Underdark

The Underdark was the enormous system of subterranean caves, caverns, and tunnels located beneath the surface of Faerun and, perhaps, all of Toril.

See https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Underdark for more.

Happenings

§ Details
34 #battle #ADuergarPlot The trapdoor led to an alcove behind Xardorok's Black Ice throne within Sunblight Fortress, sitting in a long, desolate great hall. Black dust and soot covered the upper walls as smoke hung below the tall ceilings. A set of high windows set in the brutal architecture hinted at two scenes outside the hall: the cavernous expanse of the Underdark to the west and the red bellows of a forge on the east. Two duergar entered from the west doorways at the rear staircases, leading to a scuffle that was eventually settled as a misunderstanding. These two were Olpha Muzgardt's men. They retold how a manic Xardorok had taken made preparations for Olpha to dine on the central Command Level of the fortress. The throne room was on an isolated side of the lowest level, the Forge Level, though direct access to the forge would require breaching a fortified portcullis from the outer yard. Instead, the duergar named Bruvo warily suggested they hurry to the elevators. He was worried because some of Xardorok's newer recruits were only a room away: quaggoths, low intelligence, hyper-violent humanoids from the Underdark which Xardorok was able to subjugate. The heroes took his advice, heading to the lift.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition The party neared the duergar mining colony, whose lamp lights were seen a mile down in the cavernous valley's floor. Sensei worried that their own presence would be met with possible hostility, since some duergar were known for prizing myconid flesh. Therefore the party took efforts to conceal themselves. They told Sensei to play dead, as they carted them in through the town's outer guardpost, claiming they had myconid for sale. Tetro took the form of a mule, and Fern decided to conceal her tiefling self, though tucking the tail proved troublesome. She applied some grey tint to Gadget so that she may appear to be a deep gnome. The half-orcs, Oona and Azgul, along with the bugbear Crank felt their presence was fine, given that the town below was reputedly frequented by other Underdark dwellers for trade.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition The duergar mining town had Sunblight soldiers positioned as guards. Past them, the party saw a series of dingy shacks and grimed shanty houses leading to a busy market square. The guards were deceived by the party's tale of being adventuring merchants with fungus for sale. Used to exerting their power, the older guard pressed them for a bribe. With a deft slight of handle, Crank took a fake cut of Sensei, and handed the duergar a tongue of madness. The guard began rambling, one thought after the next. He not only granted the party passage, but revealed that Sunblight merely controlled the town, that other duergar had to be kept in line, and that a duergar princess from the Muzgardt clan was staying at the other end of the markets, awaiting an invitation to dine and be courted by Xardorok himself. She was known to come from a line of merchant brewers in the distant cavern city of Gracklstugh.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition The ashen and dirtied local duergar miners kept to themself, avoiding the party, as they moved into the busy markets of the town, now known to be called Thizrun. Several deep gnomes pandered mining technology, shoved along by the occassional Sunblight soldier, and hooded drow were seen making deals in alleys with savvy duergar artisans. The town numbered one to three hundred it seemed, and one roadway appeared to lead towards the duergar's mining activity. The party noted an opulent tent as well, with several armed duergar moving in and out. This must belong to the princess. As they were milling about, they heard a croaky whisper, "Hey! I know you!" T-Rex the kobold was in a cage, his snout and eyes poking out from under a cloth. A cock-eyed duergar slaver and his bugbear bodyguard manned the booth. It seems like T-Rex fled back into the Underdark after the party took care of his cronies in Termalaine and was caught thieving. He was now for sale.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition Weariness began to set in. The party had been adventuring for nearly a full 24 hours. They found a roadside duergar bar, where several anxious miners tried their best to ignore them. Oona clapped one on the back and massaged the tired worker, but was taken aback when chardalyn fragments flaked off their skin. The party discovered that the mines were once brimming with the black ice, before the duergar sought out purer sources on the surface. While the dwarves were somewhat more tolerant of its corrupting effects, the party began to sense its malignant presence in the area. Azgul toyed with the stone in his pocket, his grip tightening. These duergar were downtrodden, but eventually one directed them to an inn of sorts.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition The inn had seen better days. Its duergar owner, Girt, did not receive the guests with open arms. He didn't care for the travelers. He didn't care for the Sunblight. He wanted to be left alone. When pressed about Sunblight, he admitted that the duergar warlord was mad, worshiping Deep Duerra, the duergar demigoddess known as the Axe of Conquest. Deep Duerra, though, had disappeared a hundred years ago. On top of that, once a nameless hovel, the very village they were in was annexed by Sunblight after the discovery of chardalyn ore. It was renamed Thizrun, the name of Xardorok's first wife who he executed. Xardorok's fortress was built up on the opposite side of the mines. Girt demanded 300 gp for the party to stay the night, since he was risking his neck. Girt, too stubborn to be swayed, convinced the party to acquiesce.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition The party managed to rest while staking out the Muzgardt tent. They counted five guards and, as the curtained door fluttered, a duergar woman inside. The guards wore different regalia than the Sunblight. Chancing a meeting, Fern and Oona went to the tent, asserting to her guard that they had an appointment to discuss fungus trade with the brewer princess. While the guard let them in, the duergar princess - who turned out to be nearly 300 years old - saw through them quickly, wondering why the tiefling was poorly attempting to hide her tail. She conjured tea leaves and asked them to sit. Discussion led to understanding: Olpha Muzgardt saw Xardorok Sunblight as a threat. Hovering near the women was a toy chardalyn dragon made in Xardorok's forge, which pulsed with the magic of a red dragon's heart. It was a gift of courtship she said. But she saw through Xardorok. He fervently attested to his connection to Deep Duerra, though chardalyn deranged his every thought. Not only was he a foolish warmonger, he was a threat to the Underdark. Xardorok was bent on conquering the Northdark in its entirety and all the lands that lie above.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition Xardorok Sunblight had been married three times, according to Olpha, siring nine children. He killed his first wife, Thizrun. His second wife, Yrraska, was killed in a tunnel collapse along with two of their daughters. His third wife, Marral, was killed during a raid against a mind flayer enclave, along with another daughter and three sons. Xardorok killed his eldest son, Ulthoon, son of Thizrun, for plotting to overthrow him. His surviving offspring number three, Durth, Nildar, and Morin. Xardorok wears a crown of chardalyn with nine spires representing his children, six of which he had since broken off. Now he wished to wed Olpha, seizing the Muzgardt Clan's merchant enterprises and mushroom ale factories.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition The candid Olpha Muzgardt's expression turned serious. After this discussion, it was clear the party's goals aligned with her own. They would help her depose Sunblight, she threatened, as her guards poised themselves behind our heroes. In return, she would reveal to them a hidden entrance into the fortress into its throne room, which they could take advantage of while she was dining the warlock himself. She vowed to have no interest in the surface folk following the coup, attesting to care only for the preservation of her clan.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition Speaking of mushroom ale, Olpha Muzgardt provided the party tinctures that would delay the onset of chardalyn corruption. The duergar were naturally resilient to poisons, including the malignant influence of the black ice, though it certainly affected them over time. This brew, she said, may help the party. Or, maybe it wouldn't, if their constitutions failed to handle it.
32 #UnderdarkExpedition Oona couldn't help but feel sorry for T-Rex, despite Crank and Azgul pleading with her to leave the issue. Fern had to chime in that an indentured servant at their newly deeded inn in Bryn Shander might not be a bad thing. And so it went that the party took T-Rex into their fold, for the meager cost of 50 gp.
31 #UnderdarkExpedition Mev Flintknapper told the party they're crazy to head towards Sunblight Fortress, but, as they stood on one face of a chasm spanned by a lone bridge spanning a river of lava, he did warn them to take heed of awakening any stirges. Stirges, they recalled, are rat sized flying bloodsuckers, and the far cavern walls seemed to be pocked with their nesting holes. Across this bridge was the duergar mining colony where Sloopidoop, Aruk Thundercaller, and Sensei landed when teleporting away from Sunblight's prisons. There, the party was told, was a Duergar princess from the Muzgardt clan. Xardorok Sunblight had summoned the woman to court her, but the rumor in the mining colony, which sounded like a somewhat open city for Underdark trade despite the presence of the Sunblight clan, was that the princess was of an independent mind.
31 #battle #UnderdarkExpedition If crossing the ancient dwarven bridge wasn't foreboding enough, the large creature's shell in the middle of the pathways certainly proved ominous. Jarnathan the familiar nearly singed its whiskers off when scouting. The party decided to push through, calling out the magma whelk within the shell. As the foe delayed their transit, the sounds of battle stirred the cave walls. An exponentially growing number of stirges poured into the air. Crank, the first to cross the chasm into the cool crevasse on the other side, noted that the stirges did not pursue. He called for his companions to run. Felling the whelk, the party dashed to safety, and as they collapsed into the crack in the wall, the swarm of stirges descending on Aruk Thundercaller at the rear. Enveloped in a hundred stirges, Aruk beseeched the party to save his captive brother, the goliath Kapanuk Talltree. Aruk then fell from the bridge, lifelessly.
30 #UnderdarkExpedition Standing before a Sussur Tree emerging from a petrified Phaerimm, the party decided to harvest some of its leaves to take advantage of its antimagical aura. Azgul advised caution, as the elven scriptures surrounding the site both heralded the creature and served as a warning of its calamitous power. Oona, Crank, and Fern each managed to walk away with a piece of its foliage, but only after reckoning with the perturbations of the entombed monster. Neither decidedly alive nor dead, whatever seals which held this phaerimm showed the slightest of cracks, spurring Crank into madness, driving him to attack Tetro until Gadget deduced that even slumbering fossils could concentrate on their magicks.
30 #UnderdarkExpedition The party had been watched during this encounter. There were kobolds who lived in the desolation of the drow ruins. Those ran away. There was a party up ahead, however. On meeting them, an exasperated sahuagin fishman, notably articulate and adorned in robes, chastised the group for disturbing not only such a creature but such a wonderous ruin. This fishman introduced himself as the Society of Brilliance scholar Sloopidoop. He was accompanied by two travelers, a goliath with a concussion named Aruk Thundercaller and a myconid who missed its sovereign named Sensei.
30 #battle #UnderdarkExpedition Forging their way deeper into the Underdark, the party ran into a cavern of ropers, ferocious stalagmites lookalikes with grasping tendrils. Chaos roiled as a Mev Flintknapper appeared screaming for them to watch out, as a shambling mound was on his tail. The party, after slogging through the rock skinned ropers, managed to overwhelm the shambling mound. Taking a short rest before continuing their expedition, they eventually found themselves at a precipice with a great bridge before them.
29 #ADuergarPlot #UnderdarkExpedition Over several days, the Heroes of the Cairn took care to prepare for the forthcoming expedition, a journey into the Underdark to infiltrate Sunblight Fortress and apprehend the duergar warlord Xardorok Sunblight before his army marches on Ten Towns with chardalyn siege weaponry. Gadget used her time to research the capabilities of the duergar military, while others convened with members of the council. Fern found a local stylist to polish and primp her horns. Azgul wandered off, then returned after picking up several potions of healing. Tetro was overheard chatting to three kobolds in a trenchcoat about fungi of the Underdark.
29 #UnderdarkExpedition #ADuergarPlot The party stabled their dogs in Termalaine. Accompanied by Oarus Masthew and Copper, they made their way into the mines, whose central shaft was now known to connect to the Underdark. A crude kobold map was given to them, barely decipherable, but containing a marker for a "glow tree", another for "grey folk village," and several dots warning for "bad things." On descending via a pulley, the temperature rose to a comfortable cool and the air went from icy dry to moist. Minutes later, they reached soft earth. At their feet were two kobold corpses, seen alive weeks ago, and now blooming with fungi. In front of them laid a fissure. Beyond that an endless cavern. It would be 20 miles to Sunblight.
29 #UnderdarkExpedition After hours in the dark, the party came into a large fungus grove. Tetro's study of nature came to be useful as several specimen were collected, from varietals providing a source of sustenance to others like the timmask spore that were maddeningly hallucinogenic. See Fungi of the Underdark for details.
29 #battle #UnderdarkExpedition A voice pervaded into Fern's head. "Miss your son do you?" Something was watching them. Intimately. Unable to locate the source the party ventured forward. After a stumble, Azgul saw straight into the creature's eye. Feeling its rotting gaze burning his lifeforce away, he was able to recall what this twisted creature was. It was a nothic - a gollum of sorts, a mage or weavebender that went a bit to far and a bit too mad and turned into a one-eyed wretch. Battle ensued, as the caverns gave way to an old ruined city. The party defeated the nothic as well as several drow skeletons whose bones were awakened by the clamor.
29 #UnderdarkExpedition Walking through the drow ruins, they took note that this city had long since been abandoned. Its structures were bereft of treasure, and were instead blossoming purple foliage and growth. A soft blue light in the city square grabbed their attention. Approaching, all but Oona and Crank felt amiss - half calm and half mute. They arrived to see a large sussur tree, blue petals glimmering and dispelling the surrounding weave, silencing all magic. It was growing out of a corpse, the body of an ancient phaerimm.
28 #TheCouncil #ADuergarPlot When considering the approach to Sunblight Fortress, Oarus Masthew suggested the Underdark. It seems that mining activity has determined that the central shaft of the Termalaine mine, once thought to be a bottomless pit, opens up into the vastness of the deep. While duergar activity has not been spotted there, a pathway to their supply lines ought to be inevitable.
20 #ADuergarPlot Disguising Crank and Azgul as handsome Underdark mercenaries, the party concocted a ruse. Tetro wild-shaped into a war horse hauling a sled full of "chardalyn." Under the wrapping, of course, were Hazel, Fern, and Oona poised to strike. The ruse gained them entry, but pressing the duergar flunky, who insisted Nildar Sunblight was busy in his lab, only arouse suspicious. Tetro charged hoof first into a duergar, sparking a brutal offensive as alarm bells went off. A dozen dead duergar and several splattered spore servants later, the party breathed a collective sigh of relief. Nildar Sunblight was dead. Now to see what he was plotting.
18 #ChardalynCaper #ADuergarPlot The two standing duergar were coerced into talking. The mind master that the party just killed was named Durth Sunblight. He was one of the remaining sons of Xardorok Sunblight, a duergar lord with a mountain fortress in the Spine of the World. The duergar race, known for having lived in the Underdark for centuries, were descendants of dwarves turned grim and having developed psionic abilities after eons of influence by mind flayer colonies. Xardorok's intent is to bring his people to the surface, raze Ten Towns, and establish a footprint for his own people to live in the dim twilight of Icewind Dale. He has dispatched two of his sons, Durth and Nildar Sunblight, to scout ahead. Durth is now dead, and Nilder is in charge of an outpost on the eastern face of Kelvin's Cairn. The stolen chardalyn from East Haven Town Hall was meant to be hauled back to Sunblight Fortress to be forged into siege weaponry. After confessing, the two duergar made a getaway, narrowly avoiding an axe to their necks as they turned invisible and bolted.
04 #ABeautifulMine Speaker Oarus Masthew is a gregarious, seemingly liked half-orc. He detailed the troubles with the tourmaline mine. Since the mines eventually connect to the Underdark, occasionally some denizens of the deep creep on upwards. Currently, a population of kobold seem to have taken root in the mine. There have been hosilities, but no deaths. The reward for clearing the mine is 50g, and he'd turn a blind eye to any gems the party picks up while in the mine itself.