Muzhahajaarnadah

Known by a multitude of names from the Muzhahajaarnadah to Calimport Below, Dark Calimport, and most often just the Muzad, the deeper city beneath the streets of Calimport is just as exciting and lively and dangerous as the sunlit metropolis above its stony ceilings. The Undercity of Calimport is more than just a series of sewers and waterways - there are whole streets, buildings, courtyards and great halls, and other areas long buried and forgotten. With the many series of disasters to strike the city over the centuries, it is not hard to believe the rubble was often simply built over after great destruction and whatever fell beneath the rubble was considered gone.

Since it encompasses the sewers and areas beneath, the Undercity ranges from 20 feet beneath the raised streets of Palace, Grand, and Emerald Wards to nearly a half-mile beneath Calimport'’s sewers. There are so many mysteries hidden in the depths and the darkness of Calimport Muzad that they compare equally to the ruined wonders of Shoonach and Myth Drannor and the horrors of Undermountain beneath Waterdeep. There are a number of regions defined among the shadows, and what little there is to know is far more than most are willing to learn of the darkness beneath them.

The Dark Bazaars

Unlike the up-top nighttime bazaars that are taking place more and more often with the cleared markets of the central city, Dark Bazaars are wandering bazaars that change their locations each and every time they meet. These trading meets are almost an eerie social gathering, as mysterious gray-robed figures appear at random all across Calimport above and below to beckon to those invited to the Dark Bazaar. No one can determine who or what the gray figures are, but they simply fade like shadows if confronted in any hostile or even argumentative way. If one chooses to follow a Gray Caller, they soon walk a path that the Caller opens that leads to the Dark Bazaar. There is no other way to reach the bazaar without being invited; should someone teleport to the site without an invitation, they would find the site filled with mists and shadows and whispering voices that they can’t quite catch. The Dark Bazaar exists around and beside them, but only with those who the Gray Callers wish to attend.

Creatures at the Dark Bazaars can be distinct or vague, imagined or real, known to the viewing PCs or not. The few accounts ever written of Dark Bazaars mention tanar'’ri lords sharing belly laughs and ribald jokes with archmages of many worlds, kobold kings bartering maps of secret tunnels with bemused dragons, or even the flickering conversations of nyth and nishruu in their light-based languages. Anyone approached by a Gray Caller will be able to converse with anyone else drawn to a Dark Bazaar despite normal language barriers. However, the context of secrets or the literal understanding of what secrets are shared and their true understanding may be at odds.

There is one cardinal rule for the Dark Bazaars: Ask or speak wisely, but only spare a secret or knowledge equal to that which you seek. An attendant at Dark Bazaar can only trade one secret for one secret, and once that secret is in hand (whether understood or not), the attendant appears suddenly back where the Gray Caller was first seen, as if it all had never happened. This effect occurs if any scrying is attempted outside of a trading situation or any violence is brought to bear within the bazaar. To those at the bazaar, the disturbing being dissipates into gray mist, while the offender reappears in place, having lost barely a second of time.

While the Temple of Old Night would have many believe it controls the Dark Bazaars, in truth some hidden powers collect the disparate figures and lost people together into a Bazaar no more than once a tenday but no less than once a month. The trading stock of the Dark Bazaars are secrets, magic, and knowledge (both that which was lost and that which has been found), and some take forms unexpected. Some forms of currency or traded items of the bazaar include rare elven ki'ira (memory gems), dream vapor bottles (where one whiff of the mists inside grant you someone'’s dreams), divination spell scrolls aplenty, or other items. The most common form of secrets and lore traded are tales told to one another— - their truth or their falsehood are up to the DMs.

The Samesaj Gate

The long-fabled Samesaj Gate that helped free the fortress Akkabbel in -1130 DR was once a famed and well-known site to all Calimpanni. Since the fall of the city into the hands of drow during the Night Wars and the destruction wrought upon the city in the Year of Falling Copper (-649 DR), its exact location and indeed the enchanted green marble arch that once enclosed it are long lost to all but the most diligent of sages. Many believe the gate still exists within the doorways leading the Pasha'’s Audience Chamber in the Caleph'’s Palace, as the floor and door jamb are made of green marble.

In truth, the Samesaj Gate fell victim to the fires set to rid the city of drow more than 2,000 years ago. The buckling of streets and general chaos of the time saw the arch fall intact down a crevice into Calimport Muzad beneath what is now the Vahlen Sabban. With the more recent building up of the “ground” in Grand Ward, the Samesaj Gate is even farther removed from any obvious search locations. The gate arch lies wedged into a deep crevasse in the lower reaches of the Muzad. The enchantments that drive it are intact, despite all odds against such magical integrity. Thus, characters willing to leap or lower themselves through the arch (wedged over a 60-foot-deep pit with stalagmites at the bottom) will be instantly whisked to a small grassy hillock just south of Ithal Pass (and the former location of the central assembly area of Akkabbel’'s main fortress, now two millennia gone). If DMs wish to include the PCs in the struggles between Tethyr and Kzelter and the Knights of the Black Gauntlet, have them materialize right in the midst of clashing forces on that hill! The gate only operates in that one direction, so there is no immediate way to return to Calimport.