The Throbbing Ruins Bundle

Part of Tribes and Patreon May 2026 release.
This set is a bundle that contains:

- Dungeon Ruin Tiles - Modular OpenLOCK Structure - The Throbbing Ruins

- The Throbbing Ruins Flesh Patches - Scatter Terrain

- The Throbbing Ruins - Heart of Darkness

- Dead Adventurers and Broken Barrels and Crates

All the models are test printed in resin and presupported when needed.

- Dungeon OpenLOCK Tiles. This set is designed to give a neutral dungeon base on which to put the biomass parts coming with this release, but that's not the only use! Neutral is, in this sense, a perk: you can build and expand basically any dungeon/undeground tiled environment with these pieces once you combine them with other releases, with tiles (for example, this is meant to work seamlessly with the Sewers set released a year ago, since they have exactly the same style) and all other terrain models. It comes with interior and exterior walls, so that you can have higher windowed or arched walkways, it has stair to make it multi-level, it has pits where you can pour resin to make water pools, it has diagonal walls with which you can make more kinds of weird rooms. As always: options are endless! I especially like the amount of arches and window options that - with a multi-level build and partially isolated rooms - make dungeons much more interesting to fight in. Having a corridor that ends in the border of the map is great for combat encounters in which you are not too sure whether you have put enough of a fight in front of your players: a host of screaming monsters can always charge down those stairs that lead somewhere else in the dungeon!

A playability-split version of the tiles is also given, to make the set easier to use at the table, but also to give you the option of increasing or reducing the height of walls.

These tiles are meant to be used for an undeground dungeon, but, given the presence of the external walls, you'll also be able to build open air ruins with them. They remind me of something like Osgiliath, although there are no roofs, tower, etcc (since that wasn't their purpose - and, well: Time. That old tyrant!). Maybe in a future release?

- Flesh Patches. There are fleshy vents, egg-like bulbous growths, masses of pustules, and hive-like holes. If you want to put disgusting organic steam traps, acid exploding pustules, or sacks of ready-to-spawn minuscule mutated horrors (those are the worst!), you should be able to find what you need here. All of these revolting bits grow out of fleshy mounds, which gives a coherent feeling to the whole thing as well as a base to stand on.

The idea with these was to have enough variety of gross growths on the biomass theme to make the set versatile and interesting, allowing for a whole adventure to be played with this terrain without seeing the same parts too many times.

I imagine characters hearing of rumors of weird findings close to the sewers in town, and maybe later they run into a weird fleshy thing on the wall of a basement during some quest. They burn it, but after the next quest other townsfolk mention having seen stuff like that invading a whole abandoned house. Then the biomass starts spreading faster - at the same rhythm of disappearing people. As the town gets claimed by the growing mass more and more, characters have to find a way to stop it. Where did it come? Was it the summoning of a sickness demon gone wrong, or was it the mutated, cancerous creation of a crazy scholar, or maybe it is the form of a dweller of the world below, who found now a fruitful patch of nourishment closer to the sun? And what if the characters show signs of sickness after their first encounter with it?

Something like this could happen basically anywhere since these patches are placeable on most terrain, and it could have already been happening for a while when the characters get there: at the final stages of this biomass spreading. A ruined dungeon (as in the render), with the flesh monster in deep slumber - after all, it would have consumed all the food around - waiting for new prey. A ghost town, emptied of all its denizens, with all the woods, cattle and people digested and added to the biomass, and only metal and stone there to remind of what once was a happy settlement.

If you are not planning to use these for a body/mutation horror effect, you can always cover the flesh parts of these models with any hobby basing material (I'd probably use the trusty old PVA glue with sand, dirt, and small rocks). If you do so, these can be used as sacks of spider eggs, disgusting and alien plants, mushrooms, or other weird natural growth. They can even work for underwater environments. On the water note, there is a pool designed to be glued together and filled with resin if you are into that kind of hobby work! (And a second, larger one for the same purpose if you join it to the OpenLOCK tiles. To be sure there is no leaking glue and some material like green stuff will be necessary to seal the whole thing, since the models has gaps to make the assembly easier and that account for a bit of the resin warping).

These models come hollowed and unhollowed, and are meant to be used as scatter terrain. That said, there is a version that has cuts meant to work with the tiles released in this set. I advise printing it (since it is hollowed and cut) only if you specifically want to combine it with OpenLOCK tiles. Some hobby work may be required to fit these to other tiles I have released, but it should be doable - especially since they are supposed to be gross and "sloppy", so any re-sculpting with green stuff and the like will fit perfectly (if re-sculpting is needed at all). They all should also be printable in FDM (although that will reduce detail, as always!)

- The Heart of Darkness. This gargantuan heart stands 28 cm (11 inches) tall. It is perched on its own veins - I really wanted that "floating" look - and it has two version: one with the upper veins ending towards the intended ceiling of the room and one with them as tentacles, ready to strike those who threaten it. I can picture it being used just like that, as a single monstrous boss with psychic - or cardiac - effects on the characters, and striking at the rhythm of its thuds.

Although that's a first fascinating use, when I was designing it I kept thinking about a titan-like creature whose heart would be found in their enormous chest, which would be big enough to be a dungeon in itself. This could be in the final room: the thing characters need to stop from beating to save the world from its titanic owner. Alternatively, it could be used - as in the case of this set - to represent the central, nightmarish heart of a biomass that's invading a town. Once that is destroyed, the growths will stop spreading and decay, being deprived of their nourishment. Or maybe your campaign has a Lich who, instead of a phylactery, uses this thing to survive, buried in a forgotten tomb inside some mountain at the end of the world - or maybe they are a vampire, and you are playing Curse of Strahd! Or again, if painted with wood and root colors and some sickly greens and reds it could be the pumping heart of cursed forest (for the Draw Steel players out there!), spreading its roots and sucking life from the trees all around it, turning them black and... aggressive. (Or in a similar vein (wink) it could be a mythical "heart of the see": I could easily see the mutated top "bumps" painted as coral reef or something like that! And what if a pirate, out of the pain of a betrayed love, decided to cut their heart out of their body and bury it in the sea not to suffer again? But make it more monstrous this time. I'm sure some will get the reference!)

But that's not it! This set also comes with a few tentacles sprouting from the ground. If you fight the heart, these will definitely come in handy to threaten players that are far away from it (although, let's be real, it would have something like 30ft of reach already). I can picture these as being "vulnerable spots" too, placed all over the dungeon (or the final room): they can be a point that characters can attack to hurt the heart itself, the things it maintains (it is pumping something after all), or the BBEG who relies on it! Slicing a vein as large as a tree trunk is heavy metal, and describing the absolute torrent of blood (Ichor? Acid? Sap? Sea Water?) coming out of it will be fun. Alternatively, you can use them to represent a gargantuan creature - or the heart itself, when it detects creatures sneaking in its dungeon - attacking from the ground. Characters will be wondering to what those tentacles belong, and when they get to the heart (wink n.2) of the dungeon they will find their answer (and more tentacles)!

These are given with flesh patches around them to help them stand (the intended use) or "free", but those will need some magnetization or a base to stand. They are great for dioramas too! (All of the pieces have a hollowed and an unhollowed version, and there is a complete non-split model of the heart too.)

A final note of color: the heart itself is a 1:1 scale of an adult human heart (the veins are waaaay thicker) - I know mentioning that will impress my friends at the table!

- Dead Adventurers, Crates and Barrels. A complete half-digested party of adventurers, a few older (and as unlucky) fellows, and broken crates and barrels: perfect for the preliminary rooms of a biomass invaded dungeon. When I was designing this release I kept thinking about quests that could lead up to that final heart chamber or to the hellish landscape of disgusting flesh patches, and I kept thinking that a great intro to that would be a first hint at the horror. This set is designed to cover that story bit! The characters may be searching for a missing party just to find them a few days too late, engulfed or consumed by weird biomass. Or maybe they are exploring the town undergrounds and in an old cellar close to the sewers they find a barrel of very, very old mead that... kept fermenting? When you stage a battle with some horribly mutated creature, having these infested bodies around can also be a physical reminder of the danger - as well as offer weapons, in case the characters need some. Plus, the wizard still has their magic stuff and spell book. Loot!