Another exploration of the Dyson MegaDelve today! This time we are travelling north from the Fungal Cavern to the area marked as “Small Caves” on the node map:

This node will probably contain two areas, the one being posted today and a second one that sits between these caves and the “Vietnamese Cavern” (the one that will be based on Sơn Đoòng Cave in Vietnam).

Since the Fungus Cave was drawn at a much smaller scale than the other dungeon sections will be (except for the Vietnamese Cavern, which will probably be drawn at the same scale), the three northern branches from it that all go to the “Small Caves” actually spread across a full sheet of graph paper when the scale is changed.

Like most of my maps, this one starts out with the walls of the caves and chambers being drawn in using a Sakura Micron 03 (and then drawn over a second time to thicken the lines). Typically, when I don’t know how exactly I want the caves to progress, I’ll stop drawing the walls and go back and start adding the crosshatching using a Micron 01.

I’m specifically adding little nodules and lumps off the caves so the goblins will have living spaces around the edges of the major caves they live within. Then as I go along crosshatching I start going back into the caves themselves using a Micron 005 adding little details – like thrones, campfires, boxes, barrels, tables and of course sleeping areas.

Also, I keep referring to the blighters who live in these caves as goblins, whereas in my head these caves are actually the “Caves of the Goblin-Equivalent Creatures”. While in game terms the creatures living in these caves will probably be pretty much the same thing as goblins, I’m thinking that they should definitely break the standard goblin mold in some way – I’ve been considering hordes of earwig-like humanoids, or semi-sentient rhesus monkeys…

In this picture I’ve finished the southeastern corner of the map. This passage, just past the goblin “king”‘s audience chamber, is where the majority of the goblins who bring back food from the fungus cavern live. They are looked down on as simple farmers by the rest of the goblins, but they see themselves as the warren’s “rangers” – an elite force of goblins who operate outside the warren itself and deal with the dangers out there and who also have the higher calling to care for their kin by providing them with the essentials of life.

And here’s the map after about two hours of work, when I had to leave it to take care of some errands. And finally, here’s the map after a bit of work when I got home from those errands and a bit of photoshopping to clean up the lines and to put the grid back in.

And for those who aren’t fans of the grid, here’s the “classic Dyson” style of this map: