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You approach Lake Donigarten, surrounded by vast fields of tilled earth worked by orc farmers. Slaves pour water into carefully irrigated dung fields, renewing and expanding the fields with wagonloads of excrement brought in from the city proper. A large bed along Donigarten’s western shore yields moss, while north of the lake stands a grove of giant edible mushrooms.
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Donigarten is a natural lake that fills the smoothest, lowest end of the city’s great cavern. Its chill waters are vital, feeding nearby farmlands and providing fish and eels for the slaves to catch from their poled rafts. At first appearance, it seems as if the city’s primary water supply comes from Donigarten. Although the lake water is used for irrigation and is potable enough to slake the thirst of the city’s domesticated animals (and slaves), few drow would ever think of drinking from Donigarten’s fetid waters. Most of the city’s drinking water is instead taken from a natural aquifer deep within the Mistrift.
Nowadays, it’s common knowledge in Menzoberranzan that dark things reside under the usually still waters of Donigarten.
Donigarten is surrounded by vast fields of tilled earth worked by orc farmers. Slaves pour water into carefully irrigated dung fields, renewing and expanding the fields with wagonloads of excrement brought in from the city proper. The soil is moist and rich in nutrients, making it excellent food for the countless varieties of moss, algae, mold, fungi, and lichen that thrive in that environment. North of the lake stands a grove of giant edible mushrooms, carefully cultivated by drow horticulturists.
One of the games slavers play is to make the goblins and orcs swim from the isle to shore, to see if any of them are pulled down to their deaths.
Drow horticulturists around the mushroom grove.
Slaves catching fish and eels from poled rafts.
Slaves tending to the fungi farms.
NPC’s
Irrigation Tunnels Leading to Lake Donigarten:
https://www.czepeku.com/fantasy/scenes/sewer-tunnels/original-night
https://www.czepeku.com/fantasy/maps/sewer-tunnels/original-night
Mushroom Grove:
https://www.czepeku.com/fantasy/scenes/overgrown-magic-forest/exodus-of-the-will-owisps
https://www.czepeku.com/fantasy/scenes/swamp-graveyard/natural-night