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The Forsaken Grotto
🕑 Added 2025-04-18 15:19:50 +0000 UTCKaelith Marrowshade has gone missing. It isn’t that unusual for a ranger to wander off for a few months, but it has been two seasons now since they were last seen. Kaelith was known for their uncanny ability to navigate treacherous terrain and sense danger before it struck. Their last letter to the group before disappearing was pretty cryptic: “The shadows in the caves move… and they watch.”
Digging through Kaelith’s favourite haunts turns up a ranger trail map of the region with a few points of interest circled – but the most recent marking is a big red circle around a cave entrance marked “FORSAKEN”.
The entrance to the Grotto isn’t the southern cave – that leads further into the depths and is unlikely to be found by most adventurers unless they shrink themselves enough to fit through the smaller passages here. Near the middle of the map, there is a dead-end passage with steps leading down from it and four smaller tunnels. This chamber (or any other chamber of your choice, really) is open to the sky above, and a rope leads down into it, tied to a large boulder above.
Portions of the grotto almost feel like Swiss cheese – there are 2 foot wide and tall smaller caves and tunnels between the larger caves. These serve the guardians of this space quite well as they can travel through these small spaces to allow for hit and run tactics against intruders. Within the grotto is a cold biting draft that whistles through the smaller passages, carrying with it the faint metallic tang of ancient decay. The walls in some sections glisten with dampness, and any light source make the shadows leap and twist with every movement, turning ordinary rocks into sinister shapes.
The Grotto is home to the Crimson Shard – a blood red crystal that glows with a slow pulse going from the brightness of a match to the brightness of the setting sun and back. The body of the ranger lays on the floor reaching for the crystal. The guardians of the shard are the brightwraiths – semi-corporeal creatures that glide silently along the walls, ceilings, and fold themselves into the smaller caverns. Their touch drains warmth and courage – dealing necrotic damage and penalizing future saving throws. But worse, as shadows of the Crimson Shard, they can pulse incredibly brightly, blinding those looking at them (and being even more effective against those without light sources who rely on darkvision – the sudden transition from pitch darkness to the brilliant light of the shard gives disadvantage on the save). Once the shard has been secured, the brightwraiths all “slide” into it and stop trying to defend it.
But other creatures lurk down here also. The veilspinners are giant spiders (about the size of a medium dog) whose translucent webs trap not only the body of their victims, but their minds as well.
This map was drawn for the Gaxx Worx adventure “Wrath of the Sea Lich” (based on an earlier map from one of the Gaxx Worx Chentoufi adventures). The text and descriptions in this post are unrelated to that work, and are based on ideas that struck me while I was drawing it.
The 1200 dpi version of the map was drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and is 10,800 x 13,800 pixels in size (36 x 46 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for 10′ squares) – so resizing it to 2,520 x 3,220 or 5,040 x 6,440 pixels, respectively.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/04/18/the-forsaken-grotto/
Comments
Dyson Logos
Awesome! I love hearing about groups using my maps.
Anathema
Wouldn’t ya know it? Perfect for the scenario my party is going to be in next weekend, bravo & thank you for sharing!
