In the Adventure "Dungeon of the Mad Mage", Skullport is connected to the dungeon of Undermountain via various tunnels and the river Sargauth. However, the adventure does not seem to indicate any distance between the two. While I can try and triangulate an approximate distance, is there any explictit information on this, maybe from older game materials / editions or from official fiction?
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asked Sep 7, 2022 at 7:57
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\$\begingroup\$ Does this answer your question? Where in the Sargauth Level are the paths into Skullport? \$\endgroup\$– illustroSep 7, 2022 at 8:49
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\$\begingroup\$ Specifically the map in the first answer \$\endgroup\$– illustroSep 7, 2022 at 8:49
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2\$\begingroup\$ While that's relevant, I don't think it's an answer to the question sufficiently to close this as a duplicate. It might get cited as part of an answer though. \$\endgroup\$– doppelgreenerSep 7, 2022 at 10:20
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\$\begingroup\$ @illustro: that is excellent, and partially answers the question. Our DM says there are other versions that have much longer distances that they are using. We‘re going along with that, all power to the DM of course, but I‘d like to understand if that is canon, or just some homebrew variant. (I don‘t want to research it myself, as I don‘t want spoilers on whatever they are using which would be hard to avoid) \$\endgroup\$– Nobody the HobgoblinSep 7, 2022 at 11:45
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2 Answers
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About 500 feet
The map in Dungeon of the Mad Mage is almost a direct copy of the mid-East portion of the South section of the Sargauth level map from the AD&D 2e boxed set The Ruins of Undermountain.
The expanded map from AD&D 2e shows Skullport immediately down river in a location called "Skull Pool" from where the Dungeon of the Mad Mage map cuts off. The grid matches up between the old map and the new one, so I used the new scale of 10 feet per square. This gives us a figure of 500 ft.
Does this match textual references?
I could not find any textual references to the distance from the Sargauth level of Undermountain to Skullport. I checked all of the original sourcebooks I could find that reference Skullport including:
- City of Splendors: Waterdeep
- Skullport
- The Ruins of Undermountain
...and the closest I could find was references to the route, but no specific distance:
The river [Sargauth] flows with a moderate pace along Level Three of Undermountain; it flows from north to south, the waters running down to Skullport.
answered Sep 8, 2022 at 15:27
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\$\begingroup\$ Thank you -- that matches the link illustro posted. Our DM says there are other versions that have much longer distances that they are using - am I understanding you correctly that you checked that none of the officially published material (as far as you could find) indicates a larger distance, so what our DM must be using is some kind of homebrew alteration? \$\endgroup\$ Sep 9, 2022 at 6:53
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\$\begingroup\$ @GroodytheHobgoblin Everything I checked is this short distance. It is possible there is something I missed, but I didn't find anything. \$\endgroup\$ Sep 9, 2022 at 22:04
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Depends on how you want to measure it
(but you could very well say that "0 ft")
I pulled up my copy of the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas (this is 2e material, but I doubt canon has changed much) and stitched together (somewhat poorly) the North and South parts of Undermountain's Sargauth Level. This is what it looks like:
I added a couple of vector measurements for reference, but really... Skullport can be said to be inside Undermountain.
In case it's not clear, the purple rectangle in the bottom-left is Skullport. Note that River Sargauth reaches Skull Island.
