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Index Card Dungeon II – Map 15 – Pool of Drifting Lights
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 15:07:39 +0000 UTCThis is the fifteenth and final map in the Index Card Dungeon II set. It sits to the southeast of Map 14 (the Cave of the Candleman), and northwest of Map 13 (The Sorcerer’s Tomb) via the secret passage on that map.
This map is dominated by a single large cave. Even the rooms to the southwest were not cut from the stone, but were built up with stone to divide them from the cavern. The air here is damp and cold, carrying the scent of melted wax. A stream enters the cave from a narrow cleft in the north wall, spilling into a deep, glassy pool before vanishing into a submerged hole on the far side. The surface is so still in places that it mirrors the cave ceiling perfectly, except for the occasional flicker of blue light that dances across it.
A heavy, iron-banded door stands closed on the west side of the cavern, leading to a couple of rooms and then the secret passage to Map 13. The hinges of the door are flecked with wax drips that have run upwards, against gravity. Steps have been cut into the stone floor of the cave on the south side, with faint footprints leading to and from the pool. Floating on the pool are thin, curled flakes of pale wax, almost like flower petals.
A solitary wax servitor of the Candleman (a half-melted humanoid figure with no face – something akin to what a half-melted wax replica of Gollum would look like) lives in the pool and will likely come out when there are people in the cave. It carries a single lit candle in its cupped hands. It won’t attack unless provoked, but it tries to press the candle into the hands of a visitor before retreating back to the pool. Like the Candleman’s candle, this candle burns with a cold blue flame – the flame always dances in the direction towards the Candleman, but it carries the same slow curse, slowly stiffening the carrier into a wax effigy of themselves.
This is the last map of the Index Card Dungeon II set. I’m working on an overview of the full set that shows the linkages and so on, but there’s a good chance I won’t get it done and published before I leave for a one-week vacation on Friday.
The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 9,000 x 5,400 pixels (30 x 18 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 2,100 x 1,260 or 4,200 x 2,520, respectively.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/09/08/index-card-dungeon-ii-map-15-pool-of-drifting-lights/
Comments
Dyson Logos
:D I did.
Frank Moore
Who the hell approved vacation in the middle of ICD2? I need to speak with the management... LOL!!
