The City of the Pools

The City of the 'Pool of Organs'
Population : 75,000
Seperated into 7 quarters. 1 'Foreign Quarter' where people from outside the city can enter
and the 6 tribal quarters.
It is a violent, racaus place. Each quarter is policed by the the quarter's lords warriors.
Fights to the death are common. Canabalism is common. Trogs are mainly interested in amassing
and keeping large larders. They salt their meat.
Humanoids are tolerated in the Foreign Quarter, but other lizard races (e.g. kobolds) better
watch out even here, as the trogs hate them. They especially hate trogs from outside the city
environs and will kill them on sight! As they are suspected of being vampire thralls.
The priests of Laogzed also have a lot of power and will quite often rouse up a few thousand
trogs to go on some holy war against their enemies.
Their main enemies are a nearby nation of kobolds who inhabit endless underdark tunnels to
the west. And vampiric mindflayers to the east who enslave them as vampire tralls and send
them back.
As a result they cultivate mushroom-garlic and use 'vampire lamps' to detect vamps. They
totaly do not work!
The city is kept in total darkness. Anyone with a light will be told to put it out. Only
thr 'Vampire Lamps' are allowed.
The city reeks of trog stench - DC 13 Fort checks every hour
Other inhabitants include:
A few dark elf lords
Some Slyths
Driders
Triders (Troglodyte Spiders)
Introduction
In the Underdark the troglodytes do indeed have a 'city' under the mountains near Waterdeep. It is a good deal underground, nearly three miles down.
It is hot and humid down here, ancient magical pillars hold up a series of massive caverns that are the home to six tribes that are united under a ruler called the Lord of the Pools. He is in actual fact a powerful doppleganger wizard called Paradrax but that won't matter for now.
The elite trogs are called the War Leaders and report directly to LP. The priests of Laogzed (name from the wiki) also keep things together.
About a mile above the city is another network of caverns known as 'the Mouth of Doom' that are home to the 'sacred beasts'. There were five of them, one for each tribe, but the sixth was killed by Drydal Trant's idiot son and a bunch of delvers.They were all slain, except Trant Junior - for reasons!
The city - called Krassed'Ress (lit, the Pools of Organs) is seperated into six quarters. Pool of Spleens, Pool of Livers etc. Each tribe has about 10,000 trogs. It is very hard to get a proper census though because of all the tunnels and suburbs and the semi-feral ones.
They breed like rabbits, and keep slaves (dark elves, dwarves, other lizard and UD races) that keeps the population up. They eat mushrooms, snails, bug and 'lizard licks' mineral stones with magical properties that are posionous to humans but that grant them mutations (such as wings!) in some cases.
The Foreign Quality
From Rollo's Journal
It took a few gold coins to get past the gate and into the Foreign Quarter. Here I should explain a little of where we now were. The troglodyte city was called
'The Pool of Organs' or just 'Pool' for short. The troglodytes of this city were called 'Pudlians'. The city was organised into seven districts, six for each
of the Pudlian tribes and one at the entrance were non-Pudlians were allowed to come to trade. They distrusted all other races, but especially other lizard races and any other non-Pudlian troglodyte was killed on sight.
The smell in the Foreign Quarter was so bad that it made Veddic bring up his lunch. It was a haphazard and chaotic place, with the troglodyte warriors that guarded the main entrance the nearest thing to a town watch. They were only interested in squeezing coins out of visitors though and shining strange red and blue lamps in peoples faces for reasons I am still not clear on.
The Quarter was not overly large, no more than fifty buildings and it only took half an hour to see it all. A dark, gloomy, stinking place full of filth and strange looking Underdark races. I saw my first Derro, Koa-toa and Grimlock!
Unpleasant as most of it is, it's utterly fascinating!
The biggest building was up the back, it seemed to act as some kind of town hall where people could also sleep if they wanted to. I saw one or two more Slyths and some Duergar. I was happy to let Fenrir take the lead on this adventure as he knew more about what was going on than I did. This gave me lots of time to take in the architecture (this place is built on the ruins of... something) and talk to the natives.
The Gates
Each Quarter is heavily guarded with large heavy gates. People from the Foreign Quarter, half starved and in search of a better life will often try and storm the north gate to the Shambles.
The Shambles
At six in the morning we got up and I used my Stone Shape spell to dig a wee tunnel around the big rock and into the next district. As I learned later this place is known as 'The Shambles' and is a sort of slum area, full of half-starved troglodytes. There is a central tunnel, a large airy hall dug out and decorated long ago by dark elves. Off it it are a thousand smaller tunnels, dug by the trogs. It is very easy to get lost in the small side tunnels that go up and down and in and out in a completly random fashion.
There is a fortress between the Shambles and the Main City.
The Heart (main city)
The largest cavern, and where the 'middle and upper class' troglodytes and their dark elf rules live.
The Temple to Laogzed
The Temple to Laogzed was built by the dark elves that were the original inhabitants of Pool. In fact, the most senior clerics of the Temple were still dark elves and driders the last remnants of their presence in the city.
The building itself is large and domed, with eight wings all sticking out of it like the legs of a spider. The main entrance was through the 'head' of the spider, a set of two tall doors that were guarded by six tough looking trogs in plate armour.
There is a deep shaft within the Temple that leads to other ruined areas of the city:
The fact that the City of the Pools was built on ancient foundations was very apparent to me as we delved down into the dungeons underneath the temple of Laogzed. The stairs went down easily three hundred feet until opening out into a cave. Here we met a slyth father and son who operated a lift that went down even further. They were not threatening and when Fenrir gave them 1000 gold (!) they very helpfully took us down to the lower levels - another six hundred feet if I am any judge.
The slyth took us along some caverns, about half a mile of them. to an ancient dark-elf mansion that was now used as the temple prison. There were no guards here as there was no means of escape, or so the slyth said, so they were just left to get on with it until required again.
And from here there is a secret tunnel out:
Hudkah showed is the secret door and off we went. With the help of the dwarves, who were from Boatmurdered and new the area we found the Long Dark Ways, ancient dark elf highways that sat deep in the lower parts of the Middledark. It took the helpful dwarves just five hours to find somewhere they recognised and in ten hours we were at their fortress - the dwarven stronghold of Boatmurdered itself.
The Labyrinth
Below the City is a massive network of dungeons. As described by Rollo:
Well, I'm sat down now, writing this journal entry by the light of Veddic's everburning lantern. After a good rummage around in this dungeon I'm still not sure who made it. I think it is the work of many hands, starting with ancient drow possibly, then dwarves or duergar or someone, adding passages where they felt they needed them. There are also crudely hacked out side tunnels, and other passages that may have been done by Stone Shape spells. It's all very interesting, but given how dangerous this area is I think I'd rather be back in the true Underdark and not this labyrinth.
Here they encounter rust monsters, lizardfolk, troglodyes and shaddows among other things.
Fenrir and Rollo reached the Labyrinth thus:
The dwarves were still there, so Fenrir talked to them some more. He then talked to Veets, and hired him to help us get into the tunnels and dungeons under the city. In the afternoon Veets lead us down to a series of tunnels then used his magical pick axe to cast 'Stone Shape' multiple times and opened up another tunnel that he'd evidently dug a few days ago. It lead all the way to the Pool dungeons. The tunnel led is through a lovely chasm as well. Veets had built a bridge over it and we stopped to admire the view. It was dark of course, but our lanterns illuminated a fair bit of it. Drypp was impressed too. I am learning about the slyth from him. Apparently they are peaceful folk, and consider themselves to be the caretakers of the Underdark. It is common for them to become druids and care for the nature that exists down here. I found myself getting along with him very well.
It was hard to tell, by now, what time of day it was, but I venture it was around midnight when we finally reached the end of Veets tunnel. Again he used his magic pick to Stone Shape the rest of the way and as he opened up an entrance to the dungeon for us he said;
'This is it, the Dungeons of Pool.'
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