Shedaklah

Geography

The Forest of Poisoned Dreams

Home to many of the layer's fiendish inhabitants, this was a massive "forest" with tree-sized mushrooms and builder-shaped fungal growths. The creatures that dwelled there constantly roamed the spongy forest floor in search of something edible; with their most common prey being the extraplanar explorers who flocked to the place in search of the phantasmagoric psychotropic fungi that bloomed there, which were the most potent in the known planes. Both addicts and enlightenment-seekers sought this place for the partly-poisonous growths.

The Ichordeep Entity

A massive, syrupy stain of purple and black colonial algae that appeared around the time Zuggtmoy was bound in the Temple of Elemental Evil and has been slowly expanding ever since. It sometimes created giant pseudopods to catch prey flying overhead, indicating at least rudimentary intelligence. The Demon Queen of Fungi did not speak of it, however, leading to some speculation among her followers that she could not control it.

The Slime Pits of Juiblex

The region separated from Zuggtmoy's realm by the River Styx where the Faceless Lord reigned. There, five bubbling, slime-filled chasms of olive, mustard, green, ochre, and grey coloration led into the twisting tunnels and caves of the layer where Juiblex dwelled. Untold numbers of oozes, slimes, and jellies dwelled there as its servants.

Xhubhullosk

A ragtag collection of lean-tos and rotting stalk-structures that was home to some 400 mortals, Xhubhullosk was in fact the most notable mortal settlement on the layer. Insane myconids, covered in parasitic growths, considered themselves Zuggtmoy's honored servants and preached to the other inhabitants while helping them separate edible food from poisonous material. The other mortals, humans and half-orcs who were stranded on the layer for one reason or another, were hostile to outsiders, seeing them as competition for scarce food, and would attack any petitioners of the layer on sight.

Zuggtmoy's Palace

Rising from the bog at the center of Shedaklah was the palace that Zuggtmoy made out of, she claimed, the largest fungi in the multiverse: two dozen colossal, pale yellow and rancid brown mushrooms that were nearly four miles tall. Bridges of shelf fungi connected the structures, and the swampy land around it was infested with acid puffballs and poisonous vapors. Countless chambers were carved out of the mushrooms, so many that not even Zuggtmoy knew the entire layout of the place, although she claimed otherwise. The palace was also home to a senile, extremely poisonous demon lord called Yibyiru, the Rancid Lady of Bitter Bile, who served as the major domo of the place and was variously said to be either Zuggtmoy's mother or daughter.

Ecosystem

Shedalkah was, like most of the Abyss, inhabited by a variety of demons: vrocks, hezrous, vathugas, chasmes, and rutterkin were all common on this layer. Additionally, a wide variety of fiendish and half-fiendish fungi such as basidironds, myconids, phycomids, and phantom fungi could be found there, as well as plants such as shambling mounds and red sundew, albeit infested with fungal growths, and rukarazyll and oozes.
Among the creatures that lived in Shedaklah's "jungles" were the threeb, a type of leech used to make quelaerel sauce.

Alternative Name(s)

222nd layer of the Abyss

Location under

Abyss