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The Leechcatchers' Drain

Blue fire trembles in the drain baskets, and the water whispers names from beneath the street.

6 roomssewermedium

The Leechcatchers' Drain is a compact undercity sewer converted into a hidden shrine and refuge by the guild that once kept the streets clear. Its flooded passages now serve a predatory thing that has learned to command the old sluice machinery.

Cold runoff laps over black brick, carrying the stink of lime, wet leather, and old blood. Blue witchfire burns in iron drain baskets, while distant sluice gates groan and something large occasionally scrapes beneath the water.

☠ Threat

A sewer spirit called Tugrik has fused with the dungeon's sluice works and now feeds on anything carried into the water. Once a bound guardian of the guild shrine, it has become a swollen, many-mouthed predator that can flood passages, animate corpses, and whisper through every drain. It wants the city above opened to the river tunnels.

History

The drain was cut by the Leechcatchers, a guild of pest removers, tanners, and sewer workers who kept the lower wards free of vermin and disease. They built shrines to the river beneath their workrooms, believing clean water required appeasing what lived below. During a plague winter, the guild sealed a starving sewer spirit inside the lowest cistern, leaving its chains and prayers behind.

Encounter Table

CR
1/4CR
Copper-Tailed Ratsx2d6

A pack of slick, hairless rats trained long ago by the sewer guild and now marked with tiny copper tags.

1/2CR
Flooded Laborerx1

A drowned guild laborer animated by polluted water, still clutching a broken maintenance hook.

1CR
Handlamprey Swarmx1d3 swarms

A pale lamprey swarm that moves against the current and gathers in the shape of a reaching hand.

Rumours & Whispers

1

The old sewer guild buried a saint beneath the lower ward, and the saint still answers prayers through drain grates.

2

Workers hear a child counting from beneath the streets, but the count always stops at thirteen.

3

A merchant house pays quietly for anyone who finds the guild's pollution ledgers before the city inspectors do.

4

No rat will enter the street above the Leechcatchers' Drain, even when food is left there.

5

The water in the poorest district tastes faintly of copper because something below is bleeding into it.

Quest Hooks

1
The Missing Night CrewRescue

Quest giver: Bren Kett, a plain-spoken drain foreman

A city's drainage workers have vanished after discovering fresh guild marks beneath a blocked street grate. Their foreman wants the missing crew found before the lower ward floods.

A city writ granting free access to maintenance tunnels and 75 gp

2
The Clean Water BowlRecovery

Quest giver: Oru, a soft-voiced plague nurse

A healer claims a relic basin in the old sewer can cure a wasting sickness spreading through the poorest district, but the basin lies beyond the bound spirit's shrine.

A pearl-handled healer's kit and three greater healing draughts

3
Ledgers in the SludgeInvestigation

Quest giver: Dagan Vark, a sharp-tongued tally clerk

Merchants secretly hire the party to recover ledgers proving that their rivals dumped alchemical waste into the sewer. The records are hidden behind the locked door in room-0.

120 gp and leverage over a powerful merchant house

Corridor Notes

Near the entrance and along the passage to Room 2

Copper tally plates mark old maintenance routes, each stamped with a leech, rat, or lamprey symbol.

Between Room 1, Room 3, and Room 6

A waist-high channel carries foul water through the center of the corridors. Loose grates reveal pale shapes swimming below.

Outside Room 4

Strips of cured eel skin hang from rusted hooks, each bearing a warning scratched in trade cant.

In the corridor between Room 2 and Room 5

A cracked drainage wheel turns by itself whenever the boss in Room 5 speaks.

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