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The purpose of this room-section is to give kuo-toa safe passage to the Sunless Sea, and to give the party their first sight of aboleth. It is designed for a party that has shut down the City of the Glass Pool and is somewhere in the first 25 miles en route to the Great Cavern. I'm aiming for a classic swashbuckling adventure, a coda to the Glass Pool if you will, to make the players feel more like heroes than terrorists. In the interest of compatibility with base NB, it is concealed; the DM can run it at his/her discretion.
This exists because: there is otherwise no fresh source of water for the Glass Pool, there are no aboleth, the kuo-toa don't travel the last five miles of cavern to the Sea (so they must be bypassing it). It might also explain the Glass Pool's population drop Book II mentions as the party's doing.
I hope you find it helpful to your campaign.
The City of the Glass Pool has long used this cavern as a staging point to the wider Underdark, avoiding the steep chasm on the Great Cavern's outskirts. A swift river, much of which sees no pocket of breathable air, runs through here directly to the Sunless Sea. Now it is a refugee camp, sheltering the panicked survivors of the crumbling City as they flee to the presumed safety of the lightless ocean.
Past the Glass Pool, the party will stumble upon a few kuo-toa refugee parties. If the PC's can refrain from being spotted, they might catch the kuo-toa enter a secret door.
The map above is a very rough schematic. It is not to scale and needn't even be in two dimensions. In fact, I have the river flowing below the passage later on anyway: see here. In general the river is south and down.
This is actually a network of caves, housing the barracks of the kuo-toa staff. In addition to their personal quarters, it also contains cells for their non-human captives and slaves. None of these will be spell-casters.
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The passage decamps into a huge, high cavern. Far within you hear a multitude of splashes and guttural voices. |
This is the port of the City of the Glass Pool. There is a spacious pond here connected to the river via a system of locks.
Again, the entrance from the "north" may be an entrance from any direction, even above.
The whole area, ground and pond, is swarming with kuo-toa. Those in the water are dressed in tough leather-like wetsuits. The kuo-toa are helping other kuo-toa - and a few beings of other races - into the wetsuits and pushing them off into the water toward the locks.
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The alcove is a clutter of fish-reeking leatherworks. |
If the PC's sift through the junk they will find a number of padded, bulky wetsuits. There will be enough to fit everyone provided they haven't raised the alarm.
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A watery cave breaks the thick grey wall to your right. |
An aboleth emissary from Shaboath is overseeing the evacuation.
The entire cave is underwater; the captives here have been given water-breathing ability as long as they behave. One of Wolfgang Baur's trigger-glyphs, the Glyph of Killing Darkness, guards the entrance.
These are the spellcasters the aboleth is currently holding. It includes a fair number of renegade derro savants. It can also include whatever spellcasters the DM decides are germane to the plot, not Jelenneth or Hazakian's band, but perhaps others whom the PC's have met along the way.
Characters in wetsuits can in theory navigate the river to the Sunless Sea, bypassing the listed hazards. But just because it is safe for kuo-toa doesn't mean it is safe for humans...
The characters probably need some way of breathing under water (usually the aboleth provides this service). They also need physical protection against the watercourse's jagged rocks and harsh currents. The kuo-toa wetsuits offer some protection, but the fishmen have the advantage of training (or at least guidance) and naturally thick hides.
Regeneration is an obvious option, but if the party has this, don't be merciful. This is not a ten-minute fight against a gang of orcs. This is a days-long struggle against a rocky, dark river. Follow the regeneration rules here.
The encounters downstream largely consist of kuo-toa and aboleth (and giant lobsters). Depending on where the DM places this encounter, the river may also cross the wormhole hazard, which is four miles from the ledgeways hazard. (If the DM has instead squeezed this harbour into those four miles between worm and chasm, then the worms may instead burst into the port or kuo-toa quarters while the PC's are there.) Upon reaching the ledgeways hazard, for characters drifting by on the river it will be nothing more than a scenic diversion; the trolls won't drop in (as it were) because their regeneration offers them little protection against aboleth digestive fluid.
Upstream, one of the headwaters is a blackwater grove. (Dragon #303)
Started it 13 August largely in conjunction with the ledgeways hazard; published it 15 August. 16 August, filled it in. 10 January 2003, Dragon #303.