Webs are Weaved in Darkened Twine Notes.
Followers of Vhaeraun in Cormanthor: Raiding parties, larger warbands, and conquerors. With slaves, property.
Raids on Archendale, Battledale, Deepingdale, and Mistledale. Riads and murders in the forests. The Great Druid of Cormanthor is missing. Battle revealed a Demon allied with evil drow, Druid also destroyed the Demon.
Cormanthor Drow are broken into factions.
Auzkovyn Clan (3500); nomadic, created portal from High Forest to a location north of Battledale. Willing to accept Elves, half elves, and Vhaeraun worshiping humans.
House Jaelre (8000); Seek to occupy the original homes of the surface elves. Specifically that in the Elven Court. Sorcerer/rogue named Jezz the Lame.
Spider Kissers (1200) Lolth worshipping drow want to claim power in the drow societies.
Underdark Raiders; Using Blindgdenstone portals.
Caves smell somewhat musty and earthy. The air is mostly damp, with 80 – 90% humidity. Some caves will smell a bit moldy.
smell a bit moldy. Caves with a stream running through will smell very fresh, with clean, clear air. Some caves have bad air, although this is uncommon.
basic cave odor is muddy, musty and earthy. The air is damp and cold. But at the same time, cave air is surprisingly light on the lungs. cave has a stream running through it, the air is fresh, clear, cool and odorless. Wet caves without running water are more likely to smell moldy.
Dry caves don’t smell like a whole lot, because there’s nothing there to stink up the place. When the humidity of the cave drops, the air gets less heavy and doesn’t smell as much. Also, without water, the smell of mud gets less pronounced.
If the cave has bats, you will smell them. But bats mostly live just around the cave entrance. Bats themselves don’t stink – according to bat researcher Amanda Lollar, they actually smell weirdly pleasant. What doesn’t smell pleasant, is the accumulation of guano and urine on the ground below. ammonia gases
Closed off chambers can contain CO2 pockets that build up over time. Especially in
Some caves have ‘bad air’ – which simply means the air is toxic, and you should avoid breathing in the air.
Signs to look for (and smells to be aware of) are:
fatigue – could indicate low oxygen
strong, pungent smell – indicates high levels of ammonia
rotten eggs – indicates high levels of sulfur
a simple drop of water falling from the ceiling onto a stalagmite could sound like an instrument. bat colony, which I would describe as chittering, chirping, screeching, and scratching, is the sound made by the bats moving different body parts. They scrape along the ceiling boards, they screech at another bat that comes too close to a mother’s pup,
**********************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party)((MED DIF))
Monsters: 10 (gang) ((CR 2))
XP to award: 4500 XP (562.5 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 2
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 9000 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 12
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Characters: 8 (large party) ((Hard Dif))
Monsters: 2 (pair) (CR 12))
XP to award: 16800 XP (2100 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 1
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 16800 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 16
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Characters: 8 (large party) ((Hard Dif))
Monsters: 6 (group) ((2, CR6; 4CR4))
XP to award: 9000 XP (1125 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 1.5
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 13500 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 15
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Characters: 8 (large party) ((Med Dif))
Monsters: 2 (pair) ((CR 10))
XP to award: 11800 XP (1475 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 1
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 11800 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 14
********************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Hard Dif))
Monsters: 3 (group) ((CR 8))
XP to award: 11700 XP (1462.5 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 1.5
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 17550 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 16
********************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Med Dif))
Monsters: 3 (group) ((CR6))
XP to award: 6900 XP (862.5 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 1.5
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 10350 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 13
********************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Hard Dif))
Monsters: 9 (gang) (CR4, 4; CR2, 5))
XP to award: 6650 XP (831.25 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 2
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 13300 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 15
*******************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Med Dif))
Monsters: 9 (gang) ((CR 3)
XP to award: 6300 XP (787.5 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 2
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 12600 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 14
********************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Med Dif))
Monsters: 8 (gang) ((CR 3))
XP to award: 5600 XP (700 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 2
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 11200 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 13
*********************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Med Dif))
Monsters: 7 (gang) (CR 3))
XP to award: 4900 XP (612.5 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 2
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 9800 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 12
*************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Med Dif))
Monsters: 6 (group) ((CR 4))
XP to award: 6600 XP (825 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 1.5
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 9900 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 12
*******************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Hard Dif))
Monsters: 8 (gang) ((CR 4))
XP to award: 8800 XP (1100 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 2
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 17600 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 16
**********************************************************************
Characters: 8 (large party) ((Hard Dif))
Monsters: 6 (group) ((CR 5))
XP to award: 10800 XP (1350 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 1.5
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 16200 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 16
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Characters: 8 (large party) (Med Dif))
Monsters: 3 (group) ((CR 6))
XP to award: 6900 XP (862.5 XP each)
Difficulty multiplier: 1.5
Adjusted Difficulty Rating: 10350 XP
Encounter Challenge Rating: 13
*****************************************************************
Aboleth: Huge, tentacled aberrations that dwell deep within subterranean lakes, enslaving other races by means of their potent psychic powers.
Behir: Giant, dragon-killing serpents that breathe lightning and are just smart enough to be dangerous.
Beholder: D&D 5e’s most iconic original monster, complete with an antimagic field, randomized lazerbeams coming out of its eyes, and enough paranoia to make the boss of an assassin’s guild wince. Beholders lair in vast subterranean complexes, warp the nature of reality around them – so much so that their bad dreams can manifest monsters in the real world – and are generally considered to be a bad time.
Black Pudding: The nastiest of all Oozes, black puddings corrode flesh, metal, bone, wood – basically everything except stone or magical steel.
Bulette: Colloquially known as the “land shark,” Bulettes are large, quadrupedal, burrowing monstrosities that breach through the ground beneath your feet like a great white shark jumping for a seal.
Carrion Crawler: A nightmarish mess of paralyzing tentacles, chitinous armor plates, scuttling legs, and far too many teeth. Carrion Crawlers scour putrid flesh from carcasses, infesting places where death is plentiful.
Chuul: Survivors of an ancient Aboleth empire, Chuul are the godsforsaken result of Aboleth magical-genetic engineering. Imagine a 12’ tall lobster with a mass of writhing tentacles for a face and the ability to smell magic. Oh, and it’s really, really angry.
Cloaker: So called because their leathery, bat-like wings resemble a long black cape, Cloakers are troublingly magical ambush predators capable of flying through the subterranean air like a manta ray swims through water. They can also make illusory copies of themselves to confuse and coral their prey. Oh, and they’re completely indistinguishable from a rock until they decide to drop on you like a 400-pound bag of nightmares.
Cyclops: The classic one-eyed, man-eating giant with a great big club. Some of the D&D multiverse’s most committed atheists, for reasons they’d rather not go into. Will also throw very big rocks at you for fun.
Dao: Evil earth elementals that covet gems above all else. Fiercely competitive with other Dao for who has the shiniest pile of rocks. Powerful spellcasters, but just as competent at hitting you with a big stick.
Darkling: Cursed fey, exiled from their home plane to live out lives as thieves and assassins in enclaves beneath the surface world. Explode when you kill them.
Darkmantle: Like a cross between a flying squirrel (aww, cute) and a squid (Oh, no no no, not cute!), darkmantles cling to the roofs of caves, dropping on unsuspecting prey as they project a wave of magical darkness around them, blinding their food to their approach.
Death Kiss: When a Beholder has a bad dream about losing all its blood, it manifests a Death Kiss. These (quite literally) nightmarish creatures have blood-sucking tentacles covered in teeth, lightning for blood, and an insatiable desire to drink you like a Capri Sun.
Death Tyrant: When a Beholder dreams about becoming a lich, sometimes it actually becomes a lich. They retain all of the powers that made them dangerous in life, but their anti-magic cone becomes an anti-life ray that prevents all healing and raises any creature that dies within it as a zombie.
Deep Gnome (Svirfneblin): A pale, slender subrace of gnomes that dwell deep beneath the earth, Deep Gnomes have survived down here by the grace of their cunning and tenacity. They dwell within heavily fortified strongholds that can represent a moment’s reprieve for underdark adventurers – assuming they can persuade a bunch of paranoid, violent gnomes that specialize in using poison dart guns to let them inside.
Derro: Another race of Underdark humanoids, the Derro resemble small dwarves and are, to a man, incurably insane. They often serve mind flayers or aboleths as extra muscle and fight bitter wars with the Drow.
Dire Troll: A troll, but bigger.
Doppelganger: Shapeshifters that steal the identities and appearances of other humanoids, infiltrating their societies and sowing chaos. As one of D&D’s most paranoia-inducing monsters, they can be found anywhere, so it’s really no surprise they crop up down here too.
Draegloth: The combination of a drow and a glabrezu demon, gifted by the demon spider queen Lolth to especially loyal drow families to serve as bodyguards and assassins. Ogre-sized, with four arms, and the ability to move with near-complete silence.
Drow: Dark elves who long ago abandoned the surface world to serve their demonic spider goddess Lolth in the Underdark. The Drow construct vast temples and cities in her name, using slave labor kidnapped from both the Underdark and the surface world.
Duergar: The Deep Dwarves – tyrannical, warlike, gray-skinned, builders of vast cities that rival the citadels of the Drow. Held captive for generations by the mind flayers, the Duergar bought their freedom with a promise to keep their one-time masters supplied with a steady flow of slaves.
Ettin: A foul-smelling, two headed orc-giant hybrid. Virtually impossible to sneak up on and possibly the spawn of the demon prince Demogorgon.
Fire Giant: Brutal conquerors who dwell in volcanoes.
Flail Snail: A large, elemental snail with five bludgeoning tentacles and an anti-magic shell. Once hardened, its trail can be cut into a substance resembling glass.
Flameskull: Tiny undead skulls wreathed in fire. Flameskulls can cast a terrifying variety of fire-based spells and, if destroyed, regenerate within an hour unless sprinkled with holy water.
Flumph: Literally the only lawful-good-aligned creature on this list. Flumphs resemble a glowing jellyfish propelled through the air on gusts of air. They feed by siphoning psionic energy and fill the rest of their days learning and debating matters of philosophy.
Fomorian: Hideous, wicked, and cursed, Fomorians are terrifying even by the standards of other giants. These horribly mutated giantfolk fell from grace thousands of years ago when they tried and failed (miserably I might add) to conquer the Feywild. Now, they scratch out a miserable existence in the darkest, filthiest corners of the world. Best left alone; their ancient curse is said to be contagious.
Froghemoth: An amphibious predator the size of an elephant with four grasping tentacles – an invasive species from an eldritch plane beyond our knowledge or understanding. Very hungry.
Gargoyle: Malevolent earth elementals that hide among statues before swooping down to gouge their prey with sharp stone claws. Often employed as eternal guardians of temples and castles.
Gas Spore: Parasitic fungi spawned from the corpses of dead Beholders. Hang around in the shape of an eye tyrant and explode into a cloud of poisonous spores if poked with anything sharp.
Gazer: A tiny manifestation of a Beholder’s dreams, Gazers only have four eye stalks and alternate between mocking you in a high-pitched, grating voice and shooting you with eye beams. Beholders keep them as pets or use them to eat all the bugs and rats in their lairs.
Gelatinous Cube: A 10’ by 10’ wall of quivering slime that devours anything in its path. Virtually impossible to spot until you’re already inside it.
Ghast: Bloated, rotting, emitting a cloud of deadly fumes, a Ghast can bring down an unprepared adventuring party before it even gets close enough to use its teeth and claws.
Ghost: Echoes of the dead, incorporeal and immune to all but magic and silver weapons and capable of either frightening or possessing anyone stupid enough to get in its way.
Ghoul: Mindless, flesh-eating undead attracted to carnage and destruction. Ghouls inflict a paralyzing toxin that disables their prey, allowing them to feast at their leisure.
Giant Centipede: Imagine a centipede. Okay, now imagine it’s about 3 feet long. Wait, why are you running?
Giant Lizard: Huge, scaly monsters used as pack animals, mounts, and pets by drow, duergar, and other Underdark dwellers.
Giant Toad: Dwellers in subterranean ponds, swamps, and other bodies of filthy water, with long, sticky tongues used to drag prospective prey beneath the surface. Probably worshiped as a god by the local Bullywug village.
Giant Spider: Might as well be the mascot for all Underdark adventures.
Gibbering Mouther: Weeping sores in the fabric of reality – a horrible combination of tentacles, teeth, and babbling madness that makes it hard to think, let alone act in their presence.
Goblin: Small, angry, probably plotting to steal your lunch.
Gray Ooze: Painfully corrosive slimes that are completely indistinguishable from a normal rock – until you step on one, that is.
Grell: Resembles a large human brain, levitating on a nest of tentacles with a large, avian beak on the front. Truly upsetting. The fact these creatures hunt in packs and will try to carry off anything up to and including an Ogre only makes matters worse.
Grick: A worm-like monstrosity with near-perfect camouflage in rocky terrain. You don’t see the tentacles and large squid-like beak until it’s much too late. Gricks hunt in packs and move like locusts through the Underdark, only moving on when they’ve eaten everything in the surrounding area or something bigger and nastier starts to eat them.
Grimlock: Gray-skinned humans corrupted by millennia in service to the fallen mind flayer empire. Grimlocks’ eyes have long since been weeded out by evolution, and they hunt based purely on sound and smell.
Hobgoblin: Brutal, tyrannical, warlike cousins of the goblin and orc. What makes Hobgoblins especially troublesome, however, is their intelligence and rigid martial society.
Hook Horror: Oh, great: more things with beaks. Hook horrors are fierce Underdark predators with huge, sharp, hooked limbs they use to climb cavern walls and – you guessed it – drop on you
Intellect Devourer: A walking brain protected by a crusty covering and set on bestial clawed legs. Takes over its victim while it feeds on behalf of its mind flayer masters.
Kobold: Small, incurably skittish little dragon men with a penchant for dastardly traps. Much like goblins, Kobolds are probably planning to rob you while you sleep.
Kuo-Toa: Maybe my favorite D&D 5e race. Kuo-Toa are fish people with the power to warp reality around them as long as they really, really believe in it. They’re like the crowd at Peter Pan The Musical, if the crowd could turn Tinkerbell into a 300’ tall rampaging fish god. They weren’t always like this, and, as with most weird nonsense in the Underdark, it’s generally agreed that this is somehow all the Mind Flayers’ fault.
Mimic: Another classic D&D 5e monster, the Mimic can disguise itself perfectly as any inanimate object – usually the kind of thing someone is going to poke at, like a suspiciously unguarded treasure chest. Get too close, and the mimic opens up to reveal rows of razor sharp teeth and some very sticky tentacles.
Mind Flayer: The Illithids are an ancient race of psionic empire builders and remorseless brain-eaters that dwell deep beneath the earth. Once, the Mind Flayer empire stretched from one end of the Underdark to the other, but it has since collapsed for reasons unknown. Still, that hasn’t stopped the Mind Flayers that remain (not to mention the Elder Brains that command them) from scheming new ways to put the rest of creation back in its rightful place.
Minotaur Skeleton: Big, made of bones and brutish rage. Probably guarding a labyrinth.
Myconid: Sentient mushroom folk that communicate via telepathic spores. Not actively out to kill you but definitely take the approach that a stranger is just good compost you haven’t met yet.
Nagpa: Thirteen cursed bird-wizard-ringwraith things cursed for their betrayal of the Raven Queen, which led to her death and reincarnation in the Shadowfell. Understandably not too keen to meet her or any of her Shadar-Kai again.
Neogi: A small aberration with the body of a spider and the head and neck of an eel (interestingly, they’re a perfect intersection of mine and my wife’s phobias and therefore banned at my table). Neogi ruthlessly enslave any and all creatures they perceive as being lesser than they are, including other Neogi.
Neothelid: A huge, slimy-covered worm that is the result of (surprise, surprise) Mind Flayer reproductive cycles gone horribly wrong. When an elder brain dies, the tadpoles it was using for food suddenly start exploring their new opportunities for a non-snack-based career, devouring each other until only one gigantic, murderous worm is left.
Ochre Jelly: Yellowish oozes capable of slipping through the smallest cracks in pursuit of prey.
Ogre: Large, murderous relatives of giants with a fondness for human flesh.
Orc: Incurably brutish humanoids with piggy faces, protruding tusks, and a love of warfare.
Otyugh: A huge, bulbous creature with three legs and a long, vine-like stalk on top of its body. Otyughs bury themselves in mounds of carrion, ready to grab anyone or anything that gets too close.
Phase Spider: A regular giant spider with the ability to phase in and out of the ethereal plane.
Piercer: A perfectly camouflaged, leechlike monstrosity that clings to cavern walls and ceilings, waiting to drop on anyone who wasn’t already eaten by a Darkmantle, Grick, Grell, or Hook Horror. Kill it before it grows into a Roper.
Poltergeist: Invisible ghosts that throw things at you.
Psychic Gray Ooze: The only thing worse than a mindless, eternally hungry ooze is one that can beat you to death with its brain. Also probably the result of Mind Flayer shenanigans.
Purple Worm: Titanic, fire breathing, incredibly poisonous worms that burrow through the earth, bursting forth to devour anything in their path. The spice must flow.
Quaggoth: Chasm-dwelling albino demon-ape things that live in brutally cruel societies throughout the deepest crevices of the Underdark. Often found in service to the Drow.
Roper: A thrashing mass of whiplike, poisonous tentacles surrounding a single ravenous maw. When ropers shut their single eye, they are virtually indistinguishable from a stalagmite or stalactite. They represent an evolution in the usual hunting tactics displayed by Underdark monsters; rather than dropping on you from above, they use their tendrils to bring their prey up to the ceiling.
Rust Monster: Feared by dwarven miners more than demons, dragons, or anything else, even the briefest touch from a rust monster corrodes metal into reddish fragments in a matter of seconds. To add insult to injury, the rust monster then eats your armor with you inside it.
Shadow: Undead that take the form of animate shadows, capable of sapping the life out of you with a single touch. Wholly undeserving of such a low CR.
Shadow Dragon: Dragons corrupted by the magic of the Shadowfell, infused with necrotic energy.
Shrieker: A human-sized mushroom that can make a screaming noise so loud it’s often used as a warning system by other Underdark monsters.
Spectator: A lesser type of Beholder with four eye stalks and the ability to reflect offensive spells back at the caster.
Specter: An angry spirit that drains its victims’ life force. Unlike ghosts, which can be laid to rest by completing their unfinished business, the only way to stop a Specter is with a judicious application of offensive spells and a lot of silver.
Spirit Naga: Spiteful, poisonous, virtually immortal snake-hybrids, Spirit Nagas are powerful spellcasters and the sworn enemies of the Yuan-Ti.
Stirge: A small flying monstrosity that looks like a cross between a bat and a mosquito.
Stone Giant: Quiet, reclusive and (as long as they’re left alone) peaceful giants with a great love for sculpture.
Swarms: Whether it’s cranium rats (more Mind Flayer nonsense), insects, normal rats, rot grubs, or anything else that’s small and scuttles, the Underdark is prime territory for all things that swarm.
Troglodyte: Primordial, bloodthirsty lizard men who love war and wallowing in filth and decay in equal measure.
Troll: Fearsome green-skinned giants that eat anything they can catch and devour. Trolls lurk in the dark, awaiting the approach of prey. If that prey fights back, trolls also possess extraordinary regenerative properties that only fire or acid can halt.
Umber Hulk: Terrifying insectoid scavengers that burrow through the earth in search of food. Umber Hulks also possess some latent psionic abilities, which let them scramble the minds of their prey, allowing them to get within mandible-range at their leisure.
Water Weird: An elemental guardian bound to a specific body of water, totally invisible until it drags you down beneath the surface.
Wraith: Powerful undead with the ability to create specters from fresh corpses.
Xorn: Strange elementals native to the Plane of Earth, Xorn occasionally burrow through into the material plane. Their diet makes them an adventurer’s worst nightmare (next to Rust Monsters) as they feed primarily on gems.
insane druids to demonic armies (it does border onto the Abyssal Plane after all), but that would virtually double the length of this guide
Use all these great monstrosities like Piercers (and their bigger, nastier siblings, Ropers), Hook Horrors, Darkmantles, Gibbering Mouthers, Cloakers, Grell, Gricks, Stirges, and Carrion Crawlers to ambush, hunt, surprise, and terrify your players.
Menzoberranzan
Ched Nasad
Ch’Chitl
Mantol-Derith
Blingdenstone-Deep Gnomes
Chaulssin
Ammarindar
Gauntlgrym
Eryndlyn
Reeshov
Ooltul
Sshamath
Oaxaptupa
Gatchorof
Sloopdilmonpolop
Morndivver
Holorar
Iltkazar
Looplishar
Drik Hargunen
Dunspeirrin
Oryndoll
Dupapn
Trasskl Thorog
Sphurupra
Deep Imaskar
Fraaszummdin
UndrkTho
The Boneyard
Brikklext
Kuragolomsh
Maeremydra
Because the Buried Realms are situated below the ruins of ancient Netheril and its daughter states, they contain many Netherese ruins. The presence of the phaerimm, however, prevents most fortune-seekers from venturing into this portion of the Underdark, The Buried Realms are bounded in their entirety by an ancient magic artifice known as the Sharnwall. This tremendous barrier was created thousands of years ago by the mysterious sharns to imprison the phaerimm beneath Anauroch.
beneath the Dragon Coast and portions of the Orsran Mountains and Turmish, lie the Darklands. foul warrens of Traaskl Thorog beneath Chessenta in the east. The most powerful city of the Darklands has long been the great duergar city of Dunspeirrin.
East of the Buried Realms lies the small domain known as the Deep Wastes, which runs beneath the Dalelands and the Moonsea. Sparsely populated and largely wild, the Deep Wastes are home to the now-ruined drow city of Maerimydra, which once held Shadowdale as a conquered surface land.
Far to the east, below the plateau of Thay and the towering rampart of the Sunrise Mountains. Earthroot is home to most of the drow city of Undrek'Thoz, as well as the duergar realm of Fraaszummdin
The Glimmersea's waters fill dozens of immense vaults, Several powerful aboleth cities lurk within its starry depths, and in the shallows stand numerous kuo-toa and sahuagin outposts.
Great Bhaerynden: south-central portion of Faerûn, below the endless plains of the Shaar, Bhaerynden was conquered and occupied long ago by the drow when they first descended into the Underdark. The drow named their new realm Telantiwar, collapsed, crushing a dozen drow cities and creating the Great Rift in the process. gold dwarves now hold the Rift and many of the caverns surrounding it, but several powerful drow cities remain in this vicinity, including Guallidurth, Llurth Dreir, and Tlindhe.
The Northdark:North and east of Waterdeep ruined svirfneblin city of Blingdenstone, the duergar Deep kingdom of Gracklstugh, and Menzoberranzan, the City of Spiders.Countless orc-holds, troll-caves, and giant-delvings also lie buried beneath the Spine of the World to the North,
beneath Amn, Tethyr, and Calimshan, Old Shanatar was once home to the powerful dwarven realm of Deep Shanatar.
CR 12 Demon. 1 vs group
Drow Scavengers
Before the fall of the city, the svirfneblin buried hundreds of spellgems in the rock around Blingdenstone as a magical defense against burrowing attacks. Since the fall of the city, several drow wizards, under orders from their priestesses in Menzoberranzan, have been using dominated xorns to dig them out for resale. Gems containing glyph of warding, symbol, and weird spells are most common, although other spellgems - some unique to the Blingdenstone gnomes - remain embedded in the rock, protecting empty space. The xorns glide through the earth toward the gems, swallowing them without triggering them (at least in most cases).
When they have completed their assigned routes, they return and regurgitate the gems into extradimensional spaces that the wizards have prepared to keep from activating the proximity spells within the stones. Afterward, the drow attempt to identify the gems ethereally and sell them in Mantol-Derith or Menzoberranzan. Xorns that showed restraint by not eating every gem in sight were more or less welcome in Blingdenstone when it was occupied, so nothing about their alignment or appearance generally triggers the spellgems.
The dark elves of Menzoberranzan's House Duskryn maintain a small, permanent garrison here, since Duskryn holds a charter from House Baenre for the salvage of Blingdensrone's spellgem defenses. Drow of other Houses can and do ignore this charter and dig whatever treasures they can from the ruins, but Duskryn warriors have dispatched more than one party of interlopers. Such skirmishes, however, have thus far been only with drow from Houses so small that Duskryn cares nothing about offending them. The leader of the Duskryn garrison is Zelzpassa Duskryn (NE female drow Rogue 3/Cleric 7 of Lolth).
Brikklext
(Upper Deep Wastes)
About a hundred goblin warrens are scattered throughout the Upperdark, but this one stands out from the rest because it has a strange, veneer of civilization. The tribe that lives here is led by a mixed council of blues (psionic goblins) and bugbears,
Chaulssin was once a drow city, but a clan of shadow dragons conquered the city and enslaved its inhabitants some 1,500 years ago. The Wyrmshadow dragons ruled Chaulssin for centuries, but at last they were overthrown by their own half-drow/half-dragon progeny, who had mastered powerful planar magic. Few of the Chaulssin descendants survive today, but a secret House of master drow assassins (the Jaezred Chaulssin).
Ched Nasad, City of the Shimmering Webs: (Middle Northdark). Formerly a cosmopolitan drow city suspended on more than one hundred layers of calcified webs, Ched Nasad now lies in smoking ruins at the bottom of its great chasm. House Zauvirr, a wealthy but low-ranking drow clan, arranged to smuggle hundreds of duergar mercenaries into Ched Nasad. Once inside, they launched a lightning onslaught against House Nasadra and House Melarn and attempted to seize the city.
duergar made extensive use of an alchemical incendiary known as stonefire to destroy the strongholds of the city's great Houses. But the stonefire bombs ignited the calcified webbing that supported the city's very structure, and one by one the great castles and thoroughfares of Ched Nasad fell burning to the bottom of the chasm. Ched Nasadans survived. A handful of minor Houses located on the chasm walls and in side-caverns weren't crushed by falling debris. The survivors numbered more than six thousand at first, but in the months since the catastrophe, almost half of this number have died of privation, fallen prey to Underdark monsters or gangs of slavers, or simply drifted away. A dozen drow Houses ranging in strength from ten to one hundred individuals still linger in the area, plus many crude gangs composed of ex-slaves and lesser races.
House Teh'Kinrellz: One of the minor houses of Ched Nasad remains nearly intact because most of its nobles were away on a chitine hunt when the city collapsed
Krashos (LE male adult blue dragon Sorcerer 12) was living among the drow of Ched Nasad in the guise of a drow wizard named Quevven Jusztiirn. He first visited Ched Nasad more than fifty years ago in search of Netherese lore, but he enjoyed the place and decided to remain indefinitely as an agent of his dragon clan from the Nether Mountains.
When the city collapsed, Krashos was on its bottom layer. Since he had no spells that could extract him from the wreckage, Krashos was forced to assume his true form and burrow away from the collapse. Krashos slew most of the slaves who fled after him into the tunnel he had created, but he saved one, a fire genasi, to be his agent.
9 CR 6/1 CR 8; Treasure (12,740) xp 756/ea
*************************************************************
Challenging; 50%
4 CR 9 Treasure (13,000), xp 825/ea
1 CR 13 Treasure (13,000) xp 825/ea
2 CR 11 Treasure (13,000) xp 825/ea
(Elder Fire Elemental (huge),
**************************************************************
Very Difficult 15%
5 CR 9 Treasure (15575gp) xp 1031/ea
9 CR 7 Treasure (14360gp) xp 928/ea
3 CR8/1 CR 11 Treasure (13,345) xp 825/ea
