Sunday, March 4, 2012

Slave Pits: Map of Hucwind Island

I've slowly been making progress on my re-imaging of A1: The Slave Pits of the Undercity. Below you will find a finished map for the general area of the Slave Pits — a place known as Hucwind Island (for the astute reader, yes, that is a rearrangement of the name Dunwich — from one of my favorite HPL stories):


Some notes:

As I predicted in my initial thoughts, this map is based on the island of Lindisfarne, the place where the real St. Cuthbert is from. It is approximately 2.25 miles wide and 1.5 miles deep.

There are three stages of habitation/development:

  • The castle is the oldest structure. It was built as a deterrent to pirates, a task at which it failed and was therefore abandoned.
  • The followers of St. Cuthbert came to the island, rebuilt the castle as a monastery, founded the village of Hinsmount (also a rearranged reference to HPL) and the Temple. When pirates/humanoid raiders figured out that the great treasure on the island were bones (relics of the saint), they destroyed many of the buildings and killed every one on the island in order to make the whole endeavor worth their while.
  • The kuo-toa/deep one slavers found a series of natural tunnels in the bowels of the island, which they expanded. Once they had enough half-breeds/sea bloods, they built on top of the foundations of Hinsmount and re-claimed the castle.
Here is a key for the numbered areas:

  1. There is a cliff wall along much of the northern and eastern coast of the island. On average it is about 50-60ft. high and is about 100 ft. at its highest point.
  2. There is a sea cave here only visible during low tide. It is otherwise completely under water. This is the normal entrance used by the slavers into the Slave Pit complex that are in the bowels of the island.
  3. This sickly looking copse of trees is the home to a group of ghouls. Whether they are the remnants of the raiders who killed all the followers of St. Cuthbert or the result of some of the vile experiments done by the slavers, no one is really sure; however, the slavers do keep them in decent supply of food — both to keep them happy and to dispose of bodies.
  4. At high tide, this area is underwater. During these times, there is a 50% chance that some of the ghouls from area 3. will be here hunting fish.

4 comments:

Paul said...

I like your wave texture.

Anthony said...

Very nice map, and that wave background is neat. The island is developing a nice horror feel to it.

Gordon Cooper said...

Excellent map and notes.

FrDave said...

@Paul @Anthony @ Gordon

Thanks for the kind words. The wave is based on a Japanese pattern I found.