Underlake

It was Malamay who created the Underlake, a vast subterranean lake beneath the earth. The deepest parts of the lake almost touched on the Abyss below, and the first inhabitants were demons and devils who slipped through the cracks.

Over the years men and elves and other creatures found their way to the shores of the lake: they mixed with the creatures of the Abyss and also with the Arnde, the dark angels sent to teach magic to mortals, who tarried there a while. A race of planetouched creatures sprang up: some Arndeborn and other Devilblooded. In time they found Floodhold, the fabled city of devils.

The halfling settlers of New Neptamet arrived in the Underlake much later. The first pioneers came from Hapamet in the Witchwood after Wesmoon began to gain the ascendancy there, eventually almost the whole of Hapamet followed, along with halflings from Slidramet and from Rhodani towns and villages savaged by the armies of Delrox, and from the halfling ghettos in the great city-states.

Relations between halflings and planetouched were been generally poor. When they first met to draw up territorial boundaries, blows were struck and the parley abandoned. The great feast laid on to celebrate the occasion went untouched and table was never properly cleared.

Both settlements were both built over the ruins of an dark-elven empire and now faced a common enemy: the elves that had set out to reconquer their ancient territories, taking Floodhold in the process.

It was rumoured that further reaches of the Underlake stretched for hundreds of miles beneath the surface of the earth and that it was possible to reach the Westwall that way. This would explain the high volume of maritime traffic that found its way to the Methbein Traders in New Neptamet, as they were well-established in the merchants’ quarter of Westwall.