Black Bile Cove
Located at the southern end of Blade Island among tall sea cliffs, this sea-level port is nestled between two archipelagos of yellow and grey sedentary rock. It terminates in a cavern ripped from the wall in a very natural manner, accessible by an artificial staircase wandering the cliff above in a lazy zig zag that is often slick and treacherous.
The cave itself is 10-20 feet tall and about half as wide, sharply pointed at the top in a way that seems to absorb light. Water from the ocean flows in and out, leaving about a foot of standing seawater over six inches of silt. The entire cave and its surroundings permanently smells of red tide, which gets more intense the further in you go. After stretching back sixty feet into the sea wall, the cavern terminates in an unworked stone chamber shaped like a cone thirty feet in diameter and over sixty feet tall.
A pitch black oil flows from the mouth of the cave, mixing with the seawater until it is finally diluted half a mile downcurrent. This poison kills anything it touches (Constitution DC 26 or die instantly, 20d6 poison damage on a successful save, repeat save each round until the ichor is cleaned entirely away). As the black ichor is extraplanar in origin, it cannot be taken away from the cave without losing its potency and simply becoming black tar.
The source of the oil is a pit at the heart of the cave, wherein four massive strands of spider silk stronger than steel and three feet in diameter have erupted and spiked their way into the walls of the cave, dripping permanently with that same poisonous ichor. The oil drips from every surface, inundating everything in the inky blackness - even to the eyes of those with darkvision. The spider silk strands lie motionless most of the time, although on rare occasion they tense and quake as if bearing the weight of something truly monstrous inside the pit. And what's worse, sometimes the strands move as though they have joints.
A creature that sinks into the pit spends ten minutes immersed in the slick oil, surrounded on all sides by the suffocating strands of spider web. The only markers are the occasional hooks of black bone a foot long that protrude into the path, pointed up as if to catch those who descend. They can be pushed aside as a creature descends. After ten minutes, the creature is unceremoniously deposited on one of the strands of The Black Web - 796th Layer of the Abyss.
Legends of this cave say that in the early 14th century, a misguided challenger in an Inarosi Akula (rite of dominance and leadership) attempted to summon Viskardis, the Queen Retriever, from her abyssal realm. They had hoped to command the Demon Prince to lay waste to their enemies, but instead they and their Coterie were never heard from again, and the Akula was ended without circumstance.
Type
Cave
Location under
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