The undead vote at ST17

We've ascertained what feeds doublehex ST17, home of the ghouls. Now let's define ST17: a ghoul (and ghast) production site.

Captives whom module D1's economy deems unworthy of sentient servitude - or if their supply runs out - get resold and taken off through to ST17. Ghouls need to eat too (famously) but, the Drow reason, they can do that far from the Vault.

Based on D1's encounter-table, I'd stock ST17's side passages with some shadows (undead in AD&D) and giant spiders. I can well imagine a vampire or two here, also (UPDATE 10/23/23: my suggestion is a visitor from R²47, potentially foreshadowing that encounter). Since I think the lich is Asberdies I might allow he's got an embassy here - but not his permanent abode (read: phylactery). As per module D2 we won't meet the beholder; definitely not the illithids nor the jermlaine. Those wererats aren't here either. I'd further keep out the gargoyles and the xorn. Bugbears, kuo-toa, and gnomes won't want to be here. Unsure about the umber-hulks.

ST17 is the end of the road for many lost souls - but, for adventurers, a local end-game on the scale of the Fire Giant Chief. The party comes there to disrupt ghoul production. Not by fighting every ghoul there directly; that is suicide. I also don't know that a slave revolt (by itself) will be possible in what is essentially a colossal live larder straight off The Road many of whose unfortunates will be in deep Ghoul Fever themselves. But the DM should supply some means to scatter the ghasts, with great loss of (un)life. And I may have an idea - politics.

As far as the most-relevant locals: Troglodytes as reptilians aren't ghouls' favoured meal, and for their own part are about the only monsters who can stand ghast stench. We know they are allied with the Lolthians. Along this module's lower network, including area ST17, trogs're the civilian workforce. These reptilians partake of the man-flesh too. Through ST17 they trade this longpork with their kinfolk in the module Caverns. The troglodytes together pass on excess fungi to O10, for trade. Clerics command the trogs: partly to keep the ghouls polite, partly to raise up lower-level deadites, partly to cure their own Kuru outbreaks. They got Huge lizards too.

Strictly speaking the troglodytes don't need a pack of "dead monkeys" shambling about the passage-ways, however they smell. If anyone wanted to shift protein for fungus, they could do that fine on their own - better, in fact, if they didn't have to compete over the menu. Also the undead presence being artificial was probably not indigenous to ST17. They're squatting on trog turf.

Granted, no race's turf stays owned forever; ST17 may well have been (say) bugbear before all this. And in the primary passages, occasionally some trolls dragoon stray trogs into service. The undead do protect these trogs from some of that. Still.

It is, I think, "the drow" themselves who insist on a ghast presence in this cavern ST17. Lolthians, that is; among which pack Kilsek are the top b!tchez... back home. For ST17 I'm thinking more their insincere toadies, angling for an independent base of support. We know Despana is active up here. So: Despana's clerics again, this time with Godeep males and some "independents" including a Kilsek agent. (I don't think Aleval are strong enough nor Everhaite trusted enough. Per D2 Noquar are playing games with the Kuo-Toa, which games they're losing - probably because Kilsek and/or Despana caught 'em.)

Beneath the usual drow drama some trogs can accept their lot in this life. Maybe not all however.

When the nasties are decimated from ST17, and their drow minders driven out: party can get a map right to that module D3 offshoot. Maybe even with boots of speed sufficient to sprint down the road.