Encyclopedia Volume 2 will span around 350 pages of 5E-compatible content dedicated to the world below the surface. You will find everything you need to play dozens of adventures in underground regions that stretch beneath land and sea. Sometimes frightening, sometimes sublime, always mysterious, the Netherworld features iconic cities, strange and exotic locations, thrilling encounters, exciting adventure hooks, and wondrous magic items.

• You can use the Encyclopedia’s contents in your own setting. Pick an adventure location and memorable NPCs to introduce to your players!
• Encyclopedia can be used as a dynamic sandbox. The worldbuilding within features complex geopolitical and supernatural dynamics between powerful individuals and factions, providing a vast, changing landscape under the growing, looming threat of a dark entity: Canker.

Various Forms of Subterranean Fantasy

Subterranean worlds evoke wonder and wariness in equal measure. This second volume of Encyclopedia showcases all the possible different aspects of such a setting, letting you explore them to your heart’s content.

• Twilit Wonderland. Experience adventures full of mysteries and legends, featuring fey guarding underground hallowed places of power called maelossas.
• Cloak & Dagger & Poison. Most underground communities gather in city-states. Intrigue is common within these locales, as are rivalries, sometimes over long distances via teleportation circles.
• Horror. Whether raw and visceral, or psychologically-driven, horror is well present in the depths, particularly through the actions of Canker.
• Science Fantasy. Shadowy mysticism and magical science meld together in the splendid and secret bubble-cities of the abyss duergars, who undertake cutting-edge research and projects while battling such elusive entities as puppeteers, aboleths, and denizens of the Ethereal Plane.

Locations, Characters & Powerful Entities

Subterranean civilizations are objects of fear for surface dwellers. While some legends are well-founded, the reality is that subterranean people can be just as diverse, wise, compassionate, or insensitive as those who walk under the sun. Adventurers will encounter friendly drows, demented svirfneblins, refined duergars… as well as surface mercenaries—including many goblins and hobgoblins—whose darkvision enables many opportunities for profitable work in the Netherworld.

• 15 Unique Cities. Each city described within Encyclopedia Volume 2 has its own atmosphere and typical adventure hooks. Visit the mining city of Fasgadh, between surface and depths; the pacifistic Dni, which is no stranger to schemes, or the motherhouse of the powerful Amamordo mercenary company. More than fifteen cities are described in detail, in addition to numerous regions, ruins, and other sites of mystery.
• Two Underground Rival Cities. Arallün and Shadowsilk, two rival cities far beneath the mountains, partake in constant deadly intrigue, providing a great, complex chessboard to explore against the backdrop of the growing influence of Canker and Sublime.
• Daily Life in the Depths. How do you live, eat, breathe, and drink when you live without sunlight? The Netherworld is a world of its own, with its obstacles and limitations, but also its opportunities, owing to a dense magic. Protective seals, roots of Eana, and bioluminescent plants make up a wondrous and radically new environment for whoever ventures in these depths. Each element of the Netherworld is given pride of place through memorable scenarios or scenes featured in rich adventure hooks.
• The Cities of Abyss Duergars. The abyss duergars are a unique people. They have grown outside of the typical Netherworld macrocosm and have developed a culture of their own in which craftsmanship is highly valued. Their creations, so extraordinary as to seem magical, allow them to explore the reaches of the Ethereal Plane aboard vehicles powered by both magic and science. They often clash with the scheming aboleths and minions of Blackwater, a dark living world populated by aberrations.
• A formidable foe. Canker is a protean entity and a reality of its own. It exists in the depths under the form of the Hideous Scourge and the Sublime. Although these aspects are opposites, they are both equally dangerous.

50 Original Magic Items

This second volume of Encyclopedia provides more than 50 original magic items.

Magic items are listed in accordance with the adventure themes they are related to, so that you can feature them in relation to appropriately evocative settings, individuals, and atmospheres. 

Discover extraordinary ancient wonders, including such exceptional artifacts as ancient dormant portals between planes and maker’s workshops. Forays into deep seas are enabled by a wide range of equipment for both exploration and protection. Political conflicts and assassination wars are sharpened to a keen edge thanks to the wonders of the cities of intrigue. Finally, abyss duergars are the genius inventors of sciencraft, an art making use of a science so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic to the uninitiated.

The Mercadin’s Shop. Mercadins are merchant-adventurers of the Netherworld. Their activities range from negotiation to looting, and they use and sell items as unusual as quandrans (three-dimensional compasses) or neiresse (a pitch-black dye).