The Underworld

The Underworld is a great confluence of dead waterways. It teems with oceans of void and rivers of darkness, flowing ever away from Spira, carrying souls and memories into its depths… perhaps to reincarnation, but all too often, simply away. These tempest-wracked seas and black torrents divide the strange islets of the Underworld—a mul­titude of paradises, purgatories, and stranger afterlives where the restless dead tarry, pinned by passion, trauma, slavery, or happenstance.

The abode of ghosts is an inauspicious place, by turns bleak as a skull or flush with heart-wounding beauty. Strange stars wind through a sunless sky (where there is a sky at all), turned by the massed force of the prayers of the dead. Mortals fear to venture here; to travel abroad between the isles of the Underworld is perilous even for the shades that dwell there, and vastly more so for the living. The ancient dead are envious of their blood and breath, and rest in the Underworld offers little renewal of mind or spirit.

Many ghosts seek passage back into the world of sun and flesh, either to fulfill their frustrated passions or to carry out the business of the lords of the dead; the Underworld is a land of many kings and riches beyond counting, and so the dead are never without ambitions or temptations.

[Will]

The Underworld is a great confluence of dead waterways. It teems with oceans of void and rivers of darkness, flowing ever away from Spira, carrying souls and memories into its depths… perhaps to reincarnation, but all too often, simply away. These tempest-wracked seas and black torrents divide the strange islets of the Underworld—a mul­titude of paradises, purgatories, and stranger afterlives where the restless dead tarry, pinned by passion, trauma, slavery, or happenstance.

The abode of ghosts is an inauspicious place, by turns bleak as a skull or flush with heart-wounding beauty. Strange stars wind through a sunless sky (where there is a sky at all), turned by the massed force of the prayers of the dead. Mortals fear to venture here; to travel abroad between the isles of the Underworld is perilous even for the shades that dwell there, and vastly more so for the living. The ancient dead are envious of their blood and breath, and rest in the Underworld offers little renewal of mind or spirit.

Many ghosts seek passage back into the world of sun and flesh, either to fulfill their frustrated passions or to carry out the business of the lords of the dead; the Underworld is a land of many kings and riches beyond counting, and so the dead are never without ambitions or temptations.