The Tyrant’s Ruins (Patreon)

Somehow when I posted this map to the blog and promoted it across all my social media feeds, I failed to post it here... you know, the place where you actually pay me for these maps. So belatedly, here's the map of the Tyrant's Ruins posted everywhere else on the internet on Thursday. Thanks again for your support!

There are many ruins in the ghost dunes. Bases of towers long fallen, temples to the pretty ones and to darker gods, and odd bits of debris and structures that are harder to place. This old structure has more than partially collapsed – the left side has no roof remaining, and the ruins atop the right side indicates that at one time this was probably a three or four story structure. What remains is a great hall and adjoining chamber on the right and stairs down to a partly collapsed lower level which has been converted by later users into a tomb.

The left side of the structure has a rough statue of a dragon-like creature (it appears to have once been a statue of a horse that then had additional material added in clay over cloth and wire frames to give it the impression of wings, spiked tail, and large toothy maw). In front and around the statue are a number of “offerings” from local dune dwellers – dried up fruit, gourds of water, the occasional trinket and shiny stone. Between this and great hall is a smaller hall that is isolated by large pieces of cloth spiked between the stone bricks of the structure. This area was evidently someone’s home at one time, but no fool would live within the structure now that it has become the Tyrant’s lair.

The Tyrant is a massive pseudo-lizard – nearly the full 20 feet wide and 30 feet tall of the structure’s stairs. To it, this presents a lovely small nest it can hide in when digesting its most recent meals. Further, it can form a “lure” to bring food to it. This lure takes the shape of an attractive genderless humanoid that wanders the desert and draws predators back to the ruins to be eaten. While it doesn’t talk, it will make beckoning gestures and is always either walking away from or to the ruins.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 7,500 pixels (24 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 1,750 pixels wide or 3,500 pixels wide, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2021/08/12/the-tyrants-ruins/