Riders from the Sunless Lands Preview 1: The Shape of the Underworld

Would that there were only the waters, with none to linger there and witness them. Alas, instead, there is the Underworld. There could be no greater tragedy.

And yet, see how it gleams in the dark. Its kings hoard the wealth of ages, vast plutonian troves that would take generations to spend. Its sunless isles rise above the water as if gasping for breath, its vistas like a dream or a nightmare. Who can look upon the Underworld and not be stirred by all that haunts it, like motes of sepulchral dust illuminated by moonlight? Perhaps it is for the best that only the dead call it home, for their unbeating hearts cannot be broken.

Where the mangled Old Laws once shaped things, the power of memory exerts sway. It twists the realm’s geography into being shifting and subjective, rendering distance a matter of emotional resonance as much as space. The truest principle of the Underworld is meaning: all is ritual, here, and through it the dead endure. Far from living eyes, the dead have managed to eke out an existence in the dark. Learned ghosts speak of three fundamental divisions of the Underworld, naming them dominions, wastelands, and waterways. They speak of the Labyrinth little if at all, for fear of what might be listening.

Dominions are the nexuses of ghostly existence, anchored points of stability and certitude. Through their command of spirit arts, geomancy, and whatever resources they may have, ghosts fix them into place and permanence. Many are great necropolises, tomb-cities build around accreted layers of burial wealth, where ghosts seek sanctuary behind high walls. Others are afterlives, their natures emerging from the confluence of forces and the Old Laws. Some dominions are raised in solitude: lonely fortresses, one-tomb towns, and hidden oases. Though shielded from the desolation outside, what awaits ghosts within many dominions can be worse than being left to the waste’s mercies.

All afterlives are dominions, though not all dominions are afterlives. Primeval afterlives (Abyssals, p. 77) predominate in the Stygian Archipelago, while ritual afterlives are most common elsewhere. Some dominions contain many dominions within themselves, like the Eternal Emerald Shogunate or the Empire of Aki. These often share similar characteristics to begin with, but the linking of place to place brings similarity — as dominions become symbolically closer, they begin to grow alike in character, changing in ways subtle or overt through their association.

Wastelands are the churning spaces between dominions. They comprise the desolate majority of the Underworld’s dry lands, and are filled with ravening packs of hungry ghosts, wandering specters, fearsome storms bearing wraiths upon their winds, and the ruins of fallen dominions. Within their borders distance stretches, lengthening journeys through them unto agony. Travel through wastelands seldom leads far, as all eventually terminate at a shore; those who linger in them are often scavengers, or seeking to avoid notice. Many shadowlands open directly into wastelands, lending to the difficulty in crossing between worlds.

Most of the Underworld’s isles contain only a single dominion, huddling away from that isle’s wasteland. Visiting other dominions often requires sailing even if they share an isle, as waterways divide isles from themselves, though in their absence travel by wasteland is possible. The Underworld’s few continents are riverine, functioning the same but at larger scale.

Ghosts typically awaken into the Underworld at a wasteland’s edge, just outside of the dominion that has found purchase upon their soul. If they’re lucky, they may even have some humble grave goods. They have little time to take their bearings, for the horrors of the wastelands are many and ravenous, and quickly force them to seek shelter within that dominion, or risk the unknown. Sometimes the dominion’s residents make the choice for them, shunting them out or trapping them within.

Waterways

It is the way of things in the Underworld that all roads lead inevitably to the shore. From every shore — be it that of a stagnant pond, paradisaical bay, or any others — can be reached the Underworld’s rivers or seas, which are called its waterways. The waterways were here before the Underworld, and in their depths rests the memory of what was there before. Each is a vast current of power, as much chthonic Essence as water.

Waterways exist only in the darkness beyond the shore, which marks beginnings and endings both. Shrouded in fog, darkness, and storms, they divide the Underworld into its lonely isles and trap unfortunate ghosts upon their shores. Yet, they also serve as conduits for those who know their rites; ferries, funeral barques, merchant vessels, and war-fleets sail upon them, stitching together undead civilization.

Ghosts cannot drown, yet none attempt to swim in the waterways; the moment a ghost’s ankles are submerged, they’re swept off their feet as if by a vicious current, pulled toward the Sea of Shadows’ lightless depths. Other spirits fare similarly to ghosts in the waterways. Living beings aren’t held in thrall by the waterways’ magics, though they find them unpleasant and cold to the touch, and their presence draws the hungry things that swim within.

Grander rivers may annihilate a ghost before he ever reaches their end, so overwhelming is their Essence. Some ghosts seek baptism in a river, that they might be reborn with strange powers from it; such attempts are rare and typically the culmination of years of preparation.

Rivers and Rites

The Underworld’s rivers form a vast and spidering network. Each one is unique in character, possessing its own power, mysteries, resonances, and rites. Most rivers run with dark water, shadow, or colorless absence, but some strange few consist of bones, milk, locusts, or pale fire. Like Creation’s rivers, they flow into one another before ultimately converging in the Sea of Shadows, their flows commingling in clouds and eddies.

Five rivers exceed all others in size and power, the great rivers all others feed into. Each defines an entire Direction of the Underworld with its flow, though they, and the greatest of the lesser rivers, can sometimes be entered into elsewhere.

The River Lethe

Myth tells that the waters of the River Lethe — the cycle of reincarnation — are real, not just figurative, counting the River Lethe among the great rivers. It is said that the Lethe is cool, calm, and pale, a place where vanished ghosts can be communed with one last time and wisdom can be gleaned; that its loamy shores shift and groan, as if alive; and that it can lead to anywhere in the Underworld.

Few claim to have sailed the River Lethe, and fewer still to be able to do it again. Rites that invoke the Lethe, if they existed, would have power over memory, peace, and reincarnation.

The River Styx’s waters are glassy and opaque, appearing perfectly still as the river rushes to its end in Stygia. Two warships can sail its breadth in opposite directions and barely see each other over the horizon, so far does it stretch; ghosts sail it at all hours, making it the Underworld’s grandest highway. Oaths sworn upon the Styx’s waters are binding to ghosts, with power akin to the Eclipse Oath.

Murky Phlegethon leads north, cold as the void and shrouded in absolute darkness. Ships sailing it hang as many lanterns as they can; for this reason, it’s sometimes also called the River of Fire. The dark whispers frightful nothings to sailors, who see in it that which they fear from the corners of their eyes. The Phlegethon holds dominion over terror and nightmares, and its magics can fortify the mind or curse others into panic and madness.

The River Acheron leads east, dipping in rapids and teeming with strange creatures native to the Underworld. If offered tribute, these beings are largely docile, but they attack the ships of those who deny them. Among the Underworld’s busiest rivers, most are smart enough to pay their taxes. The Acheron holds powers over fortune and wealth; its blessings can bring ghosts the luck they need to endure or finish a trade deal, or ruin all they have built through sheer chance.

The Cocytus is always stagnant, its lukewarm waters yellow-green and untroubled by any wind as it winds south. Through the ripple of miasma, ships appear to be still even when they’re moving; the only way to tell is by the comings and goings of things below, like rotting reeds and bloated reptilian beings. The Cocytus holds power over stillness and decay,

Swift-flowing Eridanus leads west, its waters clear but flecked with gold. The sky above is dark and foreboding; it exists forever in the moment before the lightning and the rain, tension forever unresolved. Eridanus permits its depths to be gazed into, sometimes revealing sunken ships, the strange, many-limbed denizens of the river floor, and monsters that swim in from the Sea of Shadows. It holds power over premonition and haste, and occasionally offers visions in its vapors that will save travelers or doom them to its depths.

The Sea of Shadows is the lightless ocean that dominates the Underworld, constituting the majority of the realm. More violent and strange than Creation’s waters, the sea can go from placid to roiling with surreal speed, lashed by ferocious tempests that bear specters on their winds. It is both wasteland and waterway, a place of pure entropy where unfathomable power churns just below the surface. Every ghost awakens in the Underworld knowing to fear it, for it yearns to drown all things beneath waves of void and darkness. The sea can be accessed from any shore or waterway; nowhere in the Underworld is ever far from the it. However, traveling upon it is slower and more dangerous than most other means, and only ghosts that have developed special spirit arts choose to sail it with any frequency. Most who travel it do so briefly, drawn there on accident or to avoid pursuers. A few daring explorers seek out forgotten islands, the detritus of lost afterlives, and the memories of numinous beings. Even for those prepared for the harshness of the sea, dangers here are many, from dread pirates to labyrinth-spawned behemoths to the tortured remains of ancient benthic spirits.

There are rites for entering each waterway. Most require sacramental tribute — an obol, a drop of blood, a secret whispered for the first time — and the recitation of a litany. The words matter less than how they are said, and whether they resonate with the river’s nature.

Ferry-priests of the Transcendent Course have spread knowledge of rites across the Underworld, though there are many who are restricted from being able to receive or act upon this knowledge. Rarer still are rites to utilize a river’s magics, through spirit arts or necromantic workings. Puissant beings can even call rivers to them, at the shore or to meet another waterway, and travel the whole Underworld thereby.

Rites of Navigation

Characters with Occult or Sail at 3+ and an appropriate specialty can roll ([Intelligence or Wits] + Sail) to enter a waterway, utilizing the appropriate rites. Characters with an appropriate Lore background may also attempt to do so. This roll’s difficulty is 2 by default, but may increase by 1-3 depending on currents, the weather, or other factors. Rolling is required to pass from one waterway to another, except when entering the Sea of Shadows or waiting for a tributary to flow into a great river.

Calling a waterway to allow entry requires five dots instead of three. The roll is the same, with a base difficulty of 10, plus or minus all applicable modifiers. The Abyssal Exalted roll against base difficulty 8.

Failure to enter a waterway traps vessels until they can succeed; failure to call a waterway brings the Underworld’s more perilous rivers or the Sea of Shadows.

Most critical of these modifiers is sympathy, which measures the symbolic connection of a character to the waterway she’s calling, or to her voyage’s destination. Different sources of sympathy stack their benefits.

Sympathy is generated by acts, feelings, and objects, gaining power from their significance to the character and how directly they represent meaning. Storytellers are encouraged to interpret this liberally, so long as it makes sense to the player character or to her and the player.

Minor sympathy examples: A spear resembling that of a Legion Sanguinary foot-soldier, spelling the river’s name on the deck with coins, a drawing of a kingdom’s ruler, becoming lost in a narratively relevant significant memory, cheap jewelry imitating Stygian fashions.

Major sympathy examples: Exposing the scar left by an Akiean noble’s rapier, quietly whispering a narratively relevant memory that makes the character feel emotional, carving a river’s name into the ship, a scrap of clothing,

Defining sympathy examples: The rosary of a Shining Way corsair; opening a vein for the River of Blood; breaking down while sharing a narratively relevant memory; brandishing a letter to be delivered; bearing a river’s blessing, curse, or demonstrating magic resonant with its own.

The Fallen Spear Imperium

Drawn by scent, hungry ghosts in their teeming thousands flock to the River of Blood. Here they steep themselves in gore under the shadows of jagged iron mountains and crimson skies. On clifftops of rusted steel, Incarnadine priests sacrifice animals taken through shadowland roads and daub attendants in precious living blood, flicking droplets to the slavering hungry ghosts below. Rapturous music plays on sinew viols and skin drums wrought from the sacrifices as the warrior-saint descends from her moon-palace to rouse her armies to war.

The dead have always been drawn to the primal liminality of living blood, and so there has been an Incarnadine Path for almost as long as there has been an Underworld. Long before the raising of Stygia, rites were performed on the River of Blood, on whose banks crowd the many afterlives of violent death. It was not until the century following the Usurpation when a war-queen rose from the host of new ghosts that flooded the banks and achieved an unprecedented spiritual communion with the river. Ukhala Enlightened-in-Blood forged the squabbling afterlives into a conquering empire, the Fallen Spear Imperium. After consolidating her power and subjugating her neighbors, Ukhala turned her attention to Stygia. Her first invasion failed in the face of the Dual Monarch’s command of the Sea of Shadows, but proved the might of her new empire sufficiently that emissaries of the Emerald Shogun and Black Heron sought her alliance in what would become the Stygian Pact. She rules now from the Fang of Nymir, a failed ivory moon of the ancient Underworld, hollowed and turned into a weapon of conquest, hovering above the lands of her Imperium.

As the River of Blood brims with vitality and passion that spans the living and dead, it hews close to Creation. Each of its 44 holy distributaries, named for Incarnadine saints of old, leads to a different shadowland. From here, Incarnadine priests and blood-hunters garlanded with fragrant carmine source living animals for sacrifice, and humans where animals are not in sufficient supply. No single region of the Stygian Archipelago boasts so many shadowlands; a traveler could cut a journey across Creation by weeks or months by traversing the River of Blood’s basin, were they cunning enough to avoid the hordes of hungry ghosts, and bold enough to risk Ukhala’s wrath for their trespass.

The afterlives of violent death are divided among hosts, the semi-autonomous armies risen from their ghostly populations. They are united only in swearing loyalty to Ukhala and in sharing some variant of the Incarnadine rites, and battles along their borders are common. The hosts rule over fractious, conquered territories across much of the Stygian Archipelago, from the Barren Roads, home to lone travelers who die of exposure, to the Boil-Spire, captured centuries ago from the Eternal Emerald Shogunate. In war, the Imperium fields fanatical soldiers bolstered by Incarnadine blood magic, along with enormous packs of hungry ghosts as shock troops. While they lack the discipline of the Legion Sanguinary, they make up for it in fervor. Imperium armies are occasionally seen in Creation, where certain hosts such as the Dagger and the Betrayed offer their services as mercenaries in exchange for reliable blood sacrifices.

The Carrion Field, primal afterlife of those that die in battle, is not the largest of the Imperium’s afterlives, but its Sword Host is the mightiest and most prestigious of its armies. It nemissary-warlord Paragon Axehead rules from the jagged fortress-tower of Shattersteel, and its iron crowned blood-priests preach the most influential form of the Incarnadine Path, of a violent warrior-ethos where the vitality of the River of Blood fuels itself in a glorious eternal war. Their greatest rivals are the Sanguine Host, raised from the primal afterlife of human sacrifice, whose interpretation of the faith emphasizes spiritual rebirth and closeness to the living world, a doctrine that has found purchase among downtrodden hosts such as the Devoured, the Maimed, and the Scourged. A generation ago, Ukhala named those rare ghosts who died voluntarily sacrificing themselves to the River of Blood as new saints of the Incarnadine Path, greatly increasing the prestige of the Sanguine Host and sparking a series of civil wars with its rivals.