Heart of Darkling - The Drop (Patreon)

The Darkling River works its way through the underdark beneath the grey hills to depths unknown. This is the thirteenth mapped location (and 15th map total) along the Darkling River and the Darkling Lake beyond.

Here the Darkling River picks up speed and heads down a gradual slope (but nothing feels all that gradual when you are in a boat riding down even a mild descent in the darkness). A set of caves exists here where the river once ran higher. These caves have been converted into a small village by the morlocks who were chased out of their previous home at Gibberling lake. However the move downriver didn’t give them enough time to collect food and without the fish supply from the lake, they soon turned on one another.

Now it is a village of cunning ghouls and ghasts, waiting “patiently” for their next meal to pause here before taking the drop.

There are two lookout points prior to the bend in the Darkling into the drop. There are generally d3-1 ghouls on each watching for travellers, with the closer side having a 50% chance of one of the ghouls being a ghast. The ghouls generally lay about on the ground like the emaciated corpses they nearly are, and then rush in a swarm when one is disturbed.

At the beginning of the drop and village are three heavy wooden poles embedded in the stone bank – used by the previous dwellers to tie off boats before they headed further down the Darkling. These folk ran a small trading compound here and appear to have been archivists of some religious order based on the libraries and temple structure they cut into the west side of the area. If the ghouls are all removed, it won’t take long for another group to take over the area.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 pixels (48 squares) wide. To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 3,360 pixels wide or 6,720 pixels wide, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2021/07/06/heart-of-darkling-the-drop/