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The Kernsridge Barrows
🕑 Added 2025-09-02 16:16:54 +0000 UTCThese barrow mounds are a great place for your party to fight some undead and score a few "graveyard souvenirs." Some of these tombs are meant to be the graves of common people, while a few are for leaders or nobility, and others are the graves of warriors.
The warriors' graves contain the weapons wielded by the deceased, which were interred alongside them. That might seem like a strange choice, given that metal weapons were valuable and they were usually only found in the tombs of important people. But that's one place where real life and fantasy settings diverge. Like, a lot.
In most fantasy settings, metal weapons aren't rare at all. Take the Forgotten Realms, for example. Everyone who wants a sword has a sword. Goblins have swords. Kobolds have swords. Swords aren't valuable, they're trash. When your players kill bandits, do they even bother to take the weapons? And if they do, are they like, "Ho-lee hell boys, we're rich!" Nah. Just more swords. A few axes. Leave 'em.
This isn't true of all settings. In Dark Sun, finding a metal sword is like finding a magical sword. When you've been beating monsters to death with a rock tied to a stick for months, finding an actual blade is a big deal. But in most settings, a non-magical weapon is practically litter. Anyway, that was my thinking here.
I hope you like tombs, because next up is more tombs! I'll be drawing an underground tomb complex in the style of Egypt's Valley of the Kings, with hidden passages, animated statues, traps and places for undead guardians. After that, we'll be moving back to the realm of the living.
Well, I'm gonna start doing some research on the Valley of the Kings. If you've got any interesting ideas for the map, let me know!
Comments
Milby's Maps
Hey, glad you like it! Not putting undead in here would be such a mind game. If the PCs walk in and see a bunch of skeletons with weapons that just lay there and do nothing while the party solves puzzles, they're going to be incredibly confused, haha.
Ethan, J.
It is so gorgeous and a perfect place to encounter powerful undead or unique history based dungeon puzzles.
Milby's Maps
Thanks! Hope your players enjoy their "archaeological expedition," haha.
Jay Farschman
These are fantastic. Not only are they beautiful, but they are topically exactly what I'm looking for.
