Depths of Madness (novel)

Depths of Madness, by Erik Scott de Bie, is the first book of the loosely-related The Dungeons series.
==Summary==
Fox-at-Twilight watched her adventuring band, including her partner Arandon, die at the hands of lizardmen and a mutated troll before passing out.
She woke up in a cell guarded by anti-magic enchantments with the Daleman Liet. After causing a scene, Twilight discovered the mutated troll, named Tlork, is guarding the prison. She tricked the troll and freed the prisoners in the surrounding cells; Slip the talkative halfling follower of Yondalla, the sun elf priestess of Corellon, Talsin, and her partner arcanist Asson, the goliath Gargan, and the warlock Davoren.
Twilight was elected the leader after a brief debate and standoff with Davoren, who threatened the party before agreeing. The group set about escaping the prison. Gargan helped Slip find a trapdoor in the ceiling while Twilight picked the lock to a chest that contained a variety of weapons armor, and gear, many of them personal items of the group, including Twilight's sword, Betrayal.
Armed, the party climbed through the trapdoor. The troll was alerted to the escape by an omnipotent master. 
On a staircase beyond the trapdoor, the party discovered a glyph that Slip accidentally set off while examining. Asson revealed the trap's incantation was spoken in a difficult dialect of the Netherese language. A crypt at the top of the stairs was bloodstained and full of murals and glyphs depicting Netherese battles with the cone shaped phaerimm. Further in the crypt, after finding a broken portal, the party was attacked by wights. 
One of the wights was formerly Arandon and it appeared to recognize Davoren before attacking him. Asson was hobbled by an injury in the ensuing chaos, and the party decided to make camp in the crypts. The group bickered, with significant distrust between various members, until Twilight threatened them, pointing out the group is well balanced, despite personalities.
Slip revealed she is from Luiren, the halfling country in the Shining South, which Twilight had visited.
Out of the crypt, the group arrived in sewer not used in a very long time, and determined they were in the bowels of an ancient city. Exploring the sewers took a full day, and Twilight became convinced something was watching them, likely her patron. The party found a trapped passage out of the sewers, and Twilight was injured leading the party through it.
While resting Twilight revealed Betrayal was made of the alloy Hizagkuur, and was one of the first such weapons forged in the Northland before the rise of Cormanthyr, during a time elves and dwarves freely traded.
The passage led to a group of caverns infested with grimlocks. The party fought them, and Twilight and Talsin were taken captive. Davoren tried to convince the rest of the party to abandon the captives.
The grimlocks began a ritual procession to sacrifice the captives to their god Ithilnin, and carried them on stretchers through a cavern with a grimlock city in it to an even larger but plain cavern in which Asson caused the illusion of a massive purple worm to appear through a hole in the floor. Under the protection of a silence spell, Liet and Slip freed the captives, but an even larger purple worm, the grimlock's god, arrived before they could escape, and broke the illusion.
In the following combat, Asson was crushed by the purple worm due to Davoren's betrayal, and Taslin was severely injured killing the worm. Tlork showed up as the party attempted to escape from the remaining grimlocks. The grimlocks saw Tlork as a larger threat than the party, and fought him instead.
Devoran collapsed a tunnel behind the party, and they found themselves in a part of the ruined city built as a minotaur maze. After being healed, Taslin swore a blood oath to kill Davoren once the group was freed, blaming him for Asson's death.
After sending everyone but Davoren to find a path back to the sewers, Twilight fought him. During the battle it was confirmed Davoren was an unnamed member of Twilight's original party hired in Westgate, and served the archdevil Asmodeus while claiming demonic lineage. Twilight paralyzed him using nar’talas venom, or Locklimb, made from a rare centipede native to Evermeet, threatened him with a fate worse than death if he betrayed the party again, and to prove her point, left him half-paralyzed to catch up to the party on his own or die.
At camp, Twilight shared a tender moment of remembrance for Asson with Taslin, somewhat to her chagrin. Davoren caught up.
The next day the party ran into a group of lizardmen that activated an invisible golem, killing many and causing the rest to flee. Twilight captured one lizardman which mentioned a mad sharn before dying. The party avoided the room and eventually set camp after avoiding more lizardmen and finding two potential exits to the area, a wizard's sanctum.
After resting the party realized something had shifted passages, and found a carving written in Qualith. The carving described the anguish of its Illithid writer having been trapped in a place called Negarath. The party fought some lizardman and arrived at a bowl shaped chamber with a summoning circle in the center. Slip accidentally activated two helmed horror guardians of the circle which were quickly dispatched, before the party was ambushed by a hangman golem on the ceiling that killed Taslin immediately.
Devoran slipped away into a secret passage while the rest of the party fought and destroyed the golem. He returned with a looted scepter after the battle. Twilight tracked the hangman golem's path along the ceiling to a secret door high up in a room they had passed through earlier.
Having become romantically entangled, Twilight confessed to Liet she believed the party was being watched, and there was a spy in the group. The next day she sent the group under Liet's lead up one potential exit, while she explored the passage she expected an ambush on and found a group of lizardmen which she defeated.
Liet's group followed the passage up to the streets of Negarath, inside a cavern full of giant fungi and strange twisted plants, the ruins of buildings that seemed to have been built upside down looming overhead. An abeil hive sensed them and attacked, forcing them into a building where they met back up with Twilight who announced she had seen the cities Mythallar, and it was intact. The group attempted to escape by climbing the central arcanist tower and digging a hole through the ceiling, but were unsuccessful and captured by the mad sharn Ruukthalmuramaxamin, or Ruuk. 
Only bargaining with Twilight and Gargan, Ruuk revealed they are cursed, and ancient enemies with the demon-priest Gastel, who brought the party to this dungeon. The two agreed to kill Gastel so that Ruuk would release their companions, and the sharn teleported them back to the original dungeon. Realizing that the Mythallar was causing gravity to be reversed in the city, through hints from the sharn, they found a hatch in the floor. The hatch led to natural caves, a gravity inversion, and Slip showed up, explaining she had not been captured, but unable to explain how she'd found them again. 
The three continued, more lizardmen were killed, as well as Taslin's reanimated corpse. On a hunch, Twilight suspected Davoren had also escaped capture, and sensed him a bit ahead of them by using her powers. The group stealthed through tunnels full hundreds of lizardmen and ran into Tlork, who Gargan declared he would kill. Tlork led them to Gastel who appeared as Liet, and during the fight Slip was blinded and left behind, while Gargan escaped with the severely wounded Twilight to a goliath village. 
After her wounds healed, Twilight and Gargan headed back to the canyon in the Plain of Standing Stones Gargan had escaped Negarath from, and they re-entered the city to find Betrayal, and face Gastel as well as Tlork again. They discovered Tlork hidden above Betrayal, and he ambushed them. Twilight was once again badly injured, and Gargan fell into a chasm with Tlork.
Davoren appeared, healing Twilight just to exact his revenge on her, but failed and she finally made good on her earlier threat.
Following the catacombs, Twilight found the place they had fought Gastel at and worked around a crevice he had created to get to the chapel to his lord Demogorgon. She confronted Gastel, who dominated her before inviting her to serve Demogorgon with him, revealing finding a powerful swordwoman was his plan all along, possessing Liet to help the process. Twilight was able to get Liet's consciousness to gain control for a moment, then Ruuk arrived. Gastel took control and destroyed Ruuk with a single word of chaos. As Gastel cast a spell to kill her, Twilight rushed through and kissed him, bringing Liet back momentarily before both he and Gastel died together. Tlork showed back up with Gargan in tow, and quickly stabbed and thrown into a pit of spikes. 
The story ended with Tlork plotting revenge, and Slip, another servant of Demogorgon, the new master of Negarath.
===Further Reading===
* 
===Gallery===
Negarath.png|The map of Negarath from the Depths of Madness novel.
Depthsmadnesswp2 1280.jpg|Promotional wallpaper.
===External Links===
* Sample chapter (.zip file)
* Goliaths of Faerun by de Bie and Costa Stats and extra information on the characters featured in the novel. Written by Erik Scott de Bie and Thomas M. Costa.
===References===
Category:Novels
Category:Works by Erik Scott de Bie
Category:Published in 2007