Imagine a mountain range, vast beyond reckoning, its lower slopes vanishing into mist and shadows and its peaks piercing through the gray, overcast clouds above. Streams of black water run down from the peaks, joining together to form rivers, lakes, and even oceans upon the mountain slopes. Imagine a system of caves within these mountains, as endless as the mountains, immense enough to hold nations and echoing with the whispered dreams of dead gods. The Underworld is something like this.
Two forces shape the Underworld more than any other. A terrible gravity weighs upon everything in the land of the dead, drawing it down into the darkness. Called Oblivion, this force of entropy consumes everything that falls into its maw. Opposing the pull of Oblivion is Creation, to which all things in the Underworld retain some anchor. Ghosts hold tight to memories of their former lives, of friends and enemies and duties unfulfilled. Even nations long dead maintain ties to life, the ruins of their lands and the descendants of their citizens preventing them from sliding into Oblivion and becoming lost forever.
An untold variety of lands dot the Underworld, each a shadow of some culture and shaped by the memories of the dead who dwell within it. Nations in the upper regions of the Underworld much resemble the current cultures of Creation, warped by the strangeness of unlife and the passions that drive ghost society. Further out and down, the dead of nations that haven’t been seen in centuries follow strange traditions and lead lives of macabre melodrama. The lower slopes of the Underworld, beyond the plague-rotted kingdoms of the Contagion dead, are as often as not peopled with ghosts that no longer seem human or never were human to begin with.
Countless rivers cut across the landscape of the Underworld, flowing with black water brackish as tears, pooling in places to form lakes and even oceans before pouring further down and away to Oblivion. When ties to Creation falter, the rivers of the dead can wash whole kingdoms away. Some drift forever, carried here and there by the tides until they are lost in the darkness, but most come to rest somewhere lower on the Underworld’s slopes. An unlucky few are caught by cruel currents and whirlpools and pulled under, dragged into the Labyrinth below.
The Labyrinth is a vast cavern system, worming its way beneath the dead ground. Large enough to swallow cities whole, the upper levels seem much like normal caves, carved by water through rotten stone, but as one descends the tunnels become strange and sinister. Voices whispering beyond the edge of hearing, passages connecting in impossible ways, time crawling or racing by, phantom lights flickering in the distance, and other spectral phenomena become increasingly common the deeper one travels. Those brave enough to plumb the Labyrinth’s furthest depths and lucky enough to survive the dangers lurking there may discover the source of Labyrinth’s malevolent nature: the Neverborn.
The tomb-corpses of the enemies of the gods slain by the Exalted in antiquity, the Neverborn sleep fitfully in death. Anchored to Creation by unbreakable fetters, they rest just above the all-consuming darkness from whence no one has yet returned.Only the mad, the very brave, and the very foolish seek the tombs of the Neverborn, for the horrors that trouble the dreams of the Neverborn bubble up into the Labyrinth, sometimes given shape and a semblance of life by the psychoplasmic nature of the Underworld. Other things dwell with these form-given fears, the shadows of slain behemoths and the ghosts of demons too powerful to die quietly.
Living Among the Dead
Two forces shape the Underworld more than any other. A terrible gravity weighs upon everything in the land of the dead, drawing it down into the darkness. Called Oblivion, this force of entropy consumes everything that falls into its maw. Opposing the pull of Oblivion is Creation, to which all things in the Underworld retain some anchor. Ghosts hold tight to memories of their former lives, of friends and enemies and duties unfulfilled. Even nations long dead maintain ties to life, the ruins of their lands and the descendants of their citizens preventing them from sliding into Oblivion and becoming lost forever.
An untold variety of lands dot the Underworld, each a shadow of some culture and shaped by the memories of the dead who dwell within it. Nations in the upper regions of the Underworld much resemble the current cultures of Creation, warped by the strangeness of unlife and the passions that drive ghost society. Further out and down, the dead of nations that haven’t been seen in centuries follow strange traditions and lead lives of macabre melodrama. The lower slopes of the Underworld, beyond the plague-rotted kingdoms of the Contagion dead, are as often as not peopled with ghosts that no longer seem human or never were human to begin with.
Countless rivers cut across the landscape of the Underworld, flowing with black water brackish as tears, pooling in places to form lakes and even oceans before pouring further down and away to Oblivion. When ties to Creation falter, the rivers of the dead can wash whole kingdoms away. Some drift forever, carried here and there by the tides until they are lost in the darkness, but most come to rest somewhere lower on the Underworld’s slopes. An unlucky few are caught by cruel currents and whirlpools and pulled under, dragged into the Labyrinth below.
The Labyrinth is a vast cavern system, worming its way beneath the dead ground. Large enough to swallow cities whole, the upper levels seem much like normal caves, carved by water through rotten stone, but as one descends the tunnels become strange and sinister. Voices whispering beyond the edge of hearing, passages connecting in impossible ways, time crawling or racing by, phantom lights flickering in the distance, and other spectral phenomena become increasingly common the deeper one travels. Those brave enough to plumb the Labyrinth’s furthest depths and lucky enough to survive the dangers lurking there may discover the source of Labyrinth’s malevolent nature: the Neverborn.
The tomb-corpses of the enemies of the gods slain by the Exalted in antiquity, the Neverborn sleep fitfully in death. Anchored to Creation by unbreakable fetters, they rest just above the all-consuming darkness from whence no one has yet returned.Only the mad, the very brave, and the very foolish seek the tombs of the Neverborn, for the horrors that trouble the dreams of the Neverborn bubble up into the Labyrinth, sometimes given shape and a semblance of life by the psychoplasmic nature of the Underworld. Other things dwell with these form-given fears, the shadows of slain behemoths and the ghosts of demons too powerful to die quietly.
Living Among the Dead
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