The War Below
Stakes The surface must decide whether to destroy every underground passage or risk reopening them to recover lost people, resources, and ancient knowledge.
World Atlas·Sphere·Every road crosses a wound, and every wound leads down.
Food-producing frontier and first line against Lemura incursions. · Wind-scoured grassland cut by sinkholes and abandoned trench lines
Hook
A watchtower receives signals from a buried garrison whose soldiers disappeared ten years ago.
Llendrafal is a wounded sphere where the greatest danger comes from beneath the feet. Ten years ago, Lemura, subterranean demonic monstrosities, tore through mines, wells, and buried ruins, swallowing much of the old world. Survivors now live behind walls, on guarded roads, and in reclaimed fields. Every town argues over the same question: should the depths be sealed forever, or can their wealth and secrets save the surface?
Themes
Form · Sphere
Llendrafal is a naturally formed planet of broad continents, deep seas, and a vast inhabited crust riddled with ancient tunnels.
Traversal
Travel follows fortified roads, river barges, coastal ships, and guarded mountain passes, while underground routes are dangerous shortcuts controlled by Lemura and scavengers.

Sphere

Magic
Common

Technology
Medieval

Death & Souls
Before the Breach
The Rooted Age
The Breach
The Ten-Year War
After the Breach
The Holding Age
The War Below
The surface must decide whether to destroy every underground passage or risk reopening them to recover lost people, resources, and ancient knowledge.
The Ash Road Dispute
Control of the safest routes determines who receives food, weapons, and medicine while isolated settlements face famine and Lemura raids.
Hold the surviving kingdoms together, reclaim strategic towns, and prevent panic from destroying what remains of organized society.
Seal every deep passage, condemn dangerous magic, and place all suspected Lemura-tainted people under permanent watch.
Recover lost settlements, protect trade, and keep independent communities from becoming subjects of frightened rulers.
Expand upward, gather living captives, and prepare the surface for a second wave from the deepest chambers.
Stakes The surface must decide whether to destroy every underground passage or risk reopening them to recover lost people, resources, and ancient knowledge.
Stakes Control of the safest routes determines who receives food, weapons, and medicine while isolated settlements face famine and Lemura raids.
Llendrafal's peoples built roads, farms, and kingdoms across a stable world, while deep mines and old ruins hinted at something living beneath the stone.
Ten years ago, Lemura erupted from the depths in countless forms, breaking cities, poisoning valleys, and driving survivors into fortified settlements.
The invasion has slowed but not ended, leaving surface communities divided between reclaiming lost lands, sealing the depths, and using Lemura remains for power.
A sealed well in a famine-struck town begins answering questions in the voices of missing villagers.
A caravan carrying medicine vanishes on a road believed safe, leaving only wagons arranged around a newly opened sinkhole.
A border lord secretly mines Lemura bone to power weapons that may win the war but slowly change their wielders.
A captured Lemura claims its brood is fleeing something older that has begun moving beneath the whole continent.
The original breach was engineered by a human mining guild seeking limitless fuel.
Discovery · Ancient surveying stones bear matching marks beneath both royal roads and Lemura chambers.
Impact · The invasion was not random because someone on the surface opened the first passage from within.
The Lemura are fleeing a buried intelligence that can command stone, corpses, and dreams.
Discovery · Several Lemura captives use different bodies but share memories of the same underground city.
Impact · Destroying the broods may release the older force they were containing.
Llendrafal's wounded earth is teaching certain living minds how to hear the world below.
Discovery · Children born near deep vents sometimes dream of places they have never visited and draw accurate tunnel maps.
Impact · These children could lead armies to the source of the invasion or become vessels for it.