White Willows p13

The City Underfoot

Below White Willows is an ever expanding maze of storm drains, sewers, basements, crypts, tunnels, vaults, and piping. The site on which the city sits has been inhabited for centuries, even millennia, according to rouge scholars and the mad street preachers. While the surface city has only a few examples of its previous iterations, the City Underfoot is a labyrinthine galley of the cities past. New sewers bleed into old foundations. The transition between ages and styles is jarring, one moment the wall are modem brick and mortar, then rough carved caverns, then blasted clay, then large cyclopean stone blocks.

There is no set strata here, no codified geographic layer. The City Underfoot is a jumble of styles and purposes. The City Underfoot is poorly documented. No map of City Underfoot exists. There are only landmarks and vague directions. This anarchic geography has made the City Underfoot into a haven for criminals, cultists, monsters, and worse. You do not find well and honest citizens in the City Underfoot.

Mothbitten Light

Despite being a land locked nation, White Willows has a navy. Ordered with the thankless task of patrolling the Nadir Aquifer this small flotilla of boats armed with high-powered search beams make sure that the Nadir Aquifer is kept free from monsters and the water keeps clean and flowing to the surface. The headquarters of the navy is the Mothbitten Light an ‘upside down’ lighthouse built under the City of White Willows. Carved from a massive stalactite this serves as both guild post and dry dock for the navy and anyone foolish enough to explore the aquifer.

The Mushroom Plantations

Early in the history of White Willows large natural caverns were discovered under the city. Dark and moist these caverns were the perfect place to grow mushrooms in vast quantities. During sieges, droughts, and poor harvests much of White Willows survives on these mushrooms. Work on the Mushroom Plantations is done almost exclusively by slave labor and is considered to be one of the worst positions one can be sent to. Almost all of the slaves in the plantations are there because they are serving a criminal sentence or are unwanted elsewhere. Conditions on the plantations are awful, teams of slaves are bringing in new piles of manure to replace the old, light is rare, and those that have worked the plantations say that the day-night cycle that rules the surface is nonexistent.

Thieves Guild

Found deep in the City Underfoot, well protected by numerous traps, false doors, locks, and thugs is the Thieves Guild. A winding network of interconnected and expanded tunnels and vaults the guild is based out of an old temple, rumored to be dedicated to the God of Thievery. (Appropriately the temple belonged to a different god, now lost to time, before being taken over by the God of Thievery.) Much of the complex is old and unused or sealed off. When high ranking members of the Thieves Guild pass away their body is stolen from their tomb on the surface (typically by their successor), flensed, and their bones dipped in gold and eyes replaced with gemstones (all of which are stolen, of course.) These skeletons roam the Guild complex slaying those who cannot speak their secret cant and guarding treasures long believed lost by the surface (and in many cases to the guild itself).

Snoghorn Sausages

Considered by most to be the best sausages in the canton, Snoghorn the Halfling butcher sausages have a special ingredient that he refuses to share. Unknown to all but a few Snoghorn is a descendent of a group cannibalistic Kender that managed to make their way to White Willows decades ago known as the Cha-Houd. Snoghorn is by far the most presentable of the Cha-Houd (which is saying something as he is almost always covered in a layer of gore) and serves as the front man for the tribe. The rest of his tribe works the abattoir under the city and has a network of traps and hooks designed to pray on lone pedestrians and the cities unwanted.

Goblin Warrens

Hidden in a section of sewers is an inbreed clan of goblins who have long lived off of the trash and discarded items from the city above. Somehow even more disgusting and stupid than their swamp-folk cousins the Goblins of the City Underfoot are little more than savages with a love for explosives.

The Hive

The madmen and children of White Willows often complain of scratching and buzzing coming from the walls of basements. Most toss this off as overactive immigrations or hallucinations brought on by poor quality hooch but every now and again strange insects, some as big a dogs, can be found in the City Underfoot.

Knucklebones Hall

Run by the Thieves Guild this illegal casino is a large cash pull for the guild. Run by Vas Rorick, the Ba’atorian Duke of Dice, the drinks here are strong and most of the games rigged so players earn just enough to entice them to come back to lose even more in the future. In addition to the standard gambling fair Knucklebones has a number of other gambling opportunities, from slug races, to bareknuckle fist fights.