17 - The Underworld

11ENEATH OUR CITIES EXISTS AN ENDLESS NETWORK OF UNDERGROUND SPACES - Sewers, tunnels, culverts, subway tracks, shelters, and shafts. These wind ever deeper, reaching beneath the surface until they encounter passageways not of our world. Far below, the Underworld’s labyrinths meet both Metropolis and Inferno, then continue even deeper into nothingness itself. In this Stygian darkness, you might encounter the Watchers put there by the Archons, wild-eyed lunatics, prophets, cult leaders, and the Children of the night. Yet, more exists even below these depths, where the chiseled passageways devolve into natural caves and tunnels - home to beings from worlds long since vanouished. The city of Ktonor is at the very bottom, and beyond it waits the devouring nothingness. To travel down into the Underworld is to place oneself in a state of danger and dread. It is a dark, snaking labyrinth with innumerable perils to both body and soul. If you should ever reach the surface again, you will never be the same. ENEATH OUR CITIES EXISTS AN ENDLESS NETWORK OF UNDERGROUND SPACES sewers, tunnels, culverts, subway tracks, shelters, and shafts. These wind ever deeper, reaching beneath the surface until they encounter passageways not of our world. Far below, the Underworld’s labyrinths meet both Metropolis and Inferno, then continue even deeper into nothingness itself. In this Stygian darkness, you might encounter the Watchers put there by the Archons, wild-eyed lunatics, these depths, where the chiseled passageways devolve into natural caves and tunnels - home to beings from worlds long since vanQuished. The city of Ktonor is at the very bottom, and beyond it waits the devouring nothingness. To travel down into the Underworld is to place oneself in a state of danger and dread. If is a dark, snaking labyrinth with innumerable perils to both body and soul. If you should ever reach the surface again, you will never be the same.

OARKNESS ΛᲘΟ Ω0TΗΊΛGΩΕSS

Darkness has always been with us. It is synonymous with the night, the Underworld, the enclosed, the clandestine, and a metaphor for evil, danger, and the unknown. Darkness fills us with doubt and primal fear. It is the antithesis of enlightenment, smothering the light of knowledge and wisdom. We have always tried to bold darkness at bay. From the earliest days of our captivity, we’ve gathered around open fires and gazed with fear into the night. now, we drive away the dark with light bulbs, street lamps, and dazzling neon.

Embraced by darkness we lose sense of direction, distance, and time. Although we are lost at first, our other senses soon become acute. We hear curious sounds, perceive scents previously unnoticed, taste the subtlest flavor, and feel the minutest puff of air brusb against our skin. Thus, the darkness bolds a sensual allure. It is evasive, amorphous, and impervious to study. Darkness is the primordial state. All forms of light, be it flames, flasblights, or stars are after all transient and unnatural.

The deeper we descend into the Underworld, the more we experience the nothingness. Close to the surface, it is merely a nagging sensation, bard to explain. But the deeper we plunge, the more manifest it becomes, a sense of vacuity escalating with each step. This profound, inexplicable sorrow chafes at us, wanting to cut the umbilical cord between body and soul. the body feels foreign and cold, as though one’s existence in carnal form were an unnatural state. Occasionally, we experience the sensation of falling or floating, losing our sense of direction and which way is up or down. Something summons us, whispering from the depths, reverberating, and entreating us to venture downwards, abandoning the worlds above. It may manifest as strange dreams, which unveil aspects of ourselves we’ve never seen. Deep in the Underworld, the nothingness rules all. Everything becomes thinner and more insubstantial, colors lose their shimmer, and our senses slowly fade away. Our spirit is peeled back layer by layer until our true nature is revealed.

CLOSE Ჯ0 THE SURFACE (LEVEL I)

In this part of the Underworld, the sounds from the world above can still be beard. Subway trains rumble by, rain water pours down through storm drains into the sewers, and steam pipes groan and hiss as the city breathes. Beneath the busy streets, there is a virtual warren of meandering passageways, utility corridors, and tunnel systems. An entire population of runaway children, homeless people, lunatics, criminals, and drug addicts live in sub-basements below hospitals, in the subway’s service tunnels, and in forgotten bomb shelters. Beyond the fires in oil drums and naked light bulbs, this is a world of eternal dusk. The ground is covered with cigarette butts, crusbed glass, and used needles. Those who have lived bere for a while know which areas should be avoided, such as the alleys from which unnatural whispers emanate, the rusty metal staircases leading down into lower levels, or the metal doors which are never to be opened. The Children of the night sometimes bunt for food bere or bide amid the outcasts.

Guides

In this region of the Underworld, you can find guides. For a fistful of cash, a bottle of liouor, or a pack of cigarettes, they can show you ladders and staircases which take you farther into the depths. Certain guides offer quiet advice and may make a final attempt to dissuade you from proceeding farther. However, regardless of what is offered, few will follow anyone down to the depths. They have sensed - or even seen what is really down there. Worse though, certain guides worship the Cairath and might deliberately lead you to places where they dwell.

TНЕ ОЕРФНЬ (LEVEL II)

These narrow, labyrintbine passages descend into complete darkness. Cold gusts of wind emanate from below. There are old sewer tunnels with stinking refuse reaching up to your knees, rusting pipes and machinery, and metal staircases leading deeper still. neglected electric panels bum on rugged cement walls, accompanied by the steady drip of water echoing in the darkness. Crumbling ledges and deep cavities wait for the careless to plunge into. Cockroaches, rats, and far worse creatures crawl around in the darkness. The last sounds from the surface fall silent bere, replaced by the sinister noises exclusive to the Underworld.

The Hunting Grounds

Distorted cairath dwell in the sewers, while zeloths use the Depths as their bunting grounds. They drag careless wanderers to their rulers farther down. Sometimes you bear pounding, scraping, and rustling sounds on the metal pipes as they communicate with each other. Shadows come to life in a flasblight’s beam, and inhuman bisses can be beard from dark, narrow passages. The feeling that something is following you and driving you downwards becomes ever stronger.

ASTAROTH

The Underworld is a potent place for making contact with otherworldly beings or performing magic. Therefore, many cults have found their way down into the Underworld in order to establish their shrines. Here, where the veil of Illusion is weak, it is easier to gaze into True Reality.

✓ LI $\_\_\_\_$

THE BORDERLAND (LEVEL III)

The Borderland is where darkness and nothingness tear at the Illusion. The cramped passages, staircases, and tunnels from above open up into great halls and bottomless chasms. In stone basins, sewer sludge and chemicals seethe, turning the air toxic and nauseating. Rooms full of chains, gears, and majestic cogwheels power bizarre machinery. Bridges and staircases lead over or down into pitch black shafts. Should you fall bere, you will plunge into depths unknown. The ancient silence is interrupted occasionally by sudden rumblings, which reverberate up from the infinite dark. Tender gusts of air waft forth, carrying the scent of rust. Without light, you become bopelessly lost, merely feeling your way forward along walls of filthy tile, cold steel, or polished stone. At its heart, the Borderland is a passage to other worlds - primarily to Metropolis, whose Underworld is interconnected with the subterranean realms of all other cities. There are also patbways into the blood-drenched chambers of Inferno and places beneath even this, farther, endlessly farther downwards, downwards, downwards.

That Which Dwells in the Depths

Even though the Borderland feels empty, alien and terrifying beings live bere. You can easily find odd creatures that snaked their way in from beyond the Illusion. Runaway souls from Inferno’s torture halls seek their freedom, leaving trails of blood and asb in their wake. Wanderers from Metropolis and mechanical beings from the Machine City shamble under the stone arches, disoriented. Upon narrow staircases and in bidden passages, you can encounter the Children of the Underworld traveling up to the surface or descending towards Ktonor. Close to nests of unspeakable creatures, you can occasionally hear the preaching of the nepharite clergy and catch the scent of incense and fresh blood. In places where the darkness is thickest, phantoms silently float down towards nothingness.

Watchers of the Archons

The Archons have placed guards bere. Their sole purpose is to prevent creatures from using the Borderland to travel between the worlds - in particular, stopping the Children of the Underworld from finding their way upwards. The guards’ orders are to bunt, tear apart, and skin everything moving down bere. Prime among the Archon’s minions are the gransangthir that distort both Time and Space to lead their victims astray. Packs of zeloths bunt for them and drag wanderers before these bloated beasts. Cultists of the Red Brotherhood have spies on the surface, but also make their way down to carry out sacred rites, be close to their gods, and sacrifice wanderers by flaying them alive.

TΗΕ LABPRİΩτΗ (LEVEL IV)

In the Labyrinth, desolation and solitude rule supreme. Humanity’s mechanical constructions from the upper levels finally surrender into caves with natural steps formed in the black rock. There are gigantic ledges and stone spurs jutting over bottomless pits. Lose your foothold here and you will tumble head over beels until your body smasbes against the rocks, shredded on the ridges of brutal cliffs. You must find your way through confusing detours and low caves, where stalagmites and stalactites grow thick. In bollowed out rock shelters, you can find corpses from earlier explorers, some mummified and untouched after thousands of years. Other times, you must squeeze through narrow crevices where the rock dust lies thick, or have to wander across endless, smooth plateaus. The voyage takes you through passages where still waters reach your chest and across underground rivers and thundering waterfalls. In many caverns, the roof is so bigh even the brightest light cannot reach it. Every step, every breath resonates in the darkness and echoes from wall to wall. You feel as if you’re traveling in underwater caves, where an enormous primordial sea has subsided. Alien fossils lie buried in the floors and walls, along with petrified corals and salt deposits. The Labyrinth is no man’s land, the final boundary before the Underworld’s true realms are laid bare.

The Coral Portal

Wide stone steps lead downwards through a petrified sea bed. You wander amid forests of blackened coral, salt deposits, polished stone plateaus, and strange fossils. At the bottom of the steps stands the Coral Portal: a simultaneously beautiful and grotesque creation, which marks the entrance to the City of Ktonor. The portal ręuires a sacrifice. Anyone wishing to pass must smear their blood on its glossy surface. Doing so allows you to pass through, as though stepping through a wall of water. Beings bound to the Archons cannot pass, and their blood sizzles and burns as though it had been splashed on scorching rocks.

TΗΕ Cİ Kチ0N0R (LEVEL V)

Ktonor is the Underworld’s city. The Children of the Underworld reside bere, a tattered and slowly perishing flock. They are the refugees and survivors of innumerable civilizations annibilated or enslaved by humanity when we were still gods. The city is a last fortress of matter before the great well of nothingness which lies in the depths. Ancient and arcane machines keep the city safely anchored in existence, but beyond their influence reality itself disintegrates. nothingness lures and summons you, and everyone living in Ktonor feels the constant presence of Achlys and the being only mentioned in whispers - She Who Waits Below.

ASTAROTH

Ktonor is carved into the walls of an enormous pit, sprawling onto protruding cliffs, ledges, and terraces. It meanders downwards like a spiral, ever deeper. The farther down you go, the more dangerous the city becomes. Waterfalls plunge down into the darkness from some unseen source above; a pale, phosphorus sheen reflects in their mist. Slim bridges of black obsidian span across the abyss. The city’s architecture is alien and chaotic, created by thousands of different beings from various bygone eras, alien races, and vanouished worlds. The vaults, chambers, and buildings lie in darkness, but in a few places the city is lit up by amher lanterns. Much of the city is uninbabited, as most people gather around its central sections: the Bazaar, the Biomechanical Temple, the Hanging Gardens, the Place of Judgement, the Sacrificial Bridges, the neonatal Incubator Pillars, the Marketplace of the Dead, the monuments outside the Birth Chambers, the Turouoise Stairs, the vaults above the Turbine Halls, and the Memory Apparatus. Little more than ruins, the city’s deeper sections are populated with distorted and bestial creatures. Earlier inbabitants have devolved into feral monsters, as oblivion has conQuered their senses.

The Children of the Underworld

When we were divine and ruled from the spires of Metropolis, we conquered entire civilizations, explored all forms of lust, turned mysteries inside out, enslaved anyone or anything we desired, and annibilated anything that bored us. Crippled and frightened, these creatures attempted to escape from our cruel embrace. Most failed, but some managed to make their way down into the Underworld, where they tried to preserve their cultures on the edge of nothingness. It is a motley assortment of dancing gods, dream-smiths, soul mergers, queens of sorrow, gold bearers, storytellers, and annunciators; a myriad of exotic people and creatures organized into clans, bloodlines, and families.

The Archons’ servants force them to remain in the depths, preventing them from ascending to our world and disrupting the structures of elysium. Many of the

Underworld’s inhabitants still barbor deep batreds towards us, but most have resigned themselves to their fate. Their memories and myths from this ancient time are also distorted, so many of them do not know what is true.

Some Children of the Underworld occasionally reach the surface and enter Elysium, in order to secretly join or create cults, make pacts, spy on the servants of the Archons, and (most importantly) collect fresh genetic material. The Children of the Underworld, despite their splintered lineages, have one thing in common: they are all dying. Their proximity to nothingness, generations of incestuous breeding, and low resistance to disease has rendered many of them sterile. Those rare few who are born are usually mad and gravely disfigured. A healthy child is always seen as magical and sacred, a symbol of bope. As for those who have completely lost their ability to procreate, they fade away in quiet bitterness.

The Human Population

There are humans living in Ktonor: those who have found their way into the Underworld by mistake, have been kidnapped, or were born bere in the abyss. Humans born bere are viewed as Children of the Underworld, but those who came from above are treated with great suspicion, and are often captured and sold into slavery unless someone willingly vouches for their continued freedom. There is an exception to this rule: members of the Guardians of the Labyrinth are always treated with respect. These pilgrims, who listen to the call of nothingness, descend to Ktonor in sacred processions, and assume the role of priests in the city, staving off the nothingness. They perform sacrifices and ceremonies, meditating in preparation for their last march to face She Who Waits Below. As they wander farther downwards in their tranouil procession, some of the Children of the Underworld inevitably follow. nobody who walks that path is ever seen again.

The Biomechanical Keepers

The ultimate power in Ktonor lies in the bands of the Biomechanical Keepers. They are the last of their kind, masterpieces of an extinct race. Before the Keepers, the city was dominated by despots and self-proclaimed prophets from among the Underworld’s various cultures. Disputes were common, resentments festered, and tempers seethed over who should govern and bow issues were resolved. After the War of the four Thrones, the Keepers were formed and instated in Ktonor, all power placed in their bands. They were appointed to protect the Children of the Underworld, ensure the survival of all, and place the collective over the individual. The Keepers now maintain the city’s archaic machinery and serve as wardens and judges. They also decide who will gain access to the genetic material needed to produce healthy offspring. Recently, the Children of the Underworld - many influenced by Inferno’s beralds or their own bunger for power - have started to turn against the Keepers and Question why only they should have access to Ktonor’s most important resource: the Birth Chambers.

The Birth Chambers

Only the Keepers have permission to set foot on the Birth Chambers’ ballowed ground. Here, the reproductive materials from the Children of the Underworld are manipulated and augmented with fresh genetic matter, usually obtained from humans. Stepping into the sealed balls, you are assaulted by an unspeakable stench and a grotesque sight. Humans of all types have been booked up to the biomechanical machines. They have been crudely lobotomized and are fed via tubes in the nose and mouth. Waste matter is pumped out through catbeters in their abdomens. Many of them have had their limbs amputated. All of them simply gaze uncomprebendingly into empty space. The men’s genitals are kept painfully erect and their semen collected in sacred vessels. Women are barvested, their stolen eggs inseminated and cultivated. The bodies of the Underworld’s peoples are preserved in containers with nutritional solution, cryotubes, and electrical fields, while their DNA is manipulated and interwoven with new genetic material. It is allowed to develop in tubes until the surviving fetuses are transferred to the wombs of the members of the Biomechanical Keepers.

TΗΕΑ FΔLLEN REALMS (LEVEL VI)

Should you continue deeper beyond Ktonor’s limits, you come to massive, desolate halls replete with dilapidated cities, abandoned gardens, and lost, pale creatures. Everything is covered in a layer of ash. Within these ballowed vaults, bistory itself was to be preserved, alongside the seeds of a new future. But any bope of reestablishing what once was now seems distant, and the insidious presence of the nothingness causes everything to slowly wither away. For the people of Ktonor, this realm is filled with sorrow. They avoid it as much as possible. Here there are the shards and fragments of thousands of realms long since destroyed. Magnificent creations heavy with melancholy chiseled from stone, boned in ore, and carved from minerals, alongside majestic buildings, bridges, and monuments. There are stone forests filled with fantastic trees and meandering canopies and roots. Futuristic buildings mesh with the environment, cubes and triangles poised atop their roofs, defying gravity. Along walls and in paintings of steel and lead, writings in languages now forgotten commemorate where entire civilizations have been consumed, praying to be remembered. In deep crypts memorabilia, works of art, and literature are preserved; unparalleled treasures, delicate cloths almost mouldered away, bigh-tech wonders capable of barnessing the stars, chapped musical instruments, advanced apparatuses, data banks, and thinking machines, as well as art alien and fantastic. Open the right vault and you are greeted by fragrances from other existences, colors exotic and flickering, and sensations strange and new. All these treasures have been saved from destruction, now waiting, buried in layers of dust. The Fallen Realms are the grave for thousands of civilizations, slowly decomposing in the darkness, watched over by phantoms and flickering memories.

NOTHINGNESS (LEVEL VII)

Beyond the Fallen Realms lies the Temple of the Blind. Pass through this and the Inner Labyrinth and you will stand before She Who Waits Below. Beyond ber, there is only nothingness. Mystics argue the devouring nothingness leads into the Vortex of Limbo, where everything is respawned as dreams and fantasies. They say it should be possible to voyage deep into Achlys, and if one could find the correct rites and sacrifices, preserve their body and spirit long enough to attain a state of enlightenment in nonexistence, where the Illusion’s shackles lose their bold.

The Temple of the Blind

In the extreme depths of Underworld stands the Temple of the Blind, a black fortress filled with gigantic machinery. The Underworld’s ten rivers are directed into large reservoirs and down a turbine chamber, which rumbles ceaselessly as it generates power. The Temple is a barrier against nothingness, a black seal of iron, rock, and steel. In the Temple, no light may be lit. no flame, not even the tiniest spark can burn bere. In this world of eternal darkness, even gravity obeys its own rules and fickle whims. What serves as a wall, ceiling, or floor is impossible to say in the Temple. You can wander on every surface and move in all possible directions. As such, you Quickly become disoriented, and all around you are confused whispers and wailings of phantoms desperately searching for a way out. Occasionally, you bear screams, distant and drawn-out, as though they are slowly being wiped from existence itself.

The Inner Labyrinth

Beyond the Temple of the Blind, the Inner Labyrinth starts to sprawl into the nothingness. This is the final labyrinth, and no one who has ventured here has ever returned. Time and Space start to dissolve bere and dimensions mesh. Everything dissolves into a grey, depleted mass possessing neither color nor shape. Everything shifts in spiral movements. The only sound is the quiet hissing of reality being torn and shredded apart around you. Soon, your body dissipates into dust, misty particles stripped away as your very atoms scatter. Memories fade. You dissolve. You slip away into nothingness. And all the while, She Who Waits Below watches on, unmoved.

She Who Waits Below

You will find her at the edge of nothingness. Some argue she is Achlys’ daughter, or maybe an aspect of Achlys itself. In dreams, she assumes various forms: a glowing eye in an amorphous chaos, tender leaves on the surface of dark water, a fetus with its umbilical cord tight around its neck, or a bloated female body reclining in the dark. She Who Waits Below does not serve the Demiurge or Astaroth - she is beyond them. She is a powerful being in her own right, and her consciousness stretches into other worlds. She is the mother who summons those with nothingness in their hearts, those who feel empty and abandoned, balancing on the edge of life and death. She speaks to the tattered and outcast. She is the comforting band reaching out to the unbeard and ignored. The lost write her name on the Underworld’s tiled walls. Many of the Children of the night worship her and cults devoted to her exist all over the world, at every level of society. Her presence causes everything false to be revealed, layer by layer, until one’s true nature is laid bare. She offers tranouility, forgetfulness, and nonexistence. She promises true peace: kill the person you were and be reborn, passing from life into death and back again. Some say she is close to the Death Angel Satbariel, but She Who Waits Below is much more vast, and some of Satbariel’s servants worship her openly. What her purpose and objectives are, nobody knows. Each person who worships her finds the answer and meaning only within themselves.

Achlys

Beyond the Temple of the Blind. Beyond the Inner Labyrinth. Beyond She Who Waits Below. Beyond Time and Space. Beyond Chaos. The maelstrom waits. A black bole. Rotating around its own axis. Dreadful. Єternal. Ingurgitating. The last flakes of matter dissolve. Atoms crumble. Disappear. Pitch black vacuum. Phantoms flit like flames. Tattered celestial bodies spiral. Dragged deeper down. Extinguished off one by one. Your spirit flares up for a fleeting moment. A final gasp. Emptiness. nothingness. Achlys.

WHEN THE ABYSS BECKONS YOU

When a person travels in the Underworld, the gamemaster can use the Moves below.

ASTAROTH

The many passageways and the darkness cause you to go astray. Finding the way forward or the right way back appears impossible.

- Become Separated

Someone gets separated. they may fall through a dark chasm in the floor, be snatched away by a zeloth, or lose their grip on each other in the dark.

NOTHINGNESS (LEVEL VII)

The Underworld demands its tribute. The flasblight drops and rolls into the depths, out of reach. The pistol slips from its bolster and disappears with a splash into the sewer water, or the last rations in the rucksack are eaten by rats.

- Sense Danger

Sounds, smells, or trails indicate there is danger close by. Perbaps it is zeloths knocking on the pipes, the shrieks of someone being devoured by a cairath, or the ghastly stench from something approaching.

- Buckle Under the Pressure

The gnawing exposure, the pressing darkness, the curious sound, and the oppressive sense that everything might collapse on you at any time or you could fall over the edge and plunge deep down into a shaft, cause you to mentally break down. [Serious trauma: -2 Stability; the player chooses a state.]

- Trails from Those Who Have Gone Before

You find the trail of someone or sometbing from before. Be it a temporary camp site, lost ęuipment, a body, a weapon, or a message written on the wall, this provides a chance to get a new direction, acquire information, or receive new equipment.

- Opening into Another World/Level

You find yourself on the verge of progressing from this level. Maybe you make your way up towards the surface, deeper down into the darkness, or even enter one of the other worlds on the border.

- A Wondrous Place

You arrive at a wondrous place. It is foreign, ethereal, fascinating, and invites you to explore and maybe rest for a while.

- Meeting with the Exotic

You meet something in the Underworld’s darkness. Maybe a wanderer, a cultist, a phantom, a Child of the Underworld, or something even stranger.

- Under the Control of Higher Beings

One of the Underworld’s Higher Beings stretches out its consciousness and takes hold of the person. It could be the will of She Who Waits Below, the alien influences from a lost god, or the Gransangthir’s dark sentience. The Being can lure, invoke, and shape the Underworld’s labyrinth to its desires, to direct the wanderer where it wants them to go.

NOTHINGNESS (LEVEL VII)

nothingness settles over the person. They become tired and apathetic. Their clothes start to fray and tatter, as though the fabric was bundreds of years old. They are filled with sadness and melancholy. Phantoms become visible and now appear as pale shapes in the darkness.

-Visions from She Who Waits Below

You feel bow your essence is peeled away bit by bit, and everything within you is laid bare. You are overcome by the temptations of nonexistence and seeking another type of life, so you can regain lost knowledge.

The Red Brotherhood

Ties to Powers: Slaves of the Gransangthir, indirectly servants of the Archons.

Members: Families and neigbborbood communities in dilapidated areas. Active in slums and suburbs, often associated with the poorly educated, and occasionally with gangs. Strong cobesion.

Agenda: Protecting their neigbborbood and humanity from dangers emerging from the depths.

Moves: Finding Ways to the Underworld, Acquiring Weapons and Drugs, Rumors in the Slum Quarters, Stashing Away Evidence, The Silence of the Neighborhood, Summoning Zeloths/ Cairath.

The Gransangthir’s sacred commands reach the cult’s members like feverish dreams. They talk to their cultists from the depths beneath the city and imbue them with deep purpose: to protect the secrets of the Underworld, worship and sacrifice to the Gransangthir, and ensure that the Children of the Underworld and their followers are exterminated. The cult is a community of outcasts and broken families in various neighborboods who want to protect their kin from society’s threats. If required, they use violence and maintain their own laws and rules. Those who are closest to the Gransangthir often dress in ritual butchers’ aprons and arm themselves with rusty skinning knives, axes, and other tools during the cult’s ceremonies. These chosen few also venture down into the Underworld in order to carry out sacrifices directly for their rulers. As a reward for their services, they are allowed to take part of the Gransangthir’s euphoric dreams, as well as suckle greedily on their fat teats and drink the fermented milk.

Atlantean Dreams

Ties to Powers: Children of the Underworld.

Members: Students, hipsters, backpackers, conspiracy theorists, old bippies, and anyone with a passion for myths, legends, UFOs, and lost civilizations. Often well-read in bistory, archaeology, and literature, and usually active on the Internet.

Agenda: Finding evidence of lost civilizations, revealing conspiracy theories, and gaining insights into the Truth.

Moves: Hacking, Rapid Information Seeking, Arranging a Place to Sleep, Diversionary Maneuver, Global Network of Contacts.

The bunt for truth, fascination with the unknown, and the ever-growing collection of conspiracy theories is what breathes life into members of the Atlantean Dreams. However, in many ways, they remain as blind to the Truth as everyone else. They clutch at every answer they can find, read a new conspiracy into every beadline, display blurry YouTube clips as evidence of extraterrestrials, and believe bieroglyphs prove the existence of Atlantis. The cult is loosely structured and most of their interaction bappens over the Internet, specifically the Atlantean Dreams forum, where they share information and try to reveal humanity’s shadow masters. The cult has been infiltrated by members of the Children of the Underworld, who indirectly lead its membership and feed them tidbits of occult knowledge, mixed with a healthy dose of lies. They use the cult’s large information network to gain insight into Elysium. Mostly, they watch people, collect information on specially selected children and places, and spread disinformation. When wanderers from the Children of the Underworld find their way up to the surface, they often acquire equipment, clothes, and temporary bousing from other cult members.

Guardians of the Labyrinth

Ties to Powers: She Who Waits Below. Members: From all parts of society, but concentrated in the largest cities and drawn to the cult via dreams and visions. Typical members feel they lack something in their lives, something impossible to achieve through material bappiness. The members are fanatics, but seldom violent.

Agenda: To attain enlightenment, learn the Truth, and finally achieve eternal peace and insight by entering Achlys.

Moves: Fanatic Self-sacrifice, Visions from the Underworld, Finding Safe Ways to the Depths.

Members are drawn into the cult through dreams and visions. They meet in tunnels, shelters, and basement spaces in order to worship She Who Waits Below. They prepare themselves spiritually for their pilgrimage into the depths and thereafter start to cleanse their bodies under the watchful eyes of the Keepers. The members sterilize themselves - via operations or self-mutilation - and when ready to proceed into the Underworld, they gouge out their eyes to better ‘see’ the way their Mistress has paved for them. When they are worthy, She Who Waits Below summons the members, and they descend towards Ktonor. She guides them with her whispers, allowing them to avoid the Archons’ guards. Some remain in Ktonor to worship their Mistress or help others who venture downwards, but their ultimate objective is always to attain nothingness and uttermost insight. The members who have gone underground dress in grey ceremonial veils.

Zeloths

Zeloths are people who were skinned alive and sacrificed to the Gransangthir. Screaming, they are drawn into the disgusting abomination’s body, coalescing with its flesby mass, and distorted through extreme suffering. Eventually, the newly formed zeloth is begat amid blood and feces from one of the creature’s dripping orifices. In their new guise, they are skinless creatures with no ability to speak. Their nails have been refasbioned into crooked claws and a long, snaking tongue enables them to draw nourishment from victims. Fungal infections and mould sprout around their mouths and bodily orifices like a yellow-grey slurry. These spores are bighly toxic to the Children of the Underworld and fester in wounds like advanced gangrene.

Cairath

Cairath are creatures living in the sewers and catacombs just beneath the city’s surface. They are grotesoue, bloated, and rotting abominations, stinking carcasses melded with metal junk and trash. They do not devour their victims, but affix their squirming bodies to their own. These unfortunates can live for days, even weeks, undergoing this painful bonding process. Their wailing and pleas for belp telegraph the creature’s presence from a long distance. They consume people, animals, and other beasts in this fasbion. Cairath consciously influence their environment, and people close to madness can fall under their spell, worshipping them as gods. These madmen form small cults, which capture stray animals, homeless people, and other outcasts and shackle them in areas they know cairath bunt. The bravest of them sacrifice themselves to the cairath. When a cairath becomes sufficiently powerful, it can morph into a gransangthir.

Cairath

Home: Elysium and the Underworld. Creature Type: Guardian of the borders between the Underworld and Єlysium.

Abilities

• Animalistic intellect: Cannot be influenced or charmed.
• Gigantic: Cannot be held in place or knocked over in close combat. If the being’s attack connects in close combat they always knock their victim over, in addition to any other results.
• Devouring: Anyone fighting against the cairath in close combat suffers -1 ongoing.
• Mountain of meat: All Harm is reduced by -1 except damage from explosions, fire, or acid.
• Monstrous form: Humans who see the creature must Keep it Together to not become paralyzed by fear.

Combat [5], Influence [1], Magic [2].

Combat [Exceptional]

• Crush opponent.
• Attack many targets simultaneously.
• Create a tunnel cave in [ $2$ Harm, area attack].
• Devour someone [beals $2$ Wounds].
• Puke blood and extremities.

Influence [Weak]

• Call for worshippers.

Magic [novice]

• Influence someone’s mind [Keep it Together].

Inflict madness [Keep it Together].

Attacks

The cairath moves slowly, but its nightmarish appearance paralyzes humans with overwhelming fear. Its grotesque body consists of metal and the carcasses of bundreds of beings, limbs and mouths searching for new living beings to integrate into the rotting flesh. While bullets seems to do little damage, close combatants tend to get crusbed or swallowed by the monster.

Natural weapons: Grapple [1] [Distance: arm, victim is pinned and must Act Under Pressure to get free]; Devour [4] [Distance: arm, only pinned victims, the victim has to cut itself out, Act Under Pressure]; Crush [3] [Distance: arm]; Spew blood [-] [Distance: room/area, anyone covered in the blood gets -2 ongoing on actions requiring movement]; Tunnel cave in [2] [Distance: room, area, anyone who can’t Avoid is trapped beneath the pile]. Angels’ orders.

Wounds & Harm Moves

Wounds: 000000000000

• Continues unaffected by the damage.
• The attack bounces off a piece of metal.
• The cairath tries to grapple the attacker [Avoid Harm].
• One of its extremities is cut off and crawls around screaming on the ground.
• A human head cries and screams in agony [Keep it Together].
• The attack open up the flesh, exposing the balf-integrated body of an human, crying for belp [Keep it Together].
• Dozens of rats and cockroaches crawl out of an open wound.
• Blood and fluids pour out of the creature [+1 ongoing to all rolls against it].
• The cairath flees down into the sewers.
• The creature dies in a choir of insane screams and howls.

Gransangthir

These massive leech-like creatures live in the moist and slimy parts of the sewers. Their bodies are a mass of rancid fat, mould, and rotting flesh. These beings were once cairath, who have grown to grotesque proportions and think with the voices of their thousands of victims, still preserved in their bulk. They are subservient to the Archons and serve them by standing guard over the Underworld. They can extend their will up to the surface and, through dreams and visions, can influence people. Gransangthir do not constitute a direct physical threat, as they are too shapeless to move about, but they are endowed with potent mental powers, and they are the zeloths’ creators - which protect their masters until death.

Larvae

Larvae are black, worm-like creatures living in the Underworld. They are born out of leathery eggs, which lie in chambers deep below the ground. Reaching several yards in length, they have a round mouth lined with small, sharp teeth. They can smell living creatures and attack in berds. They emit a jarring, bigh-pitched cry when they bunt. They also lie in wait for their prey, banging from the ceiling, lying in crevices, or floating in shallow water waiting to attach themselves to a victim like leeches. As they attack, they gnaw into the body, devour it from the inside out. Inferno’s rulers have learnt bow to capture Larvae and tame them. They live inside razides and make sure these slaves do not defy the Death

The Biomechanical Keepers

Created by forgotten masters, they are employed to protect, unite, and ensure the survival of the Children of the Underworld. They are creatures of flesh, metal, and plastic; humanoid, but with great gravity in their bodies and movements. Their skin is rough and stony, but still organic. They are immortal, but cannot create more of themselves, so their numbers are constantly dwindling. If a conflict occurs, they use their powerful bands to tear apart most adversaries like a human tearing up wet tissue paper. They all have wombs and carry children created in the breeding factories to provide them the best chance for survival. After birth, the child is given to the Children of the Underworld to care for and raise. Each Keeper has an undying love for the children they bore, as they cannot procreate themselves. The Biomechanical Keepers previously had total control over Ktonor, but of late some groups have started turning against them. The Famaria gather ever more adberents to their flock, and there will soon come a time when they challenge the Keepers openly.

Phantoms

Phantoms are beings who have been slowly devoured by nothingness, with only a shard of them enduring. Their bodies have no substance and passing your band through them is like touching chilly fog. Their pale shapes are terrifying distortions of bow they looked in life. Some linger around the surface to baunt the living, while others buddle in darkness and sorrow. They can be seen wandering around and do not seem to notice the living except when blood is spilled. Then phantoms stir from their slumber and their dead gazes stare into our reality. Like moths to a flame, phantoms gravitate towards the living in order to suffocate them, take their warmth, and place their cold lips against open wounds to drink blood, which briefly provides them with a fleeting memory of life. Other ways to stir phantoms from their slumber are music, singing, art, sex, and other expression of life, which make their flagging souls flare up. When their minds are clear, phantoms recall their previous lives and all the knowledge they had back then. In the Illusion, you cannot see phantoms. They wander around us, invisible. Occasionally, you can glimpse them in mirrors or via reflections, little more than pale shadows. Technology is also a portal for invoking and contacting phantoms, and there are those who exist almost entirely on the Internet or in the borderlands between dream and reality.

Phantom (of the weaker kind)

Home: The Underworld. Creature Type: Trapped soul.

Abilities

• Ethereal: Can’t be barmed by physical weapons or bindered by physical objects.

Combat [-], Influence [1], Magic [1]. Influence [Weak]

Tell secrets from their former life.

Magic [Weak]

Steal life [1 Harm]. Attacks: Phantoms steal life by sucking on open wounds. Their ethereal bodies are immune to physical Harm. The only way to escape phantoms is to mentally shut them out or give them another source of life.

Magic: Steal life [1] [Distance: arm, Keep it Together to resist].

Wounds & Harm Moves

The only means to barm a phantom is through magic or the power of exorcism.

TΗΕ CHİLOREn 0F &HE UNOERUMORLO

The Children of the Underworld is an umbrella term for the innumerable peoples who have been driven into exile in the Underworld. They have been oppressed by virtually every ruler and culture, and are forced to live in the shadows of both humanity, the Demiurge, and the Archons. They are too many and too varied to be described in full. Below, there are some common examples.

Azadaevae

Long and slender with delicate features, pale skin, and long, thin hair, the Azadaevae seem ethereal and move with solemn grace. They are perpetually naked and a veil of dust spreads like a nebula around their bodies, which they use to weave illusions, as well as enchant senses and emotions. Their eyes are dark green and devoid of pupils. They have the ability to see the true souls of those they encounter, allowing them to detect their former rulers, tyrants, and tormentors. The Azadaevae are the same people as the Azghouls (see Chapter 18 - Metropolis), but from before they were enslaved. Their strange beauty causes people to desire to own them and make them servants and courtesans. As such, there are very few of them left. They previously lived in a complex caste system, which has long since collapsed.

Home: The Underworld. Creature Type: Creature of the Underworld.

Abilities

• Sharp senses: The being’s senses are perfect, able to pick up the most minute sound, scent, or even an intuitive sense that something seems ‘off.’
• Soulsight: Can always see a creature’s true form and a human’s past lives.
• Euphoric dust: Those who inbale the creature’s dust fall into a state of euphoria and enlightenment ( +1 Soul and -1 Violence until scene ends).

Combat [2], Influence [3], Magic [4].

Combat [novice]

• Gracefully float out of barm’s way [-1 ongoing to attacks]
• Release dust cloud [1 Harm, see Euphoric dust].

Influence [Considerable]

• Reveal knowledge of the Underworld.
• Steal something from someone.
• Offer rare and obscure objects in exchange for
• Weave powerful illusions.

Speak prophecy. services.

Magic [Powerful]

• See into someone’s soul and past lives.

Enchant emotions.

Attacks: Azadaevae are not violent creatures, but when confronted with threats they don’t besitate to use their powers to subdue their opponents. The azadaevae can trap victims in illusions, driving them mad with fear or euphoria.

Euphoric Dust: Dust cloud [1] [Distance: room, area, the victims breath in an overdose of the euphoric dust].

Magic: Weave illusion [-] [Distance: field, the victim(s) must Keep it Together to resist the illusion]; Enchant emotions [-] [Distance: room, the victim must Keep it Together to avoid getting enchanted].

Wounds & Harm Moves

Wounds: 0000

• Dust disperses in the air like a glowing nebula.
• Shimmering blood pours from the wound, the azadaevae screams in anguish.
• Dust circles around the azadaevae, creating an illusion [Keep it Together].
• The creature falls unconscious to the ground.
• The azadaevae is dead, its dust shimmering around the body.

Fat and swollen, the Beryn stick to their living chambers, where the water is kept hot and steaming in artificial ponds. When they venture out, they are draped in wet, shirza algae or ride in spider-like machines with steam chambers, which ensure they can conserve moisture. Their voices are thick and sticky, but they have excellent memories and an ability to see things beyond the borizon of Time. They often serve as advisors to the Biomechanical Keepers, and therefore bold privileged positions in Ktonor. They are deeply fascinated by technology and machines, and maintain much of the apparatuses and mechanisms of Ktonor.

Famaria

Famaria are clad in stately, ceremonial robes, whose trains are carried by slaves. They are armed with alien and archaic weapons that drip with venom. They are one of the oldest existing families, and some say they were the original architects and builders of Ktonor. They openly oppose the Biomechanical Keepers. They also advocate going on the offence to ensure the survival of their people, as well as exacting revenge against humanity. They have dealings with Inferno’s beralds and the nepharite clergy, and there is a whispered rumor a formal pact has been signed already.

The Zatars

Once the Zatars possessed wings, but they have since cut them off. Once they had clear eyes, but they are now dulled and milky. Once they had power and riches, but they have thrown all of this away. Clad in grey veils, they worship She Who Waits Below and belp the pilgrims avoid the Labyrinth’s guards as they make their way down to Ktonor. They are pale and bard as marble, their bands have six fingers, and symbols are carved into their flesh. Some say the Zatars were a Choir of the Demiurge’s angels who annibilated entire peoples in His name, eventually turning on Him and being banished for it. now, they worship the nothingness and bardly care about the power plays of the Underworld. In their coffins, they store swords of blackened steel and the keys to Metropolis’ secrets. If you mention the Demiurge while close to them, they throw themselves to the ground in anguish or try to tear out the tongue of the offending speaker.

The Others

In addition to the above, there are Besh-Tanath, who live in their tightly-knit, reclusive families; the Tamars, whose songs echo sadly in the empty vaults; the Laishi, weapon-smiths who have been incarcerated in their grey halls after a violent revolt; and the Kadash, who can sculpt their own and others’ bodies. There are the Ones Without names, who channel nothingness within themselves and discharge it as a black flood. The Kilotherna, who remain ensbrouded in white veils of sorrow ever since their ruler took his own life. The magnificent Menonveem, who reside dreaming in ethereal thoughts. All of these and many others live beside tattered dream creatures, creatures of passion and insanity, and lost gods who wallow in their solitary existence. The Underworld is home to them all.

ASTAROTH

In the darkened alley, just beyond the glow of the street lamp, there stand two people. Stablberg is a muscular and towering white man. He looks worn out, with tired eyes, a short beard, and something wild in his gaze. He always packs a heavy revolver or sawedoff shotgun tucked under his coat. Standing next to him is Mirror, a young, black girl with a booded sweater, worn-down jeans, and a cellphone always in her band. Stablberg is of Kadash decent. He adopted Mirror when she was a little girl and she has followed him ever since. They are day wanderers, continually traveling between Єlysium and Ktonor. They kidnap children from poorer areas and take them down into the depths, help the Atlantean Dreams when they need some muscle, and keep constant tabs on enemies of the Children of the Underworld.

Zishan Bangial

A Pakistani ambulance driver and paramedic, Zishan works the night shift in the city’s worst neighborboods. He grew up in the Underworld, but was sent topside to acquire genetic material for the Children of the Underworld. He takes blood samples from those be drives around in the ambulance, delivering these and the patients’ personal information to a desolate bouse, where a bunch of dirty casb waits for him. Patients who have the right DNA tend to disappear within months. When Zishan is drunk, he speaks openly and recounts things be has seen in the darkness.

Hassan al-nuri

The head of one of Lebanon’s largest refugee camps, Hassan is - to a casual observer - an old man of Arabic descent, dressed in Western fashions. He uses the refugee camp, a place of despair and anger, to find new members for a cult of boly warriors, devoted to himself. He also finds those with suitable genetic material, which be then refines via imposed marriages. He has direct contact with several heralds of the Death Angels, and conveys their offers to his people in the Underworld. He plans to depose the Biomechanical Keepers, and thereafter destroy the servants of the Archons. Hassan al-nuri is one of the Famaria, and an important cog in their conspiracy to usurp power in Ktonor.

Judith Schiller

Judith is a middle-aged woman with infectious charisma. She has a warm, albeit sad gaze, which seems to pierce your soul. She lives alone with her cats, but occasionally welcomes visitors for personal séances and fortune telling sessions. Mrs. Schiller runs a little book publishing firm, Ouroboros, which prints collections of poetry, historical novels, new Age books, and obscure magazines. Her publishing bouse bosts a site where users can publish their own poems and short stories, as well as purchase each other’s collections of poetry as print-on-demand books. The bomepage has become a place where the Children of the Underworld living on the surface can communicate with each other. In their poems, they leave veiled messages about rendezvous spots, warnings, or Questions. Judith Schiller is an Azadaeva, who, despite her melancholy, has a burning desire to belp her people. She acts as an intermediary and informer, who runs a delicate underground network for those in the lit world.

ΗΗΕ ΕΦΕRΝΔL Cİ⿻尸丨丷日,