[Paid] Temple of Myrkul

[Aegeri]

So this is a pretty big project and I didn't feel comfortable asking for such a large map (4 in total actually) for free, so I am willing to negotiate some rates and such for it. Depending on what you feel you want to do and how, but there will be lots of room here for your own creativity (see below).

This is the basic idea, the "Map" is actually a large temple with 3 levels and an outside area. The premise is that the Temple has come under assault from outside forces who have breached the temple and are attempting to get access to the inner chamber. The PCs arrive to a massive fight, with the Gnoll/Orc/Daemon army of the Legion breaking into the Temple and assaulting into the inner sanctum (fighting the temples numerous undead defenders). Most of the rooms are 3 way fights and the temple is sustaining major damage from the assault. The relentless undead refuse to give up and there is fighting in nearly all parts of the temple, mostly because the Legion are simply throwing their troops into the undead to distract them while their leader makes her way to the center of the Temple.

So with that premise here is the time constraint:

It should be done by the end of March, which is when I suspect my PCs will be done with the current module and the beginning half of this module. As the maps are split into four parts, they should be done in order so if only half is done that's ok (there are a lot of complicated encounters in this module, so you should have plenty of time). I'll pay on a per map basis as well to make life easier for you!

The style is up to you actually. Personally, I'd rather not have something excessively fancy like some people like to do. Something sort of like this would be the best for me. The bottom two levels of the temple are in the shadowfell however, so these maps should be greyscale with very dark features (this is how I represent the shadowfell in my own games).

Once someone undertakes the project I will give the specifics, but there is lots of room for creativity here:

Map 1: Outdoors map, which is the entrance to the temple and has been under seige. There are ruins and bits of masonry everywhere. It's built into the side of a giant cliff as well, so should be pretty rocky, gnoll corpses on the ground, siege equipment and that sort of thing. It should be a singular terrain map, with the entrance to the temple and just the surrounding terrain. Just a decent sized battlemap really.

Map 2: The first "floor" of the temple is where the primary worship to Myrkul took place. Much of it is in ruin, as spells have destroyed many corridors and such, heavily damaging the entire structure. Most rooms are fairly large and extravagant, with a central mausoleum housing hundreds of coffins (and in fact is where many of the undead come from) and numerous other chambers (including chapels of worship and that sort of thing).

The most important room is the dining hall, which is more a mockery of living things requirements for nourishment than anything else. It's a very large room and forms one of the central battles of the module. At its rear is the entrance down through the shadowfell to the second level.

This map should ideally have ten rooms: The central mausoleum and the dining hall being essential. Other rooms can be crypts or anything you feel like. You're free to add details and such as you like to personalise the map. The main thing is that the rooms need to be fairly large, preferably if at all possible with some "Z axis" or second levels, raised balconies and similar. They should be covered in rubble, broken pillars, smashed bits and pieces.

It's very important the rooms are of a decent size, because ALL the combats just about on this floor have numerous gnolls, orcs and demons (The legions servants) AND have the undead defending their turf. So this makes most fights 3 way fights between the PCs and the attacking enemies: limited space will turn these battles from "this is pretty epic" to "OMG this is stupid I can't even move".

Map 3: The second level of the temple of myrkul holds the main library, is on the shadowfell and again, is heavily structurally damaged. This floor holds numerous holding cells, a fully equipped torture chamber and again, the library. These are the 3 essential rooms. The same conditions remain for this floor as the second. The floor should be roughly seven rooms or so (I build my encounters based on rooms). Again, mobility between rooms should be limited because there is basically a war going on in here and damage to the corridors has collapsed many of them.

On maps 2 and 3, you can approach them two ways: You can make the rooms linear and just hint at a HUGE structure or you can interconnect them any way you want. I don't want to purely railroad the players into one route, but this can also be a good idea (as the final encounter is a real sod) to just connect some chambers so they only have a couple of different entrances.

The entrance to the deepest level is within the library and is a descending set of spiral stairs with a river of blood flowing down the middle of the steps (like a little stream) from the roof above.

Map 4: This is the trickiest map. It needs to be one ginormous room, with a large motif on the floor (as a mosaic) of a grim reaper like figure with a skull (this is a depiction of Myrkul). The little stream of blood leads to two giant stone doors that open into the main central chamber (with the mosaic on the floor). There should be a massive altar, again of a statue of myrkul where a particular weapon important in the campaign is being held. This room needs to be very large and provide room for the gargantuan solo (yes, the Mosaic) to move around in. Then it needs to be big enough for the four way fight that results shortly after it is destroyed.

Again, lots of rubble, destroyed statues, overturned sarcophagi and such would be fantastic for the PCs to hide behind etc. This place should be covered in bodies, blood and all kinds of mess (the PCs walk in here after the main battle has taken place). This is a really important map, more important than all the others as it's really essential to my games story and really should have a very "desperate" feel to it. Anyone looking at it should feel that some truly massive battle took place there (scorch marks from spells like fireball are everywhere etc).

Ideally, these maps should be a good size so nobody has to squint at tiny tokens in maptools and have good sized squares (otherwise it makes it hard to align the grid). I don't intend to print these out as battlemaps.

Once finished, you may post the map publically for anyone to use. I believe in sharing and am more than happy for you to make it publically available or whatever. It's up to you.

So let me know if you're interested. I will forward you a copy of a MS word document that details the room descriptions and the rough number of creatures. An understanding of 4th edition rules would be helpful, because this module is really heavily focused on being a dungeon crawl and upping the danger/lethality of enemies a lot (It brings the PCs from heroic into paragon).

[DevinNight]

I'd be interested in talking to you about this project.
Fell free to contact me: devinnight@att.net
-Devin

[Aegeri]

Ok, I have found a helpful cartographer to help me with this project. Thanks guys