The Warrens¶
"I may not be an upstanding Proturas citizen and I am guilty of all kinds of shady shit … but at the end o' the day, I'm working to bring order to the Warrens and look after these people." — Berek Beetleslayer (S062)
The Warrens is "a slum located on the southwestern-most edge of the city" of Proturas, "a labyrinth of caves and crevices in abandoned parts of a clay mine, providing shelter for those without means" (S105). It was never an official district until 834 AL, when the Proturan Council annexed it as the County of Claydun, broke its gangs and began to build it a hall and a courthouse (S051). Its caves run down into the Underdark, and what comes up from below has shaped its history as much as anything the city did.
Also called: the County of Claydun (from 834 AL, S051).
Overview¶
"The cramped and dark living quarters within the Warrens are fashioned out of strips of cloth, canvas and occasionally wood, which are attached to the rough rock walls. The residents of the Warrens are the poorest of the poor, including laborers, beggars, and outcasts." The streets "are often shrouded in darkness and filled with the sounds of shuffling feet and hushed voices", yet "the community is tight-knit and resourceful, relying on each other for support and protection" (S105). The clay itself is white, sediment that filled the cracks of the cavern walls "back when this whole cave was flooded (before the dwarves emptied it)" (S103); the White Hand gang is assumed to take its name from it (S103). An active clay mine adjoins the slum, policed as part of Spillwater, and many Warrens folk labour in it (S105).
"Very little commerce or industry to speak of. This is the poorest area of Proturas." What trade there is "gambling, prostitution and crime" (S105). Lodgings are a lockable cave shared with neighbours: a wood-elf fortune-teller, a drunk who will watch the door for whiskey, a young miner saving his joining fee for Chester's Corner, a beggar who comes and goes (S063).
Notable places¶
The Pale Pit¶
"A tavern built around an abandoned clay pit (white). The pit is used as a fighting ring and is one of the central gambling hubs in the Warrens. It is also the home base for the Stone Syndicate" (S105). The condemned fight in the pit at nightfall, their fate chosen by a giant six-sided die cast by Berek Beetleslayer: a bull's head for the minotaur Taun, "a beetle" for a giant rhinobeetle captured below, "a single humanoid standing with arms outstretched" for a last-man-standing brawl, dogs doubled or single, or a group fight with stone clubs (S061). The crowd chants "cast the die!" (S061). Prisoners are kept below the Pit, and Berek's hall within it is where the crew bosses meet (S061, S038). The Stone Syndicate and its twenty-two crews have their own page.
Under the Pit lies something older. One of the Runestones, or Wardstone, of the prison of Vixseranyol is "located here", and the Tenebrians wanted the Warrens partly because "they need to start a significant dig at the pit (for the Runestone) which will draw attention" (S038, S040). After the annexation "the Pale Pit is being dismantled. (Claydun Hall & Courthouse will be built on the site)", while the new Mayor digs for the Wardstone (S051).
The Gallows¶
"A tavern built using rope bridges suspended above the Warrens. It is home base to the second of the Warren's large organized gangs, the Drowned Ring. Enemies of the gang are often hung from the bridges between parts of the tavern (many skeletons still remain there)" (S105). The Ring held the northern reaches, the Syndicate the southern (S105).
Chester's Corner¶
A barred and passworded cave where "Chester is the leader of a group of 6 miners + 3 partners + 2 kids. One of them is always at the place (to keep an eye on it)". Eleven live there, and joining costs dues and a fee (S063).
Ravenhold¶
The Raven Concord, "an order of warlocks which has an order hall in a small part of the Warrens, which is made up of a series of caves" (S105), is feared by the gangs: "the last gang which abducted and killed a Concord warlock in the Warrens was completely eradicated. They all died of a withering disease over a period of weeks, whose effect was on display to the rest of the Warrens. The gangs don't forget" (S105). The Concord's hall is named Ravenhold in 834 AL, when Arbiters "backed with a considerable Proturan military force" besieged it on a warrant of Lord High Arbiter Nadlegade, killed two of its masters, took its elder Grimbac, and gave it to the warlock Valtor, who "is presently occupying and operating out of Ravenhold" (S051). Whether Ravenhold is the cave hall of S105 the sources do not say outright.
The Lost Mines¶
The constrictors that took a dozen Warrens folk in two weeks, "no beggers n whores neither", came from a cave "connected to several different parts of the Warrens … they leave behind loose rock, so the entrances and exits are pretty hidden" (S062, S063). Behind it the Tenebrians, serpentfolk of Teneb'Urat, worked an old mine with enslaved peasants, "mining copper ore (Malachite)" with new doors of Tenebrian bronze, a dwarven smelter whose bellows were worked by men climbing "the once-waterwheels", an alchemist's laboratory of green fluids and ground spores, and a fungus farm where "several decomposing corpses … are covered with green stalks and strands growing out, through and across them" (S063). Peasants met one of four ends: Tenebrian transformation for the strong and willing, the fungus farm for failures and the overworked, or to be "feed to the snake god while the other peasants watch" (S063). The mine's shrine holds the Statue of Teneb'Urat.
The Statue of Teneb'Urat¶
"The huge statue that dominates the room depicts a fearsome creature with six arms and a serpentine body, frozen in a powerful and imposing stance. Two arms stretch over a stone altar near its base. The upper torso of the statue is carved in the likeness of a powerful humanoid … However, instead of a regular head, the statue has the venomous head of a viper, complete with gleaming fangs and a forked tongue, frozen in a snarl." Its eyes are polished gems "giving the impression of a predator's gaze that follows one's movements around the room" (S063).
The Underlake¶
Past the mines "a large underground lake stretches off into the void. Waves lap up against the shore creating quite a lot of noise" (S063). "Across the lake and further into the underdark is the Tenebrian City" (S065), described on the Underdark page. Here the Warrens stop being a slum and become a frontier: the White Hand's lair "spills into the Underdark where more powerful minions of Teneb'Urat are gathering: Gorgons, Quetztls, Naga and other Serpentfolk" (S028), and an old dwarven gate below the Pit "stops them from coming up to the Warrens in force", the rhinobeetles the Syndicate raids for the pit among them (S061). A secret door in a forge leads to "a small clan-hall within old Pro'Turra" (S028).
Other places¶
The Cutters' den under Spillwater and the Dwarven Roads that join it to the sewers are described on the Spillwater page; Valtor's mansion, built into the rock of the Stairs, reaches the same roads (S042). The Rock Troll Warrens of the Urok'gar borderlands are a different place altogether; see the Urok'gar Confederation.
History¶
Two gangs split the slum until 834 AL: Berek Beetleslayer's Stone Syndicate, "equipped with simple stone clubs", in the south, and the Hangman's Drowned Ring in the north, with its drowning initiation and blood-attuned blue-steel rings (S105). The White Hand rose between them, and behind the White Hand the Tenebrians, who wanted the Warrens for "ready supply of minions and converts" and for the Runestone under the Pit (S038). Berek's death, his head "on a spike outside the Pale Pit", the hostage-guaranteed election of a new overboss under "the rules of the meet", and the revelation that Berek was a simulacrum run by the mystic Isador are told on the figures' pages and in the Proturan Campaign chronicle (S038, S039, S040).
Then the city moved. As part of the articles of war against the Boreal Elves "a bond was raised to hire a police force and build basic infrastructure in the Warrens. (It is seen as a security risk). Every major faction of Proturas contributed" (S051). "The Warrens has been officially annexed by Proturas as the County of Claydun." Count Galaphile, a Blue Flame warlock, appointed Valtor as Mayor of Claydun; the Stone Syndicate and Drowned Ring "have been dismantled. Many of its bosses are captured and a few in hiding"; Berek was imprisoned at Sharpstone; Isador's place "has been ransacked and is sealed by the authorities" (S051). The Warrens was "cleared", and able-bodied men were conscripted unless they could prove full-time employment or pay a ten-gold war bond, women for the support battalion unless employed, mothers of young children, or able to pay six gold; unguilded craftsmen paid a thousand (S051). A regiment of the Silver Wolves now draws its payroll inside the Warrens (S051).
In Play¶
The Warrens is the heart of the Proturan Campaign: the party lived here among the neighbours above, fought in the Pale Pit, hunted the Tenebrian constrictors into the Lost Mines, and returned from the Rift to find the slum annexed and their own bar seized and put up for auction (S061, S063, S051). Cutters who want a job done inside the Warrens hire Warrens people, "so that it can be blamed on remainders of the Stone Syndicate" (S051).