Green Dragon Lair, Adept (Patreon)

This week I made the Green Dragon Lair (30x35), which is mostly just a cave in the forest with a big gold hoard in the corner. As it turns out, dragon lairs are usually just caves, who would have thought? I was under the impression that they resided in big fortresses or something, but I suppose I had the wrong idea since a quick glance at the Monster Manuel shows that these bad boys do in fact just hang out in forest caves. Not as much fun as I was expecting, but at least it will be easy to use alongside my many many forest maps.

Also, you'll notice I made a spookier version of the map for you, which I'm calling Spectral due to the hanging blue mist and colder colors inside the cave. I didn't try too hard to imitate my other spooky maps for this one, but I think I got the idea. 

1. I went through several sketches before I settled on this layout. I was originally going to include a system of tunnels which eventually would lead to a treasure chamber, but I was struggling to also fit in a healthy portion of forest into the frame. If I had more time maybe I could have made this an unusually large map with dimensions greater than 40", but I don't think I am ready to start making maps that take two weeks.

So anyway, I settled on a single chamber cave, which I thought would be a fun place with enough space for a dragon to do a little flying, though realistically not much. Either way, I wanted it to be a possibility since it would be a shame if you couldn't utilize their flight speed.

Oh, and also I like the tiered ledges for a Green Dragon's cone breath attack! I can easily imagine the dragon swooping up and perching beside the treasure, unleashing a cone with enough distance to hopefully hit multiple players. And maybe the players who are pressed up against the tiered rock walls are less likely to take serious damage? 

2. Lots of rock walls, lots and lots, and they're pretty boring to make. I'm getting to the point where I'm looking for ways to make maps without them, but I can't deny the way they add a lot of complexity to a map. In an attempt to save time I tried to grab stretches of rock walls from the Desert Canyon Bridges, which helped a little bit, but sadly it barely filled in a quarter of the walls I needed. At that point I just put on a Warhammer audiobook and got to business. 

After the rock walls, everything else came together very very quickly- detailing grass, water, and dirt is something I can do in my sleep, and I only rarely need to draw new trees and rocks anymore. The waterfall did require a decision though, since I didn't want to confuse the viewer into thinking it's a river that cuts into the mountainside. I hoped that the lighting would help clear that up.

3. With this map's colors, I wanted to get across the poisonous aspect of the green dragon. One of the details listed about the area near a green dragon's lair is the acrid fog that hangs over the forest, which seemed like fun detail to include. I leaned into it with more greenish, jungle colors, though I felt that it didn't look quite right for the cave itself to also have the same effects. For the sake of clarity and contrast I decided to leave the cave fairly unobscured, leaning toward crisp and clean lighting which I thought would help keep the terrain readable.