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The purpose of this region is fivefold:
The last two are the most important. I already moved the trolls to Book III; even so, the party still has to wipe out orcs, hook horrors, and (soon enough) kuo-toa. It wears on player morale. And I'm sorry to say that my own first attempt of expanding this Underdark doesn't help matters; instead of a present massacre, I gave the campaign a past one.
Plus there is a lack of true NPC interaction. Every group the PC's meet is a tightly-knit tribe. With the gnomes and Rockseers, the PC's must choose between alienation or near-assimilation. Additionally, the gnomes and even the Rockseers are tainted with the harsh life of the Underdark; and if they talk to the PC's or offer a place to bunk, "they" in practice means the tribe's chieftain. And the chief only extends the right hand of friendship with the left hand asking something in return. Most players, by the time they reach the derro caverns, are sick of the bloodshed, isolation, and oppression.
Christian Walker (who had already provided some valuable critiques in rec.games.frp.dnd) suggested (in email) that the Underdark might be improved with an under-urban location. A city would provide shops, inns, and taverns; a "home away from home [having] plenty of role-playing opportunities" as he put it, if a little dangerous. Back in my day we had Erelhei-Cinlu, the uncontrollable refuse pit of the Vault. Christian leaned towards Skullport from the Forgotten Realms setting.
I thought about this and concluded that Erelhei-Cinlu and Skullport are too cosmopolitan for this sector. Quaggoths and Rockseers are too tribal; there are no drow; the deep gnomes have hidden their homeland; the Glass Pool is an artifact of aboleth-illithid domination and other kuo-toa won't leave the comforts of aboleth servitude. That leaves the illithids and the derro. A mind flayer city is out of the question for narrative reasons; it would be far more powerful than the Glass Pool, and probably Shaboath too, and therefore a distraction from the endgame.
But a derro city with illithid rulers - and then it all clicked. I had long suggested expanding the derro caves, but only to expand the map and spread the wealth a bit (including the dragon statuette). Now I knew a way how. Shunting the derro encounters into an urban environment would also keep the PC's from committing yet another mass murder - or at least give the PC's the illusion that they are not. The party may have to slay the same number, but it will be within a setting where there are many more who are to be left alone.
I must warn you: what follows is a departure from the Night Below atmosphere in a way that "The Abandoned Outpost" was not. The caverns of Book II are like Haranshire in Book I - an uncivilised backwater, a perfect hideaway for exiles and hermits. This changes all that. Purist players and DM's - like me, usually - may want to keep the campaign (and the derro) nasty, brutish and short.
The derro arrived at the City of the Glass Pool not so long ago, as elves would measure it. Near it they soon found an underguarded svirfneblin trade post. (Records are unclear as to whether any drow were present at this time; it appears they had already fled this sector.) The wicked dwarf-kin wasted no time in extirpating the gnomes and claiming their caves for their own.
Most dwarves distrust magic. Concentrating on practical matters - moderns would call it "engineering", "geology", and "material science" - dwarven architects have earned a reputation as the finest in the Underdark. The derro are an exceptio probans regulam. If a tunnel can be hollowed out in a few minutes and shored up with some Walls of Force, so be it. If the tunnel undermines someone else's living space, leading to the crushing and/or asphyxiation of dozens of kinsmen - well, such is life in the night below.
For the next couple of centuries the derro settlement followed a well-attested pattern. The chaotic evil derro fragmented into clans, each one staking a claim to a section of tunnels and then expanding those tunnels with little regard to the work of others. Over the years several cavern systems took shape in the region. Each system would typically contain a large, open cave for mushroom-farming and animal herding. Smaller "family" cavern systems would pit the walls of that central plaza, usually well-sheathed in magic. Ladders would lead to some of the systems; others proudly did without (the homes of aspiring wizards). The members of the cavern system would follow the commands of a strongman, in uneasy alliance with the local savants. These systems connected to each other with constantly-shifting tunnels, in the general centre of which lay a large cavern claimed by none but the savants. From there the derro reached decisions (more or less) on issues relevant (in a manner of speaking) to the entire community (loosely defined). Usually they concerned unholy crusades against kuo-toa, quaggoths, and gnomes.
The systems continued fighting each other and themselves, and continued digging and recollapsing tunnels. Add to this the lack of orderly waste disposal, and soon the floors and even the walls took on the consistency of overworld soil (if a bit alkaloid). By the time the mines had played out, the area became the breadbasket - or fungus basket - for the entire sector. The derro traded their mushrooms with quaggoths, kuo-toa, and illithids for weapons, slaves, spell components, and other items the derro deemed useful.
But it was not to last. The aboleth had already insinuated their tentacles into the City of the Glass Pool (in fact, they may have created it); soon they allied with certain illithids as well. One night (or was it day?), a party of mind flayers, bearing the Crown of Derro Domination (II.56-7), staged a coup and installed a puppet ruler as the head of one of the derro clans.
The mind flayers know the derro have the advantage in the warrens. They are pursuing a policy which they hope will bring the derro into the open. To that end they have been expanding the central cavern and attempting to encourage the derro to live in the middle of it. To do this the illithids have been trying to make life in the burrows miserable. They have secretly let loose a number of hideous monsters in some tunnels, and have been engineering "accidents" in others. Many of these, of course, are geared towards kidnapping savants for the aboleth. In response, the derro outside this ever-expanding cavern have been launching acts of terrorism against not only the illithids, but the derro who have migrated to the central cavern.
The derro homeland is not a compact network, but a series of warrens crisscrossing through all the area between area 16 and the Glass Pool, bounded to the north by the illithid bypass. The Book II and gnomish maps respresent a crude, linear rendition of one possible path through the overall system. In reality, the system cannot be mapped. Such a map would be rendered obsolete within hours, useless within weeks. The central cavern is more orderly, thanks to the illithids. That cavern is, roughly, south of X6 and northeast of X7 and 19.
In the usual pattern of oppressive rulership, the illithids have built, by sorcery and slave labour, an enormous citadel far from the insecure cavern walls, atop an artificial hillock. The mind flayers have provided enough magical light for them and the derro to see by, which is to say not nearly enough by human standards.
Surrounding the ruling plateau is a small city of derro and others. Every building is above ground; tunneling is forbidden. The main city has a market and inns, of course. Outside (in green) is a sizable fungus farm. In purple the illithids and derro are busy expanding the cavern even further.
The derro of the central cavern largely consists of the old, weak, cowardly, and (especially in the case of the few remaining savants) traitors. Some of these depraved wretches soar about on flying spiders (II.43-44), which the aboleth allow them to harvest from the Great Cavern over Sunkenhome (the illithids do not allow them to breed spiders here).
The illithids hide their alien visages behind embroidered robes and cowls. They are the true rulers of the central city.
Kuo-toa serve as an elite guard, or shock-troops. Their madness can be kept at bay only if they are given search-and-destroy missions; organised warfare and guard work tends to weaken their morale.
Also in the central city are representatives of other races. Quaggoths serve as slaves in some instances, as do humanoids and a few actual humans from the surface. Some duergar can be spotted in the crowd, and even a few githyanki (keeping an eye on the 'flayers). There still aren't any drow to be found, and gnomes are never seen here alive.
For a real taste of derro life, the PC's will have to sneak into the warrens. Naturally, the illithids forbid non-derro to enter. Even derro normally have to have permission to enter the tunnels, and can only enter those tunnels the illithids know about. Those are the tunnels marked on the map. Other openings appear all the time, but are shut down as soon as the illithids find out, which, in a land ruled by ESP, rarely takes long.
As for the central castle, the DM may want to design an illithid tower from scratch with Zanticor at its head (he can flee to the Glass Pool later), or it may be the City of the Glass Pool itself.
The "better" (or at least more libertarian) of the derro still brave the dangers of the outer caverns. These dangers are substantial indeed; they should pose a real challenge to the PC's.
The northwest region connects to the aggressive purple worms of X4, and probably include the illithid worm called the Neothelid.
Another region may be infested with driders and rogue flying spiders, and aracholoths and even a spiderleg horror (from Dragon #298) - the dross of Sunkenhome now in uneasy truce with the illithids.
Another such danger is the old cavern, where the ghosts of the svirfneblin still prowl the halls, guarding their ancient tomb.
There is much to be found here, with one exception: there is no detour around the Glass Pool. To the south and southwest, the warrens gradually give way to the wider Underdark, outside the scope of Night Below.
1. Kuo-toa attack the PC's without provocation.
2. Public execution by mind blast.
3. Bodies of dissidents found with their brains missing.
4. Building in PC's area blows up or collapses.
5. Flying spider drops its derro rider into the midst of party (fatally for the derro); spider dive-bombs PC's immediately after that.
15 June 2000: last update. 10 June 2001: some more ideas... 18 August: some KP. 27 November: flying spiders. 13 August 2002: Dragon #298 ideas.