D&D Out of the Abyss - Part 1 Velkynvelve

The player characters wake up with nothing but their shirts, manacled, in a shared prison cell noted as the Slave Pen in a Drow outpost by the name Velkynvele, an elvish word for hidden knife. The outpost is built 100 feet up in a large chamber of a cavern. The outpost is long and narrow. It is made up of some hollows in the cavern walls and in some very large rocky outcroppings resembling stalactites that are all connected by zurkhwood bridges and platforms and rock paths. There is a net of spiderwebs just below. Its exterior is dimly lit by prosenescent fungus called nightlight which grows out of the walls. Do you really need a map of Velyknvelve? It's pretty small. Just use theater of the mind. Here's a list of the key locations.

• Priestess Quarters (lead priestess only). The room is decorated nicely with things of monetary value. The player characters equipment was taken when they were captured and is stored here.
• Shrine of Lolth. Has a giant statue of a spider and is littered with silk pillows. The other priestess quarters here.
• Soldier Barracks (x2). The soldiers work in shifts, and so there are always some resting soldiers here. All soldiers and elite soldiers have a chest for storing their personal possessions with some minor value by their bunks, and for storing their equipment when they're off duty.
• Elite Soldier Barracks (x2). The elite soldiers work in shifts, and so there are always one or two resting soldiers here.
• Quaggoth Den. The Quaggoth are worked in shifts, and so there are always some resting Quaggoth here.
• Slave Pen. Closed by a heavy iron gate. The prisoners are kept here. There are no comforts other than chamber pots. Has an anti-magic field in place.
• South Watch Post. Manned by two soldiers.
• Northern Watch Post. Manned by two soldiers.
• Guard Tower positioned to look straight into the Slave Pen. Six extra sets of weapons and armor are stored here.
• Main Hall (an all at once meeting hall, mess hall, kitchen, and food storage)
• 100 ft Waterfall and a pool below. An acidic grey ooze (monster) lives in the pool and eats the waste created by the outpost.
• Lift (or an elevator for readers in the USA) with room for four or 800 lbs. The lift, made of zurkhwood, is suspended by a rope (spider silk) by a zurkhwood arm. The rope coils in a winch that is manually operated and requires a lot of strength to crank by two operators, usually Quaggoth. It takes four rounds for the lift to be raised or lowered.

Undercommon

One of the challenges of playing in an Underdark campaign is the language barrier in the Underdark. While in fantasy, the common language is referred to as Common, the Underdark has another language called Undercommon. Common is rarely spoken or understood down here! That means your player characters will have to rely on their other known languages such as dwarvish, elvish, gnomish, etc.

Fellow Prisoners

The book prescribes ten other non-player characters as prisoners. Their inclusion suits the efficiency of the Drow, but it's a lot for a GM to manage, so give yourself permission to consider them optional. Let them serve as movie extras. Create your own NPC prisoners if you prefer.

What's important about fellow NPC prisoners is that the player characters are not assumed to be knowledgeable about the Underdark, but the NPC prisoners are. Therefore, NPC prisoners can provide foundational knowledge of major Underdark locations which the PCs will need. In other words, the PCs don't know where to navigate to after they break out, but the NPCs do. The NPCS can also foreshadow some of the challenges to come, such as madness and the appearance of the demon lords.

Prisoners Knowledge

• Velkynvelve: Who's in charge here, what to watch out for, the goings-on and Velkynvelve drama, that the delivery of supplies from Menzoberranzan is days overdue, and that a contingent of soldiers from Menzoberranzan is due any day to collect the prisoners and take them back to make them into slaves.
• Miscellaneous about Major Locations of the Underdark: Sloobudop and Darklake, Gracklstugh, Neverlight Grove, Blingdenstone, Menzoberranzan
• Dangers in the Underdark: madness, other hazards, monster species and demons, the difficulties of survival and exploration in the Underdark, things to forage
• Other rumors, news, gossip

Velkynvelve Captors

There are nineteen Drow (pronounced row as in row your boat with a D in front) in all. A Drow is an evil variety of elf. Four of them are named. The rest are generic soldiers. Here's what's significant about the named Drow.

• Two Priestesses: The leader of this outpost is a priestess of Lolth, the spider queen. She is cruel and ambitious as is typical of priestesses of Lolth. She's basically a psychopath, and she's armed with a scourge or whip which is a magic item. There is a lesser ranking priestess of Lolth who can be promoted in place if anything should happen to the first. When the PCs escape, this lead priestess will take it personally and will put everything else down to recapture them.
• Two Elite Soldiers: Of the five elite soldiers present at the outpost, two of them are favorited by the lead priestess. One of them was recently maimed and has fallen out of favor, and he's primed to sabotage the outpost or help the PCs to spite her. The other one is armed with a magic wand that shoots sticky globs of goo that can restrain and immobilize a single character per use.

Who else is at the Drow Outpost?

• Six Trained Giant Spiders guard the perimeter of the outpost which is surrounded with sticky their webs. Prisoners are occasionally thrown to them for food when the Drow want to make them an example to the rest of the prisoners.
• Twelve Quaggoths slaves: What is a quaggoth? They look like beast from Beauty and the Beast, but they're blue or blue-green, they're hostile towards those who don't man the outpost, and they have massive strength. One or two of them could be in any room or scene at any time.

Schedules

There are opportunities for players to take action. Feeding time, when bowls of thin mushroom broth are delivered, and labor, when players are taken out and forced to do manual labor and busy work for hours at a time. They can pick a pocket, palm or scavenge goods, or overhear conversations in elvish that might have valuable information about shifts and patterns, or weaknesses of the people here.

Prison Break

The PCs must break themselves out of prison. If your player characters have never done this, they might not have a clue how. NPC Prisoners can also give them hints or suggestions. Just outside the slave pen is the 100 ft waterfall to the pool below, and is the fastest way out. The campaign book offers two interesting scenarios that the GM can provide to assist the players.

• Scenario 1: Drow Saboteur. One of the disfigured elite Drow soldiers gives the players the keys. Then he distracts the guards with conversation for a few minutes while the PCs escape by jumping into the waterfalls.
• Scenario 2: Demon Intervention. Some flying demons are fighting, and their fight places them in the Drow outpost. They are completely indifferent to the Drow outpost, but the Drow raise a call to battle to defend the outpost and are distracted. The demons can conveniently slaughter a few guards and smash the cell door.

The Drow guards let prisoners of their cells in pairs to do hard labor. This gives them opportunities to scavenge and conceal objects that can serve as improvised tools (like bits of metal to bend into lock picks) to help them break out. This includes objects that can act as improvised weapons.

Where to?

At the floor of the cavern, the player characters can see some passages. Pick one and go. All passages will lead to at least one of the major locations, and so none of them will lead the characters to perpetually nowhere or to a dead end.