Lost Marvanathique: Level One

06 Sep, 2026

Two weeks ago, my girlfriend and I were staying at a tiny rural cabin when the country was hit by one of the strongest storms in years. We were stuck indoors with no power for two days. While she would knit, I would read Gormenghast and Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea stories, and solo play my wallet-sized OD&D hack.

I grew fond of how naturally a fairly interesting dungeon was forming in my solo game, and decided to key and release it when I got back home.

So I present to you Level One of Lost Marvanathique. Intentionally fast and loose, and an unashamed Thracia + Clark Ashton Smith rip. But a fun map and key, I think.

Grab the .pdf here!¹

Through the ruins of sand-swept Marvanathique runs an East-facing boulevard. At its end, a blasted temple, whose black columns still cage the rising Sun. Three malnourished horses are hitched at their base. Inside the ruin, a tar-stained stair descends to Room 1.

Loose thoughts on keying

Idraluna Archives (without whose Typst templates this project might not exist) just wrote about three-sentence hexes. One good consequence of this restriction that isn't explored in the post is that there's no real room to describe more than one thing in a hex. I find this ideal - one interaction/situation per key (be it room or hex).

An oversaturation of stuff in any one key leads to locations that are harder to keep in your head for the players and referee both. It also leads to physically small dungeons².

So if there was any real rule that I was trying to follow in writing this, then that was it: one notable interaction per room³. Even where there are multiple things in a room, they tend to be parts of the same situation:

An enemy gates access to information.
One searchable thing is a red herring to distract from another searchable thing.
A combat encounter is modified by an environmental hazard.

And interesting keys sit alongside empty or sparse ones. This gives the dungeon a rhythm: peaks and valleys, centers and peripheries. A weird and detailed shrine or NPC can exist in one room, while another is just a latrine. And an empty room may not be interesting in and of itself, but its value lies in its interplay with a populated room.

Ease of use, low overhead, terseness, texture - I hope I was able to hit these notes.

Thank you to user shotgun_ramadan over on Reddit who caught two small oversights in the document, now fixed.↩
Necrotic Gnome releases tend to be very small and very dense. We could have more sprawling dungeon maps with less mental overhead, instead.↩
Okay okay, two more rules: 1) every trap and secret is at least explained, if not telegraphed; 2) every treasure and magic item has at least the barest description or effect.↩

#releases