Hello everyone, and happy New Release Monday! Today, I am releasing my 9th map in the Lothburgh series: The Dundland Weaver Rope Factory.
Lothburgh is a new campaign setting being designed and developed by creator Lunch Break Heroes. It will include a campaign setting, a full adventure, new monsters, magic items, and sub-classes! I have been brought on to create the battlemaps for the Lothburgh series, and you'll see these in print once the book comes out.
You can learn more about the setting on LBH's YouTube vid here.
You can also follow the campaign on Kickstarter to be notified once it releases here.
In addition to the newest map, LBH has graciously given me the section from the work-in-progress PDF, which includes the adventure that features both this location as well as my last Lothburgh release for Deaver's Apartment! Note, this is still a work in progress as playtesting is still happening, but I've gone through the adventure twice now and had a blast both times. This adventure is included in the downloads for all tiers.
This map was a fun challenge for me since I had no idea how rope was made. I found this incredible video, which really helped me out from Master Ropemakers in Chatham Dockyard (UK).
As industry is one of the most common features of Lothburgh, I wanted this map to have a semblance of realism, and though it may not be as big an operation as the one in Chatham Dockyard, I think the end results are fitting for the gritty city of Lothburgh.
Your party of investigators will be met with the brickwork building on the muddy and soot-covered streets of the New Ashes borough. A large rusted metal sign illuminated by lights reads "Dunaldand Waver Co.," which is one of a handful of notable rope makers for the various sailing vessels nearby.
I included three entry points to the building:
The main front doors from the street
The right side of the building has an entry to the side where the new rope is covered with a coating of tar to make it water-resistant
The left side of the building has a loading dock for both outgoing and incoming shipments
Inside, you will be greeted with the smell of tar, rope fibers, and coal while machines whine and twist to create various braids of new rope. The center of the factory features the "Rope Walk," where braids of rope are strung up and fed through several holders into the rope-twisting machine. This steam-powered machine has various hooks attached to the face that spin, pulling in the braids and twisting them together to form the bigger rope used on ships. There is an apparatus where the rope is fed through that is on rollers, and the workers will pull this down the rope-walk as the twisting machines pull the rope tight.
Toward the front of the building, raw bales of rope fibers are taken to smaller, hand-cranked twisting machines where they form the first initial braids of rope (to then be fed onto the rope-walk). Various workbenches line the walls where rope is packaged, tied, and loaded onto spools for shipping.
On the right side of the factory, your party will find the loading dock where crates of rope are ready to ship, the storage room where bales of fiber are stored, a latrine, and the main office where (currently) a band of gangsters is holed up plotting their next move.
On the attached PDF adventure, this features the first job in the main adventure from the book, which kicks off the entire plot of the story. Your party of investigators is hired by a wealthy woman to find her father, who has gone missing. Furthermore, her father is a man of notoritiy being one of the "Blades of Morning". A group of Vampire Hunters responsible for driving out a plague of feral vampires from taking over Lothburgh nearly 70 years ago. Hailed as a hero in his early days, her father now lives alone in an apartment in one of the roughest boroughs of Lothburgh, New Ashes, concocting one conspiracy theory after another. Many think Deaver has begun to lose his faculties in his old age and no one so far has taken him seriously...that is until your party is hired to find him!
The adventure contained in the .zip files features both this map and my Deavers Apartment map for the two main encounter locations. If you decide to run it, let me know what you think!
Click the download link below for your tier to download all the map files.
The Foundry / Champion Tier Download
The Foundry / Champion Tier Printable PDFs Download
The Grand Library Tier Download
The Grand Library Tier Printable PDFs Download
The Great Hall Tier Download
With nine maps in, the city is really starting to come alive! I've been playing in a Lothburgh campaign for a while now and have had so much fun! I hope you check it out, I think the setting has a lot of potential to make for a really fun and different campaign.
For my other projects, next week I am working on another outdoor location inspired by the CoS module as I map my way west of Vallaki.
I'm also working on an exciting collab for March with D&Demetrius where I'll be releasing two maps in a single week! I'll be tackling the outdoor location, and D&Demetrius will be working on the interior map for what should make for an epic dungeon! This project was inspired by one of the bigger locations from BG3 Act I, and I think it makes for a wonderful set of maps to be used in your various games.
In the workshop, I'm cooking up new assets to support future map projects such as the Vistani Camp outside of Vallaki, the Saltmarsh Graveyard, Van Richten's Tower, and TONS of new swamp assets for the Swamps of Berez / Hool Marshes! I can't wait to share what I've been working on, so stay tuned for more updates on those projects. As always, THANK YOU, all, for your continued support of my craft, and I hope my maps continue to inspire your sessions.
Cheers friends,
DM Andy