The Sunless Sea and Surrounds

The Stinking Delta (#20/30; #171/365)

The Stinking Delta is the stagnant swampland where the underground River Scour drains into the Sunless Sea. A treacherous expanse of mud, quicksand, and still black water, profusely overgrown with luminous fungi, moss jungles and lichen thickets, the misshapen foliage of the Stinking Delta rustles with all kinds of life. Along the major waterways can be found occasional villages of TROGLODYTES, ever happy to accept tribute in return for steering traders' watercraft through the safer channels. Deep within the Delta's swamps is a gigantic spiral-edifice of baked black mud-brick - this is rumoured to be a temple to Siluva the Worm God and full of bloodsucking HIRUDINEAN acolytes, otherwise known as the dreaded Leech People! (for more information, see The Warlock Returns #9, pp. 4-5) The Troglodytes are sick of Hirudinean depredations and will pay mercenaries decent tribute to raid the swamp-temple and destroy the parasitic worm-things and their cursed shrine once and for all!

An encounter table for the Stinking Delta looks as follows:

3. GIANT MUDWORM (adult)

4. GIANT SLUG

5. TENTALLUS

6. VAMPYRIC SLIME MOULD

7. MOTTLED KRAKEN

8. a raft of trading FLAYERS

9. a band of TROGLODYTE hunters

10. GIANT LEECHES

11. a swarm of purple CAVE CRABS

12. a band of HIRUDINEAN maruaders

13. a skiff of N'YADACH fisherfolk

14. a pod of FUNGOIDS

15. a lurking KARANTH

16. SAND SQUID (in a pool of quicksand)

17. TENTACLED THING

18. DEVILWORM

The Sunless Sea (#21/30; #172/365)

This enormous underground lake of brackish water lies in a gigantic cavern beneath the Desert of Skulls, simultaneously draining any water from that arid wilderness and ensuring it stays barren and bone-dry. Some light is provided by phosphorescent fungi and moss as well as bioluminescent creatures dwelling under the waters, but, by and large, the Sunless Sea has only mild waves and currents and is largely weather-free. On its western shore lies the Stinking Delta, fed by the underground River Scour, but the eastern reaches of the sea are relatively uncharted. There are boats; usually N'yadach fisherfolk, as well as Flayers from the city of Grx on trading vessels, and rafts of Caarth pilgrims visiting the Island of Lost Souls (see below). Of course, many weird subterranean things also call the Sunless Sea their home - see below for a full encounter table:

3. an albino aquatic CESUOSHE serpent

4. LURKING HORROR

5. TENTACLED THING

6. A flock of CAVE VAMPIRES

7. A shoal of albino carnivorous FLYING FISH

8. A raft of CAARTH pilgrims

9. A barque of FLAYER traders with a BRAIN SLAYER captain

10. A swarm of purple CAVE CRABS

11. A shoal of albino SNAPPERFISH

12. A skiff of N'YADACH fisherfolk

13. A SKORN ore-barge

14. A swarm of subterranean SEA SPIDERS

15. A lone NYCTERIN flapping through the air

16. TENTALLUS

17. DEVILWORM

18. An amphibious LITHOGEN, pretending to be a small island

The Island of Lost Souls (#22/30; #173/365)

Legend states that aeons ago, an ancient desert shrine, thought to be Djaratian or Vatosian in origin, was accessible at a distant oasis via an underground tunnel. However, a freak event - the Splitting of the Lands, a regional earthquake, the displeasure of the gods (take your pick, really!) - caused the shrine to crash though the basal strata, and the roof-dome, and fall down into the shallows of the Sunless Sea, where it lodged like gigantic block of black basalt that just happened to have a ruined pillared shrine atop it, poking above the water to create an island and a series of rocky outlying reefs.

Now, the Island of the Lost Souls, as it is known, is home to a powerful GORGON called Q'thun Corrax (beautiful, greedy), and her coterie of servants and hangers-on, mainly hag-like MEDUSAE, SNAKE-GIRLS, SIRENS and other unsavoury types, who harvest fungi from the gardens about the island, and catch fish from the Sunless Sea. Among the fungi and the pillars are many weathered statues; the petrified remains of heroes and adventurers who have journeyed here, attempting to cleanse the island of evil.

Caarth pilgrims also journey here in some numbers to pay fealty to Q'thun, who they consider an avatar of Tanit in her role as Goddess of Venom. They are not targets of petrification, as long as they do not stray from the prescribed sanctuaries, and some Caarth stay on as hermits, perched on pillars of rock that rise above the Sunless Sea, eking out a marginal existence on fish and fungus. Occasionally the Caarth defend the shrine too, against bands of adventurers employed by the School of Yore, or the Order of Arzochollies, sent deep underground to the Island of Lost Souls, to restore to life one of the petrified legendary heroes, or at the very least scavenge their magical accoutrements.