5e Setting Building: The Underworld

Third of the three realms, commonly interacted with by man, in this setting is the Underworld. In this setting the underworld is a place of shadow and fading passion, through which the dead must travel, before entering the Great Labyrinth of reincarnation.

The Bleak Moor

This is the part of the Underworld closest to the physical world. It is land with thin air, and gently rolling hills covered in course grass, heather and gorse. Threatening gray clouds scud across the sky as though time has been speed up, in the constant twilight. There is little colour here, and what their is, is almost always muted and drained. Across this land, ruins and  tiny abandoned villages are scattered across it. It is in this land that the dead first find themselves after their bodies die in the physical world. It is possible to walk for ever across these  desolate moors, and never find anywhere of import, for they are vaster that the imagination of man.

It is through this land that the dead must wander, with only their grave goods, in search of the spiral pathways, or the wardens. Those who are lucky find them, but the Bleak Moor is a dangerous place, and some souls find themselves devoured by the hungry dead, or other stranger things.

The Spiral Pathway
The Spiral Pathway is a mystical road way that spans all of the Bleak moor, but which some how, mysteriously, will lead any traveler upon it to the Great Labyrinth, with one year of travel. The road is marked by menhir, which are placed upon it's side. However, the Spiral Pathway is not safe, many threats lurk upon its rout. The path eventually leads into a great tangled forest, before opening into Roan, the city of the dead, who's heart at which can be found the great labyrinth.

The Wardens
Little is know of what exacly the Wardens are, save that their appear to be nine of them, and that the appear to be unique beings.  What is known, is that the Wardens will guide the dead to the great labyrinth, and defend them from the dangerous of the Bleak Moor and The Spiral Path.


Roan and the Great Labyrinth
At the end of the spiral path, where the dead are so numerous upon the road that they must walk in unbroken single file for a week before they come to vast clearing. It is filled with a ten-thousand buildings in at least a thousand styles of architecture. These buildings surround the great Labyrinth, a great mass of stone passages, at the center of which re-incarnation can be found. It is here that the dead gather and prepare to make their journey into the labyrinth. Not all venture into the labyrinth immediately. Some, those who's families remember them and continue to make offerings and prayers for them, set themselves up with homes, forming new lives with new friends or lovers, etching out a few more year of passion and pleasure before surrendering their personality and memories to the labyrinth and embracing re-birth. Others orders, such as the Thorns of Roan, striding back along the path, to protect the newly dead, and help them reach the great labyrinth. Lastly, some few, terrified by the prospect of the labyrinth, hide themselves away, long after their families stop making offerings to them, making lives as thieves and vagabonds, or devolving in into hungry ghosts.

The cosmology of death, or resurrecting death.

Before being able to talk about my ideas for the Shadowfell in my 5e game, in any detail, we need to talk about death.

Death is one of those things that fantasy gaming and literature is always getting wrong. It should matter, it should be the end off, or at least a defining moment in a characters story arc.

In the words of Max Landis, "the death and return of superman, forever broke death in comics".  Once you trivially return a major character to life, you can trivially return all characters.

Fantasy roleplaying games, especially those in those forms closest to DnD are generally less that respectful of death. In DnD it is, even for relatively low level characters a trivial thing to return form the dead. Death is also often a relatively boring part of the game, an obstacle to overcome with a  bit of money or a spell, or at best, a sources of cool monsters in the form of those that refuse to stay dead.

Our underworld are bland and lifeless, which is ironic because one of the best way to make death meaningful, if to give the underworld life of its own. Mythologies from across the globe are stuffed full of interesting material from the underworld, which is a place that living heroes most occasionally travel too, to recover lost secrets and treasures, to rescue loved ones, or finds way to defeat an enemy.

So how do we get back to a point where death is meaningful once again? Well one possibility, and probably the most important, is to remove magics that allow characters to be brought back from the dead. Being able to return PCs to life is perhaps the single biggest contributor to this issue. Another possibility is to take a leaf from Greek myth, where the underworld is a place which is fairly active. Heroes visit it, are dipped in the waters at its boarder, and rescue loved ones from it's clutches. Being able to explore the world of the dead, and gather from it treasures and knowledge means that it is a living breathing place, which will matter more to the characters and their players.

So, next stop, the shadowfell...

5e Setting Building: Brainstorming the feywild.

The feywilds a big thing in this setting, and entire world parallel to the physical world, with which the physical world often collides in strange and awesome ways. That is the traditional awesome  by the way. To be full of awe. It is the kind of emotion evoked by forest fires and tornado.

Knowing that it is going to be these things however does little to drill down into the subject so lets set out what the role of the feywilds in in the setting.

Traditional DnD has a whole bunch of problematic aspects which both from the stance of verisimilitude and any reasonable critical reading of its ethics.

The first of these is simple. The existence of a several dozen sentient species, all pressed right up against humanity can be a very challenging concept, given our world had so far as we know only ever seen a handful of species which bared a resemblance to to humanity. If goblins have lairs just a few miles from town and are less powerful than the militia, why are the adventurers dealing with them instead of the lord or the militia?

Then their is the whole "committing war crimes against a sentient species because you happen to be in resource competition with them and they are evil because we happen to want the same thing as us and at less good at killing us than we are at killing them" thing is a real turn off.

Having a parellel world with different laws(especially ones which account for the existence of the diverse and odd creatures of DnD ) helps to create space(both figurative and geographical) for a wide range of monsters to exist in the world, while not making it seem like goblins and man live right on top of each other. It also allows a way to have less problematic monstrous races, if goblins are not an evolved sentient race, so much as the result of human fears and worries .


Denizens highlight reel:
The Feywild is in this setting is to be home to a wide variety of creatures, some of which will be taking on a very different role in the setting to that which they normally take. Here are two examples.

Goblins- In this setting goblins are a fae race, which spring into existence from childhood fears. They congregate in warrens. They take the kind of sadistic pleasure in the death of small animals than only the most horrible and disturbed of children can muster and gather to to trade the spoils of their raid in markets during the dark of the moon.  

Driders- Drow bore me. There I have said it. Like more homogeneously evil species in roleplaying, I have very little time for them, while their use in basically every DnD setting leaves me cold. But driders....they are kinda cool. So driders in this setting are called Ariadrin, and they are the members of the mystery cult of  Aria, the Eladrin goddess of weaving and intrigue. Ettercaps are humans who have been captures and corrupted by Drider poison into a servitor race to the Ariadrin.

5e Setting Building: Inspiration

So a big part of world building is knowing what to steal and from where.  My setting doesn't have a name yet, but one thing it does have is a healthy list of sources from which it draws elements, and tool which are helping me with the process of building it.

First things first however, time to thank those who triggered me in talking about this as I do it +Lex Starwalker from the Game Master's Journey  podcast  got me thinking about actually thinking about doing this, so if you haven't  checked it out yet, you probably aught too. Like me he is on patreon, if you like his stuff, it would be awesome if you could see your way to giving him a few dollars a month.


So whatgot me writing this setting up? Three bodies of work have driven the this process more than any other.

First of these is the Artesia comics of Mark S. Smylie. His setting the known world, is a world with an apparently mundane physicial world that exists and interacts with a powerful but largely invisible spiritual world. It embraces a deep and nuanced take on religion(especially polytheism) often lacking in fantasy RPGs. This setting shapes the way I see the martial world of the setting and its relationship with the spirit world. It also says something about the kind of stories I want to tell with it. Stories rich in sex, religion and politics.

Second, the white wolf's  changeling: the dreaming and changling: the lost have both inspired elements of the feywild within my setting, with its surreal beauty and picaresque elements of the dreaming being combined with the wild horror and weirdness of the hedge from changeling the lost.

Another white wolf classic is at the core of how I see the shadowfel in this setting, specifically Wraith: the Oblivion, with the underworld aesthetics helping to define how I see the shadowfell.


However these works are hardly alone in shaping my setting, with pan's labyrinth and game of thrones coming immediately to mind. As does the setting of the British Fest LARP "Empire", who's take on re-incarnation is fairly interesting.

What I am not including is almost as important. Firstly, I am explitingly forbidding myself from including the kind of Lovecraftian  and Chambarian themes which are common to my work. Nor am I allowing myself to touch on transhumanist themes, which are another calling card of my style.

5e game prep

Well it look like I am going to be running some 5e, with that in mind I have been doing some world building.

Below are some of the core assumptions I am working into the setting.
Grimm and Gritty:
This is a world where even relatively minor wounds can cause great difficulties and where healing magic is miraculous and rare.

Local Heroes to national movers and shakers:
The heroes will be given the opportunity to find, claim and restore an abandoned keep. The challenges that they will face, will be best overcome by them  becoming local figures of power, such as religious leaders and nobles.

Tough choices:
This is a world where the choices of the adventurers will shape the course of first their community and later their nation. As a way of facilitating this aspect, the  setting does not have alignment the only judgement as to the morality of their actions are their own perceptions, and those of the world around them.  

Three faces to the world:
In most DnD settings the physical world is the entire focus, and even the feywild and the Shadowfell take a distinct back seat. In this setting, the Feywild and the shadowfell are going to be as important to the setting as the physical world.

Passage between the physical world and either the feywilds or the shadowfell is common enough that it is a regular activity even in the local tier for adventurers

The shadowfell is especially important in this setting, for it is the first stop made by the spirits of the denizens of the physical world after their death, as they make their way to the labyrinth and their eventual reincarnation.

Goblin Markets:
The art of magic item creation is held only by a few powerful denizens of the feywild, meaning they are incredibly rare. Moreover the denizens of the Feywild have almost no interest in the riches of the physical world, and when they do trade or gift them to the people of the physical world, these items come with oaths, geases and curses which bind them to a single owner, all of which mean it is practically impossible to buy and sell magic items for gold coin. That does not mean they cannot be bought however. If you can steal a maiden’s voice, or have access to a hanged man’s hair, or if you will swear never to turn down a request for aid lest you suffer a terrible curse, you may be able to purchase a trinket or treasure at the goblin market.

Getting back into the swing of things.

Things have been pretty busy over the last two week. Turns out getting married is a pretty exhausting process. However, I am back at it, drawing both in my sketchbook and on my tablet. Below are some work in progress bits for what will eventually be an A1 poster map. Hope you all enjoy