Graxworm Map 10 – Watch Tower Upper Levels (Patreon)

The Graxworm is a massive dead dragon of mythic scale, several miles long and large enough to contain a town in the mouth. Creatures have set up here to “mine” the massive corpse for its valuable materials – leather, scales, ichor, tendons, and more. Practically every bit has some value to someone, and in the long term the expectation is that nothing will remain, not even the massive bones. We’ve returned to the head of the beast for these next two maps – exploring a watch tower built into one of the horns atop its head.

A pair of horns on the head of the Graxworm have been converted into watch towers to provide an eagle’s eye from the highest point in the region. These upper levels were cut into the horn before the aeries were added to the base of the structure. As such, these levels are rarely used by the troops below, as the flying mounts of the new patrols allow them to see from higher above, or just fly up to the top level of the horn to watch over the area without climbing the seemingly interminable stairs.

However, a few of the troops from below took this posting specifically because it is a quiet one that leaves them time to do what they please. Thus a few have set up for themselves in the watch level where they only come down once or twice a week to acquire rations and water (when they can’t convince the riders to carry up a snack or two for them). They spend their days in quiet personal time – one working on a map of the Graxworm from memory and time spent in the tunnels (and a lot of conjecture as they’ve spent no real time in the depths of the corpse); the other reading whatever books and scrolls they can get their hands on. They rarely go up to the nest level except on exceptionally nice days, leaving it to the rider patrols as a place to rest their mounts.

The Graxworm Megadungeon was proposed to me by Gallant Knight Games – a dungeon set within the corpse of a dragon some seven miles in length. If I were to map out the whole thing we’d be looking at a good 100+ maps, so instead we’ll be focusing on points of interest as a sort of “point crawl” megadungeon setting. We’ll be posting a few maps in the set every month for… well… quite some time!

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,200 x 13,200 pixels in size (34 x 44 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 2,380 x 3,080 or 4,760 x 6,160 pixels, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2024/06/21/graxworm-map-10-watch-tower-upper-levels/