Tags
Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Hex, Hex Map, Labyrinth Lord, Maps, Old School Essentials, OSE, OSR, Regional Map, River, RPG, Rural, Urban, Village
The Serpent’s Lands / Serpent’s Landing is a small settlement where the Serpentine Tributaries join the larger Serpentine River. The whole region is one of slow rolling hills with marshy lowlands between them which are home to meandering streams and rivers that work their way south eventually spilling out into Black Sphinx Bay.
Serpent’s Landing takes advantage of the stonework left behind by the elves in the region – most of the structures incorporate elven stonework and on the north side of the landing, many are built up on “foundations” of a grass-covered fallen elven citadel which was once set to guard this particular area. Other elven ruins can be found in the forests with a bit of digging, and there are ancient stairs in a few places that make climbing the hills a bit more convenient.
Finally, there is the “Kalen Path” – a road so old that it had fallen to ruin before the war with the elves. The remnants of this road can still be found in the forests where trees generally refuse to grow. While much of the stonework is ruined or overgrown with grasses, the route is easy to find as it angles up along the south side of Serpent’s Landing and then veers north. The old road is much more clearly visible to elves, and some of the old stonework seems to glow for them at night, guiding explorers north towards…
Today’s map was an experiment working with a real-world water system and then building up a settlement and game environment around it. In this case, I also kept the cuts through the forest that Quebec Hydro makes for their transmission lines and turned them into the old elven highway. I chose these rivers specifically because I love meandering rivers with oxbows… It is also an experiment with a bit more colour and working at a smaller scale. The map itself is 8.5 inches tall by 14 inches wide, designed to be printed on US Legal sized paper. It was drawn based on the Ruisseau Serpent in Quebec and has a rough scale of 1 hex = 100 yards.
The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month over 600 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
Wow, that’s really beautiful!
Absolutely Incredible.
Hah. I looked at the map and thought “That looks just like a utility right of way.” I continued reading and found out why. 🙂
What would you say is the scale of the hexes in the first map? About 100 feet?
Never mind…I see now. 100 yards.
An additional nice thing about this map is that if you’re using it and you need to expand it, there’s a real-world model just waiting to be used. It’d be a while before most people recognized the source.
Admittedly I simplified the terrain to be more “rolling hills” than the scarred and scratched “pillow” stone formations of the Canadian Shield so it will fit in better in European-style fantasy game settings. But yeah, just look up Lac Serpent and follow the Ruisseau Serpent to get the real world version.
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
This is really an exceptional map! Love it
About an hour’s drive south of where I live, you enter the shire of Serpentine, and soon after that you reach the Serpentine River. Not in Canada – the opposite side of the globe.