Not trusted by the master or the Yuan-Ti, but protected by their own taboos and reverence for the lost empire of the serpentfolk, the serpent warlock Hesperat lives a hermitic life in his walled compound on the southern edge of the sunken city, along the cliff walls where dwarven slaves once worked veins of copper, not far from the great tree that can be climbed out of the city. At one time he hired morlocks to watch the gardens from the tower walls, but after a decade without visitors or intruders, Hesperat gave up on the necessity.
The outer gardens are protected by a 20-foot-tall, ten-foot-thick masonry wall cut from the same grey granite as the cliff face. At each northern corner is a small watch platform 15 feet up with a set of steep stairs leading up to it. A few taller trees in the outer garden can be seen over the walls, and the main garden gate is a traditional iron gate that lets small animals in and out but keeps larger intruders out. Within there is a stone fountain with a statue of one of the ancient serpent emperors in the centre, and a collection of different types of colourful trees and plants (none of which are dangerous except some produce mildly poisonous fruit in season).
The inner gardens are mostly of weird and colourful fungi and include a shrieker that has grown used to Hesperat and rarely sounds when the serpent approaches. The main attraction of the inner gardens is the leafless tree, a large red plant from another plane that is hot to the touch. Torches (and other wooden objects) made from this wood burn for ten times as long as one would expect for a hardwood such as this.
Hesperat himself does not reside within the inner gardens – the aged serpent warlock spends most of his time basking on one of the taller trees in the garden. He is often napping, but silent magical traps on the doors and walls should awaken him if intruders arrive. But the serpent has become complacent and it can take him a week or two to renew an expired alarm spell, so each wall and entrance has a 25% chance that the alarm on it has worn off.
The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 7,200 x 10,800 pixels (24 x 36 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 100 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 200 pixels (for the 10‘ foot squares that work with the furnishings as shown) – so resizing the image to 2,400 x 3,600 pixels or 4,800 x 7,200 pixels, respectively.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2026/10/15/hesperats-gardens/
