Undercity

Faction: Horde · Ruler: Banshee Queen Sylvanas Windrunner

The Forsaken capital, built in the catacombs beneath the ruins of Lordaeron's Capital City.

Sylvanas Windrunner chose this site deliberately: the entrance passes directly through the throne room where Arthas Menethil murdered his father, King Terenas. She makes everyone walk through it.

What It Feels Like

Wrong, and deliberately so. Green light from apothecary lamps, a constant low drip, and the smell — visitors describe it as a cellar that has been closed too long. The Forsaken have not fixed any of this because none of it inconveniences them.

Orderly. This is the surprise. The streets are clean-swept, the districts are logical, the record-keeping is meticulous. A people with no appetites and no need for sleep get a great deal done.

Quiet in an unusual way. No eating, no children, no snoring, no crowds outside working hours. What you hear instead is work: presses, scratching pens, the apothecaries' equipment.

Watchful without being hostile. Living visitors are stared at. Not with menace — with something closer to curiosity, and occasionally with envy that nobody admits to.

Districts and Sites

Walking It

You come down through the ruins first, and the route is theatre. Broken banners, a collapsed hall, and the stain on the throne room floor that has been left exactly as it was. Nobody hurries you through it.

Below, the city is a wheel — an outer ring canal with the quarters arranged around it and the Royal Quarter at the hub. It is the most rationally planned capital in the world, because it was designed all at once by people who did not have to compromise with anyone living there first.

The canal carries sewage and run-off. It is not pleasant and it is not hidden.

The Apothecarium is sealed to visitors and the guards on it are not conversational.

Who You Meet

• Forsaken, in every state of preservation from nearly-lifelike to frankly alarming, dressed with more care than you would expect
• Deathstalkers — intelligence work, unmarked, and they will already know why you are here
• Dark Rangers — elven women, Sylvanas's personal loyalists, and the most unsettling people in the city
• Apothecaries in stained coats, hurrying, disinclined to chat
• Orc and troll envoys, visibly uncomfortable, keeping visits short
• Living traders — a small, hardy population who make excellent money and have made their peace
• Almost no Tauren. They come when they must and leave the same day.

Customs and Manners

• Do not ask how they died. The single hard rule. Some will tell you. Being asked is an intrusion.
• Do not offer food or drink. A kindness elsewhere, a pointed joke here.
• Free will is sacred. Any suggestion that a Forsaken could be commanded, compelled or charmed will end the conversation and possibly the relationship.
• Do not heal a Forsaken with the Light without asking. It hurts them. Doing it uninvited is closer to assault than to charity.
• Black humour is the register. Grim jokes about their own condition are normal and expected. Pity is not, and lands very badly.
• "The Dark Lady watches over you" is the standard blessing. Returning it is polite and costs you nothing.
• Do not linger near the Apothecarium. Nobody will explain why. Everyone will notice.

Food and Drink

The Forsaken do not eat. This is the fact that reorganises the whole city, and visitors take a day to absorb it.

• There is no restaurant culture, no tavern culture, and no market smell. The inn exists for living guests and Horde envoys and is oddly formal about it.
• What the markets sell instead is reagents, chemicals, preservatives, poisons, cloth, and information. The Trade Quarter is a supply depot, not a food market.
• For living visitors: salted rations, hard bread, and imported ale, all sold at a markup and all slightly stale. The Forsaken find this funny.
• Embalming supplies and preservative wine are on open sale, and are the city's genuine luxury goods. A well-preserved Forsaken has spent money.

What You Can Buy

The best alchemy and poison market in the world, and very little else.

See Professions and Crafting.

Groups Worth Knowing

• The Deathstalkers — intelligence and assassination, the largest arm of the Forsaken state, and always recruiting
• The Dark Rangers — personally loyal to Sylvanas rather than to the Forsaken as a people. That distinction matters.
• The apothecaries' guild — chemists and alchemists, respectable, well-funded, and sealed off
• The Magic Quarter circles — Forsaken who were Kirin Tor apprentices in life and remember the whole curriculum
• The living traders' compact — a dozen families who supply the city and have negotiated genuinely good terms

Downtime Here

Undercity is the world's best alchemy city and its worst carousing city. See Travel and Downtime.

Things To Do In A Session

• Walk the throne room on the way in and let a Forsaken tell you, flatly, what happened there
• Buy poison openly and notice that no other city in the world would allow it
• Ask a Forsaken what they did before — the one question they will usually answer, and the one that opens them
• Watch a living trader haggle with someone who does not need anything they sell
• Try to visit the Apothecarium and be turned away politely, twice

Connected to

Sylvanas WindrunnerCharacterForsakenLoreTirisfal GladesZoneThe HordeFactionArthas MenethilCharacterScourgeFactionTTravel and DowntimeRules