At the beginning of October I opened up “the Oak King” for the first time in over two years. The Oak King is a hand-made book with a lovely rough paper I was gifted for Christmas of 2012 and which contains a number of maps that I drew over the next few months. The paper, however, wasn’t conductive for use with my primary pens of the day, and also doesn’t work well with the fine markers I use now (Sakura Microns and Mitsubishi Uni-Pins – both bleed excessively on this paper).

Thus, the book was quietly retired until I considered using it for my Drawlloween work. In the end I didn’t use it for Drawlloween either, but when I went through it in December, I realized that it contained over a half-dozen maps that had never been scanned or posted to the blog.

The first of these is this small fortification and mandatory subterranean “dungeon” beneath it. Built into a hillside with entrances on two different levels because of the elevation change around the structure, it just “feels” like a lovely little guard post or fortification for a clanhouse of sheep-herders with delusions of grandeur.

There’s something about how the lines came out after the scanning and processing that makes this map “feel” awesome when I look at it at this scale. The original was obviously drawn without a grid, so the grid overlay on the top image is a little… rough and imprecise. In fact, I didn’t include the grid at all originally when I posted it as part of the monthly Backstage Pass to my patreon backers, but I got a few requests for a version with the grid, so this is as good as I can manage on short notice.

This map is made available to you under a free license for personal or commercial use thanks to the awesome supporters of my Patreon Campaign. Over 300 awesome patrons have come together to fund the site and these maps, making them free for your use.

Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make this map free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.