Life in the hot and often toxic caverns and tunnels of the undercity is hard and unpredictable. You could leave, and people do, but the allure of the gleaming city above has a hold on people. There's money and power to be had, and you've seen your own neighbors gain both through a combination of hard work and luck. Well, maybe not your neighbors, the lovable but degenerate fucks, but certainly people from your neighborhood. You and your companions started at an early age venturing out into the tunnels to hunt, into the landfills to scavenge for useful items, and even into the employ of one of the Conclave Houses from Scourge, the overcity.
The Conclaves don't make it too easy, though. Moral panic sweeps like waves over the inhabitants of the overcity, and Scourge Enforcers (some of whom are regular riffraff like you) regularly come through in their heavy riot armor and round up anyone who looks at them funny, all in the name of clamping down on crime.
Most people in the Underscourge fall into one of two categories: working stiffs or the riffraff. The working stiffs hold down regular jobs, commuting into the overcity to work in fancy restaurants; serve as housecleaners, maids, nannies, and butlers; work in the hydroponics farms; perform various building, mining, and manual labor tasks; or seek access to one of the more specialized trades in the overcity, a nearly impossible undertaking. They take jobs in the overcity that the manicured inhabitants of the Conclave Houses won't take.
But you're not a working stiff. You're not afraid of hard work, mind. Far from it. But a life of wage earning and the soul-grinding that comes along with it was never in the cards for you. You're not just willing to get your hands dirty, you're willing to get them bloody if the price is right. You're what they call the riffraff, the mercs and the hired hands, the hunters and the nightlife, the people who haunt the dangerous passages, selling your sword or your spells to those who can pay, or taking from those who don't want to. Even the gods play mercenary down here. You sign on to the private armies of the Conclave Houses, sneak around the city on the hunt for valuable information, and take care of problems. Dirty work is your business, and in a city like this, business is always good.
All of the playable races and classes of Yer Shar live and operate in the Underscourge. Even the clerics and the paladins play the game, most in the name of promoting their gods’ ideals, but a fair few have risen as the most ruthless exploiters of the roiling undercity politics. The difference is that they generally belong to a larger organization with its own goals, though the central churches often conveniently forget their undercity chapters.
The volcano is situated on the northeastern edge of the Harrowlake, where Edril's Fangs give way to the Harrowmarch. This is where the fleeing members of the discredited Reliquary Crafts Guild settled after they were exiled from the Delve. The area surrounding the volcano is mostly mountainous, giving way to foothills in the north. It is cold here, and snow chokes the mountain passes. The only possible overland trade routes run through the Harrowmarch, but the fierce demons of that haunted land render these routes too dangerous to maintain. That leaves its main trade routes as over-lake. Much like the Delve, the Scourge routes its incoming and outgoing shipments through the docks in its undercity. Here, that's the Underscourge.
Notes and other items to facilitate character creation, solicit consent for topics, and choose members of the starting cadre to run if players intend to use pre-made characters.