Beneath the darkened catacombs and caverns above lies an ancient and monstrous thing waiting in the darkness for its prey to come down and enter its eternally ravenous corpus where it will devour them and slowly digest their souls.
The lowest levels of the Underdrake are entirely comprised of this massive entity from The Umbral. It is not just in the Underdrake, but is the Underdrake; a sentient and maddening maze that spans many worlds.
Throughout the forbidden pages of eldritch grimoires and inscribed on crumbling and cursed scrolls, Umbraxas is known by many fearsome epithets:
I have been very busily prepping for my upcoming Shadowdark game and decided that I should codify my house rules with something a little more professional than just a page with some Markdown lists. The PDF below was developed using the Shadowdark Affinity Publisher template and has been compiled from a number of sources, first and foremost from the guys over at the Dungeon Master Diaries podcast (highly recommended).
Scavs (short for “scavengers”) is the slang name used in Dundrake for the freelance adventurers that go below into the Underdrake to find relics and riches. Some are enlisted by the Reliquarians of the Feretorium to recover holy relics, some are hired by the Order of the Obsidian Eye or the Arcane Concordat to seek powerful artifacts, and some just come for the chance to crawl through catacombs and raid forgotten tombs for glory and fortune.
The “City of Nebulous Delights” is the royal seat of Queen Margareth of House Morvern, sovereign of Dal Raeth and Protector of the North. Built upon the foundations of prehistoric settlements, the city conceals a vast subterranean network beneath its streets and sewers. Known as the Underdrake, this realm of ruins, catacombs, and tunnels is a perilous lure for scavenging adventurers (Scavs). They delve into its depths seeking fame and fortune, risking everything in this dark frontier that promises both reward and ruin.
Dundrake, capital of the kingdom of Dal Raeth, is famed far and wide as the City of Nebulous Delights, both for its night fogs and for its darker, ephemeral pleasures. Yet, despite its dark allures, many of its destitute citizens live short, brutish and often violent lives.
Dundrake stands as an ancient metropolis built upon limestone foundations of enigmatic prehistoric settlements. Through centuries, its inhabitants carved extensive mines into the bedrock, extracting stone that rose to form majestic walls and towers crowning the emerging capital. When the vast network of cavities beneath the burgeoning city began causing dangerous sinkholes and structural collapses, mining operations ceased. Throughout the years the city’s pestilent and overcrowded cemeteries were emptied and the countless remains relocated into the abandoned tunnels below. Today, these extensive labyrinths of quarries, catacombs, and ancient ruins beneath are known collectively as the “Underdrake”.
Above, the cruel city offers you only grinding poverty. Below, in the darkness of the Underdrake, lies opportunity. You are a Scav—tomb reaver, relic seeker, catacomb crawler—one of the desperate few chasing fortune and glory in the forgotten depths. Grip your torch, draw your steel, ready your spells. Forge your legend in the labyrinth below, or die trying!
