On Loria Broadly:
The Underroot
Beneath Loria runs the Underroot — a continent within a continent, carved not by stone alone but by living root and flowing mycelium. It is the secret body of the world, vast enough to swallow kingdoms, alive enough to resist being mapped, and strange enough to unsettle even those who make their lives in shadow.
Depths Without Measure
The Underroot stretches deeper than any explorer has returned to chart. Its upper levels are a weave of caverns and veins, roots thicker than bridges twisting through stone. Deeper still, those roots hollow, forming natural tunnels vast enough to walk within. Some stretch like causeways for miles, spiraling into chambers so wide they feel like cathedrals.
But travel is never safe. Fluids course along the walls — sticky saps, black resins, pale streams of fungal ichor — some nourishing, some corrosive, some alive in their own right. Parasites cling to the flow, waiting to seize on warmth or light. Predators move where they will, silent as the roots themselves, blind yet unerring in their pursuit.
Ecology and Atmosphere
The Underroot is dark. Torches and lanterns are carried by necessity, their flames bending strangely with the drafts. Only in patches does the place glow — colonies of pale fungi, clusters of translucent insects, veins of bioluminescent ooze pulsing faintly along the walls.
Sound carries differently here. The air hums, not only with echoes but with a deep vibration in the roots themselves. The farther one descends, the louder this humming grows, until it becomes not just heard but felt in the ribs and teeth, a constant pulse like the heartbeat of something greater.
The Hidden Core
Few dare speak it aloud, but among scholars there is a theory too consistent to ignore: at Loria’s center lies not endless stone, but a heart.
They say the very core of the continent is solid iron — an anchor older than gods. Around it flows the Source, the raw current of energy that the Houses name and harvest as the Myrrhn. It burns hotter than fire, yet it is not fire. It pulses like molten blood, carried outward through the colossal roots and membranes of the Underroot.
This is why the mycelial threads hum. This is why some roots bleed crystals bright as stars when cut. The world itself is alive with condensed power, channeled and hidden beneath the land we walk.
Cultural Views
The Underroot is described in many ways:
- Farmers treat it as breath — it feeds their soil, but also starves it.
- Scholars treat it as text — a pattern, a code, too vast to decipher.
- Priests treat it as proof — the body of a god that never died.
- Miners treat it as curse — tunnels collapse, pickaxes bend, roots regrow where none should.
Every voice, however, agrees on this: the deeper you go, the less the rules hold.
Strategic Importance
The great Houses covet what bleeds from the Underroot. Resin that hardens into crystals capable of storing impossible energy; spores that alter perception; threads of living fiber stronger than forged steel. Each promises power enough to sway wars or crowns.
But harvesting is perilous. Roots regrow, collapses bury entire ventures, and those who return often bring sickness in their lungs or whispers in their heads. A few speak of glowing membranes stretched like drums around chambers near the core, pulsing with every heartbeat of the Source — too bright to look at, too loud to approach.
If these accounts are true, then the greatest artifacts of Loria are not forged by men, but stolen from the veins of the world itself.
Philosophy of Place
The Underroot is not simply beneath the land. It is the land turned inside out. A body, a mind, a secret pulse.
It is older than the Houses, older than the gods, older even than the Labyrinth. To walk there is to trespass in the living dark, where the walls themselves breathe and the silence is only waiting.
The Underroot remembers, and its memory hums beneath every step of Loria.
