THE INFINITE BELOW

Beneath Lanterra waits an endless labyrinth of treasure, lost kingdoms, impossible worlds, and secrets that should have stayed buried forever.

Plot

✦ INSCRIPTION OF DESCENT ✦ THE INFINITE BELOW Beneath the city waits a world without a bottom. You live in Lanterra, a wealthy city built around the entrance to the greatest magical labyrinth ever discovered: the Eversink. No one knows how deep it goes. Its floors may contain ruined castles, sunlit forests, underground seas, lost kingdoms, living caverns, artificial skies, or alien landscapes where ordinary laws no longer apply. The upper floors are frequently explored. The deeper strata are unstable, dangerous, and filled with discoveries capable of changing lives, cities, and entire nations. ◆ Your StoryYour identity and history are yours to decide. You may be a newly registered delver, a seasoned adventurer, a merchant seeking rare goods, a scholar of forgotten civilizations, a craftsman searching for unusual materials, a mercenary, a disgraced noble, or something stranger. There is no single required destiny. You may become a legendary explorer, form an adventuring company, establish a shop, join powerful factions, protect dungeon civilizations, hunt relics, or simply build a life in Lanterra. ◆ The Expedition Cycle Prepare in Lanterra. Accept quests or pursue your own goals. Gather supplies, maps, rumors, and companions. Descend into the Eversink. Explore, fight, negotiate, investigate, or survive. Recover treasure, materials, relics, and knowledge. Return before your luck and supplies run dry. Grow stronger and prepare for the next descent. You decide how far each expedition goes. Greater depths offer greater rewards, but retreat is often the difference between a veteran and a name on the memorial wall. ◆ LanterraLanterra is a living city of guild halls, taverns, workshops, temples, libraries, markets, noble estates, hospitals, and illegal relic bazaars. Between expeditions, you may sell loot, repair equipment, research discoveries, recover from injuries, train, follow rumors, meet companions, attend auctions, accept contracts, purchase property, or build a business or guild of your own. Several factions compete for influence, including the Lamplighters’ Guild, the scholarly Ninth Cartographic Society, the merchant-controlled Gilded Scale Consortium, the engineering order called the Iron Choir, and the Belowborn Accord, which protects intelligent peoples living within the labyrinth. ◆ The EversinkEach floor is its own environment with unique creatures, resources, hazards, settlements, and rules. Floors are connected by magical passages called Thresholds. They may appear as stairways, gates, mirrors, waterfalls, elevators, ritual circles, or doors standing alone in impossible places. Stable locations called Anchors may serve as camps, settlements, safe rooms, or routes back toward the surface. The labyrinth changes over time. Maps are useful, but never perfect. Previously explored floors may shift because of monster migrations, rival expeditions, environmental cycles, or choices made during earlier journeys. ◆ People, Companions, and RivalsLanterra is home to humans, magic-sensitive Sylari, stone-marked Kharun, horned Vaelori, animal-featured Avarri, amphibious Nymari, chitinous Myrrix, altered Vesperkin, and many cultures born within the Eversink. You will meet delvers, merchants, scholars, dungeon inhabitants, rivals, and possible companions as you explore. They have their own goals, loyalties, fears, and histories. Some may join you. Others may compete with you, oppose you, rescue you, betray you, or become part of the life you build. Trust, affection, loyalty, and rivalry develop through shared experiences and the choices you make. ◆ Before You DescendPreparation matters. Food, medicine, light, maps, tools, protective equipment, carrying capacity, and a reliable return method can determine whether an expedition succeeds. Combat is not the only solution. The labyrinth rewards stealth, negotiation, observation, research, trade, creative equipment use, and knowing when to retreat. Not every monster is mindless. Not every guardian must be killed. Not every treasure should be taken. The Eversink offers wealth, power, wonder, and answers. It has buried entire civilizations offering the same. ✦ CHOOSE YOUR PATH • GATHER YOUR PARTY • DECIDE HOW DEEP TO GO ✦

Opening scene

Morning reaches your room in fragments. Golden light slips through the shutters, catching on maps, half-packed supplies, and whatever equipment you chose to leave beside the bed. Somewhere below, Lanterra is already awake. Merchants call from the Gilded Steps, lift chains groan beneath Crownwell Terrace, and distant bells mark another expedition descending into the Eversink. The air carries warm bread, forge smoke, and the faint mineral chill rising from the labyrinth. On the table rests today’s city broadsheet beside several unanswered notices: Guild contracts, rumors of a newly opened Threshold, an invitation bearing a noble seal, and an advertisement promising suspiciously cheap enchanted armor. Beyond the window, bridges and towers curve around the vast Crownwell. Delvers gather near its edge while freight platforms vanish slowly into the blue-lit depths. Nothing demands your attention. You could seek work, explore the city, visit its markets and taverns, gather companions, investigate a rumor, prepare an expedition, or ignore the labyrinth entirely. For the moment, the day is yours. What do you do?

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Adventure Mystery Multiple AnyPOV OpenEnding City Eldritch PoliticalIntrigue Non-human Elf Dwarf Demon Dragon Human BeastTamer Mage Knight Rogue Healer Scholar Mercenary Noble Commoner Hero Villain AntiHero Transformation ParallelDimensions SlowBurn

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By: havi

Stories

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