Arcturiadoom

Arcturiadoom was the 14 level of the massive dungeon known as Undermountain. It served as the personal retreat of Arcturia, a unique lich who was infamous for being one of the most powerful of Halaster Blackcloak's seven apprentices.

Description
Several of the hallways and alcoves were decorated with statues of Arcturia and Halaster himself. While Arcturia thoroughly made the domain her own, many chambers and rooms featured crypts and foundries, holdovers of the old Melairkyn dwarves. Among these was a large iron tankard that weighed over 1,500 lbs (680.4 kg) and several dwarf-sized statues that had escaped arcane transformation.

As Arcturia herself was a master transmuter, her domain contained a great number of traps that were designed to transmogrify and alter the form of any humanoid creature that happened to set them off. They typically came in the form of magical glyphs, inscribed into the domain's floors. While they could be easily dispelled, they had the potential to possibly alter the form of any interlopers to anything from otyughs to gelatinous cubes and even wyverns.

Entrances

 * The great bore worm dug a large tunnel that led down from Trobriand's Graveyard to a cave that opened up into large set of double doors that featured carvings of skulls that had been eaten away by worms. Behind these doors was they foyer of Arcturiadoom, decorated with dwarven statues that had been grotesquely altered by Arcturia's magic.

Notable Locations

 * Central hall:
 * In the center of Arcturiadoom, down a hallway north of the entrance, was grand main hall. Its arched ceiling stood 150' (45.7 m) tall and was buttressed by broad stone pillars. It was illuminated by a number of sconces that were enchanted with continual flames.


 * Classroom:
 * Like her master Halaster, Arcturia occasionally took on a number of apprentices and dedicated a portion of her domain to their education. However, their quarters were often empty and the classrooms were strewn with evidence of the displeasure she had in her pupils. In addition to words like "YOU ALL FAIL" being scrawled across the blackboard, the remains of several arcane apprentices could be found throughout this area of Arcturiadoom.


 * Disintegration room:


 * Foundry:
 * In the northwest section of Arcturiadoom was a large smithing room with an arched ceiling that reached 30'(9.1 m) high. The foundry itself was a vast room and three smaller chambers that extended beyond corresponding 70' deep (21.3 m) pits that, when active, were partially filled with bits of scrap metal. Within each chamber were stone stairs that led up to the three forges, whose flames were drawn from the Elemental Plane of Fire. The heat of the foundry was so intense it was harmful to anyone who spent more than an hour within, while the flame itself was comparable to that of the fiery breath of a young red dragon.


 * Laboratory:
 * Arcturia kept a small, but often-used experimentation room in the eastern part of her domain. It featured a large stone operating table, atop which she kept the subjects of her transformative "innovations". Another room just off to the side of the lab had several chains linked to iron rings, which had been bolted to the floor. It gave the archmage a space to secure some of her particularly hideous creations.


 * Prison:
 * North of the main entrance, down a pair of halls, was a half dozen holding cells where Arcturia kept her subjects before she could experiment upon them.


 * Timekeeping room:
 * Within the halls of her realm, Arcturia kept an entire room dedicated to the marking of time, allowing her to keep track of the day and night cycle of Toril. An 20' (6.1 m) wide iron ring was suspended in the air, attached to the four pillars that extended into the room's partially-concave ceiling. Within this ring was a slightly smaller disc that was inscribed with a symbol of the sun on one side, and the moon on the reverse.


 * Two alcoves within the room contained life-size statues of human wizards, which had been heavily enchanted by evocation and transmutation magic. At dawn and dusk each day, the statues exerted arcane energy upon the disc, displaying the symbol of the sun during the daytime, and the moon at night.


 * Transmutorium:
 * A single room in the northern part of Arcturiadoom held some of Arcturia's most horrifying creations. On the western wall hung a tapestry made of flesh, that was in fact the beholder Xebekal. After invading her lair, the eye tyrant was stripped of all its powers and transformed by means of a wish spell.


 * Hidden behind a crystal door within the transmutorium was a small alcove that held a magical device, comprised of a a brass panel and a number of buttons. Within this chamber any being could be made larger or smaller, as if they were affected by the spell enlarge or reduce person.

Inhabitants
The halls of Arcturiadoom, along the caves outside, were inhabited by several types of creatures and humanoids native to the Underdark. Just outside the front entrance of the archmage's domain, a group of carrion crawlers dwelled within a small garden of luminescent fungi. Giant fire beetles could be found scurrying around the stone floors, and were often thrown together in a large cage to create naturally-powered lanterns.


 * Assistants:
 * For quite some time, Arcturia had an illithid assistant who lived within her domain. She even went so far as to create a tentacle-themed private room for them near her own lab. However, after beheading her assist to study the psychic energy found within, she was forced to lure Ellix Gaspar from the arcane academy Dweomercore. As of the Year of Three Ships Sailing, 1492 DR, Ellix could be found wandering around Arcturiadoom in a state of befuddlement and stupor, after having displeased Arcturia.


 * Fire giants:
 * The half-dozen or so fire giants that called this level home spent most of their time in the foundry. Several of them focused their efforts on the creation of the giant metal construct referred to as Mecha-Hallaster.


 * Experiments:
 * Arcturia's domain was full of unique "creations", horrific creatures she had experimented upon in one manner or another. Among these abominations were a, ogre with the head of a carrion crawler, a two-headed rodent the size of a man, a number animated rusty swords that were animated into a humanoid form along with an umber hulk that had been polymorphed into a giant scorpion and forced to live within an enormous shoe.


 * Guffaw the Stone Eater: One of Arcturia's experiments was a deep gnome named Guffaw, who had been altered by Arcturia to possess a voracious appetite for worked and carved stone. He felt wholly compelled to eat any such stone he encountered and had to limit to how much he could devour.


 * Death's Head Phalanx:
 * This band of hobgoblins established a barracks and base camp within the south-eastern halls of Arcturiadoom sometime during the 15 century DR. Their leader, Doomcrown, kept his personal quarters in a nearby chamber. The clan also maintained several guard posts throughout the level, along with a training room and a large rallying area, used for mustering their ranks.

History
Before Arcturia claimed this domain as her own it existed as part of the subterranean realm of the dwarves of Clan Melairkyn.

Sometime prior to 1492 DR, Emberosa and her fire giant kin came to Arcturiadoom on a mission to aid their efforts in dethroning the storm giants of Faerûn within the giants' ordning. They originally sought an ancient rune of power created some 40,000 years before the Second Sundering, which they believed was stolen by dwarves and taken to their domain beneath Mount Waterdeep.

During their excursion into Undermountain, the fire giants were accompanied by the Death's Head Phalanx band of hobgoblins, led by the Warlord known as Doomcrown.

Within the central hall of Arcturiadoom, the fire giants gathered scrap metal from Trobriand's Graveyard and began construction on an enormous magical-iron automaton called Mecha-Hallaster. This 100' (30.5 m) tall machination was the near-exact duplicate of Halaster himself, though by 1492 DR, it was still incomplete. The Mad Mage intended to use this colossus to combat the Walking Statues of Waterdeep when the time arrived to conquer the surface city.