statisticians of Certainty, who had captured the Navigator of Possibilities with the help of arch-heretic Valentine Illst. The Statisticians of Certainty had fled into the Lost Worlds, beyond the edge of the Imperium intending to activate the Navigator of Possibilities, travel to the far future, and become techno-gods. This adventure ended with the Navigator of Possibility recaptured, and the Statisticians of Certainty's main fleet crushed, though many of their members escaped. The mysterious pre-Imperial demigod Azar, a supergenius alpha-psyker from the Dark Age of Technology released from his imprisonment on a lost world by the Rogue Trader, was seen vanishing into the future with several of the Dark Mechanicus and the psyker-vampires.

The third was a Deathwatch campaign in which this sudden burst of activity by Valentine Illst was registered by his old foe, an Inquisitor-Lord on Ammis unable to travel between the star due to a daemon's vendetta. A kill team of Deathwatch marines was assigned to hunt down Illst (who is possibly any one of a Xeno pretending to be human, a Silica Animus remotely operating a doppleganger, or a colonist from the Dark Age of Technology resurrected over and over again by infernal science). The kill team captured Titus Hyle, Nurglish sorcerer and master of the Black Dawn, slew several others among Illst's cronies, and eventually captured Illst himself after leading an Imperial naval fleet into the Black Atlantis dyson sphere.

The Black Crusade game, if I ever run it, will be about breaking Illst free of the Inquisition's headquarters on Ammis, and recovering the Navigator of Possibilities from the same.

The Only War adventure is a secret until I run Black Crusade, but will involve Illst and his cronies once again. Azar will show up here again, and the nature of his mysterious connection the Illst matter resolved.

Actually Surveying Things: A Short Introduction

The production of maps by PCs in the fictional world is an under-used adventure goal despite its dramatic potential. "Surveyor" is actually one of my favourite PC occupations - I've played four in various eras and settings in my roleplaying career. Surveying is the oldest licensed profession in the world (the Romans issued licenses for it), found in almost all sedentary civilisations, and the basic techniques have been intact for thousands of years. Though aerial photography has allowed better information, a surprising number of the processes involved in field surveying are simply refined versions of ancient ones.

One reason for the under-use of surveying and mapmaking as adventure goals is that most people are not surveyors or cartographers and therefore know little about what goes into producing the information that creates an accurate map. This leaves the process abstracted and therefore uninteresting.

First, watch this video in three parts [1] [2] [3] by the United States Army about how maps are made (circa 1973). This explains the basics of triangulation, using plumb lines, theodolites, chains and tapes, plotting tables etc. There are some references to modern technology (an ancient surveyor would use a dioptra, not a theodolite; obviously planes with cameras don't exist in most fantasy settings) but ancient, medieval and early modern tools include the alidade, groma, astrolabe, clinometers (basically variations on astrolabes in their earliest versions), quadrants, sextants, and of course compasses, rulers, telescopes and measuring rods which gathered similar information to the newer tools.

The basic technique in surveying is determining the distance between three points, known as triangulation. So long as one knows the length of one side of the triangle and the angle of the lines from two of the points to the third, one can calculate the length of the lines and therefore the position of the third point, as well as the area of the triangle, using trigonometry. Most of the tools mentioned above help perform one of the two functions. A chain or tape is used to fix the length of the known side, while tools like dioptras are used to measure the angle of the lines forming the triangle. Because this process relies on sighting the third point, various workarounds exist for where terrain prevent clear sighting (i.e. a forest, intervening mountain, etc.), like the construction of towers. All of this happens in three dimensions, not two, so there are additional calculations to determine the relative heights of the points and how that affects the calculated lengths of the lines.

 A web of interlocking notional triangles is created by surveyors hopping from point to point until the relevant area is covered. A single hexagon can be split into six equilateral triangles, for those hoping to use this with hex maps, though most map hexes are too large to be mapped that simply.

If you want to get an idea of the challenges that crop up while surveying, it's worth reading Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, which along with being a really great book goes into a lot of detail about how difficult a  surveying project can be logistically. PCs who want to execute surveys will have to frequently split up for extended periods of time with one party tromping around in the woods or up hills to place markers, while others go to set up the sighting equipment. You'll need teams of people to cut down intervening obstacles like trees, some way to signal between the parties so they know when the other team is in place or when the task is completed, maybe a building crew plus a stock of building materials to knock up sighting towers when you need them, someone to build and set markers on the points you locate, etc. Plus money for this crew, and guards to keep order, and handlers for all the baggage, etc. You might even need a mathematician. And don't forget the cartographer, the guy who makes the actual maps.

Part 2 of this will deal with cartography, which is the translation of the data gathered during surveying into maps and related representations.

Ten Rivers and Hinterland Map

This map is to the immediate south of the Cauldron and Hinterland map. You can click on it for a larger version. The Lorinths and Solkars, like the Torbails, are nomads, while the villages are Hill People. Dwer Tor is the south, and will be on the next regional map.

The Cauldron and the Tomb of Thranisphane

This map is to the immediate south of the map of the Orthocracy of Kaddish and its hinterland.

I know I've been blasting you folks with a lot of anthropology and other high-level stuff lately, and people who haven't read theRPGsite thread are probably asking "What is there for PCs to do in this setting exactly?" This map, containing the tomb of Thranisphane, is a good opportunity for me to give you a taste of that.

The Tomb of Thranisphane the Twice-Killed

Thranisphane was an ancient king of High Kaddish, one renowned for his wickedness and evil. Even death was not enough to stop Thranisphane, for he returned as an undead monster, slew his own children, and reigned over High Kaddish for ten years before he was slain once more while fighting the Black Eagle tribe of the Hill People. The Black Eagles took him within a circle of binding stones and sat him atop a throne made of red glass, with unbreakable pins through his wrists and ankles to hold him in place. Thranisphane still sits there, dead and yet not passed from this world, waiting for the end of time when he will break free and stride over the dead earth as its lord. Thranisphane knows many things, and though it is death to come too close, brave men may stand at the bottom of the hill and shout questions to him, which he will answer or not as he pleases, though his answers are not always truthful.

The twelve stones are arranged as four trilithon gates. Walking between gates kills the one who attempts it, but the gates are comparatively safe. Walking through a gate transports one to another point in time. All four gates were originally in the future of the Black Eagles, but as time has passed, the end point of one has passed into history. All people who will ever travel through the gate arrive within about an hour of the same point in time, with just enough displacement between petitioners to prevent jams. This means that the hill at each endpoint save one is relatively crowded.

The northern gate leads to the end of the world, to a few minutes before Thranisphane is released. This gate is no longer safe, as the number of petitioners present has become large enough that they cannot all petition Thranisphane before he is released, whereupon he kills anyone still remaining and strides forth as Lord of the Dead. The land from the hill is flat, level and grey, a featureless waste in all directions. Overhead, the sun is red and swollen, and the heat is unbearable.

The eastern gate leads to what is estimated to be millions of years in the future. The hill is underwater, and those who cannot breathe water will quickly drown. Hive-intelligences composed of schools of small fish have built a city of black stone around the hill, using enslaved cephalopod gnostics as labourers. They will not cross the barrier, and know nothing of the times of Kaddish save what Thranisphane and other travellers tell them.

The southern gate leads to tens of thousands of years in the future. The hill is surrounded by a blue glowing dome of force, and in the distant horizon, a city of red glass blocks looms. The people who live in this time do not approach the hill. The skeleton of a great serpent lays around the base of the hill, just inside the perimeter of the gates.

The western gate leads to shortly after the revolution in Kaddish (about two hundred years ago). This is the most commonly used gate, but at this time, a great serpent lives here. Anyone entering will arrive at the same time as the serpent, and be forced to fight it.

Orthocracy of Kaddish Regional Map

Click for Big Version

I realised I screwed up with the big map yesterday when I started to calculate how big the Orthocracy was and it turned out to be the size of Peru or Angola. So I'm starting back at first principles and building up from regional maps using the Welsh Piper's templates and Hexographer. This one took less than an hour to make, especially now that I have the big map for layout (if not sizing).

As you can see, the Orthocracy is basically one city and some exurbs (the Exile, Reservoir, and Muster wards of the so-called "Outer City"), with the general pattern of settlement following the river valleys. The villages mainly serve as common markets for an otherwise dispersed settler population.

Another Map of the Dawnlands

Click on this for the big version

I broke down and finally bought the professional / full version of Hexographer. The ability to make "child" maps is just too useful, and will simplify the work of mapping the Dawnlands tremendously.

These are hexes with 20km apothems (40km from face to face), which match up with the Welsh Piper's 25 mile hexes. This map would be as large as two regional maps using WP's scales. This has increased the size of the Dawnlands a bit, to 2000km of longitude, while retaining 1000km of latitude. Fortunately, most of what I had to add was just desert.

Hex Map of Isla de Naufragio

Isla de Naufragio

I merely combined a blank outline map from here with a hex map from here. This is going to be the map for the next part of the Emern game. Now that the PCs own this island, Hesh will be sending surveyors out, which the PCs will be playing. The reason the map isn't filled out with details is that the PCs will be expected to colour it in as they survey it. I'll be procedurally generating it as we go along, with a few set points here and there for specific ideas I have. The scale here is about 1 hex per 10km.

Locations in Axrew

Click for a bigger version where the numbers are clearer

17:15 Sile's Pass - A fortified town (pop. 3500) under the command of Roger, Count of Sile (the surrounding area), it guards the two main northern passes into Axrew. Roger's sons are both crusaders in the Knights of Naral, and both are current prisoners of the Dakons. He has begun charging steep tolls to travelers through the passes to raise their ransoms. Many claim he has also turned to banditry, though nothing has been proven.

17:18 Naral Manor - One of the greatest castles in Axrew, Naral Manor is owned by the Militant Order of St. Aemer, and is the preferred staging ground for expeditions into the Northern Marches. At any given time, up to 250 knights and their retinues (an additional 2500 men) may be here, along with the grandmasters of the order and other religious pilgrims to St. Aemer. Naral County, held in trust by the grandmasters of the order, is known for its fine apples and cider.

21:22 The Leprosarium - The dry climate of Axrew is thought to be particularly amenable to leprosy and other wasting diseases, and many who find themselves afflicted by these diseases head for the Leprosarium, a segregated complex of villages in the middle of the desert meant to house them (pop ~5000). It is a place outside the normal restrictions of Moragnian society, with sexual morality relaxed, sumptuary laws ineffective, and social class abolished. Though leprosy is curable through magic, it is a low priority for the church of the Hidden God compared to the more infectious and mortal diseases rampaging through the major cities. A small chapterhouse of the Dombatian monastic order is slowly trying to cure all the lepers, but only a few priests capable of divine healing are present. The Dombatians administer the Leprosarium, and own the land on which it is built, and they make quite a lot of money from encouraging the lepers' trades.

23:19 The Moot - The castle of the Duke of Axrew, currently occupied by Robert Lameleg. Often besieged by angry vassals, it is one of the most imposing structures in Axrew, its motte raising it nearly eighty feet off the plain surrounding it. It is built on the site of a battle between Thern and Morags during the conquest. The area around the castle is dotted with caves and warrens where Thernish peasants and soldiers attempted to hide after Weallan, Earl of Axrew was defeated. The victorious Morags butchered everyone they could lay their hands on and dumped the bodies further in the caves while searching for the earl's lost wealth. The mass death led to the caves being infested with uneasy spirits and undead abominations, which periodically emerge to ravage the countryside.

26:17 Rockwood Shire - The shire is the site of a bloody conflict between freeholders and local barons. The freeholders hold much of Rockwood Shire in allod, and make a fine living harvesting and processing timber. As allodial freeholders, they pay taxes directly to the crown through Gordon of Earlingshire, the sheriff. The local barons and knights charge the freeholders with extortion because of the high prices they charge for the timber, which the barons use in the construction of castles. They also accuse Gordon of denying them the right to buy land in Rockwood to exploit for their own use (he does do this, with the support of the local franchisers). In recent years, the barons (particularly Robert of Amark and Robert of Gonton, who hold lands in 25:17) have taken up arms on several occasions to force the issue, and only a lack of coordination has prevented them from overunning the shire. As it stands, Rockwood is a shire besieged, with Gordon forced to hire mercenaries to protect visiting merchants from southern Axrew.

29:17 Redfriar Abbey - The largest Sesquinard abbey in Moragne, the Redfriar abbey gets its name from the deep red-brown robes its members wear. Of Lacallian origin in the city of Sesquin, the Sesquinards in Moragne are the King's bankers of choice. They also run a highly esteemed scriptorium that produces illustrated psalters on commission. Finally, they also serve as neutral ground for the other sects of the church to meet on, and Redfriar Abbey is traditionally where conclaves, councils of Moragnian bishops and abbots, and theological debates take place. The abbey itself is a sprawling enclosed compound built atop a massive motte that stretches for nearly a mile, and is surrounded by smaller fortifications staffed by client knights of the Sesquinards. Years of donatives mean the monks own everything a man can see from the abbey's tallest tower, and the abbot, Morse Remla (from Narbonika) is known more for his nous and business sense than his theological skill.

30:23 Remeldag - A thriving city long before the Revelation of the Hidden God, Remeldag has been a ruin for nearly a millennium, after the immortal sorcerer queen of the Vellings slew its half-demon sorcerer-king, Remel I. The city was barraged with powerful curses that transformed its inhabitants into half-bestial half-demonic abominations, and which enchanted the city so that it is impossible to find by ordinary means, though its lights can be seen at night during the rare times when the desert and surrounding wasteland will support a fog. Nearly a thousand of the original inhabitants remain under the rulership of Remel II, the son of the original sorcerer and a powerful wizard in his own right. He calls himself the Count of Remel, and pays a yearly tribute of 1,000 lbs. of silver to King Harold to be left in peace. Where he gets the silver from is unknown.

32:19 Harken - Harken (pop. 10,000) is the seat of the Moragnian king and his court, as it was of the Thernish kings before him. The current king is Harold II, grandson of Harold I "the Builder". About a third of the population of Harken is employed by the state or the court in one capacity or another, and the city receives many immigrants from across Moragne who have come to make their fortune in politics. Harken is more of a cosmopolitan city than Carlaw or the rest of Axrew, with Vellings, Morags, Therns, and Einermen mixing freely and creating a uniquely "Moragnian" culture.

33:20 Carlaw - The great commercial crossroads of Moragne, Carlaw (pop. 20,000) houses the Royal Mint, the Eastern Tower (the royal armoury), the largest brick and iron works in Moragne, and the University of Carlaw and its associated colleges. The city was built on land belonging to the archbishop of Carlaw, and he remains its feudatory lord, though city government is a run by a council of burghers and gentlemen. Armies are equipped in Carlaw, cannons cast, and sutlers, sumpters and merchants abound. Almost every religious order in Moragne keeps at least a chapterhouse here, due to the city's reputation for piety. Famously, it produces the Twelve Men of Carlaw every year rather than ordinary scutage or levies (though it does possess a well-equipped and trained militia for civil defense).

34:17 Wyrmbone - The site of the famous battle where Jack Dragonkiller (aka Sir John Weaver of Carlaw) slew the dragon in the time of Harold the Builder. A small village (pop. 200) has grown up that makes a living off of pilgrims, who come to touch the bones and dried blood of the great wyrm which stretch for nearly half a kilometre. It is claimed that any sword plunged hilt deep into one of the scabbed pools of blood becomes capable of cutting anything, but no one outside Jack Dragonkiller's line has ever succeeded in doing so. His grand-daughter, Countess Margaret Weaver of Wyrmbone (aka the Woman), has a nearby manor and title to the lands, but she appears to mainly use it as a cottage for suitor-pilgrims and is rarely found there.

34:26 The Heronage - One of the true prizes of Moragne in the eyes of the Church. The Heronage is a sacred location where it is possible to cross the Veil and enter the divine presence of the Hidden God and his various emanations, the runes. It is used for heroquesting. It is guarded by the Fraternity of St. Gerrard, a monastic order who prevent the unworthy from abusing the location, and protect the hermits who live in the surrounding valley. The Heronage is named after the local wildlife, which includes a colony of blue-black herons unique to the area whose plumage exactly mimics the colouration of angelic wings. Brother Ruget, widely considered to be a living saint and perhaps the most holy man in Moragne, is the leader of the brotherhood and it is he who administers the tests that determine whether a visitor is worthy to enter the church itself. Its monks wear blue-black robes in the same shade as the herons' feathers.

35:24 Aemeth County - Aemeth County is an extremely large county controlled by Ogoth the Dog. It is naturally well-fortified, has rich soil, good timber, and several mines that supply it with silver and iron in great abundance. It produces extremely fine wines and fruit, and is significantly wetter than much of the rest of Axrew. However, Ogoth is greedy, and he has taken the opportunity of his excommunication and used it as an excuse to prosecute war and plunder against his neighbours. This has led to the mountains being flooded with free companies on both sides of the conflict. Because he has been excommunicated, the local clergy has risen up against him, and is encouraging the peasants to revolt and flee to more pious masters. The Coiners are proselytising, as are several other heresies, and religious hysterics claim to see the Great Beast lurking behind every tree and stone. Only Ogoth's soldiers and his success in battle are keeping things from exploding into civil war.

37:15 Athelshall - Athelshall (called Affeldag by its former inhabitants) is another pre-Thernish city. It is known in legend as the Great Sinful City, and was destroyed by Estan the Pure, the king who oversaw the conversion of the Kingdom of Therne, at the behest of St. Jerse of Narbonika. The city was looted, its walls dismantled, its inhabitants put to the sword, and the fields salted. No one has ever resettled the land. However, the city has over time become home to several different heretic sects, including Coiners, Whites, and the followers of Barry Nearn, as well as more mundane bandits. Though each thinks they are the true faith and the others vile schismatics, they have set aside their differences to concentrate on banditry, raiding the merchant trade from Harken to Lanarth and Moragland.

37:13 Woodwell - The southernmost settlement in the Einerwood, Woodwell is a walled village built on one side of a ravine with a well-made wooden manor from which William, Baron of Woodwell rules. The town is rich in lumber, and serves the carrying trade with carts, hitches, barrels, chests and lumber. He is currently imprisoned by the Dakons, and his wife, Gertrude of Woodwell, has increased taxes and excises to pay his ransom. This is highly unpopular with the local freeholders and cottars, and the entire barony is on the brink of revolt.

Warren of the Leper Queens Maps and Aboveground

Comfy and cozy

Both of these were made with Isomage's random cave generator

I "made" these caves using Isomage's Random Cave Generator, which is one of those quirky little tools that you wonder about the use of until you have the highly specific need it meets perfectly. It produces PNGs, which I opened in Microsoft Paint thanks to my high level of technical sophistication and artistic ability, saved as JPEGs, and then marked up. The blue is particularly useful should you ever want to print or photocopy them, as it's easier on your ink cartridge. These maps, by the way, are consistently referred to as "Map 1" and Map 2" throughout all the extant text on the Warren of the Leper Queens.

One of my goals when creating the Warrens was to create a plausible underground base. There are airholes, latrines, multiple entrances, water sources, occasionally the roof will change height, etc. If you read closely, I hope you'll see how these are used to allow PCs multiple ways to engage with what would otherwise be too bunker-like. If I were to run the Warren of the Leper Queens, finding the place would probably be a session long adventure involving hunting down cult collaborators, interrogating them, following the wagons, and then probing the area, ending in the discovery and testing of one or more entrances.

Finding and Entering the Warrens

The warrens are not easily found, but there are traces of their existence aboveground.

The warrens are located in an area known as "Sandy Ridge" to ordinary inhabitants of the Leprosarium. No one lives nearby: All hexes within 1km (2 hexes) of the hex marked "D" are uninhabited. However, many people may be able to direct PCs to the warren's location. All members of the cult at the rank of Cultist and higher are brought to the warrens and instructed on how to find the main entrance, and can give directions sufficiently specific to let anyone find the entrances in Area 1. They will not reveal these entrances except under extreme duress or magical compulsion.

The first entrance (leftmost in area 1 on map 1) is a spacious 5m vertical shaft dug next to a distinctive lone pine tree. It is covered by a disguised but unlocked trapdoor and has a crude mounting near the top for crates to be lowered down. PCs with specific directions can make Perception checks at +30% to spot the tree and find the entrance near its base.

The second entrance (rightmost in area 1 on map 1) is a 10m shaft at a 45-degree angle with the entrance covered by canvas and dirt. It is in between two lines of boulders, requiring PCs to clamber down about 3m between the boulders (using Athletics). It is a much narrower fit than the first entrance. It requires a Perception check to spot the entrance. The check is at -20% unless the PC has climbed down amongst the boulders first.

PCs may also find the warrens by following the secret supply wagons from Saffork. This is difficult (-20% to Perception or Track tests) until the PCs get within 2 hexes of the hex marked D, where the wagon tracks become the only marks. Perception or Survival tests at +10% will spot the tracks at that point. The wagons all go to the first entrance.

The third entrance (area 9 on map 1) is known to those of cultist rank or higher, but will not be mentioned by them under any circumstances other than magical compulsion. Cultists are taught to strategically reveal the first two entrances if they must, but to keep knowledge of the third secret at all costs. They are capable of phrasing their responses so that they appear to satisfy truth-discerning magic without mentioning it. (Example: Q: "How many entrances are there into your base?" A: "The first entrance is by the crooked pine tree, the second is in between some boulders. [Silence]")

The third entrance is used for the transport of prisoners into the warrens. The entrance is canvas covered with dirt and is in the middle of an extensive thornbush. PCs must make a Persistence or Resilience check at +10% to clamber through the thorns despite the pain and hindrance of the dense cluster of brush and thorns. Failure means they are Entangled on a random location as if the plant had attacked them, until they can make a Brawn roll to break free. A critical fumble will cause them to take 1d2 points of damage to a random location.

The entrance is a 10m vertical shaft with a ladder on the side. Prisoners are typically thrown down before their captors climb down, and many have broken legs or at least sprained ankles from the fall.

Both Brother Morris and Holy Tom have observed men entering and exiting through this entrance. Holy Tom saw them drag a prisoner down, but Morris saw nothing per se incriminating. The two have not discussed the matter.

The fourth entrance (area 10 in map 1) is known only to Servants of devotee rank or higher. It is a 50m long natural crack in the earth that is covered with rock piles on both sides. It slopes gently towards the surface. Unless the rocks are removed, PCs must make Perception checks at -50% to sense the fresh air that gently flows through the crack, otherwise it simply appears as a pile of rocks. A Brawn test can be made to remove the rocks once the existence of the entrance is determined. This entrance is intended as an emergency escape for high-ranking members in case the warren is ever compromised and is not otherwise used.

The fifth entrance (area 12 on map 2) is more of an airhole than a true entrance. It is a winding, natural tunnel about as thick as a man's leg. It progresses 3m through soft earth and emerges near the base of a tree. PCs can spot this entrance if they are searching the area (about 100m or so east of the main entrances) with a Perception check at -50%. It would require a shovel and a couple of days digging to get down, but it would be possible. The Brides are aware of it but consider it beneath their notice.

The sixth entrance (area 17 on map 2) is known only to devotees and Brides. It is another emergency escape tunnel. It goes for about 100m at a gentle slope. Underground, it is entered by lifting a false boulder that covers a shaft down into the tunnel. The boulder can be lifted with a successful Brawn test. The exit on the surface is hidden in a dried up riverbed under a second false boulder. PCs may only spot either one if their Perception is above 100%, and then only if they make a successful Perception check at -70%.

Aboveground Traps

There are two false entrances aboveground. The first false entrance is near to a large pine tree in the general proximity of entrance 1 and is intended to confuse interlopers who have somehow obtained the directions to find the real entrance. It only requires a regular Perception roll to notice.

The entrance opens onto a shaft that goes down about 15m and dead-ends. There is a wooden ladder hammered into the side of the shaft that goes down 10m. Either can be noticed from the surface with a Perception check at -50%. If a light source can clearly shine down the shaft (a torch held at the entrance will not work), the Perception check is only at -10%.

The rungs of the ladder are smeared with the Spume of Acephax by cultists about once a week. Characters wearing gloves are immune to the poison. It requires a Perception check at -30% to notice the poison.

Spume of Acephax
A mixture of blood and other bodily fluids from the corpses of lepers, mixed with a runny green bile that condenses on the statue of Acephax and the menses of the Brides of Acephax. It is incapacitating to all but the chosen of Acephax. Those above the rank of devotee in the Servants of Acephax are immune to its effects.

Application: Contact
Onset: 1 minute
Duration: 12 hours
Resistance Time: Every 4 hours
Potency: 70
Resistance: Resilience
Conditions: Agony, Confusion, Exhaustion, Nausea
Antidote/Cure: Cure Poison Spell

Cultists check it once a day as part of a routine patrol. They will use hooks and ropes to drag victims out of the shaft for questioning.

The second false entrance is near to the third real entrance. It is a more easily found copy of the third, also in the middle of a thornbush. It requires a Perception check with no modifiers to find it. However, the thornbush is painted with the Spume of Acephax, and any character who touches the thorns without protection must check against the poison. Cultists check it once a day, but victims can be seen by anyone coming and going from entrances 1, 2, 3 and 4.