Community Atlas: Dragon Head, Lanka, Kumarikandam
Wyvern
🖼️ 264 images Cartographer
A good deal later than I'd hoped, delayed thanks to various events outside my control, the next batch of maps for my sort-of Dungeon24-25-2... project are finally completed, covering aspects of a small peninsula on the northern shores of the easternmost Peninsula of Lanka, Kumarikandam:
Lanka's pre-existing Atlas notes described it as an ashy, blackened, barren, volcanic wasteland, home to demons, dragons, dwarfs and assorted other (probably inimical) humanoids. However, peering closely at the Atlas map for the peninsula, there are a few spots with trees, shrubs and other hints of vegetation, some of which have settlements marked nearby, so it's not entirely desolate. And it was one of those vegetated headlands that I finally settled on mapping, from this extant base (extracted from the map above):
That orange-outlined area is some 20 miles square (30 km or so), to give an idea of scale.
A group of locations where sites of interest could be placed, were randomly assigned, much as usual, and then ideas for what they might be were drawn from, or inspired by, prompts from The Story Engine's "Deck of Worlds" and its expansion card sets, with some from the main "Story Engine" deck and its expansions too, including "Worlds of Blight & Shadow", "Written in Ash & Bone", "Worlds of Myth & Magic", "Worlds of Tide & Tidings", "Heroes' Quests & Fools' Errands", and the "Story & Worlds Bridge Expansion". From which you can tell I was leaning heavily into the "doom and disaster" concepts from the previous map's notes...
With that completed, the map was starting to come alive more, which, thinking about its geographic location - right on the equator - helped firm-up further. I was tempted to run lines of low hills into the gaps in the pre-mapped wooded areas, on northeast-southwest lines, only to decide against that (although hints of that still survive in the final map) as some of the ideas that had begun to coalesce favoured more west-east lines instead, partly based on what and where the random features were placed. These also gave rise to a number of offshore items, many of which were turned into islands too small to be shown on the original (honest!).
Thinking of what mapping styles might work best for this generally "threatening" area brought me eventually to the Dark Fantasy Maps style (CA140), to which were added items from the SS1 Fantasy Color style too, as suggested by the CA140 PDF Mapping Guide. After which, mapping commenced:
To keep things nicely confusing, "Dragon Head" is the name of this whole peninsula area, a coastal village settlement on the peninsula's northern tip, and the name of that headland where the village is sited! More hints of oddness feature in other map names, which the PDF map notes in the Atlas expand upon, as usual. There are definitely Dwarves, Demons, (Demi-?)Gods, Cannibals and Undead in places though, not all necessarily in what might be considered typical forms, along with still weirder things...
Speaking of which, the jungles have been kept deliberately off the hills for a couple of reasons. One is to further enhance the slightly uncomfortable feel of the whole area - rainforest jungle, but maybe the rain here isn't so healthy as it might be (the locals say it's often so heavy, it strips anything less tenacious than grass from the uplands). Plus the land has been tainted by events elsewhere across Lanka that laid waste to so much of it. The other main reason though was because when designing this map, I was also reading a couple of books on the Guadalcanal campaigns of 1942-43 in the Solomon Islands. Those islands are covered in tropical rainforest jungles, yet on Guadalcanal, as period photos clearly show, the hills are bare of anything much larger than scrubby bushes and grass, including from before any fighting began there. That contrast was just so unnervingly striking, it seemed very apt to reuse it here.
The dungeon map was originally going to be located on the western flanks of the narrow, crevasse-like canyon of Sundered Dale, near this map's centre. However, I found I was struggling to find reasons to so-locate it, and exactly how it was going to work there, because part of the design from the Inkwell Ideas Dungeonmorph Dice showed a large clump of trees in an open air circle, in the centre of a large, partly-roofed, temple-like chamber.
Inspiration for where else it might be placed, and just what it might be, came unexpectedly during a YouTube livestream on Free RPG Day 2025 by The Story Engine, creating settings with various guests using their card decks and expansions. One feature option that wasn't immediately spotted by the streamers was "Fence of Toads", and as so often in the live chat, we went off on our own little tangent about that... Then the stream's organiser, creator of The Story Engine decks, Peter Chiykowski, spotted our tangential chat about the point where I'd mentioned I'd then very recently been designing a "Swamp of Toads" (for this Dragon Head map). He said he'd love to see that, half-jokingly, and so was born the decision to expand the Swamp of Toads into a complete, separate Atlas map!
In case you can't spot the Swamp immediately on the map above, it's here, and we'll find out more about it next time:
Comments
Pretty cool maps. Lanka is a proper dark map lol. I like the very subtle coloration of the sea around it.
I was like why are there 4 weird lines on the Dragon Head map in the middle Northwest. Then I woke up a bit more and realized it was the ships sail.
Like the feel of the Dragon Head map. Gives me a more modern vibe of maps that were in the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas.
The Lanka map was already in the Atlas (not one of mine 😊), but it does indeed look good!
I did think about adding a key for the sailing routes on the Dragon Head map, but decided it was easier just to add sailing ships on the NE ones, where space allowed. The routes are mentioned in the PDF notes which will be in the final Atlas version, of course.
The Dark Fantasy mapping style, being vector, has a lot of symbol options, so it's very versatile, especially with additions from SS1. Indeed, it can feel all a bit overwhelming at first, and I kept missing things I ended-up swapping into the final map here!
Having succumbed to expanding this map-group to three, I set-to randomly allocating some extra places to the Swamp of Toads, beyond what was there already, though not too many, as the area involved is just six miles by three. I toyed with the notion of changing the mapping style for it as well, but the symbol options were just so much greater using the CA140 and SS1 styles than others I'd thought to try, that I chose to stick with them:
Drawing the twisting river lines was rather fun. Indeed, I had to calm down some of them with redrawing, as while accurate to such things in reality (take a look at some of the historical maps showing how the lower Mississippi has appeared and changed over the years!), it made this map look too messy and hard to read. I also dropped the idea of drawing oxbow lakes alongside the channels for the same reason, plus some of the swamp symbols come with little pools anyway, which worked just as well to hint at such elements, while not looking too cluttered. I did have to add one larger lake from the random design process, though that was big enough not to be a problem.
Many of the features came from a variety of the Story Engine decks again, including the three main ones, "The Story Engine", "Deck of Worlds" and "Loremaster's Deck", and several of the fantasy and horror supplementary decks, but this time added to from tables in the main Shadowdark RPG rules, and the free PDF adventure pack "Shadowdome Thunderdark", both available from The Arcane Library.
Within the Swamp is much monstrous flora, both in size and nature, and the place has been generally little-visited by outsiders for centuries, other than a few folk from the Leechfort martial arts school on the Leech Hills (yep, there are giant leeches here as well as toads!). Most of the intelligent creatures here are humanoid Toadfolk, many of whom live in separate homesteads or small communities scattered over the Swamp and nearby jungles. Then there's a gigantic, deity-like Swamp Elemental, commonly known as the Toad Lord, who lives near the heart of the Swamp. And that Palace was what the dice-design dungeon map was soon to become! (Next time!)
While the map layout from the Inkwell dice designs was pretty straightforward, I'd already amended it in a few places before embarking on the CC3+ drawing, because rather than being subterranean, this was going to be a surface feature Palace building, albeit one composed of living vegetation, to fit with its key inhabitant, the Swamp Elemental known as Ssathrokkwa, the Toad Lord. The Palace is thus an extension of himself, in a somewhat loose sense. From a distance, and even quite close-up, it simply looks like one of the denser patches of swamp-jungle vegetation scattered across the whole Swamp area, while inside, being composed of living shrubs, trees and other plants, with marshy floors that sometimes include pools and water channels that pass beneath the walls, the structure isn't as solid as it may appear, albeit with thorns, cuttingly-sharp leaf edges, and dense internal branches that act as deterrents to anyone trying to force a way through walls or ceilings.
Ahead of the mapping, aspects of the Palace and specific items within it were randomly chosen, with adaptations, from a variety of tables in the main Shadowdark RPG rulebook, the free PDF adventure pack "Shadowdome Thunderdark" again, both by The Arcane Library, and the "Curiosities" tables in the "Unnatural Selection" supplement for Shadowdark published by Dungeon Damsel.
For the mapping style, this became quite an unusual mixture. One of the possibilities I'd considered for the Swamp of Toads map was the Darklands City style, and although that wasn't used there, I did like the connecting-symbol hedgerows in it, and thought they might be interesting to use here instead. The tree symbols and water options from that were also deciding factors. However, this is a dungeon-sized map, not a city-sized one, so others of Sue's dungeon-scale styles were pressed into service as well, ultimately including those for Marine Dungeon, Creepy Crypts, and Forest Trail, aside from a few more from DD3.
And so to the map:
Part of the reason I wanted to use the Darklands City hedges was because they come with thinner, brown-leafed segments, which seemed an ideal way to indicate the doors to this complex. That's because they don't appear obvious to non-residents, and open like a camera iris, the branches and foliage pulling back to form a rounded opening at the touch of a living hand or tongue (the latter is the usual method for the Toadfolk, naturally). The solitary Secret door is shown on the map above ordinarily, which decided me to also provide an option to show similar marker-lines for the ordinary doorways as well, for clarity:
That should have a toggle in the final Atlas FCW version.
Similarly, there should also be a toggle for the map grid:
That's been kept deliberately very subtle, and sometimes well-hidden (especially by that grove of trees in the Throne Room, area 12 - the floor space continues beneath their canopy, although much more heavily vegetated than in other open areas). GMs needing a more obvious grid can of course adjust it as necessary. There's also a cluster of magic crystals in the centre of the grove, for those wondering what might be happening there - there are more notes in the PDF file for the Atlas, including Shadowdark game stats for the new and variant creatures involved.
It's amazing what can be repurposed as something else at times. That long, rising passageway with two sets of mud-and-branch steps in (14), for instance. The "steps" are reused rectangles of the Fields bitmap fills from Darklands City, the mud in between the Earth texture fills from there, and the darker area (actually an ooze pit trap) beneath the "14" label, the dungeon dirt patches from Creepy Crypts. At the southern end of that passage, that dashed-white-line square is set over some strands of Kelp from Marine Dungeon, standing-in for swamp-jungle liana vines! And that square hatch and vines lead up to the Watch Tower, available on yet another FCW toggle for the final Atlas version, thus:
Of course, that Tower's of living vegetation too, so the floor is composed of interlocking branches, and the walls of canopy foliage, through which the watchers can climb to keep watch. There's a gentle, milky haze overlay across the lower parts of the map to indicate this is the highest part of the complex as well, and if required, there's an extra area of grid that can be shown for the Tower as well:
The lower grid doesn't need to be shown at the same time, as they're on separate Sheets, although both are here.
This was a lot of fun to draw, especially with the water pools here and there. Indeed, I got a bit carried away with adding water channels and pools outside the complex initially, as they just looked so interesting, and had to scale those back ultimately in places!
With this complete, the next map's scheduled for somewhere in the vast expanse of NW Doriant...
amazing!