Boneyard Cavern, Adept

The final map of this month is the Boneyard Cavern (11x16), a nice little cave with big rocky ledges. a few shadowy corners, and whole bunch of bones. At least in the regular version, your bonus one has 0 bones, in case your enemy of choice doesn't leave any scraps or leftovers from their kills. Or maybe you've have other plans for this cave that doesn't involve fighting plain ol' beasts and you need a blank slate for, say, druidic rituals, camps, or other encounters I couldn't even guess at. In which case here you go- go nuts!

1. This is one of those maps that I had 0 time to make (much like next week's map) due to family stuff, so I started with a vaguely cave-shaped sketch and decided I'd work out the details as I drew. I had a feeling that it would be some sort of animal den, but I wasn't entirely sure what that would like. That's all fine by me, it's not like a wolf would get to design a cave around their needs anyway, they'd just do their wolf stuff in any cave that does the job. I figured if I made a cave with a few interesting features then I could add a theme to it later. And I did!

   My plan for making it interesting btw was add a rock wall and a single pillar. Fascinating!

   

2. Thankfully I came up with a bit more than that as I worked. I developed the other side of the cave by adding another large ledge, leaving the middle as a sort of irregularly shaped pit. I thought this other ledge would be a fun place for an enemy to pose or throw stuff, but more importantly it makes the map look more interesting too, which is what I usually care more about.

   At this point I decided that it would definitely be a den of some kind but, rather than trying to make it look like a regular animal den I thought it would be more fun if I instead overfilled it with bones. The result is much more dramatic than a simple wolf's den, and definitely more intimidating- it feels like something actually very dangerous lives here. Now that's a fun foundation for a map, and vague enough for just about anyone to use!

   

3. Well well well, if it isn't my old stumbling block- coloring and shading caves. This time my strategy was to make it look kinda dusty and monotone with enough shading to imply some changes in elevation. I don't know, what do caves look like? Boring, that's for sure, not very colorful if you're aiming for semi-realism. One thing's for sure, that's how this cave looks, and I have no intention of changing it.