Jörðgarð Map of Week#288 - Dragonwood Ruins

[Mark Oliva]

The 288th Map of the Week is a battlemap that shows the ruins of a settlement known Dragonwood, or Ásbjörn's Wood, as it originally was called. In the ruins a PC group will be able to find the corpses of two humans and two orcs as well as the headless body of a male draug. There is no trace of the draug's missing head. The bodies appear to have been dead for about one day. It appears that the two humans and no doubt their companions were in a skirmish with the draug and the orcs. The tracks of two other orcs lead southward from the ruin where the dead orcs and the headless draug lie. Tracks of three humans lead northward from the point where the two dead humans lie.

Before and during the Great Wars, Ásbjörn's Wood was the ruling seat of the Æsir Southwood Barony. It gained its new name, at least in popular usage, in the later days of the wars, when the dragon þurí came from the north and appeared to have settled somewhere near the town. She never attacked the town, although she flew over it frequently. In the final years of the wars, the villagers lived in fear of þurí, although they never were attacked by her.

Ásbjörn's Wood had a population of more than 2,000 in its best times. It was a bustling center for trade, artisans, farmers and loggers. Today it is visited frequently by small bands of orcs, but nothing lairs there. During its glory days, it was small but rich, with a walled inner town and a small baronial castle. All that remains of the wall today are four arches over the fading trails that once were roads into the town center. There also still are the foundations the baronial castle, a wizard's tower and other structures of no longer known usage. There are dank cellar levels below the castle and tower ruins. When they are in the remnants of Dragonwood, draugs and their orcs lair by day in these cellars.

Key to the Map of the Ruins:

1. Two Dead Humans. They appear to have been slain by poisoned arrows. The fallen both are male, one probably a warrior, the other perhaps a spellcaster. All valuables, if any, were removed from their bodies. The ring of stones north of the corpses, about a yard/meter high, are the remnants of a wizard's tower.

2. The Beheaded Draug and Two Dead Orcs. They are in and near the remnants of the wall of the old baronial castle. The wall ruins vary in height from 3 to 5 feet/90 to 150 cm. There is no trace of the draug's head. The two orcs, probably warriors, were slain by arrows. Any valuables that the three might have had were removed from the bodies.

You can get this battlemap in two versions:

1. The Fractal Mapper (TM) 8 version in FMP format, fully editable (4.2 MB) from the Jörðgarð website.

2. As a JPG flat map of 3000 x 2250 Pixels (1.8 MB), available above.

Both versions are released for personal and commercial use under the Open Game License Version 1.0a, which you can read on the Jörðgarð website at:

http://www.vintyri.org/joerdhgardh/

Next week: Greenwood Penal Colony

[Bogie]

Nice concept and layout Mark. The thing I don't care for is how blurred a lot of the background textures are. You should have plenty of higher resolution textures you could use.

[Mark Oliva]

The thing I don't care for is how blurred a lot of the background textures are. You should have plenty of higher resolution textures you could use.

Greetings, Bogie!

I agree with your point completely! When I still lived in the U.S., I can remember that one sometimes said that a camel is nothing other than a horse designed by a committee. The shortcoming that you point out here applies not only to this map but also to a number of others published by the Vintyri Project. It's my job in the project group to do the public work, including posting the Map of the Week here. But three of us make these maps. They aren't all my work, as it seems up front. My colleagues think it's acceptable to limit resolution to that necessary to get a good computer printer page on 8½ x 11 paper. I think for users who want to custom edit our maps (which a number of people do with maps in the native format of the maps), we could do better. However, the majority opinion disagrees and isn't interested in adding stronger resolution to our mandatory map style guidelines. As a result, some of our cartographic horses will continue to be camels.

Nonetheless, your point is excellent, and I certainly will pass it on. Thanks for the comment!