Umbrafall

B-class article · First seen: s4 · Last seen: s11
Umbrafall
Umberfall · the City Beneath the Dead Sun
Umbrafall — portrait.
Location
StatusActive
First seens4
Last seens11
FactionNightwatch, The Hollow, The Broker, Aurelian forces

Umbrafall, the City Beneath the Dead Sun, is one of the six great powers of Eldurae and the principal home base of the party from session 4 to session 11. Once the fertile breadbasket of Luminara, the city was cursed fifty years ago when a magical ritual meant to create lasting light failed catastrophically; the sky blackened, the fields died, and the old order fell apart. What rose from that ruin was Umbrafall — a city beneath eternal night that survives by turning its curse into profit, harvesting bioluminescent fungi, mosses, and poisonous growths for toxins, reagents, potions, and darker trades. Umbrafall has no clean public government, but it does have real power structures — the Shade Mistress, the Broker, the Nightwatch, the Rat King (whose spies are said to hear everything worth hearing), the Black Cartels, and other criminal/export powers. It is also the city in which the Aurelian conspiracy first surfaced through the Dawn Mercy Clinic cover-up (s8-s10).

Umbrafall
Umbrafall

Overview

Umbrafall is the cursed industrial city, the assassin’s bazaar, and the campaign’s largest visited urban space — a city beneath eternal night. It was once Luminara, fertile farming country at the heart of the continent, a breadbasket whose crops fed much of the land. Fifty years ago a magical ritual meant to create lasting light failed catastrophically; the sky blackened, the fields died, and the old order fell apart. What rose from the ruin was Umbrafall. (Internal corpus dating tags the ritual as the “Eclipse of Luminara, 793 A.I.” — the DM’s world brief gives only the “fifty years ago” framing.)

Now the city survives by turning its curse into profit. Its streets are wet, crooked, and dimly lit by lanterns and strange glowing flora; bioluminescent fungi, mosses, and poisonous growths spread through it in unnatural colours, harvested for toxins, reagents, potions, and darker trades. Umbrafall cannot feed itself well, so it buys what it needs and pays for it with what only Umbrafall can provide. The party arrived in session 4 and made the city their base of operations through to session 11.

There is no clean public government, but there are real power structures. The named powers per the DM include the Shade Mistress, The Broker, the Nightwatch, the Rat King (the spider at the centre of Umbrafall’s information web — see The Rat), the Black Cartels, and other criminal and export interests. The city’s surface enforcement is the corrupt Nightwatch; its real economy is run by The Broker in the Black Hollow Market, the underground bazaar where almost anything can be bought; its deeper power is The Hollow itself, whose Hollow Guardians ask “thieves or servants of the Hollow?” before they kill you. As of session 10, Aurelian forces also have a presence — running a coerced abduction operation through the Dawn Mercy Clinic, shipping magically-gifted residents to Aurelia via Dock 13.

Most people know the city by reputation alone. They have heard of the Black Hollow Market, where almost anything can be bought if you can stomach the price. They have heard of the Gloaming Warrens, the deep fungal workings that help keep the city alive. They know the Nightwatch are corrupt, feared, and dangerous. And they have heard quieter names too: the Shade Mistress, one of the city’s most powerful shadow figures, and the Rat King, whose spies are said to hear everything worth hearing. Umbrafall is not a place people trust. It is a place they use, fear, avoid, or vanish into. Some come for forbidden goods. Some come to hide. Some never get the chance to leave. In Umbrafall, secrets have value, suffering is ordinary, and the dark is just part of life.

Geography and appearance

Perpetual night. Glowing purple-green-blue poisonous fungi creep across every wet wall. Streets are crooked, narrow, dimly lit by lanterns and bioluminescent flora. Slums of jacket-pitched roofs lean against the broken towers of the pre-Eclipse city. A warning bell tolls somewhere deep, the sound felt rather than heard. Masked figures drift through the fog. The air is venom-smoke and rot.

The pre-campaign world brief lists three known major features:

  • Black Hollow Market — the underground bazaar where almost anything can be bought.
  • The Gloaming Warrens — deep fungal workings that help keep the city alive (the Warrens underneath the Black Hollow Market that the party cleared in sessions 4-7 are one section of this broader system).
  • Nightwatch — the local enforcement; corrupt, feared, dangerous.

The party’s documented map of the city includes Wane Quarter (the lower-fog district housing the Glomangol Inn), Black Hollow Market (the bazaar), the Dawn Mercy Clinic, the Whisper Coil Emporium, the Starpoint Secrets potion shop, the Nightwatch Jail, and Dock 13 — the Aurelian shipping dock on the eastern outskirts, named in s10. Beyond the city’s northern edge, a day-and-a-half’s walk through bio-gloom forest, lies the Black Vein Quarry where the Mharos/Harvo arc played out.

Map of Umbrafall
Map of Umbrafall

Government / control

There is no clean public government. Power is distributed among the city’s real (mostly criminal / export) power structures — per the DM, the named ones include the Shade Mistress, The Broker, the Nightwatch, the Rat King, the Black Cartels, and other criminal/export interests. The on-screen power-holders the party have actually engaged with so far are:

  • The Broker (“the Hollow’s Voice”) of the Black Hollow Market — the masked, bone-ledger-bearing fixer who contracts work in and out of the city. Word is bond.
  • The Rat — Umbrafall’s major information broker, formally titled the Rat King per the DM’s world brief; his spies are said to hear everything worth hearing. He only contacts you when he wants to. Mentioned but never seen by the party [6].
  • The Nightwatch — corrupt city guard. Bribery is the standard transaction; a 500gp official release was negotiated to 150gp under-the-table by Harvo in session 8.
  • The Hollow itself — a deeper power, whose Hollow Guardians (encountered in The Warrens, s5) test new arrivals with the question “thieves, or servants of the Hollow?”.
  • Maelis Dirn (deceased s7) — ran a protection racket and the soul-binding Titan operation out of The Warrens until the Titan turned on her. Her Duskwatch shipping ledger is now in Hugo’s possession.
  • Aurelian cells (active s10+) — running the abduction conspiracy through the Dawn Mercy Clinic to Dock 13 to Aurelia. Have bribed the Nightwatch to look the other way.

The pre-campaign brief and the DM both name the Shade Mistress and the Rat King as principal Umbrafall power-holders alongside the Black Cartels; the Shade Mistress has not appeared in transcript, but per the DM these are real power structures the city operates around — not absent figures of speech.

Notable features

  • Black Hollow Market — the underground bazaar; The Broker’s stall.
  • Gloaming Warrens — the broader system of deep fungal workings that help keep the city alive; the world-brief name for the subterranean network of which The Warrens (below) are one cleared section.
  • The Warrens — Maelis Dirn’s lair beneath the Market; cleared in session 7. One section of the wider Gloaming Warrens.
  • Wane Quarter — the district housing the Glomangol Inn.
  • Glomangol Inn — the safer-than-most tavern, two-headed-serpent and bioluminescent-mushroom sign, “no Nightwatch business inside” rule-board.
  • Whisper Coil Emporium — healing-potion shop run by the dwarf Alston, a few blocks from the Market.
  • Starpoint Secrets — potion shop run by a fairy with a string of severed hands of various races strung from the ceiling. Ruin’s failed theft attempt in s11 doubled the prices.
  • Dawn Mercy Clinic — the aquamation-cover clinic; nominal charity hospital, in fact a coerced abduction front for the Aurelian conspiracy.
  • Nightwatch Jail — where Vazquez was held and where Harvo bribed his way to a release in s8.
  • Dock 13 — Aurelian shipping dock on the eastern outskirts; route to Aurelia (one day by boat).

History in the campaign

Status as of session 16

Active. The party has not been back since session 11. The major in-city threads remain open: Risa still waits at the Glomangol Inn for news of her sister Mira Hale; the Dawn Mercy Clinic orderly Drew has fled; the Nightwatch still has Vazquez’s arrest log entry (“bitch-ass elf”); the Aurelian conspiracy continues to ship victims; The Broker continues to broker; The Rat has yet to make contact.

Inhabitants (named)

  • The Broker — Black Hollow Market quest-giver
  • Maelis Dirn — deceased s7
  • The Glomangol Inn bartender (40s elf, fungal eye-orb)
  • Alston — Whisper Coil Emporium proprietor
  • Risa — at the Glomangol Inn
  • Jack — Vazquez’s prison cellmate at the Nightwatch Jail
  • Drew — Dawn Mercy Clinic orderly (fled, s10)
  • Jorin and Harak — Nightwatch jail clerks (corrupt)
  • The Rat / Rat King — major information broker; spies are said to hear everything worth hearing. Never met.
  • Shade Mistress — one of the city’s most powerful shadow figures; world-brief only, never met.
  • The Starpoint Secrets fairy (no name given)

See also

References

  1. ^ Session 4, line 1442-1446 — Umbrafall described; perpetual night; the wizards "broke their sky".
  2. ^ Session 7, line 1234-1340 — Nightwatch street fight outside Whisper Coil Emporium.
  3. ^ Session 8, line 73-543 — Nightwatch jail; Bruise the cellmate; Harvo's bribery.
  4. ^ Session 10, line 643-666 — Drew confesses Aurelian abductions via Dock 13.
  5. ^ Session 10, line 794-1054 — Aurelian Paladin ambush in an Umbrafall alley.
  6. ^ Session 10, line 446-498 — Inline citation.
  7. ^ Session 6, line 1226-1263 — Inline citation.