Forgotten Realms: the Underdark a Jumpchain Compliant Document Created by Yorokonde
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Forgotten Realms: The Underdark A Jumpchain Compliant Document Created by Yorokonde The air around you is not just still. It’s dead. Lifeless. Musty with the smell of long settled dust and damp, cool walls. The feeling of millions of tons of stone hanging over your head presses down onto your soul. You’re not just underground, you’re so distantly far under the earth that it would take hours worth of walking straight down to reach the depths you’ve appeared in. The darkness around you isn’t the simple absence of light. It’s the darkness that has not seen daylight since the planet first formed. A hungry, slippery ink that rubs against your skin with every breath. The Underdark. A second world sitting beneath the sunbathed one above. Beneath Faerun lies a violent place of shadows where every monster that despises the light chooses to reside. The races surviving down here were old even before humans were born. They squabble and war with the other terrors using psionic powers and ancient magic no sane being would ever dream of unleashing on another. Down here, it is a constant struggle for survival and the weak do not last long. The civilizations that survive this far below ground do so brutally. The Drow elves, skin black and hair pale, plot and scheme against each other while viciously fending off any who dare enter their territory uninvited. The Illithids are terrifying alien creatures possessing powerful mental abilities and a complete disregard for the worth of any other life. The lucky few who cross their paths have their brains devoured. The unlucky are made into slaves, or worse, used in their breeding rituals. Phaerimms, Aboleths, Beholders, and undead of all stripes live and die in this shadowed world. They fight on a daily basis for survival and dominance. Over each other, over their own kind, even stopping to raid the surface world on occasion. They also brutally punish the few who wander down searching for riches and treasure long since lost. Surface dwellers rarely come prepared for the cruelty and myriad dangers that greets them. Even discounting the inhabitants, merely traversing the Underdark is a trial that leaves many to meet their end starving in dead end passages. Split into three layers, the Upper, Middle, and Lower Underdark, the caverns and passages of this subterranean world are a wild, jumbled mess. A passage might expand out into a system of caves large enough to hold a small city, only to suddenly shrink to a space too small for a halfling to squeeze through. Major cities are sometimes cut off from everywhere else except by cracks no larger than a fist. A trade route between two colonies might require travelling down a layer, then back up. To complicate all this, magical portals litter the Underdark. They can lead to areas of the subterrain thousands of miles away, or to other Planes that will destroy those who wander in blindly. But they are often the only way to travel between different regions. This brutal, twisted, scattered world is where you find yourself. You need not spend all your time down here. But making it back up to the surface will certainly not be an easy trek. And depending on what you now are… perhaps you belong down here with the other monsters. Surviving the Underdark The weak, the unprepared, and the foolish all die young in the Underdark. It is a fact of life in the dark and desolate world beneath the surface. That you stand here is proof you are at least not the first two. You have enough skills and experience under your belt to recognize most of the common dangers of the Underdark. In addition, you’ve learned enough of the ways of adventurers to be dangerous. Whether your talent lies in magic, the martial, the shadows, or something odder, you will find those talents sufficient to survive in the safer portions of this dark world. Attempting to blindly wander the corridors alone with just this, however, is tantamount to suicide. Consider bringing a team or a few friends if you wish to explore. Pick one of the below talents for FREE to represent your existing ability to survive. Your choice will affect your Discounts. [See Notes 1 and 2] The Martial The only thing standing between the darkness and your life is the weapon in your hands. Whichever one you initially picked up, be is a sword, a spear, all of them, or none of them at all, your mere survival means you have learned enough to be dangerous. You may not be able to deal with some of the more magical or esoteric dangers of the Underdark, but you’ve got brute force on your side. When there’s a cave in or a minotaur is charging, you’ll be the one people rely on. Your weapon, your armor, and your strength will be your defense against those who wish you harm. The Arcane Whether you have learned how to tap into the Weave, use your own natural talents to fling magic, or have stumbled onto a secret darker or less well known, you have the power to access the arcane energies of this world. Whether you specialize in one school, such as Enchantment or Evocation, or dabble in all of them, you have a powerful ability buzzing beneath your skin. While studying your art has left you weaker and less durable than other talents, you compensate for this by the sheer variety or power of the magic you can use. Your talent still has much room to grow but even now you are dangerous enough to survive this dark world. The Divine Just because the Underdark is a world without sunlight does not mean it is one without faith. Lolth, the Spider Queen, holds the Drow tightly in her chitinous fist. There are other gods aplenty beneath the earth, twisted and cruel and merciless as they are. They can offer power to those who bend their knee and listen to their dark whispers. Of course, in the deepest darkness, a spot of sunlight can glow all the brighter by comparison. Whether you worship good or evil, somewhere in between, or if you steal your power where you can get it, the divinities are the source of your strength. While your magic is not usually as powerful as those who tap into the Arcane, you hold the power to heal and harm in your hands. Eventually you will be able to raise the dead back to live, whether as themselves or the walking undead. You may also have some talent with a weapon if your chosen deity is of a militant bend. The Shadows Only the truly stupid wander the eternal darkness below ground with the assurance that their strength of magic or might will carry them safely. There is only one true way to survive the Underdark. It is to not be seen or heard by the creatures that hunt there. While you have learned no fabulous might of arms or flashy magic, you have learned how to survive and travel unmolested. And when you need to strike you do it decisively. In one swift blow that leaves your foe bleeding out on the ground. Or, perhaps, you focus on killing those you find silently and swiftly instead of merely surviving. Scout or assassin, you know how to stay unobserved by all but the most keenly observant, or mentally talented, individuals. The Mind Living so far under the ground for so long can do strange things to the mind. Unused senses get discarded or allowed to atrophy and others rise in their place. Or perhaps the generations of exposure to the natural magical radiation of the Underdark have created whole new talents in the minds of certain residents. Whatever the reason, you have learned how to tap into the power of the mental magic known as Psionics. Not truly magic, but not truly not magic either, it can be a powerful force once trained and focused. You have begun that journey and learned more than enough to become labeled as a dangerous foe to cross. But beware. There are creatures down here with mental powers that would, quite literally, blow your mind. And some consider those with this talent especially tasty. The Path Between Of course, there are those who have discovered multiple talents in themselves. Or just put in the time and effort to train themselves down more than one path at once. It is not uncommon to find those willing to explore any avenue in an effort to drag up an ounce of extra power just to survive. While you are not as talented in any one path as those talked about above, your versatility makes up the difference, allowing you to touch upon two of them. Blending magic with a weapon, teleportation with slipping through the shadows, or even Psionics with worship of a deity are all possible, if not always ideal combinations. Races of the Underdark The Underdark stretches for tens of miles below the surface of Faerun and runs under most, if not all, of the surface, including some of the oceans. As such, there as dozens of sentient races that call the lightless underground home. There are communities that have not seen anyone outside of their own kind in millenia and others that are as intermixed as some surface cities. Most of the races listed below barely get along with each other, let alone other races. Some races come with exceptional abilities, magical or otherwise, that make them naturally more powerful than the rest.