No detailed map is provided for this location. The placement of the following features is at the DM’s discretion, as is the composition of guardian forces.
Khesavuthir’s Pets: The power of the Black Well has long been a magnet for debased and evil draconic creatures. These now prowl the wasted landscape around the site, feeding on each other and any creatures foolish enough to linger here. A party that approaches within fifty miles of the Black Well (whether by land or air) must check each hour for random encounters on the Black Well Encounters table, below.
A party that approaches the site with any degree of secrecy has the normal 10% chance of an encounter each hour. However, the servants of Khesavuthir have an instinctive mystical connection that aids them in their efforts to keep the Black Well free of intruders. For each wandering monster encounter the party faces, the chance of a subsequent encounter the next hour increases by 5%. A party that leaves the area for 72 hours or longer has its chance for a random encounter reduced to 10% when it next returns.
Sinkhole Shelves: The landscape of wind-etched rock that spreads across the nondescript tundra surrounding the Black Well has been undercut and weakened by the erosion of centuries-old volcanic vents. Each round that a party moves through these areas, there is a 1% chance per Medium creature in the party that the ground collapses in a sinkhole with a 15-footradius bury zone and a 15-foot-radius slide zone (DMG 66). It takes a DC 30 Search check or a DC 30 Survival check to note a sinkhole shelf. (For the purpose of triggering a sinkhole, two Small creatures equal one Medium creature, a Large creature equals two Medium creatures, and so on.)
Guardposts: The Forgotten Gate that leads to the Black Well is surrounded by a number of caverns wherein dwell the site’s most devoted guardians. These abyssal drakes (Dr 145) maintain a sleepless watch over land and sky. The low caves from which they scan the surroundings are well concealed (Hide +22), and the drakes are difficult to surprise (Listen +17, Spot +17). Whenever intruders approach within 100 feet of a single abyssal drake’s position, it takes to the air, using its breath weapon and frightful presence to drive intruders toward other guardposts where its allies wait to attack.
The Forgotten Gate: Obscured by shifting landscape and shadowy fog, three crumbling onyx archways rise within a series of cinder cone peaks. Seemingly carved of single blocks of stone, these great arches must once have stood more than 50 feet high. Now, only their bases remain, surrounding a perfectly circular portal leading straight down.
The entrance to Khesavuthir was designed for dragons in flight, the shaft dropping some hundred feet before ending in a vast circular chamber. From here, dozens of tunnels lead off at different angles, twisting as they plunge deep within the earth.
Chambers of Shadow: The labyrinthine corridors of Khesavuthir are a seemingly endless web of unmappable passageways and caverns. All are dragon-sized and are subject to the same sense of shifting landscape that affects the surface above the Black Well. This effect does not impede forward movement or a party’s ability to explore, but it takes a DC 30 Survival check to successfully backtrack along the same route. On a failed check, a party becomes effectively lost (DMG 86, but add +10 to the DC of the Survival check to determine the correct direction of travel).
These chambers might be home to guardians from the Black Well Encounters table, to artifacts that bestow the half-dragon template or other effects, or to draconic undead or fiends lost here since the Age of Demons.
The Library of Khesavuthir: Among a small number of secretive draconic scholars, it is known that the Black Well was once home to a draconic cult whose members interpreted the Prophecy in ways eventually forbidden by the Chamber. Though knowledge of their beliefs has been lost to history, whispered rumors speak of the cultists drawing great arcane power from blood sacrifice. The transgression that saw the cultists eventually hunted down and destroyed involved the appearance of dragonmarks among the lesser races—and the cultists’ belief that the dragonmarked had been created as fodder for dark rituals of sacrifice and consumption.
The heart of the Black Well lies some three miles beneath the surface, and it consists of an interconnected set of caverns wherein can be found the greatest secrets of the cult. The full extent of those secrets—as well as whatever lore and artifacts the cult abandoned here—is left to the DM’s determination.
The Hold of Danazharil: For more than thirteen hundred years, the Black Well has been the lair of the shadow dragon Danazharil (Dr 191). Once a high-ranking leader of the Talons of Tiamat, Danazharil fled the cult centuries before, though he sends his minions on endless missions to keep track of its activities. Now a great wyrm of unparalleled power and malice, Danazharil has designs on taking control of the Talons of Tiamat using the lore and magic of the Black Well. A trio of Io’lokari explorers corrupted by the site’s foul power (see the High Cultists encounter, DoE 62) are his eyes and ears within the upper echelons of the cult.
Danazharil relishes the opportunity to destroy those who seek the Black Well’s forbidden knowledge. He can move freely through the labyrinth of twisting corridors and caverns, using his shadow blend and create shadows abilities to attack with total concealment as he carefully destroys his foes with tooth and claw. He uses his breath weapon to strip away the power of any foes who present a serious challenge. Dragonmarked characters and those who outlast their allies in direct combat are given special honor by being left alive—so as to be consumed in the dark rites that were forged here.