4E Underdark — Sometimes You Have to Take the Good with the Darkbad
Every adventurer journeys to the Underdark at some point in her career. It’s a rite of passage. Now your 4E characters can make the trip. Just don’t go to any of the silly places.
I was very excited about the 4E Underdark book. It’s a concept that just sings out for excellent D&D adventures — a world that is essentially one giant dungeon. Plus there’s drow and illithid! Some elements of this book met my expectations of a place both creepy and brutal, yet beautiful and full of wonders. Some parts just feel silly.
Organizationally, it offers potential Underdark focused campaign arcs, rundowns on what various races and species do in the Underdark, and a collection of new Underdark monsters. The bulk of the pages are devoted to a location by location rundown of notable scenes and sights, with encounters and mini-adventures scattered throughout.
A lot of the locations are actually very interesting. Underdark is surprisingly fluffy for a 4E book. There’s a nice balance between “interesting weird” and “just plain too weird.” Some of the NPCs and locations could have come straight from a White Wolf book (I mean that as a high compliment). Favorites? The Pride of Maelbrathyr, survivors of an adventuring party living in eternal torment, twisted by agony into bizarre parodies of their personalities; the Spire Sea and Gar Morra, a forsaken Dwarven city built into a giant stalagtite; Hraak Azul, a giant fungal fortress that slowly crawls through the Underdark.
The Incunabula, a new (at least I think so, I’ve been unable to find any reference to them existing in earlier editions) race of monsters are a major highlight for me. They’re unsettling and have alien motivations, but aren’t so weird that you can’t figure out how to use them in an adventure. Bonus points for Vecna worshipping. It’s also time for a brief etymology lesson: incunabulum (pl. incunabula) is a book collector’s term. It specifically refers to any printed (i.e., not hand-written) book produced before 1501 — the earliest movable print editions ever created. It derives from Latin words for straps used to hold a baby in a cradle. Today, the word is often used to refer to anything that is among the earliest versions of a given thing, although you might get weird looks if you call your 1st issue of Web of Spider-Man an incunabulum.
Then there’s Torog, an evil deity who is certainly more interesting than Orcus. I don’t really feel like D&D needs evil gods as arch-villains, but I’ve complained about this before. Torog is at least seriously disturbing (his depiction in the book is actually difficult to look at). He’s defined by torture — he constantly endures it, and constantly dishes it out. This makes torture something of a running theme throughout the Underdark, which is kind of weird, but kind of cool too.
There are things I dislike about this new Underdark book, however. For a book that comes across as an atlas to a strange nether realm, it is entirely devoid of maps. There are encounters, and some nice mini-adventures made up of three or four encounters, which are of course mapped out with dungeon tiles. But where is Gar Morra in relation to Mherkrul? How long is the trip from Erelhei-Cinlu to Forgehome? I have no idea, because there are no maps of the Underdark in this book.
The ridiculous grade-school terminology used by D&D has been addressed at hilarious length. That there is really a place in D&D cosmology called the Shadowdark makes my brain bleed slightly. That means DarkDark! But the names get far worse. There’s a river called Pitchy Flow. There are Toothy Plains. The districts within the drow city are known as ghettos. I understand the historical origin of the term, but these days it has taken on many shades of meaning (from the Nazi Holocaust to modern urban blight), none of them appropriate to a fantasy setting. Rarely has something in an RPG book caused me to literally say, “Ugh” out loud, but this did.
Furthermore, the SpookyFey or whatever they call the Underdark version of the Feywild is forever ruined by the presence of Fomorians. I’m only going to harp on this once: Fomorians suck. No one wants to encounter them. No one wants to hear their goofy cartoon villain descriptions (one huge eye, one little eye? Just shut up!). Their servants, the cyclopses, are way cooler. Stop with the stupid Fomorians already.
Ah well, I can’t love everything published in a D&D book. Overall, there’s some good stuff in Underdark, and it seems to foretell a slight shift in direction for future D&D books — more fluff, fewer stat blocks. To this I offer subdued applause, in hopes that the fluff gets better.
As always, you can order your own copy of Underdark from Robot Viking sponsor TrollandToad.com.
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February 10th, 2010 11:20 PM
Shadow Shadow Bo Badow.
February 10th, 2010 11:57 PM
February 10th, 2010 11:59 PM
Let us think of a better name for both the parts of the Underdark beneath the Shadowfell and beneath the Feywild. If your names win, I might use one or the other or both in my upcoming adventure that will never actually be published anywhere (zomg, spoilers!).
Undershadow is an improvement, if a bit lame. I like to name things as if I were an outsider looking in though, perhaps a Shadar Kai parent whispering the dark name of the hidden depths to my young in order to scare them into obedience. “Clean your room or Forbilta, the death giant, will freeze your soul and steal it away to the frigid Feldeep that her ferocious children may feed on it.” The alliteration really gets it into the kids heads, that way they’ll never forget! (or sleep!)
As for the Feydark… How about “The Hidden Forest” if only because it evokes “The Hidden Fortress,” one George Lucas’ inspirations when crafting A New Hope.
February 11th, 2010 12:12 AM
What, you don’t like the SpookyFey?
February 11th, 2010 12:38 AM
How about the Feralwild?
February 11th, 2010 1:21 PM
I think they should go with the Boogeytwinkle or perhaps EekTink.
February 11th, 2010 2:08 PM
or Darkwild. I kinda like darkwild.
February 11th, 2010 7:06 PM
I LIKE the Formorians. A lot, actually. Also, I also have a place in my game CALLED the Darkdark. Anyhow, this will be the first non-Core 4e book I buy. I like the Underdark a lot! Also the best thing about Torog: his cultists NEVER want to kill you, they ONLY want to capture you & try to convert you to the dark side. Torog is awesome for that reason alone– a reason, a dogmatic reason, for stereotypical “evil genius” behavior.
February 12th, 2010 6:22 PM
This Torog character intrigues me. I remember Gavin mentioning him a few weeks ago. and I think I read about him on the character builder once, but I’ve never seen his picture, or got any in depth info on him. Honestly, I think I hate him already, because the very idea of torture makes me skin crawl, and my blood boil. Troian doesn’t like him either.
Also, my vote is to call the Underdark, “Deep Shit,” from now on.
February 13th, 2010 11:40 AM
Torog is simply a solider abandoned by his divine companions after the Primordial Wars. He tortures because he is tortured, it is all he knows at this point, free after an eternity of imprisonment by the primordials. All it would have taken is a small divine force to rescue him from the Iron Maiden that is the Underdark, but the other gods left him there, wallowing in pain while they experienced the full glory of the Astral Sea. Torog deserves our pity, not our hate. Perhaps, if you experience a bit of his pain, you may become more like him, Troian.
Do you know what it is to have your blood boil, tiefling? Do you know what it is to have your skin crawl from your flesh?
No? I will tell you then.
It is divine.
February 13th, 2010 12:42 PM
I suppose you’re right that he deserves pity. However, I do not believe that excuses him for torturing everybody else. If a person is beaten mercilessly as a child we don’t forgive them for beating their own children when they are adults. We feel empathy for their painful past, and understand what has driven them to violence, but we don’t excuse their actions.
As for Troian’s point of view, I didn’t reveal much about his ordeal. He was recently freed from the clutches of a fae deity that made him fall completely in love with her, and rewarded his unquestioning devotion with physical, mental, and emotional torture for an indiscernible amount of time. He is not particularly fond of torture at this point. If it’s alright with Ed, I’ll share his description of the predicament Troian found himself in.
February 13th, 2010 4:26 PM
You seem to misunderstand.
Torog is not only the patron of torturers, but the patron of the tortured as well. Troian would certainly be welcomed into the court of the King that Crawls, just as his friend, Samel, was welcomed.
February 13th, 2010 9:04 PM
Aaaah, I see. Well that raises some interesting questions about Troian’s character. Would he side with the lord of torture as one who has suffered, or would he oppose him because of what he represents? I don’t think I know the answer. God, why can’t everything just be black and white?
And about Samel, I haven’t heard anything about Samel in a long while. Whatever happened to that guy?
February 14th, 2010 1:33 PM
Your companions (not Arkus or Dowsabel though) would tell you that Samel made some sort of compromise with Torog in the depths of Thunderspire Labyrinth that bestowed upon him significant powers of healing and harm. After the completion of the mission there, Samel remained behind to work with the mages in Thunderspire while your companions continued on. He created a gift in the form of three bracelets that provide healing while kept within the vicinity of the others. Dowsabel has since learned (through study and her knowledge of Supernal) that there might be more to the bracelets than the healing powers, too.
February 14th, 2010 3:58 PM
That would explain why I didn’t know. That must have happened during Troian’s absence. Interesting… now I’m even more curious about the personality of Torog. He’s all about torturing people, but at least he’s not so mindless as to ONLY torture people.