Oathbound

Book excerpt: The great City of Penance is the oldest settlement on the Forge, literally containing millions of years of history in its deep hulking mass. Though nearly forty million souls call the city home, less than half of one percent of the city's locations are inhabited. The bulk of the Pedestal is a madly stacked and sprawling ruin, only superficially explored by the relentless rafters and treasure-seekers of the surface world. Every home in the city has a hundred others lost beneath it, and every city street stands atop an incredible three-dimensional maze of corridors, alleyways, and crawlspaces - a maze where time has left nothing unchanged, eroding and distorting the framework of magic and even the laws of physics themselves.Long past the grasp of any human control, the ruins of Penance have become a true landscape, vast, beautiful, and unforgiving, with their own unique ecosystem and their own set of hazards and comforts. Strange plants and creatures have evolved in the eternally darkened streets below the city, and prey upon those foolish enough to step out of the city's gilded cage of civilization.Wrack and Ruin is an essential guidebook for anyone intoxicated by the forgotten secrets of the past, or by the potential power lost within the great city's crumbling majesty. Don't leave your Bloodhold without it!