Battlemap
The Drowned Ledger
The old light works now drown in black water, and something below waits for the town's lamps to fail.
Beneath the ruined town supply works lies a flooded distribution hall that once stored lamp oil, enchanted wicks, and delivery ledgers for a network meant to keep the streets lit and beasts at bay. Now the lower level has become a choke point of knee-deep water, unstable catwalks, and predatory intruders, with the missing supplier somewhere below and signs that a deeper faction has seized the dark.
Cold water ankle to knee deep, oil-slick and stale, fills the lower halls with a sharp scent of rust, mildew, and old lantern tallow. Drips echo from cracked stone while distant channels groan behind the walls, and the light from carried lanterns turns the floodwater into moving black glass.
☠ Threat
A subterranean faction of cave-dwelling raiders and corrupted tunnel servants has claimed the lower cisterns, using the flood choke point to control access while they stockpile stolen lantern oil and intercept anyone who comes looking for the missing supplier. Their leader keeps the supplier alive for guidance and leverage, and is preparing to sabotage the town's light network by tainting or withholding the remaining enchanted materials.
History
This complex was built decades ago as part of a town supply works, where enchanted oil, wax, and treated wicks were stored before being carted to street lanterns and watch beacons. When the first floodgate cracked, workers sealed the lower hall to save the surface stores, but the failure spread through the cisterns and left the deepest chambers abandoned until something from below moved in.
Encounter Table
CRThin scavengers that slip between broken crates and attack anything carrying food or light.
Small raiders wearing oil-skin scraps and using stolen tools as weapons.
Disciplined tunnel soldiers patrolling between choke points with polearms and whistles.
A grim labor brute carrying hooks, chains, and a lantern cage full of bones.
Rumours & Whispers
The supplier vanished after taking a cartload of oil and wicks to the old works, but the gatekeepers swear they heard singing from below.
People say the lower cistern floods on its own whenever torches are lit near the west drain.
A clerk in town claims the missing ledgers were altered before the delivery team left, as if someone expected them not to return.
Old miners warn that the drainage tunnels open into deeper caves where pale folk trade in stolen light.
A broken lantern recovered near the works had black fungus growing inside the glass, though it had never been filled with anything wet.
Quest Hooks
Quest giver: Captain Elra Venn, town watch captain
The town's night watch hires the party to find the missing supplier and recover enough oil and wicks to keep the wards burning through the next moonless stretch.
350 gp and a case of enchanted lantern oil
Quest giver: Mira Tallow, counting-house clerk
A desperate clerk offers a hidden map of the old supply works if the party brings back the ledgers that prove who diverted the last shipment.
200 gp and access to sealed records
Quest giver: Borin Vale, apothecary and lamp-maker
Strange beasts have begun testing the streets at night where lanterns have gone dim, and the party is asked to stop the source before the wards fail completely.
A batch of superior oil and a favor from the craft guild
Corridor Notes
Riveted pipework runs along the walls, still carrying occasional cold surges that rattle the grates.
Collapsed freight rails jut from the floor, half-buried under silt and broken crates stamped with lantern marks.
A narrow drainage slit leaks warm air from the deeper chambers, carrying faint voices in Undercommon.
Chains and rusted pulley hooks hang over the corridor junctions, left to lift oil barrels that no longer exist.
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