The kuo-toa get no respect. I don’t mean from lorebooks, I mean from DMs. When you’re writing an underdark campaign and you need a powerful empire, who do you think of? The drow, sure. The illithids, of course. Maybe the duergar. But the kuo-toa? No, those are trash enemies for random encounters. I mean, sure, sometimes they play a significant role in a story, but they hardly ever take center stage.
Well, the kuo-toa of the Black Loch aspire to a little more than jumping out of the water and getting decapitated by your half-orc barbarian. They’ve got plans to take over the loch and subjugate the other races. Including your precious drow.
The plan is crabs. Siege crabs. Crabs the size of your house with carapaces a foot thick. Walls don’t save you from that. Soldiers don’t save you from that. Running for your life? That might do it.
The kuo-toa have been breeding siege crabs in the caverns below the Eel’s Maw Stronghold for decades and, as soon as the next brood reaches maturity, they’ll be ready to kick things off. The kuo-toa intend to move up in the world, or at least wreak enough havoc to take everyone else down a peg or two.
Next up, I’ll be drawing another map from the Black Loch. This will be a battlemap for the drow city of Vlyn’darastyl. It’ll be a few streets with some houses and shops. Nothing too fancy, just something that’ll make a good backdrop for encounters in the city. I don’t expect it to take too long.
By the way, I thought I’d give away the DM notes for this map, so you can download those here. Also, here are some siege crab tokens and a trebuchet token I made.
Well, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think!
Must say: I love Kuo-toa villains! And even more in awesome maps! Thank you for that.
I ran some kuo-toa gangs that worked for a mindflayers once, and it was a blast presenting increasing challenges for the players. But they were mere pawns at that time, althout they have aspiration for greatness.
They also make excellent ex-slaves that wanna slave others. And they have a eternal grudge for the drows, what makes even more awesome to have them in the loch!
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About the lore: giant crabs? That means that with dark magic they could be creating chuuls? That would be mad! Some otherwordly experiments to payback on the mind flayers.
Nice!
They could be making chuuls, sure. If you really want to get serious, they could have a kuo-toa leviathan:
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Kuo-toa_leviathan
Thank you for the tip. A Kuo-toa Leviathan would be sick! Maybe too much, but a necessary message for overly confident characters.
I’ll see how it develops and come back for feedback about your awesome maps.