The Warrens

Start-class article · First seen: s4 · Last seen: s7
The Warrens
Warrens · the Hollow's lair · Maelis's lair
Portrait of The Warrens.
Location
StatusAbandoned
First seens4
Last seens7
FactionThe Hollow

The Warrens are the underground lair beneath Umbrafall’s Black Hollow Market where Maelis Dirn kept her base, her experiments and her giant, The Titan. The party fought through fungal tunnels, a sludge-pit cavern, a statue storeroom and the Maze of the Minotaur across sessions 5 to 7. Maelis died in session 7 when the Titan turned on her [6], and the lair has been empty since.

Overview

The Warrens are the underground lair beneath Umbrafall’s Black Hollow Market where Maelis Dirn kept her base, her experiments and her giant, The Titan. The Broker sent the party after her in session 4 [5], and they fought through the tunnels over sessions 5 to 7: a fungal giant, the Hollow Guardians, a sludge-pit cavern, a Phase Spider, a mind-controlling bookshelf and the Maze of the Minotaur. Maelis died in session 7, when the Titan turned on her [6]. The wiki reads the Warrens as one cleared section of the Gloaming Warrens, the deep fungal workings the world brief says help keep the city alive.

Geography and appearance

Natural caves shored up with wooden pillars, lit dimly by bioluminescent algae and fungi that have soaked into the roots and foundations [7][8][9]. Spores drift like lazy snow [10], and the whole area is saturated with magic of every kind, so that Detect Magic is swamped [11]. The great hall deeper in predates Umbrafall itself, and something big has been through it recently [12].

Layout

  • Tunnel under the market: the way in. Faint runes, scratched rather than carved, catch violet light and point deeper in [10]. Caelumn’s Produce Flame burned the spores off the walls and exposed a rune path that led to a hidden door [13][14][15].
  • Entry cave and side cavern: a natural cave shored up with wooden pillars, with a bulbous side cavern pulsing violet, its floor slick with slime, bone shards and half-sunk cart wheels [16]. A fungal giant burst from the floor here and kept regrowing until its three nodes were cut [17][18][19].
  • Corridor of the Hollow Guardians: the only way on. Dozens of hollow eye sockets turn in unison to follow the party, ending at two glowing figures who ask whether they are thieves or servants of the hollow [20].
  • Collapsed side passage: rubble over a hidden satchel with five red vials and a scroll of Wither and Bloom [21].
  • Sludge-pit cavern: a humid, reeking, bowl-shaped cavern with two or three pits of bubbling acid froth, five-foot stone runnels and a collapsed walkway, its walls sweating biogloom. Corpses half-submerged in the sludge rose as zombies [22].
  • Hall of the minotaur: beyond, stone doors sag on broken hinges and roots hang like nooses [23]. The hall is lit by biogloom, with glowing statues in all but one corner, a giant minotaur icon in the floor, stairs down to either side and a double-width stair up [9]. A sarcophagus bears a minotaur head with a gemstone in its forehead [24].
  • Statue storeroom: crates among statues of minotaurs in different poses [25]. A phase spider waited on the ceiling over Caelumn [26]. The party long-rested here behind rubble and an Alarm [27][28] and found three healing potions, a salve, a biogloom-resin buckler and a silvered shortsword in the crates [29].
  • Bookshelf room: to the south, a sarcophagus barring the doorway and a bookshelf of scrolls that calls to whoever enters; Caelumn knelt before it until Hugo dragged him out by the leg [30]. It was left unread [31].
  • The maze: open corridors 15 feet wide under a ceiling about 60 feet up, with nowhere to hide [32]. A side room holds Maelis’s desk, her notes on the Titan, and papers about shipping through Duskwatch [33]. A chamber with two minotaur statues fifty times human size and a buried, decayed heart is a node that draws on the biogloom and channels it inwards towards the maze [34]. Nearby are more sarcophagi, one trapped with acid gas, and a store of crates holding organs and potions [35].
  • The boss’s room: Caelumn blundered into it by accident [36]. It is not described. The Titan’s fight ranged through the maze, among five clusters of fungal nodes [37][38].

Inhabitants

  • Maelis Dirn: killed by the Titan in session 7 [6].
  • The Titan: her giant, bound to the nodes; it disappeared after her death [39].
  • Hollow Guardians: two, destroyed in session 5 [40].
  • The fungal giant, the sludge-pit zombies and the phase spider: all killed [41][42][43].
  • Masked collectors: Maelis’s “dogs”, who shook down the market stalls above and bolted when followed [5][44][45].
  • The bookshelf: still there, unread [31].

Government / control

Maelis Dirn’s protection racket and experimentation operation. The Hollow Guardians spoke of “the Master” [46], and the Broker told the party that the Hollow would pay what was owed for her death [47]. The Warrens have been leaderless since she died.

Notable features

History in the campaign

Session 4: The Still Current, the Black Mask, and Hugo’s Pact

Main article: Session 4

The Warrens first come up when the Broker contracts the party to kill Maelis. He told them she sends her dogs to collect coin and then “scurries back into the Warrens”, so they should follow the dogs in [5]. The party watched the market, trailed three masked collectors with stitched-leather faces, and lost them when Terry’s attempt at sneaking made them bolt [44][45]. Hugo tracked them to an opening in the ground, and the party decided to go down stealthily next time [52][53].

Session 5: Black Hollow Market Tunnels and the Hollow Guardians

Main article: Session 5

The party went in under the market, where spores drifted like snow and magic detection was swamped [10][11]. Caelumn’s Produce Flame burned a rune path into view and led them to a hidden entrance [13][14][15]. A fungal giant burst from the first cave and kept regrowing until its nodes were cut [17][18][41]. A corridor of staring eye sockets led to two Hollow Guardians, who drained Caelumn’s and Vasquez’s maximum hit points before they fell [20][54][40]. The party found a hidden satchel [55] and met risen corpses in the sludge-pit cavern, where the session ended [22][56].

Session 6: Maze of the Minotaur and the Titan

Main article: Session 6

Beyond the sludge pits lay a vast hall with a minotaur icon in the floor [57][9]. A phase spider dropped on the party in the statue storeroom, put Caelumn, Harvo and Hugo down, and was killed; the party long-rested there [58][43][59]. A bookshelf in the next room bent Caelumn’s will until Hugo dragged him out [60]. In the maze Hugo found Maelis’s desk and her notes on the Titan [48], and Terry read the heart chamber as a node feeding the maze [61]. The Titan came out, Maelis found Hugo among the nodes, and the fight stopped mid-round with two of the five node clusters cut [62][63][64][65].

Session 7: Maelis Falls, Vasquez Captured

Main article: Session 7

The Titan fight resumed. Hugo cut the third and fourth node clusters and found the last [66][67][68], while Maelis blasted the party with force and marked Vasquez for the Titan [69][70]. Harvo’s turret put the Titan on its knees and Hugo’s reckless strike destroyed the last cluster [38]. The Titan, grown stronger, turned on Maelis when she pointed her ring at it, said “No more”, and pounded her into the ground with a natural-20 blow for 34 [6]. The party took her cracked ring, 50 gold and two vials of biogloom toxin [51].

Status

As of session 23. Cleared and abandoned, and not revisited since session 7. The deeper Gloaming Warrens beyond this section are unexplored. In session 19 Hugo told the Wraith that he had destroyed what remained there “to my knowledge” [71], but the bookshelf was walked away from, not destroyed [31]. Caelumn carries Maelis’s ring.

See also

References

  1. ^ Session 4, line 1572-1840: The Broker names the Warrens as Maelis's lair; the party trails her collectors to an opening in the ground.
  2. ^ Session 5, line 171-1607: The tunnel under the market, the hidden entrance, the fungal giant, the Hollow Guardians, the satchel and the sludge-pit cavern.
  3. ^ Session 6, line 226-2935: The minotaur hall, the phase spider and the storeroom, the bookshelf, the maze, Maelis's desk and the heart node, and the first half of the Titan fight.
  4. ^ Session 7, line 100-633: The Titan fight concludes; the Titan kills Maelis with a natural-20 blow; the party loots her remains.
  5. ^ Session 4, line 1572: Inline citation.
  6. ^ Session 7, line 610-614: Inline citation.
  7. ^ Session 5, line 229: Inline citation.
  8. ^ Session 5, line 397: Inline citation.
  9. ^ Session 6, line 312: Inline citation.
  10. ^ Session 5, line 173: Inline citation.
  11. ^ Session 5, line 239: Inline citation.
  12. ^ Session 6, line 236: Inline citation.
  13. ^ Session 5, line 292-322: Inline citation.
  14. ^ Session 5, line 351: Inline citation.
  15. ^ Session 5, line 378-384: Inline citation.
  16. ^ Session 5, line 397-399: Inline citation.
  17. ^ Session 5, line 484-486: Inline citation.
  18. ^ Session 5, line 611-672: Inline citation.
  19. ^ Session 5, line 821-857: Inline citation.
  20. ^ Session 5, line 891-894: Inline citation.
  21. ^ Session 5, line 1506-1550: Inline citation.
  22. ^ Session 5, line 1570-1607: Inline citation.
  23. ^ Session 6, line 226: Inline citation.
  24. ^ Session 6, line 341: Inline citation.
  25. ^ Session 6, line 376: Inline citation.
  26. ^ Session 6, line 392-396: Inline citation.
  27. ^ Session 6, line 807: Inline citation.
  28. ^ Session 6, line 840-851: Inline citation.
  29. ^ Session 6, line 942-946: Inline citation.
  30. ^ Session 6, line 1025-1087: Inline citation.
  31. ^ Session 6, line 1101-1118: Inline citation.
  32. ^ Session 6, line 1160-1167: Inline citation.
  33. ^ Session 6, line 1226-1263: Inline citation.
  34. ^ Session 6, line 1372-1425: Inline citation.
  35. ^ Session 6, line 1484-1527: Inline citation.
  36. ^ Session 6, line 1356-1361: Inline citation.
  37. ^ Session 6, line 1455: Inline citation.
  38. ^ Session 7, line 570-571: Inline citation.
  39. ^ Session 7, line 614-615: Inline citation.
  40. ^ Session 5, line 1267-1277: Inline citation.
  41. ^ Session 5, line 857: Inline citation.
  42. ^ Session 5, line 1787: Inline citation.
  43. ^ Session 6, line 708-718: Inline citation.
  44. ^ Session 4, line 1770: Inline citation.
  45. ^ Session 4, line 1818: Inline citation.
  46. ^ Session 5, line 1182: Inline citation.
  47. ^ Session 4, line 1576: Inline citation.
  48. ^ Session 6, line 1226-1230: Inline citation.
  49. ^ Session 6, line 1453-1455: Inline citation.
  50. ^ Session 6, line 944: Inline citation.
  51. ^ Session 7, line 633: Inline citation.
  52. ^ Session 4, line 1830: Inline citation.
  53. ^ Session 4, line 1840: Inline citation.
  54. ^ Session 5, line 938: Inline citation.
  55. ^ Session 5, line 1506-1534: Inline citation.
  56. ^ Session 5, line 1818: Inline citation.
  57. ^ Session 6, line 226-255: Inline citation.
  58. ^ Session 6, line 376-396: Inline citation.
  59. ^ Session 6, line 877-903: Inline citation.
  60. ^ Session 6, line 1061-1087: Inline citation.
  61. ^ Session 6, line 1404-1425: Inline citation.
  62. ^ Session 6, line 1707-1714: Inline citation.
  63. ^ Session 6, line 2410-2414: Inline citation.
  64. ^ Session 6, line 2893: Inline citation.
  65. ^ Session 6, line 2933: Inline citation.
  66. ^ Session 7, line 100-102: Inline citation.
  67. ^ Session 7, line 325-332: Inline citation.
  68. ^ Session 7, line 462-469: Inline citation.
  69. ^ Session 7, line 124-126: Inline citation.
  70. ^ Session 7, line 477-481: Inline citation.
  71. ^ Session 19, line 448: Inline citation.