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A foul, dark haze rises out of small vents in the rock at the base of Black Plume Crater. Mildly poisonous, noxious smelling, deeply humid, and thoroughly unpleasant. These dark vapours bubble up from toxic muds below the crater floor. In the crater wall there is an ornately carved entrance leading down to the toxic sludge below. It resembles the face of a massive unpleasant imp with an open mouth through which to enter – and when seen from closer, it is in turn made up of carvings of many lewd and vile smaller imps.

Black Plume Crater (300 dpi promotional - no commercial license)
Black Plume Crater (300 dpi promotional – no commercial license)

There is a small complex below at the end of which is a sealed treasure vault. But of course a portion of the complex is the bubbling toxic mud itself, filling the whole environment with a foul miasma that promises illness and eventually death to those who explore this place unprotected. Swimming within this toxic mud are a pair of ancient kopru and a small legion of horrid little mephits that are both their servants and their food source.

Black Plume Crater (1200 dpi)
Black Plume Crater (1200 dpi)

With the right masks and aromatic herbal filters, one can survive the toxic mist for some time. And with the right motivation – say a treasure map to the vault and indications that an ancient rune blade is hidden within – one could probably be convinced to assemble such gear and enter the bubbling death trap. The real risk is of course the mud-dwelling kopru who would love to send adventurers back to the world under their control armed with a few fresh tools from the vaults… if they are strong enough to survive the other dangers down here.

Black Plume Crater (1200 dpi - no grid)
Black Plume Crater (1200 dpi – no grid)

From the name and the map it is pretty obvious that part of this dungeon was inspired by White Plume Mountain (the room with the suspended wooden platforms across a chamber of bubbling mud) and Isle of Dread (kopru living within the pools). Obviously some other adventurers have been here in the past and managed to lay down some wooden planking between the first batch of stone pillars in the mud chamber (which in turn is inspired by our own antics in a DCC game where the wizard was accompanied by an animated “transformer” style wooden wagon which disassembled itself to produce bridges for us in a similar environment).

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 13,200 pixels (44 squares) wide. To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 3,080 pixels wide or 6,160 pixels wide, respectively.

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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 500 amazingly generous people 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 these maps 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 this commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”).

Please note that the promotional version of this map (the one with the brown paper background) is not included in this commercial use license and the text and name of the map are NOT released under this license, and cannot be used in conjunction with this map in a commercial project.