Slithering Hole Battle Map - Launch

Hello Adventurers! I wanted to create a useful cave system for the end of the month and themed it to be dank and slimy, maybe even full of creepy crawlies! I added a few different side rooms as you descend, with a relatively large final cave for the end encounter.

If any of you have phobias of creepy crawlies, please be aware that there will be descriptions of bugs later in the text.

Next Maps

May will be a month of utility releases. First, you’ll get Into the Dark Forest, a general-use set of maps with a dark forest theme. Then I’ll be working on a set of assets for use with all my previous maps, which will include items you can overlay, including chests, piles of rubble, ballistas, and a bunch of other stuff.

• Into the Dark Forest (Map Pack)
  Much like the Into the Wilds map pack I created last year, this will be a set of general-use maps for forest travel, with a theme of dark pine forests. The layouts will be things like a clearing, a path, maybe a river crossing.

• Useful Assets for Adventurers!
  I realise sometimes you’d like to add some extra details to an existing map, so I’m going to create an asset pack with a bunch of useful items, such as chests, barrels, trap doors, rock piles, creature nests and a bunch more. Some will be updated assets I’ve used in previous maps, but many will be new. If you have specific requests, I’d love to hear your ideas.

As with every release, I’m throwing out my love and thanks to all you wonderful people who patronise me and all the amazingly talented creators in the TTRPG hobby community. You help grow this hobby and make it the awesome, creative place it is! If you have new map ideas, let me know, and specifically, any requests for small assets you might need in the Useful Assets for Adventurers pack. Try to remember they should be useful for general play!

With that, let's get started! Remember to tuck the bottom of your pants into your socks. Don’t touch the walls without looking first, and for the love of the gods, don’t look into dark holes while investigating the strange slime you just discovered.

Downloads

The files, thumbnails, and tags can be accessed on the Map List Page. You must be logged in to Patreon and signed up for the correct tier to access them. Remember, you are only charged for map releases; you can download all the old maps at no extra cost!

Map Description

You feel cool, damp air on your face as you step into the narrow stone tunnel. Water drips from the ceiling, while the walls are slick with slime. The tunnel descends steeply into darkness. Your footing is treacherous. With every step you take, loose rocks and gravel tumble down the slope, making it impossible to move silently.

Atmosphere Descriptions

• The air is damp, with an acrid note that you can almost taste.

• A cool breeze blows particles of moisture into your face.

• A light mist makes the torches splutter, along with the constant dripping of water from the roof.

• Once in a while, a drop of cold water falls down the back of your neck.

• The ground is covered in a layer of slick mucus, which sticks to your boots as you move.

• Bright spots of green bioluminescent light cover the walls.

• The walls glisten in the torchlight, giving the impression of constant movement.

• Water runs down the walls in tiny rivulets.

• Once in a while, you hear a buzz of wings in the dark, but no obvious source of the sound can be found.

• Tendrils of some organic thread run down the walls, dripping with slime.

• Tiny insects flit around your torches. On occasion, one will get too close and ignite into a spark before spluttering to the ground.

Notes and Tips

• 30x45 Grid Map

• The ground is slick with slime, bug droppings and other sticky stuff. It's easy to slip and fall to the ground. Once you're on the ground, things can crawl on you. It's NOT fun!

• Things will drop from the roof of the tunnel and caves. Most of the time, it's just water or slime, but sometimes it's something else, maybe with mandibles or fangs.

• Have things buzz past a party member's ears, too fast to see, but making it clear something lives down here.

• Night vision makes this kind of location less fun, so have the place obscured by mist or heavy ground fog.

• As your party descends, I’ve added different caves with unique layouts:

  • The first cave has rocky walls on either side of the path, with gaps leading into chambers on either side. The spaces between the rocks are narrow and will be hard to get through for most adventurers, but smaller creatures, often with extra legs, can move around with ease.

  • Off the main path are a few caves with nests, mounds, or holes in the floor. Something likely lives in them. These could be swarms of small creatures, with larger warrior versions.

  • Further in is an area flooded with water or slime. There are slick stepping stones which can be used to cross this cave. Leeches or water bugs could live here. Or some kind of biting fish that jumps out of the water.

  • The final cavern is likely where a queen or brood mother would live. I’ve left it open and somewhat unthemed to allow for the widest possibilities.

• Kicking the Nest: It's a giant ant nest! Your party has to make its way down to the queen to capture an egg or something similar. Each area has a different purpose. So, for example, the rooms off to each side of the first cave could be used for storing food collected by the colony. The caves with the holes could be where the colony farms aphids or fungus. The water is full of larvae, while the final chamber is covered in eggs and contains an angry queen and her royal guard. It doesn’t have to be giant ants. It could be any insect or fantastical creature that fits the location.

• Shiny Collection: Some creature lives at the bottom of this cave system. Maybe it's intelligent, or maybe it isn’t, but it loves collecting shiny things. It's collected so much that each cave is full of junk, mostly metal and glass. The quality of the junk improves the closer it is to the beast's lair. Each room contains creepy crawlies of different types. The final room is likely to be the only place the party will find anything truly valuable.

• They Mostly Come at Night, Mostly: The villagers have vanished, taken by whatever lives in the caverns. The party makes its way down into the cave system with ease, finding the villagers cocooned and dead. At which point the aliens… I mean, insects start coming out of the walls. It's time to leave! Epic escape fight music begins!

Variants

You get a desert variant for a giant scorpion nest.
You get a green/tropical variant for your jungle or temperate campaigns. I imagine giant snakes or cockroaches.

Yeti? Some kind of snow wasp? I don't know, but it's an ice/snow cave system.
And a lava/Nine Hells variant for fire beetles or lava worms.