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The Caravanserai
🕑 Added 2016-04-08 13:53:53 +0000 UTC As the guy with all these maps, you would think I would have a map ready for just about every occasion in-game, right?In our Dungeons & Dragons 5e game that I’m running, we’ve had two sessions where a small caravanserai outside the city walls has been central to the game. Two whole sessions where I’ve been describing it without a map. So, now that we’ll most likely not be needing it much more, I finally drew it out. (Although my players should note that the one in our game is actually the mirror image of this one, with the stables to the left of the inn and the barracks to the right).
This is a very simple caravanserai or walled coaching in more in the European tradition than the Eastern styles (I’ll probably draw up a more Eastern caravanserai soon – in researching this one I discovered some lovely floor plans for them and they are so much more interesting than this design).
The main structure is a stone three story building that acts as an inn for travelers and merchants. On one side of the inn are barracks for caravaneers, guards and the rest of the lower class people attached to a large caravan. On the other side are stables for horses or camels. Smaller outbuildings provide storage for goods, while the courtyard is usually home to the wagons, carts, and non-perishables or lower-value goods.
The inn proper and the walls are made of stone (or brick, depending on the locale), with the outbuildings made of wood. Access to the wall tops is by ladder and guards are sometimes posted on the flat-topped “towers” and/or at the gate. Roofing is slate or clay, again depending on the region the caravanserai is set in. The well in the courtyard provides water for both guests and animals.
The Carvanserai map was drawn using Mitsubishi Uni Pins on Staples graph paper. It is made available for your use, commercial or personal, thanks the the support of the many patrons of the Dodecahedron.
You can download the Caravanserai map at 300 dpi (both with and without grid) from the blog post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/the-caravanserai/
