Skyreach Castle Battlemap
I finally finished my redesign of Skyreach Castle for the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. You can find the battlemaps of all castle floors and the ice caverns and a legend as free downloads right here! I also added a description and legend of all the rooms.
Update July 26, 2021: The links to the battlemap files were broken, I re-uploaded everything and also created a zip archive with all the files, which you can find below:
Download the full archive with all maps (full castle grid/no grid and all the rooms):
Update January 17, 2021: It’s been a couple of years since I’ve put the map up on DMsguild. It is very well received both here on the blog and on the Dungeon Master’s Guild. It is an “Electrum Best Seller” as of right now, with over 5000+ downloads and an average rating of 4.5 stars.
Some very nice people even paid for downloading the map. It is still “Pay what you want” though, so you don’t need to! But I am very grateful for the few that do pay, because it allowed me and my D&D group to buy other people’s products off from DMsguild using my store credit.
For a while, I was considering, if the map would need updating to better fit VTTs like Roll20 oder FantasyGrounds. However, I don’t really have to time to do that, and I hope, people can still use it as is today. If you have any problems with the maps, please contact me! Again, thank you very much!
Original Text: Obviously, this article contains some spoilers about the layout and the residents of Skyreach Castle. So if you are planning on playing this episode (as a player), please be warned.
My D&D group finally made it to Skyreach Castle in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. When preparing this final episode of the adventure, I wasn’t very happy with the castle itself. There was no picture of the whole castle to show my players. And I didn’t like the layout, it felt too small for my taste. Also, I did not dig the vampire living in it and the cultist barracks were a joke. So I decided to make my own castle based on this wonderful image:
I created a 140 by 120 inch battlemap of the castle in Photoshop. I however completely underestimated the time needed to finish such an endeavor. I’ve put like 40 hours of work into it, but I am finally finished now. Here’s the top view map of the castle with a legend :
Click for full size preview
If the rooms are too small for you at the scale of the full map, you can use some rooms in a higher resolution below. Also, you can see the numbers of the rooms and how they correspond to the original map of Skyreach Castle in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen book.
| # | Room | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | Main Gate (2nd) | Similar to original main gate, but gate opens from second level instead 6A/6B |
| 7 | Lower Courtyard | Upper Courtyard does not overhang lower courtyard, instead it has a small wall with two gates leading to the upper yard and ogre barracks |
| 8 | Stables | There are now two stables in the lower courtyard |
| 9 | Cultist Barracks | Increased the size of the barracks: Now two buildings with several rooms and an additional room on the ground floor of the big eastern tower |
| 10 | Stone Giant’s Chamber | Upgraded to a two-room appartment |
| 11 | Rezmir’s Chamber | Upgraded to a three-room appartment with a stairway to the inner main tower |
| 12 | Red Wizards’ Room | Now upgraded to a whole Wizard tower with summoning room, library, living quarters and laboratory |
| 13 | Storeroom | Upgraded to whole level of main tower |
| 14 | Guest Chamber | Upgraded to guest house in upper courtyard |
| 15 | Kitchen | Upgraded to three room kitchen with kobold living quarter |
| 16 | Upper Courtyard | Upgraded with a steep stairway leading to the main tower of the cloud giant and entrance to the ice caverns |
| 17 | High Blue Tower | Not used anymore to teleport (Blagothkus can now do this anywhere, using a talisman). Instead, a small tower was added to the Wizards’ Tower contained a small observatory on top |
| 18 | Crumbling Tower | Not used anymore as a vampire lair. Instead used as fortress tower with a teleportation circle on the roof |
| 19 | Steering Tower | Now placed on top of the Giant’s main tower |
| 20 | Ogre Baracks | There are now two Ogre Barracks, one located between the lower and upper courtyards, the other within the main tower. |
| 21 | Esclarotta’s Tomb | Placed deep under the main tower |
| 22 | Cloud Giant Tower | Now the Cloud Giant has a huge tower – the main tower of the castle |
| 23 | Giant Guest Chambers | Placed within the main tower |
| 24 | Servant Baracks | Placed within the main tower |
| 25 | Main Vault | Very similar to the original map, placed within the ice caverns under the castle |
New rooms in the castle:
| Room | Comments |
|---|---|
| Dungeon/Oubliette | In the tower between the guest house and the Wizards’ Tower. There’s also a guard room in there |
| Storeroom/guard room | In the big eastern tower (17), also contains ammunition and a woodworker’s workshop |
| Cultist meeting rooms | In Rezmirs Chambers (11) and cultist barracks (9), also there is a cultist kitchen |
| Ogre guard room | In the cellar of the main tower at the lower entrance gates (from castle walls) |
| Ogre/Giant forge | In the main tower. They have to be able to make their own stuff, right? |
| Blue ice flame | In the main tower, where the stairways start at the bottom. I decided this would be the source of the castle’s magic: A blue fire, tapping into the elemental ice node within the iceberg. There’s a magic protection circle around it. The light of the blue flame concentrates into a blue beam, that goes up all the way through the main tower to the top into the steering tower. |