Umbra Profunda
„Deep Shadow of the South" · „Southern Wastes" · „Land of Sand and Shadow" · „Deserts of Drow and Goblins"
Umbra Profunda is a vast southern region of Ulvenor made up of deserts, parched steppes, savannas, rocky ridges, oases, and drow and goblin settlements.
From the Chronicler's Atlas
📖 Summary
Umbra Profunda belongs among the oldest and most inhospitable regions of southern Ulvenor. Today it is known as a land of endless deserts, parched steppes, rocky ridges, cave valleys, lonely oases, savannas, and stone cities that stretch south of the Great Elven Empire. To the north and northwest it borders the Ancient Southern Forests, to the east the Red Desert, to the northeast and southeast the Helk Marshes, and to the south the dark sea Thal Veyr. Although it is often considered a dead land, in truth it is a territory full of memory, migration, exile, war, trade, and stubborn life. The goblins here found the end of their ancient pilgrimage from Nolomb, and the drow turned the punishment of exile into a civilization of their own.
Deep Shadow of the South
On maps Umbra Profunda is often drawn as a barren wound on the body of southern Ulvenor. From afar it feels like an endless sea of sand, stone, and parched grass, where the sun rules as mercilessly as war. In truth, however, it is far more complex. Alongside the dead dunes there are savannas, rocky valleys, oases, cave complexes, salt plains, and cities carved into sandstone and black stone. This region is not empty. It is only hard. Roughly eighty-five percent of its territory is almost uninhabitable, but the remaining fifteen percent is worth a kingdom. The oases, seasonal rivers, shaded canyons, savanna belts, coastal cliffs, and deep caves are the places where life, trade, war, and politics gather. Whoever controls water, shade, or a passage through the desert controls more than just a piece of land.
A Land That Was Once Green
Umbra Profunda was not always a desert. In the most ancient times, even before the end of the age of the first humanoids, the region is said to have been far greener, wetter, and more alive. Larger growths of plant life grew here, wild beasts passed through the country, and among the rivers, lakes, and savannas the first settlements of ancient humanoids may have stood. The present form of the country is the result of a long series of climatic shocks. The eruptions of great volcanoes, long droughts, changes in sea currents, periods of cooling, ice ages, and the subsequent disruption of rainfall gradually turned the south of Ulvenor into a hard land. The rivers changed into seasonal streams, the lakes into salt plains, and the once forested regions into open steppes, which in many places at last became desert.
Present Face of Umbra Profunda
Present-day Umbra Profunda is a land of sharp contrasts. In one direction the dunes stretch so far that they meet the sky on the horizon. Elsewhere black rocky ridges, sandstone towers, and canyons rise out of the sand, in which shade and water both hold. In some valleys tough shrubs survive, succulent plants, thorny trees, and small pastures for animals adapted to drought. The savannas form an important transition between the dead desert and the habitable land. It is here that smaller goblin villages arise, temporary camps, hunting grounds, caravan stops, and places where at least a limited amount of crop can be grown. Through the dry grasses move herds of hardy animals, desert bison, lizard draft beasts, jackal-like predators, and birds circling above places where someone has not survived the journey.
Water as Supreme Power
In Umbra Profunda the greatest wealth is not gold, but water. Every oasis, underground spring, seasonal lake, or cistern carries strategic weight. Some oases belong to goblin tribes, others are managed by drow houses, and still others are formally neutral, because their destruction would damage all the caravans in the surroundings. Water here decides politics as well as war. Many seemingly small conflicts arise over the right to water animals, to bring in a caravan, to raise a watchtower, or to extend an irrigated field. The drow try to protect water through deep cisterns, underground channels, and shaded halls, while the goblins often rely on the knowledge of hidden water holes and the ability to move quickly when a source dries out.
Drow Cities of the Desert
The most majestic seats of Umbra Profunda are the drow cities. They do not stand against the desert; they rise out of it. They are carved into canyons, set between rock walls, joined to caves, and shielded from the wind, the sand, and the heat. They are built of sandstone, black stone, and materials that can resist drought and the swings of temperature. Drow architecture binds elven elegance to the hardness of exile. Pillars, terraces, narrow shaded streets, star observatories, temples of the night, deep water halls, and stairways cut into the rock create cities that feel foreign, dangerous, and magnificent at once. For the elves they are a reminder of lost kin, for humans an almost other world, and for the goblins often an enemy that cannot simply be driven out.
Goblin Villages and Moving Camps
Goblin settlements in Umbra Profunda are far simpler than the drow cities. They resemble mobile camps, low buildings, leather and wooden constructions, palisades, tents, pens, and gathering places of the chieftains. Their beauty does not lie in endurance, but in the ability to rise again. In a land where a sandstorm can bury an entire seat in a single night, it makes no sense to build for eternity. The goblins therefore build to purpose, quickly, and with the knowledge that any structure may be lost. When a storm sweeps away the tents or breaks the palisade, the goblins gather what is left, raise the poles again, stretch the hides, and go on. This ability not to bind themselves to a building but to people and clan is one of the reasons for their survival.
Caravans, Trade, and Exiles
Even though Umbra Profunda is a land of war and inhospitality, several important caravan trails cross it. Here are carried salt, metals, rare stones, dried herbs, poisons, fabrics, glass, desert animals, magical objects, and messages that would never leave the south by any other road. A caravan that knows the right oases and has enough armed guards may earn enormous wealth. The great drow cities are not inhabited only by drow. Here live goblins, dwarves from the far north, gnomes, a few orcs, a smaller troll community, smugglers, exiles, and merchants from places that would otherwise never meet. Umbra Profunda is therefore not only a battlefield, but also a peculiar space of trade, refuge, and unexpected alliances.
Vael'Zakar, City of Night in the Sun
The greatest and best-known drow city is Vael'Zakar. According to tradition it stands between black stone and golden sandstone, either in a vast canyon or around a deep abyss that is sacred to the drow. Vael is read as veil, shadow, or sacred beauty, while Zakar carries the hard sound of stone, desert, and power. Vael'Zakar is a city of night in the midst of the sun. Its towers at sunset color into black and gold, and at night they look as if they grow out of a sky without a moon. It is the center of political power, of great houses, temples of shadow, trade halls, and water cisterns that allow life where any other city would long since have been buried by sand.
Sha'Khalir and Nyr'Azhar
Sha'Khalir is an old, royal, and almost mythical seat hidden among the dunes. Its temples, black obelisks, broad stairways, and monumental statues of ancient rulers belong among the most impressive works of drow architecture. The sand here piles up at the feet of the statues as an offering of time, and the entire city gives the impression that it does not stand on the desert, but was slowly revealed from within it. Nyr'Azhar is the seat of magic, astrology, and secret schools. While Vael'Zakar embodies power and Sha'Khalir memory, Nyr'Azhar represents knowledge. Here the drow watch the stars, the eclipses, the movement of sandstorms, and the invisible currents of magic which, in their view, run through the desert like underground water. To foreigners it is perhaps the most beautiful of the drow cities, but also the least comprehensible.
Place of Contradictions
Umbra Profunda is a land of contradictions. It is dead, and yet full of life. It is parched, and yet hides cities that belong among the most majestic in southern Ulvenor. It is the home of goblins who here found the end of their long migration, and of drow who here turned exile into their own civilization. Whoever watches it from outside sees only sand, heat, and death. Whoever steps deeper inside will understand why it is called Umbra Profunda. The deep shadow of the south does not mean emptiness. It means a layer of history, of pain, of hardness, and of survival that lies beneath every dune, every canyon, and every city that refused to disappear.
Sub-Locations
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Goblin Story of Umbra Profunda
The story of the goblins in Umbra Profunda begins with a long migration from the Nolomb Wastes and ends with the rise of hard desert tribes that came to rule most of the southern waste.
The goblins came into Umbra Profunda after one of the longest migrations of the earliest history of Ulvenor. Originally they came from the Nolomb Wastes, but part of the tribes set out to seek a better land. They wandered along Lake Helk and the Helk Marshes until the ocean forced them to turn west. In the end they came to Umbra Profunda, where they settled around the year -50000 of the imperial calendar. The hard land did not break them, but turned them into a desert people who learned to survive on the smallest of resources.
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Departure from Nolomb
According to old tales the goblins arose in the Nolomb Wastes in the northeast of Ulvenor. It was there that their toughness was born, their tribal hardness, and their ability to survive in a country that other races would consider almost uninhabitable. Even so, not all goblins were willing to remain in Nolomb forever. Part of the tribes came to believe that somewhere else there must be a better land, more game, more fertile pastures, and room for a new beginning. This hope drove them out onto a road that gradually became a migration of several generations. The children born along the way no longer knew Nolomb as a home, but only as a name in the tales of old warriors.
The Journey Along Helk
The goblin tribes traveled along the marshes and Lake Helk. At first they hoped that precisely in these damper regions they would find a new home, but the Helk Marshes did not offer what they sought. Either the local environment did not suit their way of life, or the best parts of the country were already held by older inhabitants who refused to take them in. Some tales claim that the goblins several times found a land in which they wished to settle, but were pushed out of it by creatures and tribes that knew the country better. In the end they came as far as the edge of the marshes, where before them lay the ocean. They could not continue south or east, and a return to Nolomb would have meant the admission of defeat. They therefore turned west.
A New Home in the Desert
The way west led them into a land that grew gradually drier and harder. The marshes thinned, the soil hardened, the water vanished, and damp growth gave way to savannas, dunes, and rocks. The longer they wandered, the more the land resembled the place from which they had originally tried to escape. Around the year -50000 of the imperial calendar the goblin tribes at last settled in the region that would later be known as Umbra Profunda. It is not certain whether they did so out of hope, exhaustion, or necessity. The land was not kind, but it offered space, few rivals, and enough empty country in which they could build a world of their own.
Desert Way of Life
The goblins here lived in a way similar to their ancestors in Nolomb, but had to adapt to the heat, the sand, and the lack of water. Their settlements were simple, purposeful, and easy to rebuild. They raised tents, low buildings, palisades, pens, and gathering places, meant to protect against the sun, the wind, the sand, and the enemy alike. The tribes gradually divided up the oases, the savannas, the rocky passes, the valleys, and the places with seasonal water. It was these places that became sacred sites, burial grounds, hunting grounds, council circles, and symbols of identity for the individual tribes. To the goblins they often mattered more than gold, because they meant survival.
Raids to the North
Even vast Umbra Profunda was not in the end enough for the goblins. Around the year -30000 of the imperial calendar the tribes began to push beyond the borders of the desert into the surrounding lands, which looked richer, greener, and more fit for life. The greatest clashes arose to the north, where their raids touched the elven tribes living on the southern edge of the great forests. For the goblins this was an attempt to break the boundary of the desert and gain access to fertile lands. For the elves it was an attack by creatures from the south that threatened the forests they regarded as their natural home. The war did not end well for the goblins. The elves defended their forests, and the goblins had to fall back into Umbra Profunda. Since then the boundary between the desert and the forest has been a civilizational wound that has never fully closed.
Drow Story of Umbra Profunda
The story of the drow in Umbra Profunda is a tale of exile, transformation, and the rise of a new civilization among sand, stone, and shadow.
The drow came into Umbra Profunda after an inner schism among the elves, when Sylvar, according to tradition, drove part of her own people to the south. The exiles brought with them elven knowledge, magic, writing, and a building tradition, but in the desert they were quickly transformed into a different people. Their skin grew gray and darker, their culture grew harder, and their cities became a monumental fusion of elven elegance, sandstone, black stone, shadow, and deep mistrust.
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The Exiles of Sylvar
The drow came into Umbra Profunda as elven exiles. According to tradition Sylvar cast them out of the elven lands after an inner dispute over the future of the empire, the unity of the people, and the nature of her rule. These exiles were not defenseless refugees. They carried with them elven learning, magic, craft, writing, organization, and a deep memory of the conflicts with the goblins. They settled above all on the northern edge of the deserts, closer to the border of the forests from which they had come, but deep enough in Umbra Profunda that their exile could not easily be questioned. Their first seats were firm, well thought out, and from the beginning built with the knowledge that they could be attacked.
First Clashes with the Goblins
At first there was no immediate great war between the drow and the goblins. The two sides watched one another, tested the borders, and learned what a new neighbor meant. The goblins were used to an empty land and to rivalry among their own tribes, while the drow advanced cautiously but steadily. They built cities, sought out water, fortified rocky valleys, took over cave systems, and gradually spread deeper into the desert. Only when they began to encroach upon places that the goblins regarded as sacred, strategic, or necessary for survival did the tension turn into open conflict.
A War Without End
The war between goblins and drow never had a single clean beginning or end. It was a long series of clashes, raids, sieges, retaliations, truces, and further wars that stretched across the centuries. At one time entire tribal confederations fought against drow cities, at another the fighting consisted of smaller bloody skirmishes at oases, rocky passes, or old burial grounds. Sometimes peace came, sometimes agreements were struck on water, trade, or the passage of caravans, but a real end never arrived. The goblins and the drow are at war on the south of Ulvenor in some form to this day. Their relationship is a mixture of hatred, respect, fear, and unavoidable coexistence.
Transformation Into a New People
One of the most remarkable traits of the drow is their unusually rapid transformation. When they were driven into Umbra Profunda, they were still elves, even if politically and spiritually severed from the original people. Within a few thousand years, however, their appearance changed far more strikingly than ordinary evolution would allow. Their originally elven paleness gradually turned into a gray and then dark color of skin, which better answered to the hard environment of desert, cave, and shadow. This change is explained not only as adaptation, but also as a consequence of the Curse of Sylvar, the magic of exile, and the extraordinary biological power of elven blood.
Cities of Shadow and Stone
The drow show that Umbra Profunda is not only a place of ruin, but also of transformation. Where other peoples would have withered, they built a new civilization. They did not raise cities against the land, but through it. They made use of sandstone, black stone, caves, rock walls, deep abysses, the roots of rare desert plants, and the natural shadows of canyons. Their buildings are not the forest halls of the old elves, but monumental desert cities, where elven elegance is bound to the hardness of stone, shadow, and sand. Vael'Zakar, Sha'Khalir, and Nyr'Azhar form the three best-known centers of their world, but around them lie many smaller fortresses, temples, observatories, water halls, and hidden settlements.
Not Only Darkness
In the tales of humans and elves the drow are often portrayed as dark, evil, and corrupted creatures who were rightfully driven into the desert. Such a tale, however, is only part of the truth, and perhaps the more comfortable part. The drow are a hard, proud, and hardworking people whose existence was never a given. They had to win it against the desert, the goblins, hunger, storms, their own exile, and the memory of what they once were. Their cruelty, their reserve, and their mistrust did not arise from empty malice, but from a history in which weakness often meant the end of an entire house.
Thal Veyr
Thal Veyr is a dark sea on the south of Umbra Profunda, known for unknown depths, coastal ruins, dangerous creatures, and legends of ancient sea forces.
Thal Veyr forms the southern border of Umbra Profunda and acts as a dark counterpart of the Green Sea. While the Green Sea is associated with trade, coastal roads, and life, Thal Veyr is a sea into which almost no one dares to set sail. Its waters are deep, dark, treacherous, and full of creatures beyond the ordinary experience of coastal peoples. The drow respect it, the goblins avoid it, and foreigners speak of it as a place where the surface looks back at you.
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Southern Border of Shadow
Thal Veyr lies south of Umbra Profunda and forms its darkest natural border. The coast here is broken, rocky, and often shrouded in mist or salt haze. Sand mingles with black stone, the waves strike sharp reefs, and only a few places offer safe landing. To the drow Thal Veyr is no ordinary sea. It is the border between the known suffering of the desert and the unknown danger of the depths. Some drow cities maintain small harbors, but they serve rather for coastal sailing, fishing in the shallows, smuggling, or secret rites than for open voyages.
A Sea One Does Not Sail
Almost no one dares to set out into Thal Veyr far from the coast. Old tales speak of ships that returned without a crew, of lights beneath the surface, of singing out of the mist, and of water that looks too black at night even beneath the stars. Some captains insist that compass and stars do not behave correctly above this sea. The depths of Thal Veyr are almost unexplored. It is not certain whether old magic, unknown currents, undersea abysses, or beings able to bend the mind act here. It is precisely this uncertainty that has made the sea a border not only geographical, but also psychological.
Creatures of the Depths
In the depths of Thal Veyr are said to dwell dark sea creatures that appear only rarely on the surface. Coastal legends speak of giant cephalopods whose tentacles can drag a smaller ship beneath the water, of translucent jellyfish as large as towers, and of creatures that move without sound just below the surface. Some fishers describe water-shadows like serpents, others insist that they have seen sea crabs with shells covered in crystal or blind fish with eyes that look almost human. Drow scholars believe that some of these creatures may be the natural fauna of an old sea, while others may have arisen through the action of dark magic, undersea rifts, or forces older than the present races.
Coastal Ruins
Along the coast of Thal Veyr lie ruins whose origin is not entirely clear. Some may be old drow watchposts, others the remains of cultures that lived here before the coming of the drow. The most mysterious, however, are structures partly submerged by the sea, whose architecture answers neither to the elves, the goblins, nor the drow. At low tide there sometimes appear stairways leading into the water, broken obelisks, stone circles, and the foundations of towers that continue beneath the surface. Some drow priests insist that these places did not belong to the people of the land, but to those who once worshiped the sea as a living being. Others believe the ruins may be tied to paths toward other continents.
Connection With Other Continents
Thal Veyr is one of the few places in southern Ulvenor where contact with other continents is seriously considered. Its currents are strange, restless, and poorly mapped. Some old drow texts suggest that far beyond the dark sea may lie unknown lands or islands that are not drawn on any ordinary map. The trouble is that almost no expedition returns with clear proof. Those who survive often refuse to speak or describe things that sound like madness. Thal Veyr thus remains a possible gateway into a wider world, but a gateway that devours most of those who try to open it.
Meaning for Umbra Profunda
For Umbra Profunda, Thal Veyr is the dark mirror of the desert. The desert kills with heat, hunger, and thirst, while the sea kills with depth, silence, and the unknown. Both lands are inhospitable, both force their inhabitants to hardness, and both hide a wealth reachable only by the bravest. The drow regard Thal Veyr with reverence and fear. Some houses consider it sacred, others cursed, and still others see in it the future of trade, if its shore can ever be tamed. The goblins mostly avoid it, because the sea is not their world. For adventurers, however, Thal Veyr is one of the greatest mysteries of the south.
Hooks for GM
Story fragments waiting for their heroes, ready for use at the game table.
The Oasis That Changed Its Master
One of the most important oases between the goblin tribes and the drow city of Vael'Zakar has run dry in a single night. Both sides accuse the other of magic, and a war over the surrounding water sources is on the verge of breaking out.
Shadows in Vael'Zakar
In the night streets of Vael'Zakar members of minority communities are disappearing. The drow houses insist that this is goblin sabotage, but the traces lead into the old water halls beneath the city.
A Caravan Lost in the White Sand
A caravan carrying labradorite, poisons, and drow textiles has vanished on the route between the savannas and Sha'Khalir. The last report spoke of a sandstorm in which the voices of dead elves were heard.
Stairway Into Thal Veyr
After an unusually strong low tide a stone stairway has appeared on the shore of Thal Veyr, leading deep beneath the surface. Drow scholars as well as smugglers are racing to explore it before the sea returns.
The Curse of the Exiled
In one drow house a child has been born with the features of an old forest elf. Some consider it a sign of the breaking of the Curse of Sylvar, others a threat that may shake the entire house.
Connections
⚑ Factions
- Drow Cities of Umbra Profunda
- Desert Goblins
- Great Elven Empire
- Caravan Guilds of the South