Written by Annie S.
Dark Heart of Andaluria is a Daggerheart campaign frame set among the blazing summers, sprawling vineyards, and increasingly dangerous nights of Andaluria. For generations, sacred rites and folk traditions protected its people from the monsters lurking in the shadows. Now, old protections are beginning to fail, and increasingly powerful horrors stalk the countryside.
Monster hunting is at the heart of the frame, with hunting mechanics for investigation, preparation, and eventually confronting the creature itself. The book encourages GMs to stage these adventures everywhere from village festivals to ancient cemeteries, giving you plenty of excuses to bring out a beautiful new battlemap whenever the party follows a trail into the dark.
1. Midsummer Festival (Jesaña) — Fey Vineyard
Andaluria’s biggest celebration is the Midsummer Festival, marking both the summer solstice and the anniversary of the uprising that won the region its freedom. This year, however, the nights have started growing longer, and fear hangs over Jesaña as locals wonder whether the festival will end with its streets running red with more than wine.
Few maps capture that contrast between Andaluria’s beauty and horror better than this Fey Vineyard. Sun-warmed stone and climbing grapevines make the original map perfect for a wine-soaked celebration, while the bloodied variant lets you turn the space into the aftermath of a Hunt gone terribly wrong.
This map comes with an animated illustrated scene that gives the party a gorgeous first look at Andaluria’s wine country, following a sunlit road between rows of lush grapevines.
2. Andalurian Villages — Heart of the Village
Much of Dark Heart of Andaluria focuses on the ordinary people caught in the path of its growing darkness. When old protections fail, and established powers cannot be relied upon, monster hunters step in to defend villages scattered across the countryside. The frame encourages GMs to contrast Andaluria’s celebrations and natural beauty with the horrors encroaching upon them.
With its small farm and cozy houses creating a warm rural community, this Heart of the Village map (and the related Starter Village series) provides players with a peaceful stop between Hunts—and, just as importantly, somewhere to get attached to. It gives them a chance to meet the locals, settle into the rhythms of everyday life, and build a connection matters more when that peace is finally threatened.
This map comes with an animated illustrated scene that gives players a closer look at the village itself, helping the settlement feel warm and lived-in before the monsters close in.
3. Caio Travelling Camp — Caravan Camp
The nomadic Caio people have long helped protect Andaluria through practical folk traditions, passing down charms, offerings, stories, and rituals that can ward off the creatures lurking in the dark. As old protections begin to fail, their accumulated knowledge becomes even more valuable to hunters trying to understand what they’re up against.
This Caravan Camp map makes a cozy home for one of these travelling communities, with wagons and supplies around a campfire at the edge of a forest. It’ll provide the party somewhere to seek out local knowledge, compare stories about recent monsters, or simply spend a warm evening among people who understand better than most what waits beyond the firelight.
This map comes with an animated illustrated scene that puts the players right into the middle of the camp, turning the wagons and scattered supplies into a cozy pocket of safety beneath the canopy.
4. Church of Golden Eminence — Grand Cathedral Interior
The Church of the Golden Eminence is one of Andaluria’s major religious institutions, venerating the Divinarch through sun imagery and preaching a strict spiritual order. As fear spreads across the region, Archbishop Mateo Veyra has used the crisis to push an increasingly hostile stance against Caio traditions, all while hiding his own connection to the infernal power behind Andaluria’s lengthening nights.
This Grand Cathedral Interior gives institution the grandiose scale it needs, with towering marble columns and carved statues that make the church feel both beautiful and imposing.
The map pack also includes an exterior map, as well as a separate crypt and catacombs map, so the church can expand into a much larger and darker investigation—if you want the party digging beneath its polished public facade.
5. Serracorte Hellgate — Ancient Tech Treasury (Hell Vault)
Deep beneath the Serracorte Mountain lies a hellgate leading to the Circles Below, once used by Emperor Arcedrio to bargain for otherworldly power. The portal remained sealed for generations until Archbishop Mateo Veyra stole Arcedrio’s blackened heart and used it to open the gate once again, unleashing the infernal influence behind Andaluria’s current predicament.
The Hell Vault variant of this Ancient Tech Treasury is a fantastic fit for a location so consequential as the Serracorte Hellgate. Lava cascades around an enormous central chamber while a blazing black sphere dominates the platform at its heart, giving the party a suitably overwhelming first look at the source of so much of Andaluria’s growing darkness.
This map also comes with an illustrated scene that puts the strange black sphere front and center, showing off the scale and intensity of the infernal chamber around the party.
6. Sombral Spade Cell — Village Hunting Guild
As Andaluria’s old protections begin to fail, clandestine cells of the Sombral Spade have taken up the fight against the monsters emerging from the darkness. Led by the enigmatic Julio Cantafierro, the organization operates independently of both church and council, protecting communities that might otherwise be left to face these growing threats alone.
This Village Hunting Guild makes an impressive home for one of the Spade’s local cells—with a central gathering hall, trophy displays, workshops, and a small shopfront where hunters can trade information and properly prepare for their next Hunt.
7. Monster Hunt — Siren’s Shipwreck Shore
The Hunt rules encourage GMs to give each monster its own motives, habits, weaknesses, and hunting grounds. Whatever creature the party is tracking, understanding how it hunts and how it can be hunted are both vital parts of bringing it down.
One such monster the book suggests is a grieving siren luring people into the bay. This Siren’s Shipwreck Shore map is, of course, a particularly strong fit for that example hunt, with broken masts and wreckage scattered around a tidal island that immediately signals something here has been claiming victims for a while.
This map also comes with an animated illustrated scene that sees the party approaching the shipwreck graveyard, with splintered masts and tattered sails giving the coast a bleak, ominous feeling.
8. Monster Hunt — Bone Dryad’s Ossuary
While the frame notes several iconic monsters such as vampires and werewolves, Andalurian monsters don’t need to come straight from familiar folklore. The Hunt rules explicitly encourage GMs to put unusual twists on recognizable creatures or invent entirely new horrors, then give each one its own motives, lair, and weaknesses for the hunters to uncover.
A Bone Dryad’s Ossuary is exactly the sort of weird horror that can make a Hunt unforgettable for players. The skeletal tree at the end of the chamber gives the party an unmistakable quarry, while the skull-lined halls leave plenty of space for clues, traps, and whatever weakness they eventually discover is needed to destroy it.
9. Monster Hunt — Oni Hideout (Blood Moon)
The Hunt rules encourage GMs to give monsters distinctive hunting grounds, letting even otherwise peaceful or idyllic corners of Andaluria become centers of memorable investigations. An oni, drawing on the fearsome ogre-like beings of Japanese folklore, makes for a particularly striking monster to place at the heart of this sort of hunt.
The Blood Moon variant of this Oni Hideout map—with its flooded fields and a quiet farmhouse that takes on a completely different character beneath a bloody crimson sky—gives the players an eerie destination to approach as their investigation leads them out into the countryside after dark.
This map also includes an animated illustrated scene showing the farmstead in quiet daytime—a seemingly innocuous location for the players to scout before the Hunt begins.
10. Monster Hunt — Cavern of the Venom Queen
Spiders have inspired monsters and supernatural beings in folklore worldwide, from shape-changing tricksters to giant man-eating creatures. This gives GMs plenty of mythology to draw from when building a spider-themed Hunt of your own, whether your players’ quarry is an enormous beast or something intelligent hiding beneath a human face.
This Cavern of the Venom Queen sets up a full-fledged dungeon for an arachnid-themed Hunt, with initial tunnels that still show signs of ordinary habitation… before thick webs begin swallowing passages whole. The deeper the party ventures, the clearer it becomes that they’ve crossed into something else’s domain, until they finally reach chambers choked with egg sacs and the remains of whatever was unfortunate enough to wander in first.
Didn’t find what you were looking for?
Every Hunt in Dark Heart of Andaluria can take the party somewhere new, and with more than 9,000 fantasy battlemaps to choose from in Czepeku’s library, it’s easy to keep each investigation memorable and distinct.
Try searching by creature, environment, or location, then browse a map pack’s available variants to find versions suited to different weather conditions or stages of the Hunt.
If you want a little help tracking down the right map for your next Hunt, this guide walks through the easiest way to search and filter the Czepeku library:
👉 How to Find the Czepeku Map You Need
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