Battlemap
The Eye's Lair
The Eye buys competence, and Valecross pays the price.
Beneath a respectable countinghouse in Valecross lies a clandestine headquarters known as the Eye's Lair. It is part spy den, prison, smuggling depot, and assassination bureau, staffed by professionals from many peoples who serve a single hidden conspiracy.
The air smells of lamp oil, hot metal, mold, and faintly sweet incense. Footsteps echo through stone corridors while coded knocks, whispered passwords, and distant chains reveal an active criminal operation. Most chambers are lit by hooded blue lamps that leave corners unnaturally dark.
☠ Threat
The dungeon is controlled by Varkesh Nine-Seals, a hobgoblin spymaster who believes Valecross can be conquered without an army. He commands disciplined guards, blackmail networks, forged identities, and a single doppelganger operative. Varkesh intends to release a ledger of fabricated scandals, provoke a political crisis, and install obedient officials while the city is distracted.
History
The lair began as a storm-drain vault beneath an abandoned merchant house. A former hobgoblin quartermaster named Varkesh expanded it with hired goblins, duergar engineers, and drow smugglers, turning the site into a disciplined intelligence hub rather than a tribal stronghold. Over the last decade, human and elven agents made the Eye indispensable to corrupt officials, criminal houses, and foreign buyers.
Encounter Table
CRA four-person patrol carrying lanterns, crossbows, and a coded whistle.
Goblin couriers carrying sealed packets between shrines, archives, and guard stations.
A bugbear collector dragging a bound debtor toward the prison, accompanied by a goblin clerk.
A drow mercenary returning from the city with coded reports and a poisoned short sword.
Rumours & Whispers
A countinghouse clerk swears that important officials visit the cellar after midnight and leave wearing different clothes.
Dockworkers claim a drow assassin can walk through any locked door if paid in the right currency.
A goblin runaway says the people below are organized like an army, with written orders and scheduled patrols.
A jailed smuggler insists that one of the conspirators has no true face and once negotiated with the city council.
Merchants whisper that the Eye keeps a ledger capable of ruining half the harbor's ruling families.
Quest Hooks
Quest giver: Marra Quill, a frightened half-elf legal clerk
A harbor magistrate's daughter hires the party after her father returns from a secret meeting behaving like a stranger. The clues lead to forged documents, a vanished diplomat, and the entrance hidden beneath a countinghouse.
900 gp, a favor from the harbor court, and access to sealed city archives
Quest giver: Odran Pell, a human caravan master
A merchant caravan disappears after receiving a coded payment demand. The party must enter the lair, recover the caravan's route ledger from room-6, and determine whether the merchants were victims or collaborators.
A masterwork weapon, recovered trade goods, and 700 gp
Quest giver: Tikka, a wounded goblin messenger
A captured goblin courier offers to guide the party through the upper rooms if they rescue three prisoners before the Eye's agents silence them. One prisoner is a spy, one is innocent, and one knows the identity of Varkesh's patron.
Information about the patron, 500 gp, and a permanent contact in the city's underworld
Corridor Notes
Thin red cords run along the base of the walls, carrying alarm signals between guard posts. Cutting one cord causes a bell to ring in Room 2.
Small iron plaques bear harmless merchant symbols, but each actually marks a safe route, a dead end, or a trapped door.
Fresh boot prints, goblin handprints, and traces of black duergar grease cross the dust, proving that the lair remains fully operational.
Short messages are scratched into the stone in thieves' cant, warning of payment disputes, missing prisoners, and an approaching inspection.
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