Delvers' Guide: Entry & Exit

Entering & Leaving the Chasm

There is only one safe way to enter or leave the city, and that is by the lift attached to the DELVERS GUILD. For a modest fee, a delver will take you down in the lift, and the return ascent is free; although you may have to wait a while for the lift to arrive. There used to be a bell attached to a very long rope, but it was removed after the more intelligent monsters learnt that they could call down food; their very own room service.

The lift passes through a shaft at the bottom of the chasm, and stops in a cavern that has been cleared and enlarged over the years. The shaft is defended by sharpened stakes driven deep into the rock, and a mixture of divine glyphs and arcane wards. There are no guards down there, as their life expectancy would be very low.

The other ways in and out of the chasm are risky at best, deadly for the most part. The obvious way is climbing the walls, which certainly have plenty of nooks and crannies to hold on to; an easy climb, if it wasn't for the blood and the half-mile descent. Climbers have to contend with the flying creatures that make their nests on ledges and in the shallow caves. No one has ever climbed all the way down, or up. The few that tried fell to their deaths.

There are a few tunnels, pits and winding stairways that lead from the catacombs out through holes in the walls; and there is at least one tunnel from the OFFAL PITS, which comes out on top of the surface, next to a sinkhole, which in turn opens into the tunnels.

Midway along the chasm, at the foot of the hills it carves through, some enterprising engineers have been trying to build their own lift, straight down to the ruins below. So far, they have failed, largely due to the greater number of monsters in that region.

At the other end of the chasm, under the shadow of the mountains, the chasm breaks into folds of rock, that are much easier to climb and ooze less blood than the eastern side. There're still plenty of monsters– owlbears, wyverns and trolls especially– but parties have managed to make their way down that way. That side has few tunnels, so reaching the ruins is a difficult journey, full of natural hazards and hungry monsters. Not many make the journey, and none have made it without taking some casualties.