Sewers and Cellars of Wermspittle (Encounter Table III)

Then came the locked cellar door, and the search for something to break it down. A heavy stool stood near, and its tough seat was more than enough for the antique panels. A crack formed and enlarged, and the whole door gave way—but from the other side; whence poured a howling tumult of ice-cold wind with all the stenches of the bottomless pit, and whence reached a sucking force not of earth or heaven, which, coiling sentiently about the paralysed detective, dragged him through the aperture and down unmeasured spaces filled with whispers and wails, and gusts of mocking laughter...

The Horror at Red Hook, by H. P. Lovecraft

---

Sewer and Cellar Encounters Table III (D30)

1. Six barrels of Spectral Brine have been roughly pushed up against the far wall. They are leaking. The muck at your feet faintly glows and you're already feeling sick.
2. There is a small (6' diameter) Maelstrom swirling at the center of this muddy, mucky-floored cellar. Only the whirlpool is on the ceiling. Every ten minutes the Maestrom's sucking force grows stronger and stronger until, after the third hour it is creating something of an inverted/reverse hurricane. Then it settles down to a light draught once again. The cycle is a bit erratic. The tenants above have barred the door to keep anyone else from getting taken away by the violent winds this thing causes.
3. A small, possibly immature Yoggidam packed in some kind of brine inside a heavy glass jar. Someone's specimen? A torn messenger-bag, a scuffed-up pair of airship-mechanic's goggles (left lens is missing), and some incidental trash gives the impression that a Forager may have hid out here not long ago. Perhaps they left the jar behind by accident?
4. Congratulations. Right there in the muck nearest your good right foot there's a Dread Penny staring right back up at you. Don't mind the half-dissolved gas mask and the six empty carboys labelled 'sulfurick acid.' It's probably safe to pick it up...
5. There must be at least twenty penguin carcasses hanging from the beams overhead. All of them skinned, salted and smoked...and sprouting the wriggly green tendrils of some pernicious and vicious form of fungi. This is why the Tsalalians prefer to use attics.
6. Three, perhaps four bodies are crumpled and curled up along the left-hand wall. Each one is covered in the distinctive gritty-sooty residue left behind by Black Smoke.
7. They were doing some work up above, renovating the old place. Then the floor collapsed and everything fell down here, into the basement. Three of the workers might have survived, if they hadn't been locked in here. With the rats. You might not see them right away. You might not even hear them immediately. Stick around and you will meet them soon enough. There are hundreds of rats running around in the warrens surrounding this basement. Their incessant digging has weakened the foundations of several buildings next to this one.
8. Seven circles of heavy translucent moon-metal chains encircle a trapped Insectillar. The chains are anchored into the floor with six-foot spikes of hardened greenbrass. You're about two steps away from awakening the guardians--the creature weakly informs you through its heavily suppressed telepathy.
9. A section of the ceiling has been compromised by the runners and shoots of some sort of Red Weeds. This particular infestation is still quite fresh and very vulnerable. The leaves are streaked with pale blotches of orange and there are pulsing, bulbous growths dangling form the ceiling that resemble mandrakes crossed with lumpy potatoes. Should you burn it or call some experts?
10. The floor is flooded to a depth of just under four feet. There are blind catfish swimming about. You've just surprised a pair of kids who were fishing. They're climbing through a window that is only partly boarded-over. One of them dropped their pole. A large fish is dragging it along the rubble and gravel slope that used to be the lower part of the wall near the entry-window.
11. Something, or someone, is watching you. It's exceedingly dark in here, possibly because of a spell. It reeks of moldy persimmons. Some merchant caravan has used this cellar for storage the last two summers. Something else has taken up residence while they're gone. Three Morlock runes have been scraped deep into the limestone above an old door that has been cut in half and fitted over the bolt-hole in one of the back corners. It is locked. With poison needles still sticking out of the mechanism from the last intruder's unsuccessful attempt to gain entry.
12. A pair of Grunters are playing some form of gambling-game with the hacked-apart finger-sections of some previous intruder. One of them carries an air-tight greenbrass tube that holds a rolled-up map to a series of three captured Weak Points that will take you to the outer perimeter of the most recent base of operations for their Queen-General's main army. The passwords are scrawled next to each of the Weak Point symbols, against all regulations and orders. You might have heard a few whispers or rumors that Idvard might be interested in something like this...and he has a good reputation for being generous to those who bring him things he wants or needs. The other Grunter, a corporal blind in one eye, wears a black iron ring that can be used to call forth a wall of tangled, burning black iron blades and spikes directly from Kalkendru that will persist in its bilocation for one hour before collapsing into the space it has been summoned into (20%), or back into Kalkendru (70%)...or just simply disappearing into some indeterminate non-space (10%), possibly taking along anything/anyone unfortunate enough to be entangled within it. The ring works once a day and costs the used 1d4 hit points to activate. It is meant to hurt. It also has three other functions, but those are unknown to the corporal.
13. There is a layer of curdled mud covering the floor to a depth of 4 inches. There are traces of the mud extending up the walls for more than three feet. The carcass of a dead crocodile lies twisted-up in a painful looking manner just out of the mud in what must have been its death throes. It appears to have been digging into the base of the far wall. That section has partially collapsed. Trapping the beast's head under a heavy pile of stones, bricks and blocks. Removing the debris will re-flood the basement. The crocodile is slightly squirmy to the touch--its insides are filled with maggots and eggs about to erupt into a swarm of cellar flies.
14. The good right arm of an Iron Pig lies in the middle of the floor.
15. A scratched, pitted and slightly dented Hexagon of Bohz lies partly embedded in the floor. It was improperly prepared. A casual inspection will readily reveal the shoddy workmanship. Polyps are unforgiving; they also have very high standards.
16. Three feet past the door everything is blocked-off by the dried-out form of a massive, gigantic Gunpowder Grub packed with well over 43 tons of unstable gunpowder. Please tell me that you're not using torches with an open flame...
17. Someone's wine cellar. Left over from better days. The entire space is infested with purple-spotted spiders. Hordes of the things. Past the third set of wine bottles in their racks you can see multiple cocoon-like masses dangling from the ceiling. One might even be writhing a bit. Are they victims or massive egg-sacs? From here you can't really tell...
18. Bubbles? Yes. There's an Orb Cluster trapped down here because there are no Weak Points available to it, and all the Ley-Lines in the area have been somehow re-routed or blocked. How is that possible?
19. Sixteen bales of moldy Yellow Wallpaper were stored down here right before the place up above was burned-out due to arson. Everyone blames a gang of Feral Children. Perhaps it was a Yellow Kid or a Creeper that escaped from the Wallpaper instead? Maybe it doesn't matter. Whoever did the arson is long gone. The bales of this horrid stuff are still here. How do you dispose of it?
20. Three arrows tipped with Yirgao-teeth. One has blood on the fletchings, which are harpy-feathers.
21. Either that's a Sallow Stain, a Loathsome Mass or a Wet Spot that is seeping into this space over by the right wall.
22. She might have been pretty. Before. Now she's a real mess. Those kids didn't leave much of her personal possessions behind after they stripped her corpse. Just the Gore Worms breeding in her heavily distended belly. There are a few blood-soaked maps, a half-burned atlas, and a small pocket notebook left in her torn-apart belt pack. The pocket notebook contains numerous references to someone named 'Bujilli.' She was sent here by her older sister. A Zurian Princess.
23.  A deserter made this space into a decent little home-away-from-the-Ramparts, up until the Takers caught up with him. There are (1d4) cans of pickled meat and some penguin-jerky (spoiled) behind the over-turned end table. There is also a Hole in the Wall that you might want t take a closer look at...
24. Pods. Six, child-sized pods of some wrinkly, almost scrotum-like plant material, split down the middle, flecked and speckled with a pungent off-white foam that reeks of rancid parsley. They're empty.
25. Someone has piled-up forty-three rolls of sod in this space. All of it is dried-out now.
26. A broken guitar. The strings have been removed. With a dull knife.
27. The deal went bad. A panicked Eloi in fishscale armor tries to force their way past you. They botched their attempt to work out an arrangement with the Withering Mist behind them.
    
    Jusgat de la Vardin [Eloi, AL N, MV 100' (30'), AC 6 (fish-scale caster-armor), HD 3, #AT 1, DG 1d4+poison (glass dagger filled with arsenic), SV MU3, ML 4, (Spells per day: 2,1) Level One: Hammer Toe, Needle-Fling, Shield, Sleep.  Level Two: ESP, Kazwen's Reflections, Knock.] They left their scroll of Call Withering Mist behind.
28. A lilac and almond striped disk of pressed-chitin embossed with the twenty-seven characters of the click-speech of Nhor. Successfully reading the disk, even to oneself, summons a 4 HD War Grub.
    
29. The gnawed femur-bone of an Almas. Each end is wrapped tightly in sinew and braided hair over a cap of thick felt. There is a swarm trapped inside it. You'll need to open it to find out what kind...
30. Six feet deep. The piles of dead frogs are six feet deep in here...

---

Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table I  |  Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table II
Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table III | Sewers & Cellars: Encounter Table IV

---

Local Authorities: Cellar Inspectors in Wermspittle
Making the Prinn Street Rounds  |  Beneath Suydum Blvd  |   The Butler Street Station
Cellar Inspectors: PreGen Characters

---

Wermspittle Index

Sewers and Cellars of Wermspittle (Encounter Table II)

We never—even in our wildest Halloween moods—visited this cellar by night, but in some of our daytime visits could detect the phosphorescence, especially when the day was dark and wet. There was also a subtler thing we often thought we detected—a very strange thing which was, however, merely suggestive at most. I refer to a sort of cloudy whitish pattern on the dirt floor—a vague, shifting deposit of mold or niter which we sometimes thought we could trace amidst the sparse fungous growths near the huge fireplace of the basement kitchen. Once in a while it struck us that this patch bore an uncanny resemblance to a doubled-up human figure, though generally no such kinship existed, and often there was no whitish deposit whatever...

The Shunned House, by H. P. Lovecraft

---

Sewer & Cellar Encounters: Table II (D30)

1. A 6 HD Withering Mist has been locked-up behind a grout-sealed door. The grout is air-tight, unless someone were to attempt to remove it, like the pair of Foragers who are convinced that there must be something behind this door; otherwise no one would have taken the trouble to seal it up, right?
2. A case of six bottles of off-brand Black Liquor have been not-so-cleverly set behind a broken pallet. There used to be 12 bottles.
3. Three pick-axes, two crow-bars and a shovel. They were dropped in haste. There's a ragged piece of the shovel-blade missing. It looks almost melted.
4. (1d6) Cacozombies armed with pitch-forks and spades are prodding a prisoner along. They intend to offer-up this young girl who would be adventurer up to their Ungezeifer master. She is a Prodigy. She intends to capture the Ungezeifer for use in an experiment...
5. A crippled harpy with only one wing and a seriously hideous form of advanced leprosy is desperately trying to push a filthy burlap sack back into a concealed niche. The sack contains (1d4) eggs.
6. (3d4) Giant Centipedes are prowling this area looking for anything they can eat. If killed without splitting the chitin, their carcasses are worth a fair bit to the local chitin-workers because of the unique coloration and growth patterns.
7. (3d6) bales of hay. It's for the Elephant.
8. A very bored Koponu sits inside it's regulation tin cage, dimly lighting a small section. It only has (1d4) hours left on its shift, then it can go home.
9. Some has cast repeated applications of Dispel Ectoplasm in this area. Why? What for?
10. A Dowser sits against the wall clutching the stump of what used to be their good right hand. Blood is seeping out. They're going into shock. All he can grumble is '...damned thing swallowed the lode-stone too...', then they pass out. They are wearing a Sewer Militia vest, but it seems out of date. The identification patches are all removed or spattered with some tarry substance.
11. (3d4) Urglun are hunting a run-away Bruthem calf that they have been hired to recover. Intact.
12. A body. It's infested with Gore-Worms. There's some Questionable Trinkets & Trash visible poking out from under the corpse.
13. A rickety trap-door in the middle of the floor has been chained-down and pad-locked. 
14. (1d4) Crudiv lurk behind a broken section of the wall that has yet to be repaired.
15. A tiny, not-so Garganta Slug is floating in a bottle containing a solution of 5% Dim Ichor and 90% cheap Gin. The slug is dormant, sleeping, dreaming. If removed from the bottle, it will resume growing normally, but will forever be haunted by nightmares of being trapped within a transparent chamber...
16. The badly mauled body of a Gargoyle is stuck in a chimney-like vent or passage cut into the ceiling. They almost got away from the Hunters that tried to capture it. It clutches a strange little amulet on a silver chain. It is some sort of locket containing a Phantasmotype of a young girl who bears a striking resemblance to someone one of the party is related to or knows.
17. A surveyor's plumb-bob sensitized to Ley Lines lies on the floor in the midst of a nasty pool of what could only be worm vomit. Some one or some thing has already claimed the hand that was left behind.
18. A badly wounded Triloo is trying to make it back to the safety of the private book repository where it works. They require some healing and the trail of blood they've left behind is attracting the interest of (3d8) wild dogs as well as a stunted albino alligator that has been sent down here to fetch specimens for their master who isn't particularly choosy as to whom, what or how the creature brings back the raw materials needed for the next experiment.
19. Three bricks and a small mound of dried-out cement. The trowel is stuck in the dried cement like a sword in a stone. A skeletal hand protrudes from the wall. They never quite finished walling them in there.
20. The floor of this cellar is covered with a dry, white granular substance. It smells like rotting fish. It is also very flammable, the smoke it will produce is very toxic (-2 penalty to Save versus the poison). When exposed to moisture, the spores quickly sprout into a wildly twisted buried forest of fungi that will quickly collapse under its own weight, then rot away into a nasty black sludge. Too bad the things aren't edible.
21. A Candle-Head homunculus is looking for a light. Can you help it get is candle re-lit?
22. (2d12) 2 HD Flutter Worms have just finished-off a once overly confident Rhinocerenary. They're still thirsty.
23. Six partly crushed skulls. Each one lovingly stripped of all flesh and delicately painted with ochre and tumeric around the eye-sockets.
24. Clomp! Clank! It's an Iron Pig making its way towards the surface and taking no prisoners on the way. It will attack anyone who gets in its way.
25. An Aethyric Eel hovers above a stagnant basement-swamp. The water-way connecting this basement to the cellar-pond next-door was blocked by the intervening tunnel caving in. The Eel's innate Passwall ability is currently blocked by a Dream-Bottle buried in the doorway. If you dig it up and break the thing, the Eel could escape. But then you'd run the risk of angering the Oneirist or whomever trapped the thing in here in the first place.
26. A Vilg wearing a violet loincloth and trying to hold onto a bone scroll tube is hiding behind some rubble. It's not working. The arrow in its shoulder sticks out past the rubble, and the trail of fresh blood is a dead give-away as well. It will attempt to hire anyone who will talk to it. The scroll tube needs to be delivered to Latterkamp. You really don't want to go there without the Vilg to guide you. It assures you that would be a bad idea. She can either offer you 26 random coins and some salt in a water-tight pouch, or you can negotiate for a better reward once the scroll tube is delivered. There's a chance that the Goules will offer a reward...
27. Someone buried a broken mirror in here. Face-down. They did a really poor job of it. Close to a third of the thing still protrudes out of the loose dirt. Do you hear that? It sounds like a voice. Coming from underneath the mirror.
28. This used to be a fruit cellar. Back during the occupation. Someone's mother sits in the corner, rocking slowly in her gaudy Uzikan shawl. She's been down here since the occupation too.
29. The foul, lingering stench of a massive Yelg Froth still clings to the walls and floors of this place. The bricks are indelibly stained a lurid shade of red-violet. There is no sign of the Yelg Froth.
30. The far wall is spattered and stained by the still-wet yellow ichor of a Detestable Putrescence left in the wake of the demise of a Shrouded that was destroyed only two nights ago by a wandering band of itinerant monks who are on a mission to bring peace to the restless dead by any means necessary.

---

Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table I  |  Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table II
Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table III | Sewers & Cellars: Encounter Table IV

---

Local Authorities: Cellar Inspectors in Wermspittle
Making the Prinn Street Rounds  |  Beneath Suydum Blvd  |   The Butler Street Station
Cellar Inspectors: PreGen Characters

---

Wermspittle Index

Sewers & Cellars of Wermspittle (Encounter Table I)

Sewer & Cellar Encounters Table I (D20)

1. A 3' patch of Gobbling Grout (Type I) has taken up position near the base of the near wall. It waits. Patiently. Eventually someone will fall asleep or be knocked unconscious close by, and then it will smother them.
2. There's a Murder-Hand in the dark. It waits. Beneath the stairs. Patiently. The bodies of three victims lie there beneath it. Carefully arranged and laid-out like cord wood. The scent of rotting flesh is getting really bad, but this thing has no sense of smell.
3. (1d100) bats. There are also several buckets, shovels, brooms and scrapers piled-up against the wall from a local guano-collecting crew. The bats seem to be using a broken chimney and three different disused and partly collapsed old conduits as both sub-lairs and access-ways to the surface. All three conduits are partly clogged with rubble and debris, and could be used to travel deeper, should one be careful not to unduly dislodge any of the precariously jammed detritus.
4. (1d4) seamless yellow-pink chitin-bags each containing 100 pounds of water-proof mortar made from ground-up Gobbling Grout, (1d4) trowels, a bucket and a rather fresh bloodstain on the floor right in front of the materials. An official work order from the local Sewer Militia is wedged behind the bucket with a well-worn worm-hide map of the major junctions of the local sewer system along this four block area. Possession of the map by non-authorized personnel is a punishable offense. Tampering with Sewer Militia business carries stiff fines. But there doesn't seem to be anyone around right now...
5. An Ungezeifer riddled with crossbow bolts and with several limbs hacked off of it is slumped up against the far wall. Its antennae are twitching anxiously. One of its eyes have been cut out of its head with a heavy-bladed chopping weapon. It doesn't have long left to it.  You only have (2d4) minutes before (1d4) Cacozombies come running in response to their dying master's final psychic commands.
6. A shallow pit has been cut into the floor, but it is difficult to detect in the dim light, especially with the Gobbling Grout (Type II) that is lying in wait within it.
7. A twitchy, sweaty half-naked student rushes past. They are wild-eyed and feverish in the extreme. They make it about (1d20) feet down the passage before they collapse and begin to transform into a Loathsome Mass. The unfortunate victim is clutching a blue-white lodestone sensitized to detecting Weak Points. The black corruption is already dribbling form their orifices like the symptoms of some of the less appealing plagues rumored to be circulating among the more recent groups of Refugees. As the poor would-be doctor's body begins to melt into putrescence, it might be noticed that they are wearing very expensive boots, and that what remains of their clothing is all monogrammed with a stylized letter 'R.'
8. A sizable warren of rat-tunnels have been gnawed and scraped-out behind the walls, floor and ceiling in this area. There are several clearly obvious holes where the material has collapsed, revealing the dark, fetid spaces in-between where hundreds of rats swarm madly like a boiling witches brew. Small bones jostle and bob about within this vile, seething mass. This mob can strip a body of its flesh in only 1d4  minutes. But they are loathe to leave the safety of their warrens. It is almost as if they were obeying some sort of compulsion or command.
9. (2d6) Patients are huddled together in a small, smelly niche hacked into the far wall. They have wrapped and draped themselves in filthy rags to hide the worst of their deformities. One of them has a rusty old axe and has been trying to keep the rats away while the others sleep or at least try to get some rest. They were turned-out from a clinic after the staff confirmed that they no longer had anything left with which to pay for further treatment.
10. Prowling Miasma.
11. (2d4) Ractur are prowling around here. They are certain that they have seriously wounded a blundering newly-recruited Forager with a heavily loaded-down frame-pack. Every now and then they find a spot of blood. The Forager is not very far away and getting sloppier as they get weaker and more frightened. The Ractur are carrying cleavers, skewers and one half-length glaive with a broken haft. One of the Ractur is infected with a nasty patch of skin-devouring mold.
12. Drab Jelly covers the wall. It appears to be a wet patch, as there is a broken pipe dribbling dirty water onto the wall right where it lurks.
13. (1d4) Prowling spiders skitter along the ceiling looking for their next meal.
14. Corpse. Weird pustules are distending from the thing's skin like bubbles of foul gas or worse fluids. Jostling the thing will cause these pustules to burst, spattering contagious goo across a 20' radius.
15. Rat Catcher with (1d4) apprentices, all carrying a variety of truncheons, javelins and hackers. They have a dozen wicker or woven bark and wire cages filled with 1d100 rats. They are being stalked by (3d6) Ratterlings at a discrete distance. The Ratterlings are looking for a good opportunity to ambush these enemies and to release their thralls.
16. A dead Morlock. Naked. A rune carved in their forehead. It's 'Urgle,' the rune for 'ruiner of waters.'
17. (10d100) Fingerling Slugs slither across every available surface. They cannot tolerate intense heat, salt or alcohol. These slugs are of a peculiar mauve hue and seem to be coming through a smallish Weak Point not recorded or listed in any of the usual references. The otherside is a vast muddy, murksome marsh that writhes sluggishly under a very dim, fog-bound sun. The water is vaguely oily, noxious and full of slugs, leeches and nymph-things that feed upon them. There are ruins of some old, run-down fortification or walled villa of some sort off in the distance.
18. (1d4) Molefolk are carrying a set of rickety-looking ladders, step-stools and at least 300' of rope in various lengths. One of them has a battered by mostly waterproof galvanized bucket full of Lithophageous Mussels.
19. A Quindra-shard has been set-up on a small brass tripod on a rickety table covered in rotten draperies torn from the windows of the building above. A small rat-skull censer holds charcoal and purple amber incense. Unlit. Cold. Whatever ritual or rite was intended, it never got performed. 
20. A Gauntlim is nailing down a Blatherer within a side room that has been prepared as a death-trap for the Gauntlim's enemies. She is not going to take kindly to any interference or meddling, especially by sun-scum.
21. A Mycelidon has taken-up a temporary perch just above the entry way to a rarely used ramp way leading down to a sub-level. The scent of burnt walnuts and rancid tallow are fairly pronounced. There are (1d6) random weapons scattered just beyond the arched entrance. All of them might have been enchanted, once, before this thing got to them.
22. A Black Iron mockery of Glushigons Mask hangs over a zinc-plated tub of entrails. Whomever was preparing this contra-mask must have been driven away or scared-off. The entrails are dried-out, on top, but still moist underneath the scabrous crust. There are close to a dozen very hungry Gore Worms in the muck at the bottom of the tub.
23. The floor settles (1d4) feet, Save or lose balance. (base 30% chance of outgassing.)
24. (2d4) Toothy Worms are wriggling along the floor in pursuit of something good to eat. Their gurgly-hissing noises are disturbing and resemble the sounds made by gleeful children being drowned--a very unnatural and unsettling sound.
25. A very large tortoise was butchered in here several months ago. The shell was removed, in sections. you can still find bits and pieces of it scattered about the floor. A mallet and two dull chisels can be found if you care to poke about.
26. A broken and non-functional Burner taken from the corpse of a Puritan. The hand is still attached.
27. This used to be a brewery, until the Brewer's Bane took over.
28. A completely empty 30' by 30' room with absolutely clean walls, ceilings and floor. The air is fresh. It is well lit, with no visible means of illumination. The temperature is quite comfortable.
29. The floor is a largish Type III Gobbling Grout.
30. This was once a laboratory. There are text-books on Galvanic Chemistry, The Violet Ray, and various and sundry references for Reconstructive Necromancy on the shelves along the back wall. All of them are at least a hundred years out of date and somewhat mildewed. The writing desk is over-turned and partly burned. The surgical tools are corroded or covered by patches of a rather unwholesome-looking pink-and-yellow mold. The Experimenter's journals are conspicuously missing.

---

Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table I  |  Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table II
Sewers & Cellars: Encounters Table III | Sewers & Cellars: Encounter Table IV

---

Local Authorities: Cellar Inspectors in Wermspittle
Making the Prinn Street Rounds  |  Beneath Suydum Blvd  |   The Butler Street Station
Cellar Inspectors: PreGen Characters

---

Wermspittle Index