Geomorph #109 (In Honor of Jim Roslof)

When Jim Roslof passed last week, I wanted to do some geomorphs in his honor. I knew of at least one more of his pieces in The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide that was suitable, and numerous others from modules and such. Unfortunately, that illustration from the DSG was a tough nut to crack. I may have been better served by going to the modules (especially this one from D1-D2). But I am orderly to a fault and I wanted to finnish this source book before I moved on to the modules and Dragon magazine.

So, let's take a look at the drawing in question (shown below). The viewpoint character is looking down a precarious stair into and over a large subterranean cavern with numerous stone formation, ledges, and interesting elevation changes. There seems to be a substantial area of level ground in the middle of the scene, broken up by some stalagmites. Most notably, there are many small rectangular holes that seem to imply some kind of organized settlement or warren.

If those figure depicted in the cavern are human sized then this scene is way too big for a single geomorph. But what if they are small creatures, perhaps gnomes or jermlaine? A geomorph need not be as big as the scene that inspired it. My goal was simply to create a map that was evocative of the source material.

So, in the end, I think the tile came out ok. The elevation changes had me stumped, but I took an approach similar to what I did in Geomorph #108. In the west, there are two levels of flat ledges separated by a steep drop (steeper than the elevation lines in the north and east. The solid black portals are meant to lead off or into the map, presumably to the warrens of small humanoids.