#underchasm

[forgotten-realms-atlas]

Introduction to the Forgotten Realms Atlas

Greetings!

Around the beginning of March, 2022, I was picking my way through the files of the Trove when I stumbled across a treasure most impressive. Buried amidst an archive of Dragon magazines and a program to teach you the rules of AD&D 2e, was this:

So, like any self-respecting adventurer who had just come across a treasure chest, I did not check for mimics, and immediately opened it up (after speaking with a few of the Installation Wizards).

Behold, what I found inside that chest!

Now, I want to preface my findings with a few important details about myself. For years now, I have had a special fascination with the Forgotten Realms, call it inexplicable, call it what you will, but something has endlessly pulled me into this world. First, my interests were focused primarily on Drow: their culture, society, and lore. But soon, my exploration through the pages of the Forgotten Realms Wiki (for purposes personal and game related) broadened my horizons, you could say.

And curiosity begets curiosity begets a lust for knowledge.

As it turns out, the planet that the well-known Faerûn is situated on, Toril, has remarkably few canon maps that show it in full, at least not easily accessible from a cursory image search.  There are a number of maps of more well-known areas, primarily within Faerûn, as it is the most well-established continent in the canon. Some are beautifully rendered in high resolution, such as the 5th edition map of the Sword Coast, released in 2015 by Wizards of the Coast (art by the WotC Extra Life Team, for download here)

This map is beautiful. I have a 54x36″ print of it hanging on the wall of my room. The detail is stunning, even if nearly half of it is covered in water. The issue is, this map only includes a fraction of Faerûn, and nothing of other continents of this world. This is the best map that 5e offers players in the Forgotten Realms in terms of sheer magnitude of places to be explored. But here we are, seven years out from it’s creation and release, without a world map.

So, I went to other editions, because the plethora of lore that is held in those books is astounding, and makes me wish that I had entered into this field of study far earlier in my life, or perhaps, that I was born just a little earlier, so I could have appreciated them at the time they were released.

The 4th edition map of Faerûn has a few key things that need to be noted before you look at it too deeply. As many know, 4e was the edition that introduced the Spellplague to the Forgotten Realms setting. I will make no moral judgements of this event in this entry, but I will point out the things that it changed in the world, the majority of which were undone by the Second Sundering and the ushering in of 5e.

This map, as you can see, features a much larger area, including just about all the land that makes up the continent of Faerûn. However, I must point out what many scholars of the realms already know.

1) The art on this map is... well it’s poopy. I don’t want to be rude, but the dreary color palette does it no service, and the Underchasm is a large brown stain that draws your eyes to it. I’ll let you do with that what you will.

2)The problem with Chult.

Since I am traveling backwards in time to reach my destination, I feel here is where I must skip around a wee bit. You see, Chult is a location that has been featured through numerous iterations of the Forgotten Realms, appearing in books as far back as the very first Forgotten Realms Campaign setting (1987). It has jungles and dinosaurs, and its own set of critiques and criticisms that I will surely dive into another time. 

The short of it is, Chult was originally a peninsula, meaning that it was a land mass that went out to sea, but was still attached via land to the mainland of the continent. With the events of the Spellplague, it was made into an island, and then returned to being a peninsula. For reference, we can use the next map on our journey, the 3rd edition map of Faerûn.

It may not have the details and aesthetic of the 5e map, but thankfully, it also does not have the unpleasant skid mark of the Underchasm that the 4e map so graciously provides us.

And, most importantly, it shows us how Chult was, and how it presumably returns to post-Second Sundering.

I’ll go into detail regarding this another day, but needless to say, the 4e map is... sub-par for our purposes.

And so, in our time machine, we make it to the year 1999, when the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas comes to Forgotten Realms Enthusiasts about to brave the new millennium.

A thrilling piece of software, this. After three major updates, it came to contain over 800 maps of the Forgotten Realms, including cities, streets, and even building interiors. All of them accessible in such a way that they could be exported and printed to be used at the table. But, the most impressive part by far, was the globe.

I dare not post a gif of it in motion as it sometimes even gives me a headache, but rendered in stunning 2D, was a globe that you could click and drag to move. But it was more than  that! By using the zoom tool, clicking an area would bring you to a “child” map of the area you wished to see in detail. On more fleshed-out areas of Toril, this means you can go as far as to a single city street in Waterdeep, following the chain of parent-child maps.

Google Earth’s initial release was not until July of 2001, nearly two years later. This must have been a massive undertaking for the artists and programmers involved, and it fills me with joy.

But there’s more?!

There are 28 different options that can be toggled for you to view, from contours to waterways, political boarders to structures to vegetation.

And, the glory of it all, I find a canon map of Toril.

I am jumping around once more, but technically, we were given a map of Toril in 3rd edition. However, it looked like this:

Meanwhile, the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas provides us with this:

(Pardon the quality, I screenshot-ed the original program from 1999, and it’s chunky at best)

But the art and resolution aside, this is stunning! This is everything at a scale and level of detail that tells us much more than the 3e outlines ever could. AND you can choose areas to zoom in on.

The only downside is, we do not see the same level of detail on many of the continents that we do for Faerûn. This is supposed to represent how, in Faerûn, they actually do not know much about these places, and have not mapped them out yet. Also, I am sure that not including those details made this project feasible in the first place, and I respect that. It was 1999, computers could not handle the things they do now, and certainly not at a price that an amateur hobbyist could purchase and use, considering the audience was mostly school-aged kids and teens to my understanding.

So, you might be asking, what does this all mean?

Well, not long after this discovery, I came across a book in a game store, carefully wrapped in plastic to preserve it.

Published in 1990.

As of writing, I have yet to unpack the contents of this atlas, but I want to do it in a way that is meaningful, and can also provide a reference to others. This blog will be dedicated to my research and ramblings on everything that I find.

So, welcome adventurers! It’s time we set off on our journey!

[agnostic-angel]

All of this is true, and overshadowed that 4e is a pretty tightly balanced system that, yes, does the main mechanical thing people were using 3e for very well.

To add to all the sensible stuff above, there's also the lore angle: Forgotten Realms was and is D&D's largest and most successful setting. When the 1e>2e and 2e>3e transitions took place, conversion of characters was encouraged, and even specifically facilitated with conversion guides. There were in-setting events which reflected the rules change - bad luck if you played a 1e assassin, for example - but generally, the story continued and you were encouraged to participate in it.

The 3.5e>4e transition for Forgotten Realms was marked not only by the biggest such upheaval yet, but also a 100-year time skip. Unless your character had been a dwarf or elf but not an arcane magic user, they were almost certainly dead in the new reality. And it's possible their homeland was gone too, swallowed up by massive map changes that made varyingly small amounts of sense.

But because novels were continuing to sell well, increasing numbers of prominent characters from the original era were brought forward to the new timeframe by some extremely dubious handwaving. This wasn't mentioned in the core book, of course - that was all about the new newness. So it was entirely possible to set aside your old characters and their story, accept that their adventures had come to an untimely end 100 years ago - and then discover, months or years later, that other characters has been given an out for some reason. (Elminster lives - of course he does, and that was clear from the core book - but Catti-Brie??)

And some of the new worldbuilding was good - the Neverwinter Campaign Setting is an extremely solid and in places excellent book, for example. Some of it was daft - the Underchasm is a large area of Underdark exposed to the daylight, which removes the single most distinctive thing about it! And some of it just never got followed up on - Returned Abeir, aka Laerakond, was an entire new landmass that never got a sourcebook about it. We learn virtually nothing about the cultures here, so they come off as extremely generic despite some promising ideas.

I think some of the PR problems of the system could have been recovered if they had not also decided to set some of their most beloved IP on fire.

People rallied against 4e for being well designed? I always heard it was because it was too much like WoW.

D&D 4e being too much like WoW is one of those things that's true in places (it actually had design informed by WoW among other things but a lot of said design was actually remodeled to actually work in the context of tabletop game instead of trying to lazily transplant mechanics from a video game directly into a tabletop game), but ultimately is just a lazy shorthand for "it's like bideo gane therefore bad." On a deeper level D&D 4e wasn't rejected "just" because it was too much like videos game but because its designers actually took a look at all the things taken as default in D&D and actually considered how conducive they were to the experience people were seemingly looking for from D&D (D&D 4e being built to be a fun skirmish game didn't come out of nowhere: it was a response to people basically playing D&D 3e like that and finding the game too unbalanced to serve that experience).

Funnily enough, in being willing to reconsider what people actually wanted out of D&D, 4e is actually the edition of Hasbro D&D most aligned with what people seem to actually want out of D&D these days. A lot of the common design issues people bring up with 5e are issues that D&D 4e already rectified once and 5e actually walked back on because they wanted to get back the purists who had rejected 4e for not being D&D-shaped enough.

[dungeons-and-danis]

Hi I recently started following your blog and its been a big help for gathering materials and ideas for my own campaign. I just am having trouble understanding what the Underdark is and how that is in relation to the material plane. Is it apart of it or how does it work. If you could let me know that would be fantastic! Oh and any other timps for first time DMs!

First of all, I am SO sorry this is so late like I read this early in the morning before work and then told myself i’d answer when I got home. But boom, weeks later and here we are. I am The Worst and I apologize but IM HERE NOW. Since I waited so long, i’m gonna go all out for you anon. So prepare for a long answer!

The Underdark is a complicated setting that I was first introduced to through the first few episodes of Critical Role season 1! On the wikipedia, it says:

“It is described as a vast subterranean network of interconnected caverns and tunnels, stretching beneath entire continents and forming an underworld for surface settings.”

Some consider it to be apart of the prime material plane (the normal world), and others consider it a realm in and of itself. You can see it primarily in the Forgotten Realms and World of Greyhawk campaign settings. Hell, its even in the video game, Neverwinter Nights! So we know it’s popular. But what is it?

Well that’s honestly up to much interpretation. The Underdark can be what you want it to be. But there are some shining features of the Underdark that make it what it is:

Its underground

It’s dark, it’s dank, and it’s cold

Usually inhabitted by grotesque monsters and uncommon races such as drow, illithids, aboleth, duergar, kuo-toa, ect.

Much of those who inhabit the Underdark are (in past official campaign settings at least) of neutral to evil alignments. This is optional though imo.

There’s usually an entrance or portal into the Underdark somewhere on the surface or in the prime material plane. That part is up to you to create.

In my homebrew campaign, the entrance to the Underdark is through a massive, inactive, hollowed out volcano in which the drow of my continent reside within. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there are ports to the Underdark via the Underchasm which is a huge canyon created by a spellplague. Seen here:

But you can make your port of entrance anything you want it to be! That’s the fun part.

Moving on, I like to reference the level-system used in the Forgotten Realms (because while most like to shit on it, i think it’s a very well developed campaign setting OKAY don’t hate me) to describe the Underdark’s specific chasms and their purpose and what they hold.

Upperdark

The first three miles below the surface. It was here where the surface dwellers and those in the Underdark most often met. 

Middledark

Located three to ten miles below the surface, this layer was where most of the Underdark cities were located. 

Lowerdark

Ten miles or more below the surface, the Lowerdark was where even those who knew the Underdark were loath to go.

So it’s obvious that the Underdark is more than just a dark, dank hole in the ground of someone’s campaign setting. As described above, there are settlements too! Thus, the presence of an economy as well. Typically, an Underdark economy will consist of armor, timber and weapons, as well as the darker trades such as slavery, magics, and exotic goods.

But usually, there isn’t just one massive, all hailing economy in the whole of the Underdark. The Underdark is a huge place, typically encompassing entire continents or entire planets. It is often a lawless place in most settings, so economies and rules of the land can vary from city to city, state to state, continent to continent. It is entirely up to you how you want to split up your Underdark setting or how you’d like to civilize it.

Personally, i’d love to see a unique take on the Underdark where they’re not the dark, horrific place that everyone views them to be. But instead, they’re a civilized society with some rather dark leaning practices. But that’s just me.

Just keep in mind that because the Underdark setting is usually so massive, you shouldn’t feel the need to develop the entire thing. It’s like creating an entirely new world in most cases, and I highly doubt your players who live in the prime or the surface will find the time to explore all of it. That is unless your campaign setting IS the Underdark. Then, by all means– GO NUTS!

All in all, the Underdark has a few iconic and unique characteristics that should probably be met so it’s recognized as the Underdark. But for the most part, it is still entirely up to you how you brew it up! That’s the great thing about Dungeons & Dragons, is you can rip all the pieces of something you like from different settings and paste it all together to create something new and unique, never before seen! So good luck in your Underdark makings! And if you have any other questions, do let me know! I’ll try my best to be on time this time lmao.

[[As for dm tips, I have a whole tag FULL of them! I used to have a post I specifically made but idk what happened to it :c]]

[uriaslore]

The Underchasm was maintained by hundreds or thousands of individual teams across many cultures. The teams generally acted independently and some in secret, and were paid through scavenging rights, international budget allowances, and occasional money drops. Teams included Eternal City workers, Mergris, Izemin smiths, Wild Ones, a Destonan group made of ex-Evershine members and their descendants, and many, many others.

These teams performed many functions- setting up strings of mechanical lights, repairing damaged sections of pathways or bridges, responding to earthquakes in particularly volatile regions like northern Ushern and the Polar Loop, and creating exit tunnels when there were no natural ones nearby (and adding whatever security measures were necessary, like airlocks on undersea exits). When a section of the Underchasm was deemed impassable- like the physically obstructed Eternal City branch, the magically obstructed sub-branch in Arkana's Machine, or the monster- filled area passing through the deep Mouth of Urias- the Underchasm teams worked to provide alternate routes around or above the problem.

These teams worked hard because they recognized the potential of the Underchasm as a transportation system- it allowed the crossing of towering mountains and deep oceans on foot. As it happened, this potential was rarely used by large groups, owing to the risk of the Void, simple lack of knowledge that the Underchasm existed or that it was so immense, and the speed of other transportation methods. The Underchasm instead saw more use by small travelling parties willing to take shortcuts through harsh mountains, messengers with secret deliveries, or adventure seekers looking for long, risky hikes across great distances.

Despite its rarity in use, the Underchasm was maintained, by charity and by governments operating in secrecy, and so it continued to be kept and maintained.

[sageadvicednd]

Shining South: what is the state of Underhome now that Underchasm is filled post 2nd Sundering? Greetings and salutations! I've a burning question from the Shining South - what is the state of Underhome now that Underchasm is filled post 2nd Sundering?

[monsterism]

New piece for my Patreon page, The Fish's Night. "The Umbratide it is called, a generational happening, the casting of a dire shadow across the underchasms of the ocean, as though Leviathan swam slowly on above." (Graphite, digital, paper) Get the full scoop here.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

To be clear, Shadowheart isnt "too good" to remain Sharran, she was literally kidnapped & brainwashed & why would you stay in the cult that did that to you?

So some extra context for the commenter above me's questions about Shar & Selune...

Very recently to the game, as BG3 is set in 1492 DR and the events I'm going to discuss happened in 1486/7 DR, Shar's worshipers and a remaining bastion of the Netheril Empire - a final remaining floating city, Thultanthar (only safe from Karsus's Folly because the city had been hanging out in Shar's realm/ythe Shadowfell at the time & then couldn't get back for a while) - managed some very good progress in Shar's grand design of turning the entirety of Toril into dark nothingness/bring the Shadowfell to the Material Plane. Before being foiled by adventurers and the Chosen of other gods, ofc.

The Sundering took place from 1482 to 1487 and involved the remaking of the Tablets of Fate, the separation of Abeir & Toril (think 2 planets occupying the same metaphysical space like a venn diagram), and the full restoration of Mystra & return of the Weave to full strength (in ttrpg terms, the inciting incident/process to transition the world from 4e to 5e). There's a very good series of tie in novels, 6 books long, if you're interested in reading about the events of the Sundering yourself. Otherwise I'll lore dump about some of them below.

In 1486, Shar's design to bring the Shadowfell to the Material Plane and subsume everything was very nearly successfully brought to fruition by a Prince of Netheril, Yder Tanthul, but a small group of adventurers - themselves Chosen of gods, namely Helm, Siamorphe, & Sune - managed to make a deal with a primordial that sealed up the Underchasm breach where the Shadowfell was to seep through/initiate the destruction.

I cannot emphasize enough how the Sundering was a worldwide event that shook EVERYTHING and EVERYONE and it pains me that it's not more mentioned in the every day lore of Faerun/games like Baldur's Gate. Dead gods were revived! Lost continents and areas of land returned! Land that was Abeir's and not Toril's went back to Abeir! IT WAS A VERY WILD 5 YEARS!!!

And in the end, the final year, 1487, Telamont Tanthul, "emperor" of Netheril, leader of Thultanthar, Chosen of Shar, continued the work his Lady had tasked him - kill the Chosen of other deities so she could steal the divinity they contained for herself, & drain the magic of Myth Drannor's mythal in order to fuel the transformation of the Weave wholly and solely into the Shadow Weave. As you might imagine, this would outright kill Mystra and destroy EVERYTHING Faerun knew or understood or actively used about magic. A mythal (kind of semi sentient big honking anchor/net of magic, they were used to keep the floating cities of Netheril afloat & currently are used in some ancient elven cities like Myth Drannor) is a big undertaking to drain, corrupt, or set up in the first place. In modern Faerun it is in fact a lost art of magic, iirc. So Telamont Tanthul hired mercenaries, moved his floating city to above Myth Drannor/its surrounding forests, and began a military offensive to protect his magical workings for Shar. The Chosen of Mystra - yes, including Elminster Aumar AND two of Mystra's daughters (she had 7), like Dame Aylin is Selune's daughter - allied with the elves of Myth Drannor & fought a ground war with the mercenary & Netherese/Shade forces, while a lich, Larloch, tried to divert things and drain the mythal for himself (he wanted to become a god/control the Weave).

Like I said, it was WILD during the years of the Sundering. And while your average Joe on the street wouldn't know about Larloch's involvement, they'd know that the floating city of Thultanthar had moved from its usual place by the Anauroch Desert in the north westish part of the continent to over Myth Drannor and the Cormanthor forests, and then - because as you & I clearly know from playing a game set 5 years later - magic was saved, Shar was foiled and Thultanthar's mythal failed, bringing the floating city to crash down into the (thankfully) mostly evacuated Myth Drannor, an elven city that had been in the process of rebuilding from a previous conflict/occupation in the FIRST place (thanks, Elminster! Yes it was Elminster who directly magic battled for control of the mythal draining and brought Thultanthar down on Myth Drannor).

So, no, tl;dr, Shar is not just a mirror aspect of night to Selune, she actively works towards *loss*, and usurping both Selune AND Mystra (a deity born from the first major divine battle between Selune & Shar, fwiw, as I lore dumped in a diff post). Shar is the Lady of Loss, night is a small facet of her portfolio, in support of the rest of it: darkness, loss, secrets, forgetfulness. Her battle with Selune - and the other deities - goes back to the very, very beginning, when it was only her and Selune and the Overgod Ao, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTED. She liked that, she'd rather have that than everything that came after she and her sister Selune created Chauntea (OG goddess of the earth/nature, now mostly an agricultural deity mirror to Silvanus, deity of wild nature) & the earth.

In contrast, Selûne's portfolio doesn't include night at all, but is the moon, stars, navigation, navigators, non-evil lycanthropes, questers, & wanderers. Selûne's Domains (as in clerics) are Knowledge, Life, & Twilight; while Shar's are Death & Trickery (what Shadowheart is). It would be more accurate to describe Selune & Shar as opposing/mirrored deities of life & death, than of two sides/aspects of night.

ETA: human women in Faerun also worship Selûne during their menstrual periods, as she's a cyclical goddess herself. Fun fact.

Listening to Wyll's backstory in context of all the details we're acquiring on devil's contracts and soul selling is fascinating.

See - I listened to Lann Tarv's three tales to get my soul coins. I felt bad for making Karlach listen to that, obviously, but to be honest I didn't even want the coins that much. I actually wanted the stories. I wanted a better understanding of how this works.

And what I'm learning is - for the gods (and godlike beings) of this world, cruelty seems to be the point. I mean - it's possible there's a god in this world I wouldn't want to stab to death with a rusty fork, but if so I have not met them yet.

These beings have the power to save people and places, to change lives, to do anything. And when someone asks them to - they demand a terrible price. But they don't just demand a price. They subvert the original request in such a way that they utterly fail to deliver on the original promise.

An abused woman wishes to be loved - and her true love appears, but dies instantly. A man wishes to save his children from starvation, and ends up personally growing masses of meat on his own body - not only painful for him, but forcing his children into survival cannibalism, which they were trying to avoid.

Auntie Ethel works the same way. Every one of her customers is left in a tortured state, while Ethel still takes her payment.

The idea is that the person must come to regret their wish long before the payment comes due. Every cry for help must be met with a boot to the face. Or else the mortals will get uppity? Or something.

What is interesting is how consciously Wyll defies that. And how much Mizora is dancing around, trying to force him into that state of miserable regret.

Wyll was manipulated into selling his soul. He was a kid, and he was summoned into a terrible situation - and in that moment, he could see no other way to save the city. Mizora did need to save Baldur's Gate to serve her boss's purposes, so she couldn't take that victory from him - but she did everything she could to take the joy of it.

He didn't get respect, or admiration, or his father's pride for saving the city. He lost his home and his family. He was assumed to have done something monstrous because he was denied an opportunity to defend himself.

That was supposed to fill him with bitterness and regret - but he got to work building his own life instead. By the time you run into him, the Blade of Frontiers is a hero of some renown. He's remade himself, and found a way to enjoy what his powers can do, however he came by them.

So that didn't work.

Then Mizora sent him after Karlach, and that was a mission tailored to break him. Karlach is kind and heroic herself, and that the start she has been sold into slavery, mutilated and forced to fight in a war against her will. If Wyll killed her, and then found out who she really was, then he betrayed everything the Blade of Frontiers is supposed to stand for - and he would lose the life he made for himself.

But he didn't, and that didn't work either. He's got a friend, now, who at least knows part of what he's dealing with.

So Mizora gave him demonic features. That would destroy the life he's made for himself, because no one would trust him to help them.

Except now Wyll basically goes nowhere on his own, and a small army of people can attest that he got those horns and eyes as punishment for being a good man. Mizora might be able to shut his mouth, but she can't silence his friends - and the group absolutely have shouting sessions about everything. Wyll's horns become a battle scar, like his missing eye, and nothing more.

And beyond that, if you are playing as a heroic character, a significant throughline in the game's story is the journey of the tiefling refugees. The story makes it clear that these people experience a constant barrage of racism, due to their appearance and "demonic" heritage. It also makes it abundantly clear that this prejudice is entirely undeserved - they're just people, with virtues and flaws like everyone else, and what is happening to them is terrible. So Wyll turns up to assist a bunch of people whom he now at least somewhat resembles - and with Karlach along, you have two people in the group who technically count as "infernal", but haven't got an evil bone in either of their bodies.

Mizora created solidarity. Oops.

Wyll is deeply suspicious of gods and higher powers. He doesn't want to make more deals with devils. When Elminster arrives to tell Gale what Mystra demands of him, he explicitly says he does not do religion. When you get Mizora to agree to let his contract expire in six months, he starts by casually invoking the gods - but switches to thanking the player character instead, because he knows who helped, and who did not.

But he utterly refuses to regret the pact he made. That can be a struggle. He clearly misses his dad, and would like that relationship repaired. The fact that he was transformed very much against his will is clearly a source of distress from him.

But if he regrets, then Mizora wins. That's it. Game over. She gets what she wanted all along. So he doesn't.

The main companion characters all have this kind of problem, and naturally have different ways of dealing with it. You have characters like Shadowheart and Lae'zel, who were indoctrinated as children, or Gale, who was literally seduced by one of these nightmare deities - and with them you have to start out by convincing them they they were the wronged party in the first place.

But Wyll knows exactly what game he's playing, and he's been screaming defiance the whole time. It's just that, in his case, the "defiance" is grinning and carrying on every time Mizora inflicts some more bullshit on him.

[the-chaotic-blade]

Dwarves, Chasms and an Elf?

Following the meeting of the god, we carried on north-east, to the town of Bezentil, all four of us. Maze, Vasilly, Shari, and Giles. (At the time, our DM switched places with one of the players, who ended up becoming our main DM, and still is.) Where we met a dwarf NPC. He wanted us to travel to some ruins, to collect his ceremonial weapon, which was stolen on his pilgrimage to a friend’s funeral. So we set off, finding a cave where the thieves had stowed, however inside, the floor gave out, and we fell down, and continued to fall. After a period, Maze, my wizard cast detect magic, and found runes which said to stand up, and when we did that, the illusory magic protecting the place diminished. We had found the Underchasm. Down there, we ran into Skwisgaar. later on, Vasilly died - and transformed into a Choker (undead) and turned on us.  We couldn’t beat this strong foe, so we fled, and he was squished by a trap. Shortly after, we found a note which dictated they would run into more ‘Trial’s in the future. Someone was watching their progress.

[doedipus]

LP D&D: Tumble in the Tundra

It’s like the Rumble in the Jungle, except not in central Africa.

Something about the concept of magic items really tickles my fancy, moreso than a lot of other fantasy tropes. Stuff like the Moonlight Greatsword from the Dark Souls games, Link’s heaping arsenal of hyper-specialized tools, and Guts’ berserker suit and robot hand strike me as being super cool. If I had to rationalize it, I guess it comes down to gadget-based heroes being more fundamentally human in my mind than someone with the innate ability to light things on fire with their brain, and in the context of tabletop games, magic items can provide some more flavor to combat and river crossing puzzles than a party of totally mundane humans. Like, the time when Coy ended the battle at the late Lord Hier’s dinner party by crashing the airship through clever use of the teleport hat was wayyy cooler than the dozens of other encounters the party just brute forced their way through.

One of these days, I really want to run a campaign in a low-genre game like Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green or something, and use quadcopters or smartphones the same way our DM in this game uses the helm of teleportation or the cloak of the bat.

I’m bringing all this up because the map the party had been carting around this whole time is basically a smartphone. As usual, content under the break.

Teller redrew the map

While he was drawing, a woman’s face appears in the map and speaks to the party

Her name is Natalie

She’s the map

Of Amarak //The last empire to control western Faerun

Natalie is having none of our berk questions

Connie asks about the sisters, Natalie gives an info-dump

They were anti-imperialist

Minnia formed a pact with some demons

Amarak successfully repelled them, and recorded their strategies in Natalie

Lucas asks about Minnia’s location

Apparently she was split into 5 pieces, and her remains scattered

One near Luskan and Syrup Leaf

One near Calimport

One near Shulk

One near Amathar

One in Winterkeep

One in Candlekeep

Natalie can give the party more detailed advice as we get close

“You seem kind of full of yourself. I like that. I’m also kind of full of myself”-Lucas

Coy asks Natalie what she knows about what’s-her-name

My responses are limited. You must ask the right question.

Max works through his headache and remembers names

Natalie has an image of her on file

Graham realizes something is off about the map

Coy and Graham take a closer look

The kingdom of Demara was apparently bigger in the past

It was slightly smaller than Amarak, and its ally

Graham puts his ear to the map

Natalie recommends he clean his ears

He does. On Natalie.

Natalie is violated

Lucas tries to concuss Graham, but he’s doing the dance of his people

Natalie dislikes being called “Map”

Coy recommends the party go check out the giblets at Syrup Leaf

Lucas is confus. What’s a syrup leaf?

Coy attempts to explain

Natalie wants to map out a relationship chart for the party

Esmeralda is a lady

no srs guys

Telepathy sex dungeon //from Sigil trip one

Lucas denies any knowledge of this “Rolen” //Rich also denies any knowledge of this “Rolen.”

He literally has no knowledge of Rolen

Or the drow attack on Amnswater

Graham reveals he’s never learned anyone else’s name

Coy considers storage options for Natalie

Can we laminate her?

Can she survive in a bag of holding?

Natalie the smartphone can keep track of our quests. How convenient! //Not like we tend to think in terms of “quests” anyway. We mostly just bumble around and then things happen

Connie asks about the Sigil portal

The ruins of the Sigil-Amarak trade hub is nearby

It’s by the crags

Graham has a question for Map

Where’s Catarina?

There isn’t one lol

It’s recently independent obvs

What’s the dog to milk ratio?

It’s 3:1, Rap

Coy asks for a brief overview of the war

Amarak allied with nearby kingdoms

They cornered Minnia in Beydale and dismembered her

There was also a golem army, which Natalie can activate

Escrima asks about extraplanar creatures

They came out through the underchasm

He asks about mother

Apparently, she patroned a few generals during the war

Callie Thorngage, Nedda Brushgather, and Escrima Smith

Natalie shows images of said generals

They bear a striking resemblance to Graham, Connie, and Escrima Smith, respectively

//From what little we know so far, Callie Thorngage was ostensibly a cis woman. The implication is pretty clearly that the members of the current party are reincarnations of these other three folks, with Escrima being the Gordon Freeman to MOTHER’s G-man. So like, why would Graham’s previous incarnation be a cis girl? Wouldn’t it make more sense if the old Graham was also a dude, and the trans thing happened because he was literally a dude dumped into a girl’s body? I swear, cis folk have no idea how to write this sort of thing.

They made it out of the war okay, and joined mother in the ether

Escrima accuses Natalie of tripping balls

She is a map. She does not trip

Amarak awarded mother some sort of reward for its assistance

Other team photos are revealed

There’s doppelgangers of Greg and Eva too.

Greg’s clone being the son of Theodin, King of Amarak

In a painting of the dicing of Minnia, a soldier uses The Cleaver to cut up Minnia’s body

The Cleaver is stored near the Sea of Fallen Stars, in a vault

Vaults are scattered around the continent, full of puzzles and treasure

Well ain’t that somethin’!

Graham and Escrima develop a plan to shoulder check the sisters and the bits of Minnia into the ocean, and then burn down the ocean. They will play their victory jingle on a triangle made of snakes

The hammer is also a snake

Coy accidentally lets slip that she has a soft stummy

Graham wants to touch it

Coy tries to be intimidating, but fails

Lucas prays to Oghma to try and figure out all that Rolen nonsense

All his memories are starting to get fuzzy, come to think of it

Eva’s are getting pretty strong, though

Lucas decides to take a look

She kept a Lucas shrine back in Candlekeep

She reduced it down to a drawing of Lucas, hidden in her cape

Lucas finds the picture. It’s of the two of them getting married.

The gang interrupts Lucas’ meditation session

He’s crying a bit, so he tries to use thaumaturgy to cover it

He makes flames come out of his eyes (by accident?)

Coy throws a potion of healing in his face

He feels very healthy

Coy explains to Lucas about the information the gang gleaned from the map

Lucas would rather Natalie just give him the information herself

Natalie recalls MOTHER as the “entity of dreams”  

Lucas wants to know if it’s good or evil.

Natalie gives him a cryptic answer

It’s a force of stability more than anything

Lucas asks Natalie if the Escrimas are the same

The one in the painting was 23 at the time of the war

Escrima always assumed he was 18

Natalie displays the group portrait with the generals, not-Greg, and not-Eva

not-Greg was named “Silifrey”

not-Eva was named “Merla Terlef,” and was married to Silifrey

Coy is irritated she doesn’t have a double

Lucas Explains Proskur to the party

He regrets getting involved, and blames himself for Eva’s pseudo death

Lucas goes to bed, as does Coy

Connie goes to the bathhouse

There’s a human man and an elf woman in the bath already

They’re married. Damn.

They’re here to open their business selling devices, gadgets and things

It’s a clock, but portable. Astounding!

Escrima wants to talk to Natalie

Coy opens the map, and prudently decides not to let Escrima touch it

Escrima asks about the generals

They were adventurers before joining the war

Lots of dragons killed, innocents saved, etc.

He wants to know about Callie Thorngage

She was a lady knight in the army of Amarak

Part of the agreement between Theodin V and mother was for the three to become generals

He asks to see the stats of the sister’s army

Several million gnolls, orcs, drow, and, oddly, fiends

The sister’s army had some generals too

They’re doubles of Lucas and legacy edition Coy. what?

//Again, why would Coy’s past-self-apparent be a dude? Grumble grumgle grumble

not-Coy was named “KUNG” in all-caps. Most dragonborn were on the sisters’ side. KUNG was killed in battle

not-Lucas’ name was Cefrey, who was the lead mage in their army. He was a necromancer who led a legion of undead

He looks like edgiest Lucas

Escrima and Coy go show Lucas

Lucas is appalled at Cefrey’s fashion sense

Lucas contemplates joining Minnia

The trio contemplate soul recycling, and realize it’s totally possible

Something or other did this intentionally

Natalie points the gang towards the planes

Lucas asks Natalie who put her in the box

It looks like Rocky. It’s probably Rocky.

Torix resumes control

Zerander heads for the bathhouse

The gang manages to sleep soundly for once

Lucas dreams about spiders

Connie has her recurring dream again

The next morning, Lucas goes to the scroll place. He spends the day copying spells

Zerander visits the blacksmith

He wants to get a silver zweihander

The smith agrees to make it out of the silver the gang sold to the armorer

Connie wants to take Nat 20 to the library

She tracks down Coy, and retrieves Natalie

She makes her way to the library in the main castle

Nat 20 has limited space, and can only absorb like 50 books

Connie feeds her a bunch of atlases and encyclopedias

She takes a bit too much pleasure from absorbing books

Zerander and Coy continue shopping

He visits an apothecary looking for alchemist’s fire

Coy bought all the fire in town

Graham goes looking for a way to upgrade grey matter //His hammer

Most of the people he asks are kids for some reason

He ends up at the blacksmith anyway

The smith upgrades it a dice class

In order to reduce the price, he spends the day working under the smith

Zerander goes looking for firearms

A shop sells old-timey hand cannons

The cannon and five rounds are 650gp

1d12 + 6 blunt damage!

Zerander talks the shopkeeper down to 600

He also goes to buy some basic supplies

He gets some holy water from the temple of Oghma

The priests want a donation of knowledge as payment

Zerander tells them about the time he fought a bear

Escrima spent the day swimming in the boiling hot river

He finds 5gp

He also finds a constitution saving throw

The water he drank is... not great

His goal was to get all wrinkly, and counts that as a success

During the night, Graham goes to check on Escrima

There’s puke everywhere. It smells disgusting

A maid tries to clean it up

Escrima asks Graham how he’s handling Nat 20’s info dump

Graham can barely understand a ham sandwich 

Escrima suggests they go to the bathhouse and turn it into puke water

They instead decide to try to become frogs

For some reason, they are unsuccessful

They’re not even green

Mother tells Escrima that she has more things to do

Escrima feels rebellious. He wants a piercing.

Graham considers having the blacksmith make Escrima a lily pad-shaped helmet

Lucas tries to relax in the hot spring

Distracted by current events, he fails to notice Coy and Zerander in the springs when he got in

Zerander explains the boomstick

Lucas doesn’t pay attention, and is instead transfixed by Zerander’s giant dong

It’s like, the size of his leg

“Eyes up here!”

Lucas comments that Coy looked better when she was a guy //Damn it, Rich

Lucas and Zerander fail their diversity training courses miserably

//Specifically, Zerander calls Coy “it.” Of all the shitty things to call a trans or intersex person, “it” stings the most in my mind. We’re human too, damn it. I’m still a bit sore about this whole interaction, but I guess this is the sort of thing that happens when you hang out with cis people in stealth. Since opening up to the players about being trans, it really hasn’t been an issue.

The gang goes to retrieve the items they ordered

Graham also has the lily pad hat made

He dubs Escrima “Sir Escrima of the Lotus Helm”

He tries to remove the hat, and fails

Lucas is informed of the frog plan, and polymorphs him into one

Graham kisses frogscrima, returning him to normal

Lucas turns him back in the middle of this

Lucas then polymorphs Graham

Graham attempts to pee on Lucas

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Coy buys a crossbow that she can fire grappling hooks out of

Zerander goes to find a boxing ring

He meets a half-orc boxer named “GGrumsh”

GGrumsh wants to fight. The organizer sets up a match for that night

The whole of Neverwinter will be there

Connie asks Nat 20 about airships

Invented by dorfs on the continent of shulk

Big business in Neverwinter

Denyr’s Mechanical Marvels

The gang heads over to the shipyard to check things out

Their couches are okay

The boss mentions that they’re manufacturing ships for the sisters of dawn

Coy remarks that the sister’s ship was poorly made, having had firsthand experience

Coy has Connie message Rocky about the appraisal of the diamond

Janice, Rocky’s secretary answers back, which is odd

It was worth 1,125,000

The gang asks about types of construction

They gravitate towards rune-fueled, heavier than air flight

They pass a few of the sister’s ships on the way out

As Lucas wraps up, he hears some murmurs about the fight between GGrumsh and a foreigner. It’s starting soon!

The gang goes to watch the fight

Zerander strips down to boxing gear

The crowd cheers for GGrumsh

They boo Zerander as he enters. He flips them off

Graham bets on Zerander, and Lucas bets on Zerander’s dick

Battle against Ultraheavyweight GGrumsh of Neverwinter

Zerander pulls a “Well! What is it!” to try and goad his opponent into attacking

...which he does.

Zerander trips GGrumsh

GGrumsh regains his balance and attacks

He calls his attacks like a true monk

Zerander tries to trip him again, but sneak attacks only work once!

He then tries to grapple GGrumsh, and again fails

GGrumsh releases a flurry of blows, wounding Zerander

Zerander pins GGrumsh to the ground and slugs him several times

GGrumsh tries to get up, but is unable to get out from under the goliath

Zerander continues to pummel GGrumsh

GGrumsh manages to land a solid hit from his compromised position

He continues to try to escape the grapple, but fails

Zerander continues to pulverize GGrumsh

Zerander pulls out an elbow drop!

GGrumsh yields to nobody

Zerander picks him up, and slams him into the ground, knocking him unconscious

Zerander is awarded a belt adorned with the crest of Neverwinter

It grants +1 CHA

Also 250gp

Graham won 80gp on the fight

Escrima christened him “Dong, Champion of the Crucible”

The crowd begins calling him that, angering Zerander

The next day, Zerander goes to the smith, and asks about melding it into his armor

You can’t do that

Coy has pancakes

The gang heads to the old trade hub

It’s abandoned

They venture deeper into the castle, and find a courtyard

The castle is covered in seals of Amarak and other kingdoms

The party is curious as to why the castle was abandoned, and consult Nat 20

It has teleportation circles to Calimport and Baldur’s Gate

Lucas asks Natalie whether or not we could easily travel back and forth from Calimport

Probably, if the return portal is still active

Escrima expresses distress at the idea of going back to Calimshan

The temple Escrima was living in was ransacked, and the perpetrators are likely still there

He fled with another acolyte from Calimport to Candlekeep

“Now I gotta go take a shit in that bush”

Lucas opens the door to the portal rooms

There are a number of safety measures in the complex designed to brutally murder invaders

DAE acid?

As they go deeper, they hear a deep moaning noise coming from the portal room

Lucas uses an arcane eye to see into the portal room

There’s a beholder in there!

END

[uriaslore]

The Fold Base

In the Fold, where the Teeth of the North abruptly switch directions, is located the River of the Dark. This river is so named because it emerges from a series of deep underground caverns that are infamously mazelike and complex. This has made it a perfect hiding place across history.

Its first notable inhabitants were a group of hermit Khul. They were primarily responsible for mapping and clearing the River Caverns. Eventually, they died off or were driven out, and the caverns were later retaken by a number of Faen refugees fleeing persecution. Over time, the caverns were expanded, with groups slowly digging out new tunnels or expanding existing rooms, until the underground installation could hold a thousand people and supplies easily.

The base never saw widespread knowledge. With brief periods of use combined with gaps of multiple centuries between usages (a result of safety concerns about it not being hidden), the base remained either unknown or believed empty.

The most significant of all the occupations the base saw was that of the Alterran Flame. They were able to create entirely new wings and a second entrance at the end of the Valley of the Fold. It was also discovered that the deeper sections of the River Caverns, far down and deep into the mountains, intersected the Underchasm, which made the location even more valuable.

The Flame also made the base much more secure, given the great opposition it faced. The entrances were properly gated and hidden, and the mountains of the Fold were tunnelled through and mounted with turrets. A teleportation system, built by Lunara, became the new access method. Traps were built, most notably a set of new tunnels and a reservoir at the River of the Dark's beginning. The intent was for the River, the Underchasm security tunnels, or the base itself to be floodable if necessary. Guard positions were also stationed along the two "front" entrances. Lastly, if it was discovered that the base was occupied again, there was a plan to give the impression that it was simply an Izemin heritage site (based on the previous use).

The base was eventually besieged, however, and while the siege was repelled, it only weakened the base's structures. As a result, in the Moment of Chaos, many of the River Caverns, some of the hallway, and a few rooms collapsed. Not many were seriously injured, but the Flame's leader was mortally wounded and soon died.

[uriaslore]

Two Urias Facts

The Dust Snows of the Southern Continent are snowy lands where the snow is tinted in several colours. They are downwind of several eroding mountains that the Progenitors mined for certain minerals (rubidium, copper and selenium especially), the dusts of which tinted the snow. The Underchasm's bridges and pathways are maintained by teams of Izemin, Lahriim, Destonan Humans, Mergris, and the Eternal City. While they aren't coordinated, the value of the Underchasm as a transportation system is almost universally recognized. About the only unmaintained parts of the Underchasm are the branch in the Peaks of High Cold (which have Nucharon and a Stasis Field), and the Nightmare Branch close to the Mouth (due to severe Starspawn risk). ------------ Note from the author: prepare yourself for a lore dump on a so-far ignored little place....

[uriaslore]

Spontaneous Magic Gone Bad- the Remnants

Spontaneous magic is generally tied to strong emotions- love, hate, anger. These emotions come pouring out in the form of magic and, unless you are a truly exceptional case, are completely uncontrollable. To master and control spontaneous magic is to master and control your most powerful emotions in a way that does not suppress them- and since emotions of this magnitude can easily tear self-control away, this feat is all the harder.

Given the near-uncontrollable nature of spontaneous magic and the power of emotion required to control it, it may seem surprising that the system can be inverted. In some cases of extreme depression and despair, spontaneous magic can anti-erupt- the magic targets its source and deepens itself, causing a disastrous snowball effect.

If the person and circumstances are right, their spontaneous magic will stop coming in bursts and become continuous. Their minds will be eroded away, as magic does, but the incredible emotional potential of the feedback loop will sustain itself and other parts of the mind. Instead of becoming a Mthrarcd cultist with incredible power over the external world, the blend of eldritch power, emotion, and Mthrarcd influence will turn inwards, reshaping the person into something awful.

-----

This being is a creature made as much of magic as matter, with little of their original selves left save their own twisted emotions and a few scattered memories that support them. Their bodies usually become twisted reflections of themselves, being shaped by their emotional magic, though some retain an outwardly human form with their magic form as a second form. They have incredible spontaneous magic powers and even have control over them, but rarely have enough self left for non-spontaneous magic usage.

Often, these twisted eldritch forms of people- known as Remnants- will hide themselves in places secluded from the world. Caves, abandoned basements, sewers, deep underwater, in the air, or even hidden pockets of reality are popular choices. They may hide because they feel that they don't deserve to be looked at, or more often because they are often hunted down. In particular, they are hunted because their magic can harm others (sometimes by lashing out and attacking those who they see as wronging them, sometimes by leading people into the same emotions that created them, and some even feed on people to sustain themselves). There is no way to help them except by killing them- which is often something they want anyway but cannot bring about themselves. In the rare legends that involve them, sometimes they are restored to humanity, but to do so in practice would require incomprehensible power over the Planes or a physical portal to the Chaos Plane, which is damn near impossible and would cause far greater chaos anyway.

Remnants are almost unheard of, with few ever becoming remnants and fewer still surviving them. To fight a remnant is usually a suicide mission. As mentioned, legends featuring them are very rare and usually get most of the details wrong anyway. As a result, few have heard of them, and of those who have, few believe, and even of them, few look for them, and that's usually a suicide mission if it is successful at all.

In regards to specific people, Jean Ohakus nearly became a Remnant who would have hidden at the bottom of the Lake-of-Sky, underwater or tossed herself into the immense, deep, mazelike volcanic caverns under Stohl. Enna Fos could have become a remnant as well, had she been a little less full of anger and a little more full of self-loathing (a much easier way of creating remnants). She would likely have destroyed the base herself and taken refuge in the Underchasm.

-----

Some common kinds of remnants are the Vampire-types, which usually take human forms to feed on people, the Shapeless-types, which have no definite form, the Phantasm-types, which have lost all their physical existence and are nearly untouchable, and most commonly, the Psycheforms, which take material but eldritch forms reflecting their psyches. Each of them is capable of warping reality to some extent- whether it is creating objects, warping space to create realms bigger on the inside, or even simply replacing parts of reality with their own wishes. Again, as noted, remnants are usually shy and avoid coming out into the open unless something motivates them to.

Remnants do not need to form from undoing magic- any sufficient nonmaterial imbuement will do. The real key is that emotions must result in planar manipulation turned inwards in a positive feedback loop. Void remnants, Fundamental remnants, Order remnants, and Transcendent remnants are entirely possible, but have not happened in the entire history of Urias due to the sheer rarity of those imbuements. The only exception is Transcendent remnants- there has been one, specifically during the Battle of the Transcendent Plane, when one Transcendent soldier lost control. The resulting remnant was more sane than most, had an almost entirely physical nature, and had inconceivable power to rewrite the world. She used that power to vanish to the Outer Void and create her own universe, thankfully- had she been attacked and fought, she could have easily leveled half of the Destonan continent. Such is the power of the strongest of all Planes, amplified by emotional feedback loops.

The last topic to cover is the fate of the Remnants who were present during the Moment of Chaos. As the broken minds lost in the Chaos Plane returned to their owners, and undoing magic was lost, the Remnants around during that time lost their magical abilities and regained some of their sanity. Some of them would likely have returned to fully human, if depressed, but many would have died, and some became stuck in their forms with much of their sanity restored (save that lost to the emotional destruction and not to the Chaos Plane). Those remnants, as usual, could get no break from their horrible lives.

In closing, Remnants are the result of depression and hopelessness, magic, and eldritch power, creating tragic monsters that hide from the world. Each remnant is unique, and they sadly are unsaveable.

[uriaslore]

89, 90, 91, 92

89. There were three people who entered Stohl before the Great Civilization from another universe. Their names were Laros Diurnus, Runal Noctym, and Drussa Marol. Each one boasted unique powers- Laros around the Sun and daytime, Runal around night and the Moon, and Drussa around twilight and shadow. Each was a powerful figure in their own right, but together, they were considered unstoppable. However, they split up and lost their memories as they entered Urias, and only reunited at the fall of the Arkshin Regime. Joining them was Jean Ohakus, who, while native to Urias, was known as the Star of Stohl and seemed to have light-based powers in addition to her emotional ones- making a celestial quadruplet of Sun, Moon, Shadow and Light. 90. After Arkana created the Underchasm by tearing through the world, Urias became particularly earthquake-prone. It wasn't especially strong in most places, and some, like Stohl or the Eternal City, had long figured out how to cope or prevent earthquakes altogether. However, it was enough that it forced Arkana to build his Machine with automatic damage reparation systems. This came in handy for him when the Flame sabotaged it. 91. Cats, dogs, snakes, and birds are common pets in most parts of the world, and most are domesticated. The Izemin have tamed dragons, the Elves have tame monkeys, and the Wild Ones have tamed many creatures, most impressively the Sehklia. 92. The Aur vine, found on the Wild Continent and Elven Homeland, is a fast-growing, super tough and super-supple plant. It's used by the Wild Ones in place of rope and very useful.

[uriaslore]

Urias Daily Factacular

17. There are two main weather patterns on Urias. The first one, the Polar Winds, affects mainly the Tundra Island and continent of Destona. It is a circle of cold winds blowing from the edge of the Polar Island, over the southern half of Tundra Island (making it a snowy hellscape), through the White-Ice Strait, and to Destona and the Elven Isle (making the hot equatorial regions more temperate). The second, the Desert Winds, blows from Shadolm to the Wild Continent, where it picks up moisture, to the Ushern Peninsula (making it warmer and wetter), and finally to the Northlands, warming them somewhat. As a result, the equatorial Destona is cool, the Northlands are merely chilly, and the Tundra Island is less hospitable (in its weather, at least) than the Polar Island.

18. Alterrjul is the long-time capital of Alterra, with a 2000-year interlude by Poritane.

Janast is the capital of the Daltian Peninsula as a whole, though its small countries have their own capitals.

Kilkirth was the official capital of the Great Civilization, while Irintaryon was the effective capital.

Lake-of-Sky is the capital of Stohl.

Kilaera was the capital of the Progenitors, but their secondary was Ahuenal.

Of the other species, the Wild Ones have no real capital except perhaps the Mouth, the Lahriim have their one city, the Elves have their Hearttrees, and other major cities exist but are currently undefined.

The Eternal City does its own thing.

19. The Pit on the Wild Continent, and the Chasm on the Southern are similar features. Each is a single, solitary, deep hole reaching to approximately the depth of the Underchasm’s physical bottom. Both were formed naturally. And something important used to exist inside each.

20. The Roostlands on the Wild Continent are so named because of the cliffs in the center of the region. High mountain cliffs are perfect roosts for the Qoetheryx, the four-winged bird-like “feathered dragon” that hunts by swooping over prey and firing poisonous quills or by crouching inside the dark jungle. The Wild Ones caution all who travel in the Continent proper to avoid the thin trees and clearings of the Roostlands most of all the especially dangerous regions (such as the Mudcoast, the Bloodcoast, the Mushroom Valley, etc).

21. The Underchasm, as discovered by the people of Destona, is probably the fastest way to cross long distances and avoid geographic obstacles (like oceans). However, access to the Underchasm is limited so certain places and can be difficult to find (for example, by going up the River of the Dark, into the right side cave, and through a maze of tunnels, or by finding a tiny crack in between Northland boulders that becomes a cavern that intersects with the Underchasm), and the Underchasm itself is dangerous due to the crumbling bridges, the ever-present Void Rift, and the presence of roaming monsters. As a result, while one can travel the whole world on the Underchasm, and some do, it is best used over short distances and to cross especially difficult obstacles (like the treacherous Teeth of the North).