Welcome to Araea

The light of the torch only kept the darkness at arms length, revealing more of the twisting tunnel as the party pushed forward. Water dripped from the ceiling and the damp carpet of fungi under their feet threatened to swallow their boots. When the path finally widened and the explorers stepped out on the arching cliff, they caught their first glance of the cave they had been seeking. Lights danced in the sweeping vista, luminescent mushroom and fire flies dotting the darkness like a thousand stars. Weary exhaustion gave way to elation: they were finally home.

What is Araea?

Araea is a weird-fantasy setting in a world where humanity has been forced to survive deep underground since time immemorial. The surface of the planet is a barren wasteland plagued by radiation, vicious storms and terrible beasts. In the dark, mankind have built cities and civilizations. They farm fungi and mushroom, raise insects as livestock and fight wars all far from the sun. Against all odds, mankind survives.

Bio-Caves by Josh Eiten

It is a world of mystery and many unknowns. Most of the surface remains unexplored and even after millennia of habitation, humanity's presence in the depths are a flickering candle in a sea of darkness. The brave and greedy plunge into the unknown in search for glory, while others struggle to to survive in a hostile world. City-states fight over resources and food, bandits harry and steal. Of all the dangers in the darkness, other people are the most common. It is a world plagued by scarcity- of food, of water and of space free from danger. A world where mankind has to fight to survive.
Life isn't always easy in Araea but for the people there, it makes the moments of joy and beauty all the more precious.

by Randis Albion

Life in the Depths

Mankind alone has carved cities from the stone. No goblins or gnomes share their cities or threaten them with doom. For most, it is a hard life spent scraping survival from an unyielding and hostile world. Humanity must strike a careful balance, or the caves they rely on for food and water can be stripped barren by their hunger. Araea challenges their ingenuity at every turn and mankind has so far clung to the world with a desperate grip on life. Nothing goes to waste and nothing is squandered - even the dead.

by The Copper Hammer

Humanity in Araea operate on what is broadly a Medieval level of technology, but warped to fit their environment. Swords and spears never go out of style when there is killing to be done, but bows are poorly developed. Instead of dogs, cows, cats and chickens, humanity raises swarms of spiders, large slugs or maggots for consumption and company. It is with stone and metal that the people of Araea have the most experience, with steel or iron being the most common choice for tools or weapons.
Even so, it is not uncommon to see soldiers clad in the carapace of slain monsters or wielding their fangs as swords. Often by necessity, but sometimes by choice when these prove far superior to metallurgy.
Villages, towns and finally city-states form the common concentrations of human masses. There are no nations, with extensive rule at distance made impossible by twisting geography and scarcity of resources. The greatest of these are worlds in their own right and many live their entire lives without ever venturing beyond its comforts and into the dark.

by Marvin Herbring

Creepy Crawlies

From sentient and mobile fungi to radiation-devouring sky-beasts, life in Araea is alien compared to our world. Extreme circumstance give birth to strange things and mammals are a minority in the world of Araea. Cats, dogs and birds are distinctly missing from Araea, replaced instead by things that thrive in the dark caverns or blighted surface. The deeper into the unknown humanity travels, the more bizarre life there becomes while fishers pull pale, blind creatures from black waters to feed their families.

by Maxim Verehin

Above, titanic beasts feed on blight and poison and visitors from the stars descend upon the surface with unfathomable goals. In a world like this, it is no wonder that people often go a little mad.

Further Reading

If you want to read more about Araea and get a better feel for the world, here are some good places to start:

A sample of how life looks for a range of people in Araea

Saen-Kaw, a popular sport in the caves

Chnagahn, a particularly important and notable dish

Quick Primer
Araea is roughly divided into four geographic regions, based on depth:
The Surface A blasted, radioactive wasteland of dangerous beast and desperate people.
The Outer Shell The caverns closest to the Surface.
The Inner Shell Deep under the earth, the Inner Shell is where much of humanity live, work and die.
The Far Deep Beyond even the Inner Shell lies the Far Deep, a strange and dangerous land of which only a fraction has been explored.

An introduction to the geography of Araea

Tone and Theme

Despair and Hope

Life in Araea is hard. Famine is a fact of life, dangerous beasts prowl the darkness and people fight each other for every reason from petty to desperate. Strange cults worship alien things and acts both cruel and terrible happen around the world.
What Araea is not is hopeless or bleak; it is 'grimbright'. Despite all the terrors and tribulations, despite violence and starvation, humanity still cling to life in the caverns. Beauty and wonder are found side by side to danger and death. It is a hard world, but it is the only one they have and so the people of Araea make the most of it.

Mystery and Discovery

Araea is a world shrouded in darkness, both figuratively and literally. Most of the world is simply unknown, a blank part on the map with "here be dragons, maybe?" scrawled on it. Entire continents on the Surface are shrouded in impenetrable radiation, leaving explorers with little more then legends and guesswork to determine what may lie beyond.
There is always something to see. Something unknown to discover. Fame and fortune await those who return alive.

by Jan Dolezalek

No Gods, No Masters

While the faithful gather in temples and cults make sacrifices to their dark gods, the truth is simple: in Araea, there are no gods. No masters, neither infernal nor divine, can command mankind or provide them salvation from danger. No miracles have ever been made to manifest and no celestial servants has ever answered to pleading cries of the desperate. Whatever humanity wants, they have to get for themselves.
This hasn't stopped faith and superstition, of course. A thousand different cults have sprung up around the caves and churches rule over entire city-states.

Weird and Wondrous

Unknowable things creep in ancient grottoes. Parasites turn humans into fungal abominations. Mushrooms that tower above buildings in vast caverns and sentient deserts made from quartz-shard. Araea is a strange world, filled with things both terrible and beautiful - often at the same time. It is strange world that has bred bizarre forms of life.
Araea is a world based on the stranger things of human imagination, from the Lovecraft mythos to cryptozoology and science-fiction. There are no dwarves or elves here, only things with too many limbs and too many eyes that prowl the dark.

World of Verticality

Few paths in Araea are as simple as a straight line. Tunnels twist and arch, dip and climb. Caves that stretch for mile can see slopes and hills, places where the ceiling collapse to a few yards or expand beyond the light of an explorer's torch. To reach the Far Deep, explorers must brave a lightless descent of miles and to reach the Surface they must climb countless steps.

by Jama Jurabaev

Author's Notes
For me, Araea is particularly special as it was the world I made when I joined WorldAnvil. It, as my canvas in the 2018 Summer Camp, has been the only reason I have been able to break a years long writer's block.
It started with a thought about how a world could work underground. Some parameters had to be tweaked, but I put them under the same leaps of faith we do to allow dragons to fly or similar fantastical things. But it is still a world grounded in humanity: life under the surface is hard. There are no wizards to conjure food from nothing, no gods to offer guaranteed salvation.
I thought it worth mentioning that I know that people really ought to be troglodytes, with pale skin and big black eyes. It is my opinion on this that diversity is more important than absolute realism.
Thanks for reading and thanks for going on this weird writing journey with me!

— Q