Heart of Darkling – Darklingtown Upper Tunnels (Patreon)

The Darkling River works its way through the underdark beneath the grey hills to depths unknown. Darklingtown is a trading community built into a series of claustrophobically low-ceilinged caverns on the banks of the Darkling and a number of its tributaries. Darklingtown (which in turn will be made of 9+ maps) is the seventeenth mapped location (and this the 28th map total) along the Darkling River and the Darkling Sea beyond.

Above the “low rent” (really, no rent) Tunnels District of Darklingtown is the poorest part of Darklingtown proper – the Upper Tunnels or High Tunnels District. Like the Tunnels below, these are a set of fairly tight caverns that have been converted into living space by those who couldn’t wrangle space in the riverside neighbourhoods. This district has been through a few boom-and-bust cycles depending on who sets up residence here. For a while, an adventuring guild and a pair of associated businesses were established up here and the whole area prospered with the feeling of safety one gets from living next to a number of moderately potent sorcerers, warriors, and clerics. But with the adventurers moved on, it wasn’t long before the ancillary businesses also closed up shop and the whole district slipped back into slumhood.

While quite distant from the Darkling and its tributaries, the Upper Tunnels remain very damp with runnels of water heading to low ground and eventually down the stairs to the Tunnels beneath. There have been attempts to set up a sort of bazaar here in a two-tiered cave, but in the end, there’s a trio of traders who haven’t let go of the dream, although few come to shop here.

There are only two exits out of the Upper Tunnels – both stairs leading down to the Tunnels district below. While this makes the district more “secure” than most of Darklingtown’s districts, the air up here is thick, wet, and smokey, and most who live here have little other choice.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 19,200 pixels (64 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 4,480 pixels wide or 8,960 pixels wide, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2022/02/08/heart-of-darkling-darklingtown-upper-tunnels/