Caffeinated alien The World Below: Dawn Path

Ancestries

Darv

Few peoples in the World Below are so committed to celebrating their ancestry and trying to follow the ideals established by their predecessors as the darvs. They sing the songs of their grandparents and have their family trees tattooed or engraved into their skins, with family crests often prominently stenciled into their foreheads. For all their perceived insularity, however, darvs have traditions relating to giving aid to those in need, especially when an injured traveler or wandering orphan stumbles into their care.

Momentum Generators:

Elv

Of all the cultural traditions passed down from elv to elv, the most prominent one is their curiosity. Elvkin often repeat the mantra, “We buried the secrets of the world; it’s up to us to unearth them.” This sense of curiosity encourages a strong tradition of exploration and sharing their findings with others. Many elvkin believe in a utopian glade of immense size, buried somewhere in the World Below, waiting for them. They call this place Pan and ascribe it a religious and cultural importance.

Momentum Generators:

Entissia

Entissia group more tightly into family units than most peoples in the World Below. While they possess no predisposition for species-based hostility, they’re aware that among the people who embarked upon the Great Descent, they alone are egg-laying, cold-blooded reptilians. Therefore, they know long-term, safe habitats are vital for their survival and have little understanding for those who feel happier as nomads. This, in turn, makes them some of the most reliable keepers of static troves of knowledge and comfortable inhabitants of ancient ruins, provided those ruins can be made secure.

Momentum Generators:

Hobgob

A numerous and varied group, the only cultural commonality that joins the hobgobs is a firm sense of irony, sarcasm, and with it, mischief. The development of this trait is perhaps due to the adversity their ancestors experienced (and they now live with) in the World Below. Since taking their freedom, hobgobs celebrate it with Kaos rocks and deep stones formed into jewelry, not because they think they look good or even appropriate to their surroundings, but because they identify the Great Descent—and therefore proximity to the Well (or more rarely, the Abyss)—as symbolic of their freedom. Hobgobs make up the bulk of Well Keepers for this reason. They enthusiastically adorn clothing with as many pieces of Kaotic ore as they can locate on their adventures.

Momentum Generators:

Human

Humans are stereotypically known for their technological and magical innovations and their energy in the face of dire threat. Humans are writers of stories, inventors of machines, and exploiters of Kaos. This doesn’t mark them out as particularly different from other ancestries, except for their particular skill at those pursuits. Humans are far from the most populous ancestry in the World Below, and a common refrain from one human to another is, “We are not long for this world.” Whether born from a place of hope that escape from the World Below is within reach or a dire sense of stoicism that the fight is already lost, humans tend to see everything as temporary, and they often join migratory communities rather than fixed settlements.

Momentum Generators:

Makiru

If the makiru are typified by one ancestral tradition (aside from their pessimistic view of the world to come), it’s their absolute devotion to children, or “pups.” Makiru are born as rats, and as they grow, they develop into their humanoid forms, retaining claws and a rodent’s features but otherwise reaching the average body proportions of a human or elv. Makiru possess an instinctive drive to sacrifice everything for their offspring, even when those pups are adopted or found and don’t bear their same genetics. As far as makiru are concerned, the world may have ended for those in adulthood, but children are destined to build a future on the ashes of the past. They’ll put everything on hold to patch up an injured child.

Momentum Generators:

Communities and Settlements

Zilenz

This nomadic monastery’s people spend their lives diligently mapping the World Below, contributing huge volumes of knowledge to the cartographers’ collective libraries and universities. They revere the element of ice, and traditionally clad themselves with armor imbued with elemental properties. Their heavy, studded gauntlets mark them out for their pugilistic hobbies.

Zilenzians fear infection. What infection they fear is a philosophical matter rather than a biological one. They fear that by interacting with other settlements, they’ll lose their way, give in to the temptations offered by such settlements as Oracaster, and halt making maps.

Skills: Athletics, Medicine, Pilot

Ipreceans

The Ipreceans—a subterranean people before the Great Descent—retreated in advance of the invasion from above. It’s as if they knew others were coming as, by the time refugees started pouring in, they’d already booby-trapped hundreds of caves and tunnels, large and small, and disappeared deep into the underworld. The few places they left alone were the strata surrounding the Well.

Ipreceans are a hunter-based culture and expect anyone coming of age in their community or seeking to join it to embark on a solitary hunting pilgrimage known as a “Long Trail.” The Iprecean is expected to hunt down and slay a murderous beast before returning to the community with its skull (and ideally, other parts), after which the Iprecean’s identity is subsumed into the slain creature’s remains, worn as a helmet, mask, and possibly other armor and weapons.

Ipreceans never reveal their faces after the Long Trail. The hunter’s mask is a permanent fixture resulting in conjecture surrounding the ancestry of Ipreceans, as they’re so often heavily adorned in armor and trophies.

This people—known principally for their battle adornments and aloof nature—still hold sizable settlements of their own, but few outsiders have found those places and returned.

Ipreceans hazard into the wider World Below to hunt or deliver information about a disaster likely to affect multiple settlements, but for the most part, they remain safely cloistered behind miles of sabotaged tunnels.

Ipreceans adopt outsiders in need of sanctuary and family, but only if they prove themselves through arduous trials including a Long Trail of their own, resulting in physical transformations. The nature of these transformations, other than how they require the permanent fixture of skulls, chitin, and leathers to the Iprecean’s body once done, is a source of conjecture among the guilds.

Skills: Artistry, Athletics, Technology

Chlzyl

Chlzyl are the largest of the World Below’s native populations, and a diaspora with it. Impressive Chlzyl settlements existed once upon a time, but these are either buried deep in unmapped strata (at least, unmapped by the guilds), or refugees from the Great Exodus came to dominate and reform their architecture, culture, and purpose.

Chlzyl are known for their talent in hunting and riding bugs, with more Scarab Dialectics appearing among this community than any other. They expand their territory like any growing people, adorning every cave they claim with carvings and busts of their gods. Chlzyl never show interest in the surface and hold a largely pacifist, charitable attitude when it comes to interacting with other intelligent beings (except where defense and retaliation are required for survival). Their peaceful approach doesn’t prevent their being incredible hunters.

With the Great Exodus, Chlzyl culture changed immensely. Chlzyl who wished to remain in the well-trod tunnels and wide caves to care for and protect refugees from the World Above did so, but a vast portion of Chlzyl retreated into the Dark, never to return. Some remaining Chlzyl were treated with gratitude and even worship, but others were exploited. Predominantly, Chlzyl of today are a community that believes it was better to stay to help those from above, but cultural clashes are common, especially where people treat Chlzyl philosophies of peace and friendship as somehow weak.

Chlzyl integrate with or spy on practically every other culture. They are a group that originated in the World Below that struggles to cling to territories and cultural artifacts even as they’re absorbed or repurposed by outsiders. Whether a Chlzyl sees such a change as tragedy or progress is down to the individual person. Chlzyl were predominantly people known as morlochs and subterranean elvkin before the Great Descent, though they took in thousands of outsiders during the Exodus, resulting in the culture’s genetic diversity. Now, Chlzyl are as likely to be makiru born as they are human or darv. You can tell someone is descended from a long-ago Chlzyl, however, as their eyes are wide, pale spheres, perfectly capable of sight but striking in appearance.

Chlzyl are not a monoculture, though they hold their community beliefs and traditions precious. Such beliefs include eating only when strictly necessary, ingesting wet, fine ore powders that emerge through their skin in bright, vivid colors (blues and greens are popular), and stiffening their hair with the same materials.

Skills: Empathy, Pilot, Ranged Combat

Bura

This prowling community of intoxicated brewers are the most well-known raiders of the Vast Underneath, and in their chaotic way, reinforce the hegemony of power around the Well. They’re a hodgepodge band of misfits and outcasts, many of whom have fully embraced their Synthesis, making them a form of elemental hazard wherever they choose to roam.

Skills: Close Combat, Larceny, Survival

Agosby

A settlement known mostly for its strange location, Agosby straddles the Vanyth Chasm via a series of bridges, vines, and ropes, some more solid than others. Unlike most settlements on a single stratum, Agosby is a vertical anomaly, with some structures and resources located higher or lower than others, stretching as deep as the chasm drops. Agosbyr—in the rare event they discuss the subject of social class—refer to themselves as “precarious,” “frayed,” “new,” and “solid,” among other terms.

Agosbyr consume the rich veins of lichen running up and down the Vanyth Chasm, send tunneling Silhouettes deep into narrow alcoves and cracks to fetch proteins (in the form of bugs and some fungi), and collect liquid via wall moisture, as no known streams run to this part of the World Below. They eschew the idea of the Well as something to be sought out or worshiped, recognizing the Dark and the Abyss as favorable sources of power.

Skills: Athletics, Ranged Combat, Survival

The Crystal City

Once upon a time, the Crystal City was one of the largest settlements in the Vast Underneath. Recently, the opulent habitat fell prey to a band of darklings that laid waste to and heavily pillaged the settlement, inspiring the often-persecuted underclass to lead an anarchist revolt against the Crystal City nobility.

The Crystal City was as wondrous to behold as its name implies, built in caverns of quartz and topaz, lined with natural defenses, home to numerous brewing laboratories, and with its only natural hazard being the alkaline pools frequent in such regions of the World Below.

Skills: Artistry, Culture, Leadership

Eryhulk

The unusual settlement of Eryhulk is a self-contained, isolated unit located somewhere between silver and basalt strata. Most people find it by heading windward from Oracaster through some of the narrowest tunnels, but even then, locating Eryhulk is no guarantee.

What makes Eryhulk unusual isn’t its isolation but its structure: the settlement is built into the upturned hull of a large vessel. Given how far Eryhulk is from the Graesian and Pekozian Seas (nobody would think to describe Eryhulk as “seaward”), how this great ship found itself deep underground is a mystery.

Skills: Enigmas, Survival, Technology

Fortress

This settlement’s name is an apt descriptor, and gods forbid you refer to its inhabitants as anything other than “Towers”: they don’t buy into strata nomenclature or class systems. Fortress is a settlement of warriors and killers, and they don’t appreciate being told they’re anything different.

Fortress is one of the largest settlements skyward, just where the copper and tin strata merge. Its inhabitants happily wall themselves in, sending out foraging parties for claws, mandibles, and hard minerals to arm their settlement even further. They believe philosophy, religion, and devotion to the Well or the Abyss is a fool’s game; all you can truly trust in is your hammer and shield.

Skills: Close Combat, Ranged Combat, Technology

Mud Town

Lacquered in browns and oranges and with a constant feeling of damp about the air, Mud Town is ever growing. The settlement is nestled within the many thick, entwined roots spreading from the vast cavern ceiling, each of them blossoming impossible flowers.

Mud Town’s anarchic community is renowned throughout the World Below. This is a worker town, where people strive to be honest and where a neighbor is likely to share their resources if you lack your own. They believe that power should never be concentrated in the hands of the few.

Mud Town isn’t without dangers. Due to the softness of the earth here, it’s a haven for vermi tunneling through the ground and the walls. Most are small and can be harvested for meat, but some grow to colossal size, at which point everyone in Mud Town works together to see off the threat.

Skills: Empathy, Larceny, Survival

Oracaster

Few settlements ring so rich and warm as Oracaster. It’s a mainstay settlement, demolished and rebuilt many times over in its capacious caverns and halls and situated over a closed magma tunnel. Loyalists to the power of the Well have often targeted it, but each time it rebuilds bigger and stronger.

Oracaster is a voidward colony, low down but distant from the Well. If you enter Oracaster, you’ll find a settlement permanently lit with blue deep stones where merrymaking is encouraged, and where outsiders with news of the world beyond are made more than welcome. Oracaster stands as the last gleaming light this deep in the World Below. Other settlements and communities exist around them, but Oracaster is the last safe place before everything becomes frighteningly void.

Skills: Athletics, Culture, Esoterica

Oriasis

On the coast of the vast, unknowable Graesian Sea lies the settlement of Oriasis. Benefiting hugely from the sea’s low salinity (which they imbibe without complaint, though their minds suffer with age), the seaward Oriases from this settlement are a hardy, stubborn sort, less concerned with excavation and more interested in building and exploring. They couldn’t give a felm about the conflicts surrounding the Well, those who seek its power, or those who wish to retain it because they plan to sail far, far away from the World Below’s heart and make a new world.

Skills: Pilot, Ranged Combat, Technology

Skullcrag

Formed by a clutch of people following a necromantic persuasion, the Crago felt the best way to learn of their past was to place a habitat in the middle of the gloomiest tunnel they could find, about as far darkward as anyone has mapped and filled with the blankly staring idols of forgotten gods.

It’s an understatement to call the people of Skullcrag “quirky” or “eccentric.” They spend more time conversing with the dead than the living, crafting fetishes and learning new methods of harnessing the Dark. When a traveling soul visits Skullcrag or stops by on its path, Crago interact stiltedly, unprepared for conversing with someone who doesn’t want to haunt you or rip out your soul.

Skills: Artistry, Enigmas, Esoterica

Tark

Dirty, dismal Tark is barely a settlement, but it provides brief shelter to anyone stupid enough to make the ascent toward the surface. Situated in the clay strata, but where seams of iron run through the earth, Tark is the last stop before inevitable death, and they make you know it. The people fool enough to live here advertise their presence as guides and loremasters, but it’s more accurate to call them preachers and doomsayers. They’ll tell you every horror story of those who ascend, trying to stop journeyers without resorting to violence to do so. Sometimes they even succeed.

Skills: Esoterica, Medicine, Persuasion

Telver's Hearth

What Mud Town is to those skyward, Telver’s Heath is to those much deeper. This sprawling town reaches into tiny caves for miles around its heart, to the point there are many who consider themselves inhabitants despite never having stepped foot inside the settlement proper.

Named for the hobgob who founded a habitat here, Telver’s Hearth is a popular waystation with clean thermal vents, geysers (the water’s not for drinking unless you want mineral poisoning), and contained pools of lava used for forging, melting, and occasional executions. Sheets of thick metal coat many of the walled surfaces and ceilings in the Hearth, with the settlement guildmasters claiming it’s for the protection of those living there.

Telver’s Hearth is the only settlement with a hall for every guild in the World Below, and it’s the place to come for those seeking the best in tools, maps, and edible resources. The entertainments here are grandiose too, with the settlement maintaining a stage for performances of music, acting, and dances.

Skills: Close Combat, Leadership, Science

Dogmas

The Church of Golthon

Followers of Golthon are found throughout the World Below. Their faith demands they offer mercy to the wicked and relief to the afflicted. They believe their deity is within the soil and stone. These beliefs lead many to act recklessly, especially in service of others, as they feel the world itself will protect them. Members of this church are often healers and quietly preach that the Well’s temptations must be avoided in favor of the blessings from the wider World Below.

Suggested short-term Aspirations for Golthon include:

Suggested long-term Aspirations for Golthon include:

Fortuna

The key elements of Fortuna worship are to assist those suffering from misfortune, to hold those with great luck in awe, and to bring low those who abuse their good fortune. The last is where the church is at its most militant, as Casters strongly believe good luck is only for the deserving. Anyone visiting suffering on another while riding a high of wealth or power needs a streak of bad luck to bring them back down to balance. They despise the way the Well Liches grasp power and refuse to share it.

Suggested short-term Aspirations for Casters include:

Suggested long-term Aspirations for Casters include:

The Hades Tract

A diverse philosophical group, the Hades Tract believe they’re already dead, and so is everyone and everything else in the World Below. It’s not a hard belief system to grasp, even though Hadeans do little to evangelize for new followers. Their argument is that the World Below is a vast afterlife, and that the fleeting memories of the World Above were of lives once lived under a radiant, nourishing sun. Now, they’re condemned to the World Below, and will only find salvation by enduring and overcoming the challenges the gods, the environment, and the other tormented souls put in their way.

Suggested short-term Aspirations for Hadeans include:

Suggested long-term Aspirations for Hadeans include:

The Lords and Ladies of Rot

Vrot are a rare, dangerous breed. They believe entirely that the Exodus was in defiance of nature’s plan. They say the original inhabitants of the World Below — the haemexii, the Ipreceans, the hypogean heralds, and others — are the only peoples to deserve a place in the Vast Underneath, and everyone else is an intruder.

They serve the god-kings known as the Lords and Ladies of Rot, though no one outside the Vrot appears to have met them. The Vrot claim to encounter these ancient nobles in lost cities and temples, and it’s there they gain the benefit of such self-destructive wisdom. Their tenets are simple: erase every intruder from skyward to wellward; lay the foundations for the Lords and Ladies of Rot to occupy their thrones; eliminate yourselves in holy sacrifice once your work is done.

Suggested short-term Aspirations for Vrot include:

Suggested long-term Aspirations for Vrot include:

The Temple of the Benevolent Earth

The Templars see it as their role to sacrifice great things to the World Below (primarily rare minerals and dangerous beasts), root out heresies (other faiths, especially when they dogmatically believe the World Below a hellish place), and channel their world’s benevolence, helping communities and peoples come to understand, live within, and best prosper within their environment. They’re dubious about the spiritual importance of the Well, seeing it as a corrupting element in what could otherwise be a utopia, and work to stymie its power throughout the World Below.

Suggested short-term Aspirations for Templars include:

Suggested long-term Aspirations for Templars include:

Well Worship

Well Keepers are a rare and troubling group, fanatical in their devotion to the Well and its offerings. To be a Well Keeper is to give yourself fully to the great source of power, eschewing experimentation with Kaos in favor of seeking out the Well itself. Many are perpetual pilgrims, making their way to the Well to harness its gifts before returning to display their newfound powers. Others are disciples who wish to forever bask in the Well’s glory or enter the servitude of the Well Liches.

Suggested short-term Aspirations for Well Keepers include:

Suggested long-term Aspirations for Well Keepers include:

Guilds

The Company of Artificers

An affiliation of crafters and fabricators, mainly those who make large and essential items such as boats, carts, wagons, sledges, tools and “maker’s gear” (such as anvils, jigs, crucibles, molds), and ropes. Members pay dues into a collective that supports the work of traveling “Agents of Art” who compile notes of the processes and procedures for forging, casting, making wire and rope, and so on; key parts are often encoded so only members can read them. Agents also assist members by finding or fetching rare supplies and ingredients (or finding sources where these can be gleaned or purchased) or skilled assistants if a member stands in need.

Major Path Attributes: Mental 5, Physical 4, Social 1
Minor Path Attributes: Mental 2, Physical 2

The Excavators and Explorers Collective

Craftspeople who “dig to make”; delvers excavate tunnels, build new settlements, and fortify and improve existing ones. They examine the geology as they go with an eye to faults and cleavage lines, what gems and minerals can be extracted from the rock in the future, and the structure of what they’re carving out. For most delvers, architecture or demolition is their expertise, and their delight and skill at either is how delvers decide who is ready for full membership (“mastery”) and who is still an apprentice.

Major Path Attributes: Mental 2, Physical 5, Social 3
Minor Path Attributes: Physical 3, Social 1

The Kitchen

Gastrevores explore sustenance and healthy needs, largely by creating detailed accounts of edible and poisonous substances, work that has given them the moniker “the Kitchen.” They examine the life cycles of slimes, worms, and molds, determine what such things eat themselves and where the most abundant supplies of them are to be found and what medicines can be derived from them. They also research sanitation and the disposal and recycling of wastes (diseases spread by improper disposal, and what lifeforms of the World Below are attracted to large deposits of fresh waste).

Major Path Attributes: Mental 3, Physical 5, Social 2
Minor Path Attributes: Mental 1, Physical 3

The Moths

Moths are a merchant guild, the members of which travel the World Below, paying high prices for “the Color”—what they call precious minerals. They live to obtain more of it, valuing it above people, though every Moth habitually cooperates with other Moths rather than competing. Which minerals count as precious may vary, but it’s always gems, ores, rocks, and rock dusts. A Moth never swindles, and a Moth rarely underpays but often overpays, which makes them very welcome in many places where outsiders are otherwise received uneasily.

Major Path Attributes: Mental 3, Physical 2, Social 5
Minor Path Attributes: Mental 1, Social 3

The Union of Cartographers and Stratigraphers

Master mapmakers and historians who seek to map the entire World Below with precision. As Kaos storms, cave-ins, and other events constantly change what’s Below, their work can never be completed. They keep at it but restrict access to their record slates to guildmembers in good standing. The guild also constructs good spherical compasses from insect bones or rare metals, which don’t last long and indicate the direction of the Well and the Abyss. These compasses lose effectiveness as the Kaos daubed on the Well end of their needles dwindles.

Major Path Attributes: Mental 5, Physical 3, Social 2
Minor Path Attributes: Mental 2, Physical 1, Social 1