Sschindylryn

Sschindylryn is a drow city located in the north Underdark beneath the Farseas region. To the surface world, it is largely unknown or dismissed as legend — a place that exists in rumour and in the whispered reports of those who travel the deep places of the world. To those who know the Farseas' deeper political currents, it is considerably more significant.

The City

Sschindylryn is a drow settlement operating on the complex internal politics common to drow urban centres: competing noble houses, Lolth's faith as the dominant but not unchallenged religious power, and a pragmatic willingness to engage with outsiders when those outsiders have something useful to offer or dangerous to threaten.

The city's power structure includes:

Drow noble houses competing for influence and resources
Stone giant tribes employed by the drow, who keep fomorians on heavy chains as labour and muscle
Zhentarim operatives employed by the drow — a relationship that has the additional effect of providing Manshoon's The Black Circle clone with more resources and broader reach than his cliff-fortress-keep operation alone would generate

Wyverns, captured by Zhentarim skymages and drow, are kept underground in the northern Underdark — kept away from the surface where their reappearance would cause significant disruption.

Significance to the Farseas

Sschindylryn's relevance to the surface Farseas is concentrated in two connected facts:

First, Shiawass — a Siv lord and senior figure in the The Siv order of frog-monks — is hiding in Sschindylryn, directing the Siv's surface operations from the safety of the Underdark. The Siv's role as guardians of the Spirit Road and the Oghrann Gates is not diminished by Shiawass's underground relocation; he manages it remotely, through agents and the Siv's own internal networks.

Second, and more recently, Yorick Osrin is alive in Sschindylryn. Believed dead — assassinated by Carcenjo Foxmantle II — Yorick survived and was hidden by Shiawass in the city's protected quarters. Following the adventurers' resurrection of Aromarr Osrin from the Spirit Road, Aromarr was brought to Sschindylryn and reunited with his father. Father and son are together in the Underdark. Chanteclair Osrin, the current head of House Osrin, knows none of this.

Access

Reaching Sschindylryn from the surface requires navigating the Underdark's northern tunnels — a journey that involves passage through territory controlled by stone giants, fomorians, and various Underdark predators. The Siv have their own routes. The drow have theirs. For a surface traveller without contacts, it is not a straightforward journey.