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The Forgotten Sewers | 7th level 5th Edition Adventure

Added 2022-09-01 17:36:12 +0000 UTC

Hey everyone!

This adventure was featured as the cover adventure for Crucible Magazine Issue 002: Underworld and was one of my favorite adventures to write! It's a hefty one that comes in at 20 pages with a lot of twists and turns, a mini-otyugh pet, and werecrocodiles!

If you're interested in learning more about Crucible Magazine, check out https://www.cruciblemag.com for more information on the magazine, or you can grab the 80-page launch issue for free! You can grab both the free launch issue PDF and free Foundry VTT module!

The Forgotten Sewers

The Forgotten Sewers is a 5th Edition adventure intended for three to five characters of 6th to 8th level and optimized for four characters with an average party level (APL) of 7. Between a pair of missing lycanthrope kids, demons trapped in an abandoned cultist lair, and a brutal war brewing between underworld factions, a lot is going on beneath the Scented City. Is it possible to achieve peace before the dams burst open and the city floods with sewage and war?

Any campaign with a large capital city with a complex sewer system can easily include this adventure.

Backstory

There are always problems between the various groups living in the sewer systems in most major cities. Citizens have become accustomed to keeping their distance and letting city officials and adventurers deal with any problems that occasionally crawl or slither their way out. And for their part, the sewer residents allow bygones to be bygones and keep to their own, maintaining the peace whenever possible to protect their homes.

That peace was recently tested in the sewers beneath Dugan, the Scented City. Dugan is famous for its perfumes and the aromatic scents wafting through its winding streets. Few remember their city's nickname originally was due to the stench of the city sewers. The Earl's gold financed the perfumeries that would dominate the city and shift the meaning away from the sewers. However, this just covered up the stink and did not remove the problems that still plagued the sewers.

It wasn't until the passing of the former waste management official that the newly placed supervisor, Parthus Magler discovered certain portions in the sewer were missing from the city blueprints. He sent city workers to open the dams, and instead, they stumbled upon an abandoned cultist lair. It lay closed for decades and was filled with the remains of their failed summonings and rituals. After running into the aberrations trapped in the den, the only surviving worker fled and triggered a collapse of the entrance to seal them away again. However, this caused a chain reaction throughout the sewers, and a pair of children found themselves trapped and cut off from their people. The two young friends were from rival wererat and werecrocodile tribes who met secretly by crawling through small pipes to reach their hidden playground. The resulting earthquake from the explosion slammed shut the door to the room they were playing in, and they're now trapped with their other secret friend—a baby Otyugh.

Each believing the other side has kidnapped their respective child, the already uneasy peace between the two factions has been fractured. War is brewing, spurred on by provocateurs within each camp who want to expand their faction's influence and territory. In his attempt to open more space and alleviate backed-up sewage, Parthus has unknowingly made the sewer much smaller as the pressure between the factions increases and threatens to explode into the city above.