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The Darklands in General
- Beneath the Earth: They particularly draw inspiration from pulp fiction of the early 1900s, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pellucidar. They're divided into three layers:
- The uppermost layer, Nar-Voth, consists of extremely deep and extensive but otherwise fairly normal caverns (which are often isolated and do not form a continuous network), and is the most familiar layer to the surface-dwellers. While most of it is sparsely populated stony wilderness, it is also home to fairly normal humanoids like goblins, troglodytes and duergar.
- Sekamina, the middle layer, consists of much larger and more thoroughly interconnected caverns and tunnels, extending beneath most of the world’s surface. It is home to more reclusive and dangerous races like the drow and ghouls, who rule true underground empires, alongside monsters such as driders, morlocks and gugs. It has more exotic terrain than Nar-Voth, including fungal forests, volcanic caves and a true subterranean sea.
- Finally, the deepest level — the Vaults of Orv — is as much a subject of fear and mystery for the people of Nar-Voth and Sekamina as the Darklands as a whole are for surface-dwellers. It consists of massive caverns the size of nations, some dark and others lit by artificial suns or glowing crystals, containing environments such as deserts, rainforests, ruined cities, mountain ranges and a vast subterranean ocean. The Vaults are inhabited by a great variety of monsters, ranging from dinosaurs, dragons, monstrous arthropods and the undead to a variety of unspeakable horrors. They did not form naturally, but were excavated by a powerful earth elemental Precursor race called the Xiomorn to host their evolutionary experiments.
Nar-Voth
Fahrauth
CE male great wyrm umbral dragon, CR 22
An umbral dragon who lairs near a portal to the Negative Energy Plane, portraying himself as a god to the creatures who live nearby.
Sekamina
Nemret Noktoria
Kortash Khain
Priest-King Kortash Khain
CE male ghoul cleric of Kabriri 5/sorcerer (wildblooded) 5/mystic theurge 10/hierophant 6, CR 23/MR 6
The high priest of Kabriri on Golarion.- Cool Crown: He has a crown of bones that's combined with a pharaoh headdress.
- Magic Staff: He carries two staffs, each with different magic.
- Reforged into a Minion: He wars with his neighbors in Sekamina, turning those he captures into ghouls to serve his army. He also has a tendancy to prey on genies and transform them into ghuls.
- Religion of Evil: He leads the church (or cult, depending on who you ask) of Kabriri, the demon lord of ghouls.
- Villain Teleportation: If he's brought below 50 hitpoints or prevented from acting for a full round, he has a contingency spell that automatically teleports him away.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: He wears robes that don't cover his chest.
- Wretched Hive: He rules the city of Nemret Noktoria, built in his attempt to copy Kabriri's Abyssal domain of Everglut.
The Quadrate Pillars
A quartet of ghul oracles that serve Kortash Khain.
- Elite Mooks: Normal ghuls are already 4 CR higher than ghouls, but these also have class levels.
- Power at a Price: As oracles, their powers come with a flaw to the body or mind.
- You Are What You Hate: Each of them was made from a different kind of genie, and each of them now specializes in the elemental magic that was their opposite in life.
The Blackstone Brotherhood
A group of shaitan genies who serve Khain.
- Category Traitor: They've betrayed their own kind in favor of service to Kabriri.
- Lured into a Trap: They lure other genies to be captured and transformed into ghuls.
- Non-Action Guy: They serve primarily as engineers and builders for Khain's city.
Other
The Mourning One
CE unique black-blooded sea serpent, CR 19
A sea serpent from the depths of Orv that's since wormed its way up to Lake Nirthran, nearby Nemret Noktoria.
Orv
The Black Desert
Tord Brickfist
CE male dwarf ghost ranger 15
Once a prospector, Tord Brickfist died in a mass of ghost mold known as the Field of Horrors. He rose again as a ghost and now tries to lure in others.- Lured into a Trap: He works to feed the Field of Horrors by luring others into its embrace.
- Unfinished Business: Averted — he's a ghost because that's what ghost mold does to those it kills. However, the fact that his spirit is still around instead of being consumed by the mold indicates there's something different going on.
Iffdahsil
CE shoggoth mythic vampire
A titanic creature that hides beneath the sands to ambush its prey.- Always a Bigger Fish: In the fifth part of the Extinction Curse adventure path, Lord of the Black Sands, the players are teleported to the Black Desert and, soon after they enter the desert proper, are scripted to be attacked by three purple worms — a somewhat challenging but not especially dangerous by that point in the adventure. In the third round of combat, however, Iffdahsil bursts out of the sand like a vision from a nightmare, instantly devouring all surviving worms as it enters the field. Notably, Iffdahsil doesn't attack — it's more bemused at the auras the players gain earlier in the story — and serves chiefly as a reminder to the players that they're treading in a realm ruled by beings far beyond their power and comprehension.
- Meaningful Name: It's Elven for "monstrous fiend."
- Our Vampires Are Different: It's a shoggoth but it's also a vampire. How that happened and how it feeds given its constantly shifting biology are questions most don't live to investigate.
Weylin Shraen
LE male drow revenant witch 10/archmage 2
Murdered by a rival centuries ago, Weylin plots his revenge against his killer and their ancestors from within a natural fortress called the Renegade Tower.- The Exile: He's split from House Shraen, though it was by choice rather than being forced out.
- Revenge: As a revenant, it's his driving goal.
- Unwitting Pawn: When he first rose he went to his family, working with them to find his killer and exact revenge. Eventually he found that they never intended to help him and were just using him as another tool, strung along with hollow promises.
Zyra and Nyrinda Shraen
Zyra: NE female drow lich conjurer 17
Nyrinda: CE female drow vampire sorcerer 16
The leaders of the remnants of House Shraen.- The Beastmaster: House Shraen trains purple worms, but due to the effort required only Zyra and Nyrinda get to make use of them with any regularity.
Danthill Rothok
LE male duergar ranger 8/rogue 9
A slaver lord allied with House Shraen.- Home Base: He keeps a secret one somewhere outside of the Black Desert.
Urserf
War Champion Ursef
NE male urdefhan summoner 15/marshal 3
The leader of the urdefhan waging war on House Shraen.- The Beastmaster: As a summoner, he comes with a custom eidolon attack beast.
Larielle Shraen
High Priestess Larielle Shraen
LE female banshee cleric of Urgathoa 11
The leader of a clutch of priestesses who guard relics said to be fragments of Urgathoa herself.- Artifact of Doom: She guards the Bloodsoaked Bones, said to be pieces of Urgathoa herself. Regardless of their origins, they can turn the most devout cleric into an evil undead monster and may be responsible for the Black Desert in general.
- Mysterious Stranger: She's waiting for one. According to Mother's Maw, Urgathoa's herald, she'll one day have to give the Bloodsoaked Bones to a wandering stranger.
- Religion of Evil: She's a high priestess of Urgathoa, the goddess of undeath, and guards one of the religion's most sacred relics.
- The Family That Slays Together: Three of her younger sisters are her fellow guardians.
- Undying Loyalty: She and her followers will fight to the death to protect the artifact they guard.
The Midnight Mountains
Erum-Hel
Erum-Hel, the Lord of Mohrgs
CE male mohrg assassin 10/trickster 6
"In life I hungered. In undeath I hunger ever more. Iomedae could not stop me, and she became a god. What chance have you?"
A fearsome mohrg in the service of Tar-Baphon, Erum-Hel aided his lord in his attempted conquest of Avistan until his defeat by the then-mortal Iomedae, which forced him to retreat to the depths of Orv to lick his wounds and brood. He lurks there still, obsessing over his defeat and plotting against the faithful of his divine nemesis.
- Arch-Enemy: To Iomedae. He still obsesses over their clash millennia in the past and strikes against her church whenever able, as her divinity prevents a direct confrontation.
- Godhood Seeker: Powerful and undying as he currently is, Erum-Hel is giving serious thought to achieving more. His enmity with Iomedae and obsession with his defeat is gnawing enough that he may very well seek to pursue the only avenue he has for fighting her again — taking the Test of the Starstone becoming a god.
- Hero Killer: He murdered every one of Iomedae's bodyguards and nearly slew the future goddess herself.
- The Magnificent: Whenever he's discussed, he's always titled fully as Erum-Hel, the lord of the mohrgs.
- Multiple-Choice Past: His true origins are unknown — the earliest chronicles of his activities cite even older texts which themselves describe him as an already undead and fearsome servant of a then still-mortal Tar-Baphon. He may have been a mortal in the wizard-king's service who was elevated to undeath, an ancient creation of the runelord Zutha or a successful mohrg who came into the Tyrant's service at a later date. Even his birth species isn't known — he may have been human, urdefhan or something else still.
- Non-Human Undead: He's rumored to have been an urdefhan in life.
- Orcus on His Throne: In the description of Wormsmaw in Undead Unleashed, he's found sitting on his throne in the depths of his fortress, waiting for the intruders to come to him and ignoring their progress through his lair until they do.
- Revenge by Proxy: Unable to touch Iomedae, he has thus far settled for targeting her worshipers for annihilation.
- The Undead: He's a mohrg, an animated skeleton with his intestines wrapped around himself. If a theory that he was once an urdefhan — a member of a race of vampire-like beings originally created by the Four Horsemen — is correct, then he was never truly alive in the first place.
- Villainous Underdog: It's difficult to think of a CR 23 foe as this, but given that he's at war with a goddess he very much is.
- Womb Level: Wormsmaw, his fortress, is a massive, petrified, buried creature of unknown origins. Its entrance is shaped like a gaping maw, its tunnels are lined with bones, passage through certain areas requires swimming through tunnels filled with repulsive organic fluids, and its halls are vaults of ribs, corded cartilage and pulsing veins.
