The skulkkin are devious shapechangers, masquerading as humans among Dundrake’s surface population. Beneath the city, however, they inhabit a network of warrens threading through the sewers and the Underdrake.
A ruling caste of skulkkin are cultists and servitors of Ningilin the Rat King, the Great Lord of Vermin, and seek to spread chaos and disease in the name of their god.
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.
Credit to the late and great Dave Trampier
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.
