The veil that separates the world of the living from the land of the dead is thin as a knife’s edge, insubstantial as a faulty brake pad, and slippery as an icy step. It rushes up to greet those who cross over, but for those who wish to venture into the Great Below before their time has come, the way is not so easily traversed. The Avernian Gates stand in Twilight, opening and closing seemingly on their own schedules, as if to add insult to injury. With a little insight, though, even such obstacles may be overcome. After all, it’s not as if the Underworld is trying to keep you out — it just hasn’t gotten around to you yet.

Morgues. Graveyards. Crossroads. Battlefields. Once you can see them, Avernian Gates are almost impossible to avoid. Anywhere that death has marked as its own births one, standing silent and dripping with phantasmal water just out of mortal sight. The Gate forms without pomp or circumstance — even if keenly watched for, it appears between blinks, between frames of video, standing as though it always had, already weathered and seemingly ancient. A cold dampness pervades the area around them, clinging to every surface in Twilight. Every so often, the living notice it on the subconscious level, shivering at the presence of a chill they cannot feel. Normally, the Gates stand closed, though the presence of a ghost without any Anchors always causes an Avernian Gate to open, to draw the unfortunate through.

Crossing Over Avernian Gates stand locked for most of their existence, grim monuments to the fate that awaits all who live. Each Gate has a key, however, and this key may or may not be a physical object. One Gate opens to any who hold a certain worn, ceramic doll with an uncanny stare — which vanishes as one passes through, always seeming to find its way back to the same empty nursery. Another Gate opens in the presence of tears. A third, to the final lines of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Avernian Gates always open for Reapers, or for their Deathmasks, allowing them free passage to carry on their dread work. The Bound, and Sin-Eaters in particular, only seldom realize what that means: that Avernian Gates can be opened without the presence of their key. In other words, the Gate may be locked, but any lock can be picked.

Bloody-Handed Payment The simplest method for forcing open an Avernian Gate is, of course, to give it what it wants: death, either in quantities sufficient to confuse the Gate or of great enough significance and in such fashion that it would open anyway. The trouble with the former is that it doesn’t always work, and the trouble with the latter is that not only does it require human sacrifice, but the body must be wholly destroyed, else it will serve as an Anchor. This method is preferred mostly by amateurs and those with no sense of ethics.

Bloody-Handed Payment Requirement: Near an Avernian Gate Cost: Living beings or objects to be sacrificed Target: Avernian Gate Action: Contested Extended; 10 successes more than Gate; one-hour interval); each roll requires a sacrifice. Dice Pool: Wits + Subterfuge vs. 6 dice Suggested Modifiers: Expensive Sacrifice (Resources •••+) +2 Roll Results Success: The Avernian Gate opens, creating the Un-derworld Gate Condition. Exceptional: The ritual’s interval becomes 30 minutes. Failure: The Avernian Gate does not open. Dramatic: The ritual is noticed by an unsympathetic is noticed by an unsympathetic party, living or dead.

Picking the L ock The more successful spectral locksmiths take a step back, into the realm of the symbolic. Through ritual, they encode all the things that accompany death — grief, tears, ceremony, and so on. Done properly, the Gate senses the semblance of mourning, and opens in response. Any ritual works for this, regardless of its origin or context — pouring out a 40 is just as good as a church service with incense and a priest — but it must have meaning. The grief must be honest, or at least honest enough to tap into the resonance of death and through it manipulate the Avernian Gate into opening.

Picking the Lock Requirement: Near an Avernian Gate Target: Avernian Gate Action: Instant; 30 minutes Dice Pool: Attribute + Occult; Attribute varies according to method of mourning Suggested Modifiers: Mourning an actual death: +3 Roll Results Success: The Avernian Gate opens, creating the Un-derworld Gate Condition. Exceptional: The ritual used to pick the lock becomes a new key for the Gate. Failure: The Avernian Gate does not open. Dramatic: The Gate will not open for any attempt to pick the lock for the rest of the story.

Pay the Toll Every ghost, whether she knows it or not, can reach into her pocket at any time and find two ancient, leaden coins inscribed with the profile of a woman of indeterminate age and ethnicity. If she doesn’t have pockets, that’s fine, too — the coins appear in a purse or pouch or just her loosely cupped hand. These coins are her toll to enter the lands of the dead, and can open any Avernian Gate — but only once, and only for the ghost herself.

Pay the Toll Requirement: Ghost only; touch the Avernian Gate; a given ghost may only pay the toll once in her existence. Target: Avernian Gate Action: Instant Result: The Gate opens, creating the Underworld Gate Condition.

Crossing Back The Upper Reaches lie. Tunnels slant ever downward, ever leading the dead deeper into the machine that flenses them for their Essence (unless they, in turn, flense others). Coming back isn’t easy. For most of the dead, it’s impossible — the Gate only swings one way. Reapers can always open an Avernian Gate, and pass through without difficulty — such, they say, is the blessing that comes of serving the Chthonic Gods. Others must make do as best they can.

A Different Key A gate’s key only works on the living side: ghosts who think to escape the Great Below with a bit of old doggerel about the world’s end are in for a rude surprise. But there are keys and there are Keys, and what’s a Key good for if not opening a locked door? A Different Key • Doom: The Bound, geists, and anyone else capable of unlocking a Key may suffer the Key’s Doom to open an Avernian Gate. They gain no further benefit from unlocking the Key.

Picking the Lock The dead and the living alike use another method to convince the Avernian Gates to grant them passage to the living world. Every Avernian Gate sits in a place marked by the same resonance that suffuses the Underworld, and the crafty can, with ritual and wild celebration, confuse the Gate for long enough that it treats the Underworld as the living world and vice versa. Picking the Lock • Mirror Ritual: As Picking the Lock (p. XX), but the ritual must be one of celebrating life rather than mourning death.

Crash the Gates When all else fails, sometimes excessive force succeeds. Destroying an Avernian Gate is difficult, but not impos- sible — especially for crafty Bound with access to high explosives and heavy-duty trucks. Crash the Gates • Durability and Structure: An Avernian Gate has exactly enough Structure and Durability that a pound or two of semtex can blow it up. Destroying the Gate opens it, creating the Underworld Gate Condition until the end of the story.

The Guardian Geist Every graveyard starts with a single burial. Every mortuary has its first tenant. Every battlefield has its first casualty. Death touches the world and the Avernian Gates rise where it does so — but so too do the guardian geists. For reasons no one quite understands, the first person interred in such a location inevitably rises as a Rank 3 ghost. The few who have witnessed the event report geysers of brackish water welling up from the soil, the geist clawing desperately for dry earth as it crawls from the body it can no longer call home. But though every Avernian Gate ought, according to this process, to have a geist bound to it, no few stand deserted. Perhaps their geists were consumed by one of the Bound, or else made the Bargain and no longer stand their cold, dark vigil. No one can be sure, just as no one s sure why the geist always precedes the Gate. Perhaps their presence is the foot in the door the Underworld needs to create a passage between itself and the world of the living. Perhaps it’s simply a byproduct of the effort, a reverse echo of an event yet to come imprinting the earliest traces of its hold on the ground it will stand on. The geists, their identities and memories washed away by the waters that birthed them, are silent on the matter, if indeed they ever knew to begin with.

Dead Roads First-time travelers are often nonplussed by what lies on the other side of an Avernian Gate — often, they wonder if the thing hasn’t just spat them back out somewhere else. It’s only when they follow the trickling streams of water downwards, and the tunnels or caverns become a patchwork of styles and eras, that they realize the truth. It’s usually around that time that first-timers also realize that they’re hopelessly lost. Those who know what they’re doing have several ways to navigate the Great Below. These methods rely on feel as much as knowledge — it’s not a question of marking or planning one’s way as it is of following one’s gut. Set paths through the Underworld do exist, but even these are best not relied upon — they tend to lead ever downward, and rarely safely. Usually content to wait, the Underworld sometimes grows impatient, and carves great gouges into itself. Sinkholes swallow up individuals, passageways, even entire River Cities. Sometimes the unfortunate targets survive, but often they do not, the only evidence of their existence the gaping maw of stone that replaces them. Navigation Basics • Legs: A journey in the Underworld is divided into legs, determined by the Storyteller. A leg is the time it takes to travel between two landmarks within the same layer, or the transition from one layer to another. • Navigation: Characters must navigate using one of the methods below for each leg. If a leg is interrupted for a scene or longer, a new navigation action must be attempted. • Cartographic Research: Identifying the correct legs to reach a destination is typically a Research action (p. XX). Architecture This method of navigation relies upon knowledge of architectural and engineering styles over a range of his-torical periods. The Upper Reaches usually mimic certain styles in each region, and being able to track those changes helps one find one’s way. Regrettably, this method is of less use the deeper one goes, as buildings and infrastructure from disparate eras, to say nothing of architecture no living society ever built, combine in bizarre ways. Navigating by Architecture Action: Reflexive Dice Pool: Intelligence + Academics Suggested Modifiers Upper Reaches: +1 River Cities: +0 Lower Mysteries: –5

Roll Results Success: The character navigates to her intended destination for this leg. Exceptional: The character is Informed (p. XX) about the area of the Underworld she is navigating. Failure: The character goes off trail and encounters a hazard or threat, but may backtrack if so desired. Dramatic: The character is Lost (p. XX). Society People are people, no matter where one goes. Their ways may differ, but they’re still people, and that com- monality is a compass the knowledgeable can steer by. Knowing the cultures in an area, and knowing other cultures, older cultures, and even how modern cultures existed in premodern times, gives one a rough map to steer by. Better yet, it lets one blend, lets one take ad- vantage of ancient rules of reciprocity — even in the Underworld, vicious and draining though it is, people are still people. Navigating by society may encompass any number of Skills, including Empathy (reading locals to pick up on their habits of travel), Persuasion (to offer payment for services rendered), Intimidation (to force them to guide the way), or Subterfuge (to trick them into it). Navigating by Society Requirement: Must move among the dead and speak with them. Action: Reflexive Dice Pool: Varies Suggested Modifiers Large Population Centers: +2 Sparsely Populated Area: –2 Deserted Wastes: –5 Roll Results Success: The character navigates to her intended destination for this leg. Exceptional: The character is Connected (p. XX) to the culture at her destination. Failure: The character goes off trail and encounters a hazard or threat, but may backtrack if so desired. Dramatic: The character becomes Notorious (p. XX) or Leveraged (p. XX).

Instinct Some people just know how to get around. Call it a good sense of direction, call it an internal compass — whatever it is, it works, even in the Underworld. For all its twisting and turning, for all its changing tunnels and caverns, the human mind can still work out some glimmer of understanding, if only subconsciously. This method is most often used by the dead themselves, who have spent so much time in the Underworld that they’ve grown accustomed to its ways, but the Bound may learn it as well. To someone with this talent, the objective is simple — just keep moving. Every moment wasted is a moment the Underworld has to change something. Physical Attributes are most likely to be important when Navigating by Instinct, as overcoming barriers and maintaining a steady pace are key. Athletics and Survival are the two most applicable Skills, though others may work at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Navigating by Instinct Action: Reflexive Dice Pool: Varies Suggested Modifiers First time in the Underworld: –5 Have spent days in the Underworld: –3 Have spent months in the Underworld: –1 Have spent years in the Underworld: +0 Have spent decades in the Underworld: +1 Have spent centuries in the Underworld: +2 Roll Results Success: The character navigates to her intended destination for this leg. Exceptional: The character is Steadfast (p. XX). Failure: The character goes off trail and encounters a hazard or threat, but may backtrack if so desired. Dramatic: The character is Lost (p. XX). Key The Bound have access to a fourth kind of navi- gation, unique to their condition: they can navigate through their Keys. Only innate Keys, or Keys in- herited through ectophagia, work for this method of navigation, as Keys bound up in Mementos provide too tenuous a connection to the relevant resonant deaths. With the Doomed Condition of an inherent Key active, the character can sense all resonant deaths in the Underworld. The first experience of this is often shocking and numbing, but with experience one learns to tune out the rushing flood of sensation and focus on specific signals. Navigating by Key Requirement: Doomed Condition of the relevant Key Subject: A ghost to be found, whose death resonates with the Key Special: The character does not need to know where the subject is or how to get there. Action: Reflexive Dice Pool: Key’s Unlock Attribute + Occult Suggested Modifiers Subject died an identical death to the seeker: +3

Roll Results Success: The character navigates toward the subject for this leg. Exceptional: The character resolves the Doomed Condition on arrival. Failure: The character goes off trail and encounters a hazard or threat, but may backtrack if so desired. Dramatic: The character is Lost (p. XX).

The Ever-Hungry Maw The first thing a new arrival in the Underworld feels as she picks herself up from the sopping floor is the absence of her Anchors. She no longer feels them tugging at her, brimming over with Essence to sustain her. She is without any form of support — each moment she is active drains her, slowly but surely. She feels herself wasting away, a gnawing and painful hunger growing in the memory of her stomach as the chill air numbs more and more of her skin. But nature abhors a vacuum, and the Essence that the dead lose is not lost, but taken, a tribute to the Underworld, a tax on one’s very existence. The Underworld, just like the dead, feeds. Needs Must: Survival in the Under- world The first rule of existence for the dead in the land of the living is simple: Stay close to your Anchors, lest the world rasp away your very being. In the Underworld, this is no longer the case — the dead move freely, needing only to spend a point of Essence every 24 hours to stay active. This is quite untenable in the long term, however, as even a very fortunate ghost has only enough Essence to survive for a week or two at the very most. Many go several days without learning the awful truth — to survive, they must consume the ghosts of things, beloved items laden with memory that they strip away in what remains of their stomachs. Finding a meal on one’s own in the Underworld is half wilderness survival and half antiquing. The streams of the Underworld carry memories ever downward, waiting to be fished out. Some ghosts construct makeshift traps to filter out debris, hoping to glean a meal from their harvest. Others take a more active role, something akin to spear fishing, hoping to pinion an item of value. Most can eke out a meager living doing this, but occasionally someone gets lucky, and a stockpile of Essence-laden goods is always a lucrative target. Underworld Survival Action: Basic, instant; a few hours Dice Pool: Wits + Survival Roll Results Success: The character finds something from which she can strip a single point of Essence. Exceptional: The character fishes up a cornucopia of phantasms worth 5 Essence. Failure: The character doesn’t catch anything. Dra- matic: The character caught something, but it sure isn’t food, or particularly safe for that matter.

Eating the Pomegranate The living can find things to eat in the Underworld, be it weird fungi in the tunnels of the Upper Reaches or a luxuriant meal of Barghest Essence cooked up in one of the River Cities. While it may seem filling and possibly even flavorful, none of it will sustain a living body. To dine on the fare of the Underworld is to dine on ash without realizing it, the first hint of the hunger is not an ache in the belly but a lightness in the head. Some starve to death without ever realizing why, only to wake up experiencing an entirely new kind of hunger. The Bound don’t have this problem. The world recognizes them as dead, and the food of the dead nourishes them even as it fills them with Plasm. The problem isn’t so much finding food as it is finding ghosts willing to share.

Don’t Starve For ghosts, to starve in the world of the living is simple enough — wander far enough from your Anchor, and the biting winds begin to tear at you, hollowing you out inside. If the dead go long enough without Essence, they slip into a kind of torpor, somnolent until revived. Those trapped in the Underworld are not so fortunate. True, the bleeding is staunched, no longer arterial, but it continues none- theless, and the consequences of starvation are far direr. Without Essence to keep it sated, the Underworld feeds directly. The walls close in, pulling at one’s heels, rock flowing like sticky, impregnable molasses, trapping the dead and slowly digesting them. Their features slowly wear away over the next few days, outstretched limbs vanishing beneath the surface — the face, twisted in agony and terror, is always the last to go. Starving • Essence Leeching: Spend 1 Essence: remain safe for 24 hours. • Trapped in the Walls: Ghosts without Essence to expend are pulled into the walls, floor, or ceiling of the Underworld. • Integrity Leeching: Ghosts who are Trapped in the Walls lose one Integrity every 24 hours. • Last Chance: Spend 3 Essence: Restore 1 Integrity to a ghost Trapped in the Walls. • The End: When a ghost Trapped in the Walls reaches Integrity 0, she is gone forever. Dark Markets At the furthest edges of the Upper Reaches, where trickling streams from the Avernian Gates merge to form the mighty Rivers of the Underworld, the dead harvest the forgotten debris of 1,000 cultures to sustain a mean existence. Clinging to what passes for life here, the dead are exploited by the powerful and hunted by the Reapers, the “fortunate” merely paying tribute for protection. Here, the only sustenance is memory, consumed whole or in part, and if the people who dwell here can no longer kill for it, they consent to do the next best thing. The River Cities are the cosmopolitan centers of the Underworld, where fleets of jury-rigged fishing boats drag wide nets behind them, tempting fate and Chtho- nians to feed those who remain on shore. Despite being trapped on the wrong side of death and left destitute in the process, they are nonetheless free from the Old Laws and the Kerberoi who enforce them. This means that virtually anything to be found in the Underworld can be had — if one knows where to look and can afford the (often exorbitant) price. There’s always someone who knows how to lay hands on highly desired items, and if she can play her cards right, she can amass a surprising amount of power and influence in these makeshift communities. Eventually they grow to become hidden commercial titans moving behind the scenes, staying under the radar until they are too indispensable to the local economy to be casually threatened by Reapers. With their own hired toughs at hand, such ghosts often become an approximation of order, but even they are ultimately self-interested. To them, “order” almost always means “got mine, fuck you.” Among the dead, these merchant kings live the high life. Their meals taste almost like real food, the nourishing phantasms palatable (and artfully concealed); their hovels are sturdy, built of the most stable detritus to wash down the Rivers. The difference between their longings and the longings of the masses who squat in hovels only feet away is that with wealth and power come opportunity. As long as they don’t overreach, the Reapers leave them and theirs be, and they almost always have something in their collection to entice Bound who pay a visit into service. Down here, such connections might as well be a hotline to God. Deeper in the Underworld, among the Dominions of the Lower Mysteries, similar figures exist. The difference is the degree of power they hold, for they are ever con- strained by the Old Laws, and travel between Dominions is rarer than between the River Cities. Even in the most miserable of Dominions, however, the clever can eke out a living far in excess of their fellows’ quality of life, and if they don’t have the immediate power of their peers above, neither do they live with the same threat of privation.

Let the Buyer Beware The most powerful and lucrative items to be found in the Underworld end up in the hands of River City merchant kings, or in the hands of someone desperately trying to sell to them without being taken completely for a ride. In either case, Bound or others hoping to acquire the item in question find themselves embroiled in a game of cutthroat capitalism that regularly descends to the level of outright banditry.

The Autochthonous Jungle The Upper Reaches and the River Cities can be ex- ceptionally dangerous places, and being better off than virtually everyone around does make one a rather obvious target. Driven by their survival instincts, many ghosts descend to a level of amorality they would have thought quite impossible when they were alive (some, of course, were just as terrible alive as they are dead). Theft and violence are commonplace, and only a fool ventures out alone. The Bound are used to a certain degree of respect from the dead (if only because they tend to be dangerous), but desperation is the mother of action, and more than one Bound has been attacked by a hunger-crazed ghost. Frequent visitors learn not to underestimate the dead. More dangerous, though, is the organized violence one finds in the shallowest reaches of the Underworld. Here, might makes right. This might mean relative stability, or it might be nothing more than a protection racket. When it’s at its worst, the gangs might as well be Reapers. Sometimes, they are. The more enterprising gangs see opportunity when the Bound visit the Underworld, and do whatever they can to ingratiate themselves — eventually, to trap the Bound in a cycle of debt and repayment, favors leading to favors that further the interests of the gang far more than they do the Bound. Such gangs have, after all, had a long time to practice.

Politics of Passing New or naive Bound step through the Avernian Gate or the first time and see the wounds of their death spring into existence upon them — they are, after all, dead, even if their bodies have long since healed in the world of the living. They take in the dripping stab wound in their side, the wet cough, the itchy bullet hole seeping blood and gray matter from the back of their skull, and think they can pass themselves off as any other ghost. They’re wrong, of course, because their liminal aura exists. The Bound are obvious to the dead, especially in the Underworld, and especially when they’ve come on krewe business. Even the newest and rawest of the Bound, even Bound who know to consciously dampen the strange energies that course through them, all but bleed life into their surroundings in the Underworld, making them as unmistakable to the dead as they are uncanny to the liv- ing. The Bound stands out as a living, breathing anchor to the world they have all lost, drawing the desperate to flock to her side. As one might imagine, this makes getting around difficult in the River Cities, where population density and material need combine to form a powder keg just waiting for a spark. The dead have three common reactions to one of the Bound showing up. The first case is alluded to above, and is common in less organized River Cities: mass hysteria, grasping, pulling, begging, pleading. The mass of the dead is unlikely to listen to reason, and such a situation might well become dangerous if not handled well. The second case, more common in cities marked by the presence of a single strong gang, resembles the first case initially, but quickly becomes an exercise in the gang sequestering the visitors, either to be ushered into an audience with the boss or quietly disposed of — some dead tyrants only grow more paranoid with age, after all. And the third case? The Bound arrives in a River City only to be greeted with nonchalant surprise. They stand out, to be sure, but only a few come to bother her, and these receive looks of pity or even disgust from those around them, who go about their business — perhaps trying to sell the Bound something. Familiarity, as ever, breeds contempt, or at least disinterest, for the third case is that of a River City whose master, too, is one of the Bound, or perhaps a Sin-Eater

The Rivers Water ever trickles from the Avernian Gates, rising to a torrent when the Gate is opened. These trickles become streams one might jump over, then grow wide enough that crossing is a choice between getting one’s feet wet and finding a bridge. In the River Cities, it flows through channels, pours over cliffs in little waterfalls, serving to quench the thirst of the dead (or else as their common sewer). But in time, these streams grow wider, deeper, until they can no longer truly be called streams; their waters take on a strange pallor, boil with hidden flame, or run so cold they freeze over. The Cocytus. The Eresh-ki-gala. The Anahita. The Phlegethon. These and many others are the Rivers of the Dead.

Dead Waters It’s hard to say exactly where the waters of the Upper Reaches become the Rivers, but the dead can tell the difference. While the streams bring life — or at least a prolongation of death — the Rivers bring disso- lution. The waters of the Rivers are anathema to the dead… anathema, but also power, for those brave enough to drink from them. The Rivers • Submersion: A ghost fully immersed in a River suffers 1 lethal damage per turn. • Imbibing: Drinking from a River inflicts 1 aggravated wound per turn for (10 – Integrity) turns, but also increases a ghost’s Rank by 1. The Ferryman’s Bond: Travel on the Rivers Few dare to swim the Rivers of the Under- world, fewer still to dive into their depths, but throughout the land of the dead curious figures ply their trade upon them: the Ferrymen. Non- descript to a fault, seemingly washed of any trait but their duty, they have little identity outside that of the task to which they are sworn: to carry passengers across or down the Rivers, but never to do so without cost. Payment must be made, for it is the payment itself that renders travel safe. Ferrymen have an unerring sense of where they are in the Underworld relative to their passengers’ destination, and deliver them there without fail — though, requesting that a Ferryman put to shore (if, for example, something there has caught the passengers attention) ends the journey early. If the former passengers wish to contract the Ferryman again, it requires a second round of payment. Sailing the Tides of the Dead The dead have little recourse but to make payment, but the Bound who venture into the Underworld have another option — become the Ferryman themselves. For reasons unknown, any Bound may assume the role of Ferryman, and thus, for payment, guide her fellows on the Rivers. All one needs is a vessel that floats and a pole (or engine, or sail) by which to steer it. Any method of navigating the Underworld works while sailing the Rivers, but the same rules apply — putting to shore ends the journey. Bound serving as Ferrymen gain an additional sense, one for the entropic resonance of a Do- minion. Dominions do not endure forever, after all, and when they fall they sink ever deeper into the Underworld, perhaps to be swallowed by the Ocean of Fragments. Bound Ferrymen — perhaps all Ferrymen — can intuitively feel when the center cannot hold, when the demand for resources exceeds the supply, even those rarest of moments when the Old Laws crumble and the Kerberoi are no more. More than one Sin-Eater philosopher holds that this is the ultimate purpose of the Ferrymen, to shepherd the dangerous and ambitious to destinations that facilitate the collapse of anything that might grow powerful enough to threaten the Chthonic Gods. Becoming a Ferryman • Vessel and Oath: A Bound who has a vessel fit to sail the Rivers and swears an oath to convey his passengers safely to their destination for a fair price gains the Ferry Bound Condition.

More Things in Heaven and Earth Humans have rubbed shoulders with the beasts of land and air for a long, long time, and we know more or less what to expect from them. Not so for the creatures that dwell (or dwelled of old) in the deeps, where we have scarcely begun to explore. The living world has biodiversity enough to astonish even the most stoic observer, and the Underworld has been reaping the memory of that biodiversity for untold ages. In the Rivers of the Underworld one may find Chthonians mimicking plesiosaurs or ambulocetids. Without respect to pressure or light, deep-sea life lines even the shal- lows; the Phlegethon, for example, is known for its black smokers and the sort of strange creatures that cluster around them. In short, Storytellers should not feel in any way limited when designing marine dangers for their players to encounter in the Underworld. We promise that no matter what you come up with, oceanic evolution has almost certainly outdone you for weirdness at some point in Earth’s long history.

What L ies Beneath Hidden in the dark depths of the Underworld’s Rivers, Chthonian beasts that have never touched the land swim hungrily, their rotting flesh and scales drifting in their wake. One may see them, breaching here, spyhopping there, their dead eyes staring, even from a ship protected by a Ferryman’s charge. When an unprotected vessel passes carelessly by, though, such Chthonians often strike, dragging the inhabitants under, drinking down the Es- sence of their dissolving prey to slake their eternal thirst. Nearer to the great Dominions and the River Cities, fishing boats take to the Rivers, armed with Banes and nets woven from the roots of Underworld vines. The flesh of Chthonian fish does not nourish the dead, but it can hide the taste of Mementos, making the dead feel almost as though they haven’t been reduced to their current state. That many fisherfolk are lost to half-glimpsed pelagic night- mares seldom troubles the elites who dine on their catch. These Chthonian mockeries may resemble sea life in the living world, but the price for being proof against the Rivers’ dissolving touch is an endless drive to consume, to grow. Anemones cling to skin, desperate to strip what they can; crabs march on the shore en masse, pincers clicking; and marlins prowl the waves like wolves, waiting to pick off the unwary even from aboard ship.

Staying Silent Action: Basic, instant; duration of the voyage Dice Pool: Composure + Stealth Suggested Modifiers Hushed Conversation: –1 Normal Conversation: –2 Shouting: –3 Roll Results Success: The character does not attract the attention of a Chthonian. Exceptional: The character gains insight into the nature of the River she sails. Ask the Storyteller a single question about it — the Storyteller will answer truthfully. Failure: The character attracts the attention of a Ch- thonian and is in imminent danger. Dramatic: The Chthonian’s attack is the first hint of its presence. Houses of the Dead The Rivers are the keys to the Dominions, flowing throughout the Underworld on their way to the Ocean of Fragments. The geography may shift over time, confluenc- es drying up and new ones being born, entire Dominions crumbling to dust, but one can always find a way to the Dominion one seeks. Here, where the Old Laws hold sway, the dead have some respite — but only some. The Aegis of the Old L aws Sheltered behind the strange walls of Dominions, ruled by the dead of centuries long past and ever watched over by the terrifying Kerberoi, the dead are no longer forcefully stripped of their Essence as they are above. Instead, they are victimized in other ways, perhaps more recognizable to the living. Few Dominions are kind to their inhabitants, using them for labor in bizarre engines, drafting them into armies of the dead for wars against other Dominions, or even peeling them apart for the very energies and substance of their Corpus. Desperation drives many to the shores of the Dominions, where Gatekeepers greet them and inform them of the Old Laws. The wise keep those laws, even in the face of wickedness, pain, and even destruction, because what the Kerberoi do to those who violate them is almost always worse. The best advice one can follow if one wishes to keep the Kerberoi out of one’s business is simply, “don’t break the Old Laws.” Many krewes and Bound take this one step further and steer well clear of the Dominions, never venturing that deep into the Underworld out of a desire to avoid the Kerberoi altogether. Yet, the Dominions hold possibilities in too lucrative to ignore, reasons to descend to those depths despite the dangers. Sooner or later, unless one is exceptionally careful, a line is crossed. The Kerberoi are ancient and powerful, as incomprehensible in thought as they are predictable in action. They cannot be bargained or reasoned with, and can only be stopped with great difficulty and more than a little luck. Dominions • Essence: Ghosts who spend 24 hours in a Dominion gain 1 Essence. • Oathbreakers: Characters who violate the Old Laws gain the Defiant Condition.

“What happens if a Kerberos breaks its own Old Laws?” It won’t. That is to say, it never chooses to and it can’t be made to with force, guile, persuasion, or any other means available to the Bound. Still, it might be possible to create, with a truly stupendous amount of preparation and a potentially inhuman degree of understanding of a given Kerberos’s modus operandi and its Old Laws, to create a paradox situation — a choice wherein all possible options result in the violation of an Old Law. No one has ever, to modern Sin-Eater knowledge, managed to do such a thing, and no one has any idea what would happen if someone did. It is, however, probably safe to say that the answer is “Bad Things.”

Irkalla’s Gates Rare but well attested are Irkalla’s Gates, so named for their resemblance to the one-way passage to the Sumerian afterlife. These gates often serve as the entrance to a Dominion; though some lie defunct and seemingly grant passage to nowhere. More than one River City has sprung up around such Irkalla Gates, relying on them for a measure of security and isolation. The dead dread these gates, for when they enter them, they often cannot pass back through them. Each gate exacts a unique toll on those who pass — one’s left arm, one’s voice, and so on. Some demand seemingly innocuous things, like a particular item of clothing, but when paid, the true cost becomes clear, as any replacement rots away in moments. Those without appropriate payment to offer cannot pass — and thus, one who has paid the toll generally cannot pay it again without some form of trickery. Some, of course, will be unable to pass at all to begin with. Each Irkalla Gate has a guardian, armored and armed in varying styles, who demands payment from all who pass. Like Ferrymen, guardians of Irkalla’s Gates have little in the way of personality, and while they can be tricked, they are unmoved by pleas, bribery, or other forms of influence. The guardian is always the one who takes the payment. One guardian simply devours a newly acquired severed hand, while another takes the hand and nails it to the gate (its surface already likely hidden beneath successive layers of previous tolls paid in full). Once the toll is paid, the guardian opens the gate. If it is possible to force an Irkalla Gate open, no one has ever been known to do so. Two exceptions stand to the toll: geists and Reapers. Touched by the Underworld’s Rivers, geists have already given up so much of themselves that Irkalla’s Gates know them not, and so demand nothing of them — indeed, many guardians will not even acknowledge their presence — a trait that carries over to their Bound companions. Reapers, of course, pass without payment by dint of their service to the Underworld, and some have grown rich by acting as coyotes, passing through Irkalla’s Gates with a belly full of passengers to be vomited up on the other side.

Irkalla’s Gates • The Guardian: The gate guardian is a Rank 3-5 ghost. If destroyed, it reappears at the gate instead of the nearest River. • The Price: The price to pass through an Irkalla Gate often takes the form of a Persistent Condition, Tilt, or Essence payment.

The Undiscovered Country For all its dangers, for all its wickedness, violence, and exploitation, the Underworld holds many treasures, for those who know to seek them. Every aspect of humanity can be found there, from ancient cities to unfinished novels with their missing chapters intact. Some krewes do nothing more than dredge the depths for the forgotten lore of humanity, sifting the ashes of history for lost gems of wisdom that they spirit away to reintroduce to the living world. Others are more mercenary — knowledge is power, after all, and they mean to have the knowledge to themselves. Hindsight is 20/20 Everybody dies. Almost everybody leaves a ghost be- hind. What, then, of every genius that death has taken too young, or who never had the chance to demonstrate their capacities? Are they any less geniuses for no longer being among the living? The Underworld is littered with brilliance, if one can find it among the suffering — the answer to almost any question, the solution to almost any problem. If it’s beyond any given Sin-Eater, it’s not beyond someone she can find in the Underworld. But the Underworld is a cruel place, and many of the best and brightest are lost to Essence starvation, pulled into the walls and consumed. Seeking answers in the Underworld is often a rescue mission, pure and simple, if finding a needle in a haystack can be called simple. There are ways of making such a Sisyphean task possi- ble, however. The dead trapped in the Underworld may no longer have Anchors, but things that belonged to them still carry a shred of their individual resonance, which can be amplified to create ritual sympathy with the dead individual in question. Using such an item as a compass, it becomes possible to find a single ghost in the teeming masses of the Underworld. Getting them out, of course, and keeping them from being rasped apart by the living world, is another matter entirely.

Ghost Tracking Action: Contested extended; five successes; one day interval Dice Pool: Wits + Investigation or Empathy vs. (10– ghost’s Integrity)

Suggested Modifiers Tracker has no tie to target: –3 Tracker has object owned by target: –1 Tracker has important object owned by target: +1 Tracker has target’s Anchor: +3 Subject’s Rank –1 for every Rank above 2 Subject died recently (less than a week): +2 Subject dead for weeks: +0 Subject dead for months: –2 Subject dead for years: –4 Subject dead for a decade or more: –5 Subject is in the Autochthonous Depths/River Cities: +2 Subject is on or near a River: –2 Subject is in a Dominion: –3 Subject is near or on the Sea of Shards: –5 Tracker uses Oracle Haunt: +2 Tracker personally knows subject :+1

Roll Results Success: The character finds her quarry. Exceptional: The character gains the Inspired Condi- tion (Chronicles of Darkness, p. 289), applicable to any rolls relating to her quarry. Failure: The character suffers the Obsessed Condition (Chronicles of Darkness, p. 290). Dramatic: A serious roadblock jeopardizes the search and must be dealt with before the search can resume.

Uncanny Tableaux The physical reality of the Underworld is only one dimension of its power over the dead. Along the Rivers, here and there, cloaked in the mist along the shore, scenes torn from myth and memory play out. But these are not individual ghosts — rather, they are the dead stories that bind disparate lives connected by circumstance, stories that echo again and again throughout history and culture. Sons who unknowingly murder their fathers, fathers who devour their own progeny (literally or otherwise), proph- ets whose foresight went unheeded; all these and more can be seen from the ferries that ply the Rivers, rendered in twisted and tortuous metaphor. Some Sin-Eaters believe that these stories are the true underpinnings of the Underworld, the very concept that death should be a punishment animated in spectral flesh and blood, bound to the shores of the Rivers and con- demned to endlessly play out scenes from myth they never lived. And perhaps they are right, for the truth about these tableaux is even more curious than their very existence: they can move on. Doing so is a task no less legendary than the stories that spawned these tableaux in the first place but it has happened before and nothing, save inaction, stops it happening again. Part of the reason such an undertaking is so rare is that these tableaux’s unfinished business is bound up in the unfinished business of countless others. The Underworld feeds on their resonance as stories play out again and again in myriad lives, carving a deep groove into the collective death of humanity that is reinforced every time a death echoes the story. Breaking the cycle requires conscious effort and no small amount of risk. It’s not enough to simply interfere with the scene — to take the killer’s knife or hurl the poisoned gauntlet to the ground — that just disperses the tableau to reform elsewhere in the Underworld. Like most things involving the Underworld, you need a key. Specifically, you need a symbol of the cycle broken: a Memento from a ghost who has moved on, a keepsake of a tragic death averted. Whatever it is, it has to come from a death that resonates with the tableau. Lives or deaths that resonate with aspects of a specific myth or reflect archetypal deaths need not be confined to the Underworld, or even dead, but the living must be in some way marked for death —on death row, fighting terminal cancer, living under a death curse; prosaic or supernatural, a death mark is a death mark. In the case of the dead, the Sin-Eater must aid them in moving on, whatever that requires. For the living, the situation is slightly more complicated. The Sin-Eater might work to change the circumstances of her death, or effect changes in her life that prevent the death in the first place — what matters is that the resonance feeding into the tableau is dispelled. The former Anchors and Mementos the dead leave be- hind — or, in the case of the living, keepsakes or trophies — are bound up in the act of liberation, rather than in the Essence of the tableau. By wearing or otherwise holding these objects, Sin-Eaters may ritually insert themselves into the tableau in question, ephemeral actors vanishing as their roles are taken. All that remains then is to go off script, and see the scene to its end.

Break the Cycle Requirement: A number of characters bearing ap- propriate objects equal to the number of key roles in the tableau; all players participating must succeed at least once to successfully liberate the tableau. Action: Basic, instant Dice Pool: Synergy + Attribute (Storyteller chooses the most appropriate Attribute based on the role being played) Suggested Modifiers The character’s death resonates with the role she plays: +2 Roll Results Success: The Underworld’s grip on the tableau slips. If all other players have succeeded at least once, the tableau moves on and the krewe takes a Krewe Beat. Exceptional: The tableau is shaken by the character’s defiance. The next Break the Cycle action (whoever takes it) receives a +3 modifier. Failure: The tableau reasserts its narrative, and the actor is compelled to act out their role — possibly leading to damage, crisis points, or worse. Dramatic: The character suffers the Insensate Tilt (Chronicles of Darkness, p. 285) as the tableau drags her into its narrative. The results are immediate and nothing short of aston- ishing. Freed from the bounds of so many resonant deaths, the tableau slips its chains and sublimates into pure Essence that trickles out into the Underworld, creating for a brief time a flourishing dead ecosystem of ghostly flora, an Eden where hellish scenes of torture once stood.

Finding Haunts The power of Haunts comes from the Underworld, ultimately, and so the Bound must descend to the Underworld to learn new ones. Simple enough, but what to look for? What moment or item should unlock that power? The answer is: whatever works for the story. If your player is in the process of tracking down the Reaper that abducted the Krewe’s seer, consider making her first dot of Oracle contingent on finding the creature and rescuing the seer in proper Orphean style. If your player has Experiences falling out of her pockets, her Sin-Eater just helped a ghost move on from the Underworld, and she really wants to buy the first dot of Caul? Go for it. Epiphanies can be found in the most prosaic of things as well as the momentous, after all, and the most valuable wisdom is often not what we set out to find.

Ylem Perhaps the strangest things to be found in the Un- derworld are the ylems, vortices of Essence and emotion found in and below the deepest Dominions, and even on the shores of the Ocean of Fragments. Similar to Memen- tos but seemingly indestructible, some of the dead claim they’re nothing more than fonts of Essence — wars have been started over the possession of an ylem — but the true value of the ylem is what is contained within. An ylem can take any shape, but is always something that can be held in the palm of one’s hand. Rumors tell of ylem that appear as twisting, shivering gobbets of flesh, or of carved bones that continuously bleed black ink. It may be a prosaic object as well, but its unusual nature always shines through — figures in the Polaroid photo move when one looks away; the cracked chalice fills with blood regardless of what liquid is poured into it. Few have ever seen an ylem, and fewer still have touched one, so rumor is much of what drives Sin-Eaters to search for them — for it is said that the ylem contain the condensed hope of those who came before, and perhaps the seed of stillborn potential.

With focus, a Sin-Eater can connect with the heart of the ylem, sending them into a trance where they experi- ence vivid waking dreams of other lives. Their subjective sense of time is wildly distorted, and what seems like days or weeks, or even months or years, passes by in just a few moments in reality. Waking from the trance, they remember few details, but the weight of what they expe- rienced will never entirely leave them. These visions may be evoked more than once, and more than one Sin-Eater may participate in an individual trance. An ylem trance is reflected with a Condition, crafted by the Storyteller, that represents the crux of what was left behind, the resolution of which grants a Krewe Beat. The vision ends either when the people the characters are inhabiting “die,” or when the heart of the mystery is understood or solved — if the latter, the Condition is fully resolved, and the ylem dissolves into pure Essence. Ylem carry within them the encysted hopes and dreams of Sin-Eaters past, thus making them an excellent source of occult knowledge and power, and resolved ylem may serve as the core of Krewe Regalia. Care should be taken when accepting the Esotery of another krewe into one’s own mythology, however. Ylem contain more than memories, after all — some believe that the ylem are the conjoined shades of geist and Bound, or possibly a mélange of an entire krewe. A universal truth lies at the heart of every ylem: The krewe responsible for its creation failed in its chosen task. Perhaps it was through no fault of its own, or perhaps theit was misguid- ed in its Doctrine — it’s impossible to know. Either way, it’s a radical act to accept something of another krewe so utterly. Depending on what is adopted, doing so may represent redefining or breaking Doctrine (p.XX). As Below, So Above Many believe that the Dominions are held together by their Old Laws, and that the Kerberoi are the expres- sion of those laws. Without the Old Laws, without the Kerberoi, would the Dominions slide into the Ocean of Fragments? Is that what happens when Dominions fall? These questions and others like them have puzzled Sin-Eater philosophers since the beginning of modern Sin-Eater culture (and probably long before), and answers are few and far between. The Old Laws certainly seem, however, to be something artificial, something grafted onto the Underworld in the name of false stability rather than a natural feature of the place. Certainly, havens from the constant, draining hunger the Underworld inflicts would seem to be at cross-purposes with it. If the Old Laws are artificial, that means someone or something made them, which means someone should be able to unmake them. Some krewes, the desperate, the brave, the reckless, the zealous, go one step further, and seek to make the Old Laws (and the Dominion they support) their own.

Suborning a Dominion Suborning a Dominion requires only that the krewe locate a Dominion with an Old Law that shares at least some similarity with one of their Doctrines (or, if they wish, krewe members can change one of their Doctrines to match the desired Dominion). Using this point of correspondence as the thin end of the wedge, the krewe slowly inculcates itself into the body politic, requiring a full story dedicated to the effort. At appropriately climac- tic moments when the balance of power in the Dominion shifts — the downfall of a wicked tyrant, the gathering of a massive throng of the dead outside the halls of power, and so on — the Storyteller should call for a Taking Control action to replace an Old Law with a New Law. The first New Law is always the one corresponding to the Old Law used to begin the process of suborning the Dominion. When all Old Laws have been replaced with New Laws or erased, the Kerberos of the Dominion finally lies down and, for lack of a better word, dies, its Corpus slowly absorbed into the substance of the Dominion. The Sin-Eaters of the krewe feel this happen regardless of where they are at the time, for they are now bound through their Doctrines to uphold the New Laws of their Dominion. They are not compelled, as the Kerberos was, to stand an endless vigil, but violations of Doctrine now have sympathetic effects throughout the Dominion, and if they do not enforce their Doctrines, the damage to the Dominion will become quickly apparent. If the Sin-Eaters themselves should violate Doctrine, the sym- pathetic effect strikes them instead — not just one, but all Sin-Eaters bound to the Dominion — and Storytellers are encouraged to get creative with appropriate persistent Conditions and Tilts. Taking Control Requirement: Doctrine with similarity to Dominion’s Old Law Action: Contested, instant Dice Pool: Esotery + appropriate Krewe Attribute vs. Kerberos’ Resistance + Rank Roll Results Success: The targeted Old Law is erased, and replaced with a New Law corresponding to one of the Krewe’s Doctrines. Exceptional: All krewe members gain the Connected Condition (p. XX) for the targeted Dominion. Failure: The Old Law remains in force. Dramatic: The Kerberoi treats the krewe’s effort as a violation of the targeted Old Law.

The Ocean of Fragments When the Rivers have run past the last and deepest of the ancient Dominions, when their banks dwindle out until they cease to be, then the dead and the Bound know they have come to the end of all things — the Ocean of Fragments that swallows memory and identity. The black waters of this ocean hold uncountable secrets, the flensed memories of every being to suffer its touch. Some cling to the shores, casting lines and nets, to fish up bits of what used to be people. The courageous (or foolhardy) sail it, and inevitably meet the Admiral. System • Waters of Oblivion: Every turn, a character immersed in the waters of the Ocean of Fragments loses a dot in a single Trait. Merits go first, followed by Abilities, then Willpower, then Attributes. If the character has any supernatural powers or Traits, these are lost as Merits. • Sanctity of Traits: Player characters affected by the Ocean of Fragments receive refunded Experiences for lost Traits. • End of Everything: When every Trait is lost, the character ceases to exist. Navigating the Final Frontier The Ocean of Fragments is wide and vast, the con- fluence of all Rivers, the foundation of the Underworld itself. It follows, therefore, that the Ocean that ends all things touches on those things as well, and the brave or desperate can sail from one shore to another, risking Le- viathan’s wrath and the Admiral’s curiosity. Without the benefit of the stars, sailors here must rely on the lights of the deepest Dominions, those hanging precariously above their own oblivion in the roof of this incomprehensibly vast cavern. There is little else on this featureless expanse to mark one’s way.

Navigating the Ocean of Fragments Action: Basic Instant; one voyage Dice Pool: Resolve + Occult Suggested Modifiers Has never sailed the Ocean of Fragments before: –5 Has sailed the Ocean of Fragments before : –3 Has visited one or more Dominions bordering on the Ocean: –1 Roll Results Success: The character navigates to her destination. Exceptional: The voyage takes a disturbingly short length of time. Failure: The character is Lost (Chronicles of Dark- ness, p. 289). Dramatic: The character encounters the Leviathan or the Admiral. Pick one; neither is feeling charitable.