At long last, it has arrived: The publication of “E6: Quest for High Ashes,” my long prose poem from the book High Ashes, my extended love letter to DnD gaming and its enlivening lexicon of magic, monsters, and the fantastic, a labor of years and of genuine love. Many thanks to Derek Mong and the editors at At Length magazine and to fantasy artist and mapmaker Michael Sean Piper for his wonderful isometric renderings of the map that accompanies the this playable long poem. Click to read! Or to enter . . . enjoy. You may even make it out alive, if you think on your feet and keep your weapons put away.

You can read “E6: Quest for High Ashes” here, in At Length Magazine.

I designed the original dungeon map. Preliminary pencil sketches led to the creation of a blueprint design using Dungeon Scrawl, an open-source grid-based mapping software.

An 2D digital version of the map was accomplished by fantasy artist Daniel Johnson (Instagram @Krathicus) using the Procreate digital illustration application on an iPad Pro with final edits performed in Adobe Photoshop, before placing the finished image into InDesign for final layout and typography.

The isometric map was drawn in pencil by Michael Sean Piper, then inked and colored by hand before being converted to a digital format. The first draft had a Beholder, which I asked him to remove on the grounds that it is most certainly a copyrighted intellectual property of the current owners of TSR products. Because musical instruments figure so strongly in the work, I suggested we fill in the open spaces with some of the medieval instruments from the module, such as the Lute of Regeneration, the Flute of Fumbling, and the Harp of Snaring.

It is my hope that DnD enthusiasts will play the module, maybe even design a miniature dungeon in which to play with figures. We shall see. If it comes to pass, you can be certain I’ll post some images!