The Cities Below

Overview

The deep places of the world are filled with great chasms, vast caverns, and extensive tunnels. The nature of this great world underground is ill-understood, and sages argue unceasingly over how this underworld came to exist.

Some insist it is a natural feature of the world, and point to the profusion of stalactites and stalagmites as proof of the great age of these spaces. Others point out that while some spaces show every appearance of being natural in origin, there are many others that are of clearly unnatural origin, likely carved by the hands (or other appendages) of beings of intelligence and of unsurpassed skill.

Occupation

Whatever the true origin of these spaces, they have not remained unoccupied. From great cities to small enclaves and villages, every major species of the world seems to have established a presence in the underworld as well, and rumours persist of still other species that live further down, unknown entirely to those who live on the surface.

Relations

Those who live below are much like those who live above, in that among them may be found great evils and great goodness alike, and between those extremes, a vast majority that are merely trying to live their lives as best they can.

Given these facts, relations between those who live on the surface and those who live in the Cities Below vary greatly from place to place and time to time. Most Undercities are eager to trade with surface communities for food types and other goods that are in scarce supply so far from the sun. In return they share those goods that grow or lay buried in the dark places that surfacers have trouble acquiring easily.