Weight of the Underworld: Lands in Shadow
Mortals with souls stained with corruption go to Hell. Most other souls sink down to the Underworld, a place of different horrors, of quiet misery, protracted grief. Here the torment is not punishment but erasure, as everything you are is eaten away by the coruscating wind. Should you awaken to see its grey deserts, rejoice, for you are not in Hell. Then despair, for other agonies await.
Weight of the Underworld joins the other installments of the Lands in Shadow series, each zooming in on one part of the world and providing you with the lore you need to realize the place in play. While most Lands in Shadow deal with places characters can easily reach, this entry examines a place no one wants to go but one where almost everyone winds up. Read on to discover the cold dread of the Underworld.
Buy Weight of the Underworld PDF from DriveThruRPG!
On a peninsula that juts out into the Crescent Bay stands the northernmost member of the Confederacy of Nine Cities, Azūl, the City of Death. Steeped in dark tales, Azūl is a place few dare seek out let alone explore and earned its sinister reputation from its founder, the Witch-King Ashrakal, and from the Black Hand, an insidious guild of assassins who ascended to power in the city by bending the decadent and corrupt Guild Council to their will. Now, Azūl’s people live in terror of the assassins, who have infiltrated every level of society, their blades sharp and smeared with poison to dispatch anyone they deem traitor to the Mistress who rules.
Five days sailing east of the Northern Reach’s city of Gateway, if the wind favors you, there rises the first of a series of sixteen islands arrayed over the Auroral Ocean in a massive crescent that stretches southwards over hundreds of miles. The cultures across the islands are diverse, yet they all regard themselves as one people, the Tide Born, and owe allegiance to a single nation: the Kingdom of Sails.
On the Empire’s northeastern edge, perched on the giant rocks that tumbled down into the swirling waters of the Auroral Ocean can be found the Freeholds of Nar. Once a string of fortresses belonging to the doughty dwarfs who mined, prying gold and jewel from the stone’s tight grip. The wealth unearthed and the skill of the artisans established the holds as a place of wonder and riches, a reputation that lasted until, one day, the ring of hammering went silent, the light of torches guttered out, and the dwarfs who had made the place their home disappeared.