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The book planted another wormhole hazard 22 miles from the Glass Pool. It is not connected to the worms in the caverns across the Pool. The party might not want to go hunting for eggs at this time; the DM may as well assume that the kuo-toa cleaned the place out. Or, they may be the aquatic sort of purple worm called the "mottled worm" (2e Monstrous Manual p. 264). Either way it's a good occasion to make the caves more mazy.
Kuo-toa are often found in the lower caverns and in the Great Cavern, but starting five miles from the Sunless Sea (25 miles from the Glass Pool), the Book III Passageways encounter table kicks in. According to that, they wander the last five miles of passageway as infrequently as they wander the other Great Cavern offshoots (01-10 after rolling 21-30, a 1/100 chance in toto). This strongly implies that the kuo-toa of the Glass Pool are bypassing that section of passage on their way to their masters in Shaboath. (The fish-folk apparently don't like heights; a ledgeways hazard isn't far ahead.) I added a kuo-toa port with aboleth and the start of a river here.
Some 26 miles away from the City of the Glass Pool, the ledgeways hazard is considered an outskirt of the Sunless Sea and takes the Book III Passageways encounter table. (III.7) I moved Book II's trolls here, and had the ledge fall into the river mentioned immediately above: here.
At least one band of ettins has stumbled upon these lowest of passageways. This group numbers 1d3+1, uncharacteristically for such solitary creatures (Monstrous Manual p. 137). It therefore has a strong leader. Their lair has 1-2 cave bears and, of course, vermin. Since they do not enter the Great Cavern, there may be ettin-sized passages (there are purple worms here) connecting some of the tunnels, and in the others the DM should replace them with fomorians. (Since I place the formorians to the north, I suggest having the border between ettin and formorian at the river-chasm.)
The trolls and ettins of this region speak a creole mostly based on pidgin derro and fomorian slang, but also containing a few kuo-toa and illithid loan-words.
In addition, if you do use the divide, think hard about whether to use the tenebrous worm in the encounter table. Tenebrous worms are gloomwing caterpillars and live in forests close to the Demiplane of Shadow. Mushroom forests might count, but there aren't any this side of the Great Cavern. They might roam this passage to the Great Cavern, or they might roam to the north of the divide (without hitting the 25-mile path from Pool to river), but they don't roam both. My preference is to the north.
Earlier I mentioned there was another entrance, woodlands where the Broken Ones once lived (III.18). Here should also be found routes to a fomorian giant lair. These deformed monsters wander the cavern, but very rarely challenge the ettins in their stomping grounds (rolling 16-20 after 21-30: 1/200 chance!). One family of fomorians recently wandered up through one of these unlisted tunnel systems, and then travelled overland into eastern Haranshire (I.38).
This sector leads directly into those tunnels of the Great Cavern that are north of the river divide; tunnels not near the Great Cavern (i.e. the Glass Pool region) do not qualify. The two-mile-long ledgeways hazard on the way to area 24 (not on the map: see III.13 instead) could also hold a cliff leading up to these tunnels, or you could extend or add a passage.
This does not rule out additional passages to the Glass Pool and derro city, but the City enforces this border and forbids it to be a throughfare for fomorians. If you connect this sector to the Glass Pool, its immediate environs take some version of Book II's encounter tables. Otherwise kuo-toa do not bother with this region.
Some notes on what you might find here: There won't be any Rockseer lairs, so close to the elven forest. In lieu of the dragons of area 20 I would add a Deep Dragon and an Albino Wyrm (from Dragon #227 p. 32). Since this area abuts an elven forest, I would also add a glouras (ibid. p. 28) with a swarm of bats. There are derro and svirfneblin here, too, but no drow.
If you added the portal to Shadow in the elven forest, tenebrous worms travel here. (Note that if you used the river chasm, they do not travel the "official" entrance from the Pool nor points south.)
The "[Great] Cavern" encounters in III.24 and the back cover refer to the Haranshire / Glass Pool shore of the Sea.
Since Ipshizeen still casts spells, the Night Below campaign occurs prior to the events preceding Dead Gods. If the DM intends to run that adventure later on, arrange an occasion when Ipshizeen and the servitors of III.45 lose their spells. Painfully. (Zanticor of II.56-7 should be dead or fled already.) If the DM assumes the events of Dead Gods has long transpired, the illithids follow Ilsenine.
There are also "caverns far to the south" where the Broken Ones washed up for a time, presumably not far from area 26.
The optional dao may be working with a Darkness Elemental (Dragon #227 p. 26), summoned long ago by the priests of Tharizdun. The magicks then were powerful enough to draw the elemental in permanently; now, the current servitors have no hope of controlling it, much less of summoning a new one.
The Cavern slopes to the Sea in a series of escarpments. This vast damp cave hosts a number of 10' radius hills and craters, that are actually deep barnacles in disguise (Dragon #303 pp. 63-4).
For the "City Margins" encounter table, "10 miles of Shaboath" means the stretch of cavern between the Fiery Rift and the Sunless Sea, and the southwest shore of the peninsula by Szandur's Isle. There is also a peninsula on the further shore, if the PC's bother with it. On those places will be found Shaboath's harbours, however they are defined. Even if the DM chooses to expand the Sunless Sea and/or move Shaboath further than 10 miles off-shore, these harbours, with the City Margins encounters table, should remain.
That Shaboath once supported makeshift harbours on the Haranshire shore
is proven by III.23, which had Jelenneth "leaping overboard while being ferried across the Sunless Sea
".
This implies watercraft, and that in turn implies a docking station
on the Haranshire shore
(c.f. Adam's post).
Assuming the Glass Pool is overthrown, these "harbours" will have a lot less traffic, and may even be
abandoned. Some or even all might be underwater. The aboleth savants still keep an eye on the area, though.
Adam's post additionally details a number of ways the PC's might cross the Sea without a functional harbour: Fly, Water Walk, the fiends, a Folding Boat. To this one might add: subduing Ixzan or flying spiders, or finding out how the fomorians get across.
I think Sargent wanted to use the City Margins table for the surface of the Sunless Sea as well. In this case the derro are going to be on boats, or flying on spiders as in II.43-44. The illithids may at DM option be swimming. The fomorians will be on BIG boats, and the DM may decide that they be accompanied by more accomplished steersmen. Finally, on the Sea's surface rolls of 86-00 do not occasion a reroll on the "Cavern" table, but on the "Aquatic" table.
My main issue with the map of Book III is that the "Sunless Sea" is bounded (and bounded in a 30-mile diameter, too). The Sunless Sea as envisaged by Coleridge is the "lifeless ocean"; below Xanadu of Cathay yet drinking the Grecian waters of Alph. If it bears that grandiose title, it must live up to it. Tear off the southern and eastern shores, or at the very least allow that the waters continue beneath the eastern wall of the great cavern. This will also enable you to link it to the Sunless Sea of the D series and the Kingdom of the Ghouls.
On the ceiling above Sunkenhome (and not adjacent to the Glass Pool shoreline) are areas clogged with webs of feral flying spiders. They divebomb unlucky boats in certain parts of the Sea. The aboleths' derro savant allies often levitate slaves to harvest their eggs. The rate of attrition is staggering.
An illithid capital can be added just about anywhere, but not in the immediate region. Wolfgang Baur wrote up a Vampire Squid which serves the illithids (Dragon #227 p. 31); if you use it, that implies that the illithids have an outpost by, on, or in the Sunless Sea.
The aboleth control another kuo-toa city (II.47), probably another island of the Sea. Drow do not live on the Haranshire / Glass Pool side of the Sea and do not venture near Shaboath.
Somewhere also hides a Brood Mother (Dragon #298 p.38). This creature was in charge of an offensive sortie against Shaboath - a mission Lolth deemed important enough to rate as a Punishment (the "chwihendrell"). Unfortunately for her, she did not die in her failure.
Sargent's Dark God appears in the Isle of Shadows in Book III; he was clearly based on Gygax's Tharizdun and is even named so in Night Below. However, Gary Gygax defined Tharizdun in module WG4 as a cosmic, exiled power with little direct power in this plane. Sargent was certainly acting within bounds when he filled the isle with undead and imbued certain items with residual magic (c.f. WG4 p. 26 #19; p. 23 #5), even (and this is pushing it) in allowing said undead access to low-level spells as priests. The problem here is that there are no hidden secrets to be found, especially compared to the evocative paintings, statues, and even writings of WG4. Also, the isle is in too prominent a location for the Dark God as defined by Gygax and even Sargent. Tharizdun's temples are deliberately remote from civilization, and this includes non-human civilization like Sunkenhome and Great Shaboath. (This forced my hand into publishing my Tharizdun notes, too: here.)
Given that the whole encounter is a distraction from the plot (like the trolls of Book II), you could just delete it or render the entire shrine an abandoned ruin; but if you're up for a challenge, move the isle off the map (having altered that map to expand the Sunless Sea, of course) and restructure the Isle of Shadows in accordance with the lower levels of WG4.
I'd already discussed the Sargent-aboleths' glyphs, but you can also revise their society. Any lawful being requires an order to follow. In evil societies, this desire leads to a hierarchy led by the powerful and cunning. The aboleth happen to be both very lawful and very evil. The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide (Douglas Niles, 1986) was the first to deduce that there were aboleth greater than the average (p. 74):
The aboleth are not known to worship any god. There are, however, huge and loathsome examples of the species that command the deep respect of the other aboleth. Each aboleth city has from one to six of these bloated and disgusting creatures. These greater aboleth can be up to four times the size and Hit Dice of a normal aboleth. They are the repositories of the vast alien knowledge collected by the race.
Brandon Grist detailed an aboleth hierarchy in "The Ecology of the Aboleth" (Dragon #131, 1988). In it he posited "greater" and "noble" aboleth led by a "ruler" of an aboleth city, each of which answered to a "grand aboleth" unique to that world. Carl Sargent, as usual, ignored this. The Night Below is the demesne of aboleth "savants" (a term doubtless cribbed from the derro) led by a unique Grand Savant, all of whom derive their powers from the Blood Queen.
By way of comparison: savants have similar Hit Dice as greater aboleth, the Grand Savant as the Grand Aboleth. Greater aboleth have enhanced illusion skills; savants do not form illusions outside spell-casting. A greater aboleth has increased domination powers, but these are countered by their decreased range compared to savants. (Naturally, the domination powers of both the savant and the greater aboleth are superior to those of the common aboleth in either way.) However, the savants' spell powers and ability to use glyphs trump the greater aboleths' minor psionics; and the Grand Savant is likewise far more powerful than a non-savant Grand Aboleth.
Add to this the presence of a pit fiend-level embassy from the Nine Hells, and this all means that Great Shaboath is the aboleth capital of the entire game world. This world's Grand Aboleth is the Savant. Accordingly the island does not contain a Grand Aboleth as defined by Grist; and any Rulers are visitors to the Savant, and will therefore not dare to show up here while the Savant is as busy as it is. Having said that, the DM is welcome to replace a few savants with greater aboleth. Also, Great Shaboath certainly has undetailed, lower levels where 3-8 Nobles work their dastardly experiments. This is also where live the Juiblex-worshippers. You decide whether the Juiblex-worshippers and/or the Nobles are working for or against the Savant and its Blood Queen. At any rate they all stay off the surface unless the PC's bother them first.
There are other aboleth cities outside Great Shaboath. Some of these cities will be in caverns or ocean deeps without direct connexion to this particular "sunless sea", but Shaboath is able to retain lines of movement and communication. Greater aboleth travel from city to city via psionic dimension door, and for others large, permanent (albeit closed) magical gates exist in the Noble laboratories down below. If the PC's go to another city, it will be led by a Ruler with a full complement of greater and (probably) Noble aboleth, and at least one Savant serving as advisor. DM's running the D-series could plant such a city in that Sunless Sea, as a springboard for skipping past Books I and II to III.
Night Below also did not use the skum race. For those whose first look at the skum was the Third Edition Monster Manual, their slime trail leads at least back to the second edition of the Forgotten Realms box (1993). The skum were made available to the wider multiverse in the Monstrous Compendium Annual, Vol. 1, in the following year. I rule this way: it was the aboleth of the Realms - but not the savants - who engineered the skum "at least a millennium" ago. According to Drizzt's Guide, the local savants use them now, but some aboleth still manage to do without in other worlds. If the DM is running a "Realms Below" campaign, skum should be incorporated into Book III, and optionally wherever else you decide to plant an aboleth. Outside the Realms, this is up to DM discretion.
It should also be mentioned here that roper stomach acid is worth 4 gp/ounce to an alchemist, and that a mature roper can supply 80-120 ounces of the stuff if "carefully harvested and stored only in platinum vials". The eye is edible. Roper glue is a component of sovereign glue, and is worth 8 gp/ounce or 25 gp/gland (ropers have four). And, while I'm sure the average xorn would normally not think twice about disemboweling a roper or two to get at the tasty gems within, in area 15 gems are literally growing on trees. These xorn can afford to leave the ropers alone.
Also, for non-Greyhawk DM's, keep in mind that the Otiluke of "Otiluke's Freezing Sphere" (II.29, III.30) is Greyhawk-specific.
How can the PC's talk to a glouras if it must attack all "creatures of daylight"? Well, first keep in mind that an adventuring party might be able to slip by this restraint. Few dwarves and no gnomes are native to the outdoors. Elves are generally creatures of twilight and the full moon; the glouras will even know them from the Seelie Court. Among humans, thieves work at night, and mages work indoors (and also at night, notoriously). Druids work their most powerful rituals at night AND are on decent terms with the Seelie Court. Soldiers are morning people, true, but adventuring fighters are not soldiers; the PC's in particular do most of their work underground. A human will only have to worry if he is dark-skinned (or, worse, noticeably tanned); or if he is a cleric or paladin associated with a sun god. But what is a Ra-worshipper doing in the Underdark in the first place?
29 October 2000, latest update. 4 August 2001, moved in kuo-toa idea. 9 August, fixes here and there. 15 August, moved kuo-toa and troll encounters from Great Cavern section into their own page. 27 November, flying spiders. 13 August 2002, Brood Mother. 6 January 2003, boating facilities. 10 January, fixes, Dragon #303.