Murkdeeps
Ervenian Era, 1051 AB
Murkdeeps is a labyrinth of lightless trenches and shell-walled cathedrals. In essence, Murkdeeps is a crushing black ocean where pearls glow like omens and every current leads toward an altar.
Economy and Exchange
Pearls (especially black), salvage, slaves, charts of Underdark seas, and chitin-crafts buy omens, escorts, and brief sanctuary. Exports: madness-wards etched in shell, claw-forged arms, blessed whips, and pearl oracles’ riddles.Security
Kuo-toa patrols, leviathan handlers, and claw-templars enforce edicts. Crimes: withholding tithe, bright-lighting a temple, aiding surface rescues, polluting holy waters.Customs
The Drowning
Central confirmation rite where one survives the flood-surge within the candle ring and serve forever under threat of recall.Pearl Tithe
Wealth is weight; pearls purchase audiences, omens, or a child’s marking by the Whip of Whips.Regurgantia
Devotees disgorge meals before idols: what nourished me now feeds the Mother.Catch and Drown
Patrols net surface-folk to honor ancient grievances; high bounties for elves and humans.Vigil of Bubbles
Priests read omen-patterns in rising bubble streams; dissenters are reinterpreted.Feast of Cast-Offs
Salvage banquets sanctify what the sea returns; refusing to eat invites suspicion of impurity.Geography
Below a roof of perpetual gloom, black trenches yawn like scars through a cold abyss. Shell-and-chitin architectures cling to cliff faces; pearl cysts vein the rock with dim, milky radiance. Forests of blind coral tick in clicking choruses, silt avalanches drift like slow storms, and geothermal chimneys exhale metallic snow that settles on ossuary fields. Processional canyons lead inexorably to drown-altars hung with net-runes and claws.
Notable Locations
Pearl-Cyst Palace
The Sea Mother’s seat with vaulted nacre halls, claw-thrones, and an audience trench fed by sacrificial drains.Labyrinth of Whips
Bureau-catacombs where edicts are scraped into shell; heresies are filed under corrections.Crustacean Choir Reef
Clicking coral and claw-chimes sing liturgy; choirs edit doctrine mid-hymn.Egg-Vaults of the Marked
Warm grottoes where chosen eggs incubate under whip-sigils and lobster guardians.Drowned Amphitheater
Tiered arena for show-sacrifices and omen plays performed in bubbles and silence.Ossuary Falls
A cascade of bone and silt sliding forever into a trench—offer a name, lose its memory.Angler’s Maw Gate
A titanic skull-gate lures travelers with familiar voices; opens to deeper precincts when fed.Cathedral of the Cast-Off
Shrine to salvage and regurgantia; its altars weigh gifts more than prayers.Blind Trenches
Divination-proof canyons where foreign gods cannot see; conspiracies breed here.Clawway Bazaar
Barter pearls, slaves, charts, and salvage under watchful monitors; all prices rise for surface folk.Travel and Access
Pearl Vortices
Cast a black pearl and a breath into a dark spring or sea-cave; the whirl opens to outer Murkdeeps.Drownways
Sacrificial drains beneath kuo-toa temples drop pilgrims and offerings straight to cathedral basins.Sinkholes of the Underdark
Brackish shafts from the Prime’s deep lakes descend to trench ledges.Shell-Gates
Bivalve arches open to a kuo-toa pass-phrase or an offering of salvage; shut like guillotines to bright light.Inhabitants
Kuo-toa masses (whips, monitors, leviathans, and marked prodigies), giant lobsters and crabs, water elementals bound as wardens, sea hags as tolerated brokers, drowned undead custodians of ossuaries, angler-wights, and Pearl Oracles, where construct-seers of nacre and chitin. Rivals (Mind Flayer, Dark Elf) rarely survive long; captured specimens become liturgy.Localized Phenomena
Black-Pearl Glow
Pearls throb brighter near lies or heresy; bribe poorly and your light falters.Sanity Shear
Meet an idol’s eyes and a memory sloughs away where clarity comes with a price.Whispering Thermoclines
Temperature bands carry chant; eavesdroppers learn truths and gain paranoia.Deadwater
Stagnant pockets negate momentum; creatures stall, prayers don’t carry, panic multiplies.Harvester Clouds
Shrimp swarms skeletonize carrion and unattended offerings and sometimes the inattentive, too.Mother’s Edict
Harming a kuo-toa within temple bounds curses air-breathers with waterlogged lungs until atonement.Trait Type |
Description |
|---|---|
| Gravity | Buoyant with trench-bias—you “float,” but pressure and currents continually urge you down-slope toward ritual deeps. |
| Time | Normal, punctuated by Madness Tides during high rites (insight checks falter; fear and compulsion linger longer). |
| Shape & Size | Infinite abysso-pelagic trenchwork braided with caverns, grottoes, and shell-built cities. |
| Morphic Traits | Divinely morphic to Blibdoolpoolp; mildly belief-morphic to kuo-toa dogma (processional ways open for the faithful, close to heretics). |
| Elemental Energy | Water Dominant. |
| Alignment | Chaotic Evil. |
| Magic | Water, darkness, silence, compulsion, summoning (crustaceans, elementals), and warding against surface divinations are enhanced. Fire, bright light, air magic, and healing that restores sanity are impeded; most glamers near idols are transparent to “the Mother’s gaze”. |
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