DnDungeon

Palace Courtyard

Added 2025-06-25 05:20:42 +0000 UTC

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Dozens of courtyards for dozens of conflicts! This palace courtyard should cover your needs no matter what’s happening — from a bustling city market to an expedition into the forbidden jungles of the spirit world!

It wasn't the original plan (I had meant the marketplace to be the "main" map, thereby fulfilling this month's theme of "marketplaces"), but the tropical version has been dubbed the "main" variant because I think it's the most aesthetic of them all. Just look at that tangerine roof. Isn't it sexy? You can't argue.

Thoughts

The Spirit World variant is tailor-made to tie into the Hidden Spirit Tree Library as a location to discover at the end of the vines!
You could put the underwater/atlantis variant in a super shallow coral reef. Have someone wreck their ship atop a spire that grazes the waves.

Tropical Paradise: A lush palace on a tyrannical tropical island ruled by bananas. In the economic sense, I mean. It’s the cover-art!
Market: A bustling market in the centre of a local temple, an open-air court, or the local palace!
Palace Courtyard: A vast stone courtyard for training, dramatic confrontations, or bloody slaughters & assassinations!
Astral/Space: A palace adrift in the vacuum of space? Or possibly the astral plane, or an eerie void? What do the crystals do?
Autumn/Dying: A spooky, seemingly abandoned palace. What’s that echoing laughter? Comes with a no-light nighttime variant so you can throw on the lights dramatically.
Halloween Town: “Oh, that’s where the laughter’s coming from,” someone says shortly before being mauled by the Pumpking.
Demon Palace: Meant to pair well with the lava throne in The Phoenix King’s Throne Room.
Demonic Sacrificial Altar: The flaming torches really set the mood here. Good for smiting demons. Comes with an active-ritual variant.
Elven Poplar: A green & white courtyard for pleasant, beautiful people. Comes with a special surreal/otherworldly variant for dream battles, Lunarian hallucinations, when the murderhobo thief stabs the fair folk’s empress, etc.
Execution: A special execution in the palace’s courtyard. You must have really messed up. They even got out the mats for the honored guests!
Forbidden City: You’re not supposed to be here, you know. The yellow roof tiles mean “emperor only”.
Forbidden Pool: Do NOT fish in the koi pond.
Spirit World: Tailor-made to pair with the Hidden Spirit Tree Library — a freakish overgrown palace strung up by vines in a misty otherworld!
Underwater/Atlantis: We think the lich’s treasure-divers went in through the main gate here, but there’s a host of possessed sharks in the way.
Winter/Ice: This palace has frozen over!
Day/Night Variants: Wherever applicable!