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Caecras: Lands in Shadow

Caecras: A Lands in Shadow Entry for Shadow of the Demon Lord

Caecras: Lands in ShadowFor over eight hundred years, the Empire has dominated the lands of Rûl. A vast realm of incredible wealth and military might, it grew by conquest, annexing nation after nation, until it stretched from the Desolation in the north to the edge of the frozen wastes in the south, and from the feet of the Shield Mountains in the west to the shores of the Auroral Ocean in the east.

Rising from the ruins of the kingdoms it conquered, the Empire became the mightiest nation in all of Rûl, a power whose fall was inconceivable. But fallen it has as the capital city of Caecras drowns in the blood of the orc uprising, and many of its provinces are breaking away. A shadow now creeps across the land, the drums of war are sounding, and chaos and uncertainty spread like wildfire across the continent.

This entry in the Lands in Shadow series details Caecras (KAY-cress), the crumbling heart of the Empire. In the following pages, you will read about its history and geography, as well as the portraits of important personages. You will also find statistics for common characters, and several new options for player characters. With Caecras, you have everything you need to explore the ruined capital, and make it the centerpiece of your Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign.

Buy Caecras from DriveThruRPG today!

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Grand Duchy: Lands in Shadow

The Grand Duchy: Lands in Shadow for Shadow of the Demon Lord

Grand Duchy: Lands in Shadow for Shadow of the Demon Lord RPGAn ancient land, both prosperous and regressive, nestles against the Shield Mountains to the west and the shattered remains of the Empire to the east. A collection of small fiefdoms, long set in their ways and suspicious of change, the Grand Duchy of the West has long been considered a backwards, rustic, and ignorant place. Serfs toil in the fields and mines, hunt and grow rice in the dangerous, brackish marshes, and spend their lives never looking beyond their ruling lord’s border or dreaming of anything better than their lot.

Lead by a feeble Grand Duke with few ambitions and even fewer ideas, Westers live in a self-induced blindness to the dangers of the outside world or the seeping, insidious corruption that infects the very land. With the remains of the Empire in turmoil, The Grand Duchy sits back to relish days of old that never truly existed. It is a land ripe for unforeseen shock and upheaval.

Buy The Grand Duchy from DriveThruRPG today!

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City of Chains: Lands in Shadow

City of Chains: Lands in Shadow for Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG

City of Chains: Lands in Shadow for Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG

On the coast of the Auroral Ocean, almost directly opposite from the Pirate Isles to the east, stands Dis, the City of Chains. One of the member states of the Confederacy of Nine Cities, it sits on the eastern shore of Rûl, perfectly situated at the intersection of several major land and sea trade routes. While nominally a trading city, it is more famous—or infamous, most would say—as the preeminent marketplace for the slave trade on the continent. Despite strict prohibitions on slavery elsewhere in the Empire, the peddling of flesh continues unabated in Dis, flourishing even, just as it has for nearly a thousand years.

The well-to-do citizens of Dis enjoy a great deal of freedom: the freedom to own other people as slaves, enjoying a decadent and heady lifestyle at their chattel’s expense. The poor and downtrodden of the city enjoy none of these luxuries, instead living in constant fear of its ruler, the cruel autarch, whose minions snatch up those crippled by debt or who break the law, no matter how small the infraction, clapping the hapless victim in shackles and chains from which they will never escape.

City of Chains reveals one of the most cruel and decadent cities in the Confederacy of Nine Cities. As with other installments in this series, the information contained herein is intended to inspire you to develop Dis beyond what is provided in these pages, to help you make this vile and sinister place your own.

Buy City of Chains from DriveThruRPG today!

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Pull of the Stars: Lands in Shadow
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Pull of the Stars: Lands in Shadow

Pull of the Stars: Lands in Shadow for Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG

Pull of the Stars: Lands in ShadowThe people of Urth are not alone in their universe. Demons rush forth from the Void, devils torment the wicked in Hell, and the faeries plot and dance in hidden kingdoms—yet worlds just as strange drift nakedly visible across the night sky. Power radiates from innumerable stars, while traumatic shockwaves pulse across the cosmos, the final screams of entire civilizations consumed by the Demon Lord’s shadow. The seeming emptiness is filled with half-thoughts from idiotic star gods, the psychic wails of dying races, and the tremendous bursts of gravity as black holes collide. The prison moon of Tarterus shields the minds of mortals, elementals, and fey alike, but this protection is imperfect, and venturing out to explore and exploit those other worlds comes at great risk.

Madness is all too common among both astronomers and seekers who set foot on alien soils. It has innumerable forms and symptoms, but a common refrain is that something wants to be known. Moons full of the bastard offspring of the genies’ insanity, mooncalves born of mortal creatures exposed to the energies of the aether, and artifacts of dreadful knowledge—all seem to join in a single song. Such whispers of a grand cosmic agenda are dismissed on Urth as paranoid, but it is impossible to deny that those exposed to the cosmos change in specific ways.

Pull of the Stars details nine worlds orbiting the same sun as Urth, each offering strange locales for adventures, as well as the means of getting to them and elsewhere in the solar system. Here you will find both stories and rules to help you send groups to truly alien locations and face all manner of mysteries and mad threats.

Venture beyond, and be forever changed.

Buy Pull of the Stars from DriveThruRPG today!

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Song of the Woad: Lands in Shadow

Song of the Woad: Lands in Shadow

Song of the Woad | Shadow of the Demon Lord RPGIf you were to ask the scholars of Rûl to discuss the origins of the Woad, they would likely speak to you about “simple, savage, debased tribes descended from the First People,” and perhaps they would venture forth that they are “common in descent from the beastmen,” and “little different than those corrupted creatures.”

But these academic musings would be sadly misguided at best: while they might share some archaic and nomadic customs with the first tribes of mankind, and are rightly characterized by their bestial nature, the Woad came to the lands much later than either humans or beastmen, and from a place no scholarly mind could ever grasp.

Propelled across the Void to Urth by the last gasping scream of a genie succumbing to madness, the Woad came from a world destroyed and forgotten long ago. They are a people who struggle to maintain their ancient customs and beliefs in a world that was initially alien to them upon their arrival, and has been hostile to them ever since.

Song of the Woad explores the various tribes of the Woad, a largely independent and wild folk who have long resisted efforts to be either absorbed or destroyed by the many great civilizations that have risen and fallen in Rûl in the centuries since their arrival on Urth. The Woad’s steadfast refusal to be assimilated has resulted in a general view of them by most peoples of Rûl as hopelessly backward, beastly, and barbaric.

However, a closer look reveals that there is far more to the wild folk than one might expect, as you will discover in this addition to the Lands in Shadow series.

Buy Song of the Woad as a PDF from DriveThruRPG!

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