Scotch Breach
by WuddyI've been developing the Scotch Breach behind the scenes of a current Glantri campaign because I always found the name evocative for adventure. Right away, I knew I didn't want this to be simply a tactical feature of the Colossus Mountains. I've seen fan material place a couple of towns in the Breach, but nothing else.
The campaign is heavy on fortunes and stars and norns, and so far has revolved around collecting cards from the Deck of Fate or Deck of Spheres from vignettes into regions of Mystara I find interesting. Now that the PCs and their rivals have combined collected 1/3 of the cards, there's going to be a confrontation with the current BBEG, a Hattian expatriate and Heldannic Knight operating out of the Scotch Breach. His motivation is to collect the deck, re-cast the fate of Mystara, and return Hattias to glory.
In concept, this Scotch Breach isn't just a valley through the mountains. It winds around, passes under, and potentially connects to Oenkmar and the Shadowlands. It's a breach, like the gates of the underworld, separating a principality ruled by lich from one ruled by vampires. It's a dark place, with an infamous part in Glantri's dark history.
When the dwarves were driven from Glantri in 802, an untold number were cast into the Breach. Although the timing is iffy, I see these dwarves becoming the duergar.
Matt Milby has a mini-setting called the Black Loch which puts a drowned duergar city on the shore of a small underground sea along with detailed and mapped locations for drow (shadow elves), deep gnomes, kuo-toa, and others. The scale of it is still twice as long as the Scotch Breach, but I'd like to rescale it a bit and place it between the Til and Dol-Anur, below the Scotch Breach.
This makes the Scotch Breach a breach in terms of a mountain pass, a broken contract, and a gap into another world. The Scotch part is weird, because Klantyre isn't canonically Scotland and its people aren't Scottish. To scotch can also mean to halt the progress or function of something, but what is it halting?
The Radiance, by some siphon designed by Prince Brannart?
An ancient incursion by some massive threat, like a dragon or earthquake beetle?
The water which feeds the Black Loch?
I'm looking for ideas and other interpretations of the Breach, even if they're completely at odds with my own