Shadowdweller Underground City

The Shadowdweller Underground City is a vast subterranean settlement beneath the mountainous Alaskan wilderness, where absolute darkness shelters its inhabitants from daylight. Its depth offers protection, but does not erase the rhythms of life shaped by light, seasons, and the dangers of travel beyond the city.

Setting and Rhythms

At noon, daylight burns across the wilderness above the city, but not even the smallest refraction penetrates the blackness below. That darkness is described as soothing as well as protective: the Shadowdwellers sleep through the daytime, following an instinct to rest in response to light even though they live miles beneath the surface. Their seasonal pattern also persists underground. When the seasons turn, they instinctively migrate in search of the longest, darkest nights.

Travel Beyond the City

The city’s isolation makes travel aboveground a potentially dangerous undertaking for Shadowdwellers. The Shadowscape provides an alternative: by Fading into this parallel dimension, a traveler can move under moonlight, the only light that does not hurt them. That refuge has a strict limit, however. After a maximum of two days, its ideal conditions can become overwhelming, producing euphoria that may prevent a traveler from recognizing the danger and lead to the destruction of their mind. The route that makes travel safe from sunlight therefore carries its own severe risk if used too long.

Law, Institutions, and Threats

Authority in the city is divided between the royal household and Sanctuary, its religious house and education center. Sanctuary and religious law operate independently of royal government and common law, so neither side alone holds power over the city’s people; control of both would be necessary to command them all. The independence of these systems gives the city more than one center of power, and makes the religious institution a consequential political target.

The city’s former assassin clans have been dissolved, and killing another Shadowdweller without provable and imperative cause is a high crime under a law created by Trace. Those who did not reform have instead become secret guilds, some with scruples and some without. The city is home to most of these groups, though some operate elsewhere. Nicoya’s coup attempt at Sanctuary brought this illicit network into focus: she hired assassins to hunt Trace’s wife, Ashla, and their future child. The threatened family thus links the city’s criminal remnants to the dangers beyond its underground refuge.