Swamp Tunnel, Adept (Patreon)

This week's map is the Swamp Tunnel (30x50), a more overgrown tunnel than I've made previously but with a bit of a rotten, hazy flavor. I didn't intend on this being so swampy that it couldn't fit in in jungle/forest environments, so the palette here isn't quite as dreary or poisonous as the Swamp Den (which this is intended to be used alongside), so I could call this a Jungle Tunnel or Verdant Tunnel just as easily. All I'm saying here is I think this can be used for several environments, not just swamps, so go nuts!

A simple layout for a tunnel, a winding path from top to bottom, but with some extra space for activities. I wanted to include a good bit of marsh so that this would feel thematically similar to the Swamp Den, and I also wanted to have water flowing in from a similar direction so that you could potentially connect the two maps in that way as well. Say the players did some stealthy recon and noticed a stream leading into the Den from the East, they could try exploring upstream from the Tunnel here and perhaps gain entry to the arena from a more advantageous angle. At least I like to imagine players coming up with such a plan, lord knows I'm either too dumb or playing a character too simple-minded to come up with a plan like that.

Roots, grass, ledges. When making this map I remembered the Jungle Cave from earlier this year, it had lots of levels and tiers which gave the cave a fun bowl-like shape. I wanted to give this one a similarly rounded shape but more tubular and tunnel-like, with lots of ledges on the sides of the map which I hoped would give it a somewhat more natural shape. I don't think it feels 'natural' still but I do think it's interesting and cave-y, and that's good enough for now!

I hate drawing roots btw. I really wasn't looking forward to drawing roots for this map. I wasted too much time redoing outlines this last week so I didn't have time to get the roots just right like I wanted. So, these are copied over directly from the Swamp Den, hopefully not too obviously. If I end up making another swampy cave map then I'll try to prioritize those before getting lost in the sauce on something silly.

Like I mentioned, I didn't want to make this map's colors quite as swampy or dreary as the Den's. That map was made to be a caustic, bubbling cave for a black dragon to make its home, this was meant to be a swampy cave. I still put bubbles in the water, for fun, but not necessarily because it's going to melt your armor but because it is evocative. Anyway, I colored this one to be somewhat more vibrant but still pretty shadowy- I didn't want to make it so bright and colorful that it felt like it was outside, it should still have that dim look that says it's underground. I really wanted to make it bright and colorful though, so I might have to make a regular forest map soon for my sake.