Written by Annie Shi
Libraries and places of knowledge are some of the most versatile locations you can drop into a tabletop campaign. They could be sanctuaries or labyrinths, seats of institutional power or forgotten monasteries; the first step into a mystery or the place where everything starts making sense.
Whatever brings your party through the door, the right library map sets the stage for their adventure. These maps below are our best library battlemaps, covering everything from sacred archives and magical libraries to demonic dungeons and entrepreneurial airships, each with three plot hooks to help spark ideas for your next session.
1. Sacred Archives — Celestial Chapel Interior
Warm and majestic, this Celestial Chapel Interior map is filled with bookshelves packed tight, tables covered in open volumes, and a gorgeous celestial mosaic floor that suggests this scriptorium is as sacred as it is scholarly.
With its labyrinthine bookshelves and detailed clutter, this map works brilliantly for investigation and social encounters alike. It also pairs with its exterior counterpart: the Celestial Chapel, for a full location.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 This archive holds the only known record of some very important information—perhaps a celestial secret, or a long-dead noble family’s bloodline. But someone has torn out the pages that matter, and the party must figure out who got here first.
🔖 The mosaic on the floor has begun to glow, and new sections seem to appear every morning. Whatever it’s showing now, it wasn’t on any map before.
🔖 The cure to a deadly illness is documented somewhere in the archive, but the scriptorium is vast and disorganized, and the party needs to find it before time runs out.
2. Infinite Knowledge — Great Library Series
Grand in the way that few single maps can manage, this Great Library Series provides a whole institution. With sixteen connected maps, spanning a planetarium, book archive, grand lobby hall, bestiary wing, and more, this series has the scope to anchor an entire campaign arc.
This map is perfect for any party sent to see answers in a place of legendary learning, and a natural fit for a campaign set in Candlekeep, or the home base of a knowledge-hungry faction like the Mind’s Eye of Sigil.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 Access to the restricted collection requires the endorsement of three senior scholars—all of whom have recently come into conflict with one another. The party must navigate their grievances before they can get what they came for.
🔖 Something has been moving through the stacks at night, and the books it’s been stealing—or eating!—aren’t random. The pattern, once noticed, points towards a mysterious piece of knowledge.
🔖 A new acquisition arrived in the bestiary wing last week—a creature that doesn’t match any entry in the collection. The cataloguer sent to receive it found the crate it arrived in empty.
3. Secrets of State — War Room Interior
Lined with campaign histories, tactical maps, and spoils of past victories, this War Room Interior is part library, part command center, and wholly a space that radiates authority and tension.
This map shines in any social, political, and war campaigns—such as Dragonlance or Daggerheart’s Five Banners Burning—as a place for negotiations, intelligence gathering, or dramatic confrontation with a faction leader.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 The party has been tasked with extracting a single document from this room without alerting its occupants, who are in the middle of a meeting that could determine the outcome of the world.
🔖 The map on the strategy table shows troop positions as they currently stand, updated—it seems—through magic. Whoever controls it obviously has a significant tactical advantage, and the party has been sent to steal it.
🔖 The party has been recruited to help broker a peace meeting between two factions. The problem is that both delegations are catastrophically bad at diplomacy, and it doesn’t help that someone keeps refilling the wine…
4. Arcane Towers - Ancient Wizard Lair (Griffin Library)
Part library, part dungeon, the Griffin Library is a map that tells a story before the party enters a single room. The strange phenomena in the different chambers hint at a wizard—or mystical creature—who was studying something vast and dangerous.
This is a great fit for the lair of an archmage, a dungeon crawl with a scholarly bent, or even an inherited home of the party wizard. It’s sure to reward exploration, and works great in systems or campaigns that lean into magical mystery.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 The wizard who built this place has passed. One of the party members has just inherited it, along with a note forbidding them from opening a specific door…
🔖 The resident griffins in the library have been here longer than anyone—longer, perhaps, than the wizard who owns the tower. It knows where everything is, and will help the party navigate the collection… for a price.
🔖 One of the chambers contains a portal that is still active, and something has been coming through it.
5. Between the Lines — Celestial Tome
This unique Celestial Tome map is a battlemap set within the pages of a book—and guaranteed to throw your players for a loop. The living illustrations spill out from the books, blurring the boundary between the written and the real.
This map works brilliantly as a journey into a mystical text or pocket dimension—and a perfect choice for campaigns with magical books at their center, such as any Candlekeep Mysteries adventure.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 The party has been warned that the only way to reach the sealed demiplane is to enter through the book that describes it. Bonus if they find the world has changed from what is documented on the pages!
🔖 A powerful entity has been rewriting history—literally, but altering the text of the tome. The party must traverse the manuscript to find the corrupted passages before the reality changes for good.
🔖 The book is cursed to trap anyone who reads it. The party has until sunrise to reach the closing chapter, or risk getting stuck forever.
6. Common Knowledge — Heart of the Village (Interiors)
Cozy and lived-in, the Heart of the Village series offers a sense of community and warmth that’s perfect for campaign starts and cozy adventures.
The buildings arranged around a central fountain include a tavern, general store, apothecary, and tucked among them, a small village library—a natural starting point for an investigation hook in a low-stakes or beginner campaign.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 The village librarian has been collecting unusual volumes for years from travellers and adventurers passing through. One of these books is a little more dangerous—or cursed—than it appears.
🔖 The library’s historical records are the only documentation of an old land deed that has become the center of a bitter dispute between two village factions, and they’ve sent the party to find the record.
🔖 A child has gone missing, and the last place anyone saw them was in the library. The book they were reading is still open on the table—and it’s on a page about a door that supposedly appears in this village every hundred years.
7. Shelves in the Sky — Airships! (Duodrone Bookshop)
A bookshop crewed by a duodrone and filled with scholarly curiosities—this Duodrone Bookshop airship map is an encounter that your players are sure to remember.
This map fits perfectly in a Planescape or Eberron campaign, as the home of a recurring travelling merchant, or even a heist location that the party must figure out how to get into before it drifts away.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 The duodrone proprietor has a book that the party desperately needs—but the lawful construct won’t sell it. It will, however, trade it for a book it lost overboard somewhere over a dangerous forest…
🔖 The party books passage on the airship, only to find a stowaway in the hold who is wanted by at least two kingdoms, and is very upset at being found.
🔖 The party is sharing passage with a scholar who is getting increasingly distressed by the books they keep finding on the shelves.
8. Forbidden Stacks — Demonic Library
Something is terribly wrong with this library—that much is clear the moment the party sets eyes on this sinister Demonic Library map. Immaculately maintained, this collection is watched over by a demonic eye that makes it clear this collection has a curator, and it knows you’re here.
This map is a natural fit for dark campaigns and infernal or planar adventures—such as the mystical Gravenhollow library of the Underdark, or any campaign where the party has found themselves somewhere they really, really shouldn’t be.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 The library is the only known location of a specific piece of forbidden knowledge. The party must find it, copy it, and leave it without triggering any of the wards on the floor—or alerting that giant eye.
🔖 A scholar or party’s ally visited here to borrow a book and hasn’t been heard from since. The party must now retrieve them—or at least find out what happened.
🔖 The demonic entity bound to this library has struck a deal: it will answer three questions, truthfully, in exchange for a living person staying behind as a librarian forever.
9. Field Notes — Monster Genealogy Lab
Strictly speaking, this isn’t exactly a library—but it absolutely is a hub of knowledge. This Monster Genealogy Lab is a sprawling research collection with shelves of volumes and potions alongside display cases of specimens and a colossal fossil.
For any campaign involving monster hunters, such as Heliana’s Guide, this map is a perfect location for the party to come seeking information from.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 Something has been terrorizing the surrounding region, and no one can identify it. The party has been pointed to this lab as the best source of information.
🔖 The lab’s collection contains a complete specimen of a creature that was supposedly hunted to extinction two centuries ago. The lab refuses to sell it to a desperate buyer, so of course… the party has been hired to steal it.
🔖 Someone has been removing specimens from the display cases over the past month. The items taken, once the pattern is noticed, would together provide everything needed to summon something very, very dangerous.
10. Magical Merchandise — Magic Pop-up Shop
Not every knowledge hub follows the Dewey Decimal Classification system—some have neon purple tapestries, a chaotic floor plan, and a proprietor whose sourcing policy appears to be “if it’s colorful, buy it!”
This Magic Pop-up Shop map isn’t a library in the traditional sense, but for a party looking to find a rare magical text or forbidden scroll in a city like Baldur’s Gate, this is an absolute—and literal—treasure trove.
Hooks & Ideas:
🔖 The shop has acquired an extremely dangerous, cursed tome…and has already sold it. The party needs to find out to whom, and fast.
🔖 The shop appeared overnight in a location it definitely wasn’t yesterday. The city watch is extremely concerned and wants answers.
🔖 The party is tasked with stealing something from the backrooms of the magic shop… which turns out to be an extradimensional space the size of a warehouse.
Didn’t Find What You Were Looking For?
Czepeku's Fantasy Maps library includes over 8,000 hand-drawn battlemaps, with countless variations across different biomes, seasons, and weather. Whether you need a crumbling dungeon, a treetop elven village, or an underwater marina, there's a good chance that map exists and is ready to bring your next session to life on your VTT.
If you're searching for a specific type of location, the tag system makes it easy to explore the collection. Browse for more library and study maps with tags like library, interior, building, arcane, and scholar.
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