The sun is shining as the early morning mist begins to fade away, and the sound of birdsong greets you over the cusp of the sleepy hills. Tidy farms, low hedges, and colourful flower beds mark the country as you descend from the wild lands into the welcoming Halfling Boroughs.

You are walking through a darkened hall, tall pillars rising ominously around you to a shadowy ceiling lost in darkness. A steady drip echoes through the vast, cold space, the sound sharp and lonely in the oppressive silence. With each step, the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, and a prickle of unease tells you that unseen eyes may be watching from the shadows. Welcome to the world beneath the surface, to the depths of a Megadungeon.

And we're finally at the end of the first season! This is the map of the Azure Throne, the end of the quest to find the Pirate King's treasure. Thank you to everyone for following along with the story of Yemoke and the Goldhunter's Sea - or, if you've missed out, check out the previous five maps and articles.

Today, we’re looking at How to Draw a Druid Enclave. I’ll be drawing the map below, which is a map of the ruins of Rostivale and its inhabitants, the Druids of Firn-na-Bolg. 

This week at the Red Quills, we're diving back into watercolours, sketches, and naturalist-style illustraitons for our exploration of the druid groves of the Ruins of Rostivale, the settlement off the coast of Firn-na-Bolg. But this is an ancient complex of crumbling towers, felled by some ancient cataclysm, and the sketches are not of beasts, but the aeons-old golems that wander the toppled spires. Enjoy this map of the Druids of Firn-na-Bolg.

If giving your world and players a coded map, something for them to puzzle over and sweat over, is the direction that your quest needs, here is our latest special: How to Draw a Coded Map.

This is the Map to the Vault Key, a coded map designed to be given to players or readers early on, and take several weeks to solve.

We’re going to be looking at a challenge today. I've been asked several times over the past few weeks about making a video on creating smaller maps. We've covered a lot of different topics over the last fourteen weeks, but in each video, I create one A2 map and use that as the focus. But if you're not making something quite so big, what can you expect? What differences do you need to make? What techniques can you use to make the most of a map? Welcome, adventurers, to this week's topic: How to Map for your World.

We've got a treat for you this week - if you're here for the downloadable maps part of the Red Quills, then this week we have three for you! For our video, How to Map your World, Ryan drew three maps (one in A3, one in A4, and one in A5) to show how you can create and incorporate maps as immersion tools for your players. These are the maps of the Isle of Dreams.

Today, we’re revisiting fantasy towns and cities. My name is Ryan and I will be taking you through the process step by step, discussing some important points to keep in mind and flesh out your world, and we’ll finish up with this map of Smug Rock, the pirate stronghold on the back of Great Okh’aratoa. 

Greetings, adventurers! We've had another productive week here at the Red Quills - releasing just now our latest tutorial, in which we revisit how to draw a fantasy city. To go with the learnings, Ryan of the Red Quills drew his latest map, Smug Rock - also known as the City of Ships.

If you wanted to hide your treasure, why would you resort to tattered pieces of paper, crudely-drawn landmarks, and ‘X marks the spot’? If you wanted to make sure that you could find your hoard again, but still keep it safe from anyone who wanted to find it, wouldn’t you think your way through it a little more? Isn’t there more to treasure maps than you may think at first? Here is How to Make a Realistic Treasure Map.

Welcome back, everyone! We've taken a couple of weeks break here at the Red Quills, and we're back with new maps, new tutorials - and an exciting new format. But more about that in a bit: today, we're bringing you our new treasure map, the Goldhunter's Sea!

Every adventure needs an ancient, weathered map: painstakingly drawn with just the right amount of detail to help, but not solve everything.

This week's topic, How to Draw a Stunning Encounter Map, focusses on the creation of a handout map that you can give to your players, and in the video, Ryan of the Red Quills draws out this beautiful watercolour and ink map of Old Gvanlar's Hall.

For a worldbuilder, it can be tempting to allow your story to stop at the travellers’ comprehension. To use their assumptions and understandings to fill in the gaps before you move on. But if you want to do more than tread water when filling your world, it’s not as daunting a task as it may seem. 

Welcome, adventurers! For those keen to explore the natural sides to their fantasy world, this week's topic is How to Draw a Naturalist's Map. For that, I've created this map of the Drifting Isle, a sketch of the wyrd and wondrous island that I delve into in my main video.

In this post, I will be going into the methods that I use to create a heist map, the details that I include, the tips and tricks that will elevate your writing and gameplay, and why I go to the effort of making a map, when you could really just write all this down.