The Well is large and complex and it is warmed and wet with underground springs. It also has a profusion of Blackweb vines the live in warm caves around the vents and openings as well as the Stark Ash, the black-leafed tree so pale it’s almost white, which only grows under cover, burns in sunlight, and thrives on warmth (the leaves are scales which absorb heat and protect the tender branches from flames).

The Well is a place of pilgrimage for the mages of the Darkened Path. There are more shadow-binders here at any time than anywhere else in the Plains. It is also a place where many shadow-binders actually leave the Sunless Plains and move off into the great unknown of the greater Empire or beyond. The Well is also the point at which foreigners come to be introduced to the Darkened Path.

It is also a place where disgruntled students and amateur sorcerers flee burdens of overbearing obligation and explore the rest of the Empire or even beyond. Sometimes they flee to join the army. Shade has a standing army that employs the shadow-bound into their ranks. Shade has always employed shadow-bound sorcerers mainly because they’re native to the Plains and they’re creepy and they can make the dead fight – what’s not too like.

There is no other army has such a collection of Darkened Path magicians and it is this force within Shade that keeps the Well free of unwanted political control. A few charismatic shadow-bound have tried but it never lasts long. The Well is unofficially a neutral place, a sacred site in their language.

The area is one of a few where the first shadow-binders tested their mettle and spoke to the creatures in the Lee of Light. It is still a place where they prove their mettle, their worth, and give themselves fully to the darkness.

The sorcerers of the Darkened Path are informally organised, they have no central tenets or religious philosophy. Theirs is a shallow hierarchical structure spread across affiliations of tutors and previous masters. These cliques and schools have feuds which span decades and occasionally these feuds turn murderous.

The Well falls within the borders of Shade and Shade keeps the largest standing force of attuned Darkened Path sorcerers and it’s only the Sunless Plains forces that employ shadow mages. It always has since magic started becoming systemised and vigorous, useful and repeatable, and a threat their enemies possessed.

LIFE OF THE DARK IN THE DARK
It’s well known that the criminally unsettling sorcerers of the Darkened Path are notoriously unwelcome outside the Sunless Plains, inside too. Its magicians are secretive, conspiratorial and paranoid; they conjure dirty things into clean air, they make the dead walk and do chores, they bicker and fight with each other…

They are a product of the flamboyant romantic notions of the Sunless Plains about death and darkness. Those shadow sorcerers can be perfectly menacing but oddly comedic and also farcical and tragic when their minds are poisoned by the blackness in the lee of light.

The notions of what those other lands are often judged incorrectly and rather too hastily but not too often unavoidably since many maddened or criminal sorcerers flee retribution to cause horror and terror outside their homelands. The sorcerers may spit and feud with each other but they all know the risks messing with angry berserk fathers and stone-throwing grandmothers when they anger the locals. This is why some more cautious shadow-bound keep their heads down and eyes on the ground.

Some Plainsmen loathe the sorcerers but they’ve been around for so long, there’s very little actual hatred unless someone’s been personally victimised by the sorcerers.

THE HIDEBOUND SHADOW-BOUND
The Shadow-bound are not unified under an academy or religion, they teach their students one or two at a time, and they’re known to be not very scholarly. Over the years each line develops its own ways and wherefores, making students unique, stamping the teacher’s baggage with another sorcerer.

The shadow-bound are known to be cranky and disagreeable, and the fact that more than a few of them are dangerously unhinged by their own wizardry, leaves little in the way of diplomatic relations between them. Across the Sunless Plains, despite their friction, differing sorcerers hold similar views and perceptions of the way things are which helps smooth hostile reactions with the balm of mutually inclusive prejudice – nothing gets people agreeing faster than someone else they can both spit on.

On the surface, the first issue which separates Darkened Path sorcerers are the ones from the deep interior of the Sunless Plains where the sun appears in the ‘sky’ as a smudgy, cold blob of sparkles, known to locals as the Shimmer. The sorcerers in the Deep divide Darkened Path sorcerers in the purist Shadow-bound who where born into the darkness of the Sunless Plain and never strayed from its borders, and the tainted, the half-dark, or the sun-touched sorcerers, the Night-bound. This simple division unites the elitist shadow-bound against the perceived weakness and effeminately magic of those who have strayed into sunlit lands. An extreme few are even more conservative and consider anyone who isn’t from the Deep to be shallow jokes not worthy of respect.

Other universal but far less profound divisions are foreign Darkened Path sorcerers and those in the Plains forces. In the border lands of Pahar and Cusp of the Western Marches, individuals found willing teachers and learned the magic of shadows. Often lumped in the same boat as the half-dark night-bound, it actually provides another step in the unofficial but blurry pecking order.

The shadow sorcerers in the Plains’ armies have an easier time adjusting to with normal folk but harder times with other free agent Darkened Path wizards who nastily call them soft. Learning from a military shadow-bound is a lot easier since you’re assigned to a teacher but the problem is that you have to join up and you’re dumped you if you screw up your attuning. The other benefit is training, subsidised equipment, and pay.

Most sorcerers are naturally loathe to take on apprentices since they are responsible for the student’s condition if he or she fails attuning, it reflects badly on the teacher, that he should’ve not wasted his time in the first place. It is not uncommon for students to suddenly disappear just after a proposed Attuning. It’s usually the teacher saving some face by dismissing his dead failure as a runaway.

ACTIONS OF THOUGHT AND VIOLENCE
Lacking a strong, centralised body of law and judicial system, simple disputes often turn nasty very quickly and continued petty vendettas became festering blood feuds through the years as a the sorcerers’ social baggage is implanted into their students. Too many groups of shadow-binders have become trapped and entrenched in unending, pointless skirmishes even though the cause of the fighting might be dead centuries past.

Universally seen as unwholesome the shadow-bound have their own particular social mores and value systems often tempered and adjusted by who was one’s teacher in the Dark Arts. Although all sorts of people have become shadow-bound, it seems to be a profusion of desperate ambition or simple power craving. This is not always the case but it’s a safe bet shadow-sorcerers have a streak for cruelty (not forgetting the damaged Imperfectly Attuned cases who find ignorant apprentices to torment) as teachers often degrade their students to weed out the mentally unfit.

While the different orders of competing shadow-binders violence does flare up and when it does it’s to the death but most often the different cliques merely throw up a grudging distrust at other shadow-bound as much as they would any other type of sorcerer.

Wealth brings some respect because they are mainly poor folk and because they are poor folk, riches brings distrust too. The most common avenues of respect and envy are new spells. For most it is how many spells one has learned or variations one has created; for the few, respect is based on how many new spells one has created, whether variations or whole cloth sorceries.

Also spells and variations thereof also strongly factor in group identity. There are many shadow-sorcerers who will teach their students unique spells as a form of signature and territorial identity. This is more common with actual shadow-sorcerer families but does occur frequently with shadow sorcerers factions.

New spells are a lot like money for the shadow-bound, those whom you share them with and those you don’t often creates a dividing line of enmity – especially true of the stodgy hardliner shadow sorcerers – and there are unscrupulous sorcerers who dangle their power to gain political support.

While having new spells is an advantage and they should never be given away always bartered and haggled with great effort and thought. A few unscrupulous sorcerers will always sell their secrets for a price. And unless you have the black-on-black eyes of an attuned shadow-bound, you are just a student sorcerer…

DAY TO DAY WITH THE DARK ARTS
While reviled outside the Sunless Plains the shadow-bound do fulfil practical purposes outside of the Plain’s military. Many villages have a Darkened Path magician living at the outskirts in case there’s a problem.

Many sorcerers become combinations of morticians and grave-diggers and prepare corpses for funerals. Considering the emotional extravagance of the Plains, a shadow-bound with theatrical sensibilities can earn a decent wage.

The other area the shadow-bound are in high demand is at mines, or when mine disasters happen. In tight tunnels of utter darkness, a lone shadow-bound sorcerer can make a vast difference dragging mining victims out with magic.

Not only can they help with mine disasters, they are also good at providing cheap one-off payments for obedient, tireless workforces. Indeed, many customs dictate a criminal has no rights and his life is part of his debt to local governance. Many Plains officials make a bit of money on the side selling the corpses of executed criminals to shadow-bound enterprises. The shadow-bound make very profitable enterprise making slaves of the dead.

IDEAS FOR SHADOWBINDERS
To try and make a stylishly creepy master of the Dark Arts, spend five creation points for the Perfect Attunement Advantage and give a total Sense and Sorcery stat of five or six. To simulate the irregular evolution of the Darkened Path, take one or two of your learned spells and use the DIY spell rules to create a variation of that or those spells, perhaps faster casting times or a longer duration, less flaws. Don’t forget a point or two of Followers for undead servants.

INVENTED SORCERY FOR THE SHADOWBOUND
These are variations or completely new spells for magicians of the Darkened Path used as examples of their magic. Use them or create versions of these for your own clutch of shadow-bound mages.

VOLUMINOUS INTERIOR
Intensity: 3
Casting Time: Width in Hours
Duration: Permanent
Attunement: Yes
Effect: The sorcerer enchants a Shadow Jacket, which never has been exposed to the sun, is ceremoniously worn under his day-to-day clothing. At this point the sorcerer sleeps and while he sleeps the magic of the Shadow Jacket unravels and changes into an unnatural gulf of living darkness, a breath away from his body.

This extra volume but also acts as AR2 to any damage covered by clothing as if the opponent was stabbing through a curtain. This Gloomy Recesses AR doesn’t stack with other armour, the highest AR takes precedence, and the wearer suffers no movement penalty.

GLOOMY RECESSES
Intensity: 3
Casting Time: Width in Hours
Duration: Permanent
Attunement: Yes
Effect: The spell creates many liquid pockets, long lasting miniature versions of Shadow Refuge under the Shadow-binder’s clothes, In this recess he can store a vast number of one-handed items and artefacts – weapons, bottles, food, artefacts – which he can retrieve at will. Without his consent the _object_s are presumed to be hidden by a permanent 10X10 Stealth roll.

Gloomy Recesses also requires a Shadow Jacket which is initially worn under the dark sorcerer’s clothes. The ritual must take place in a dark cavernous area where no light touches at night. The shadow jacket is destroyed. The Gloomy Lasts until at least half the shadow magician’s body has been stripped naked and exposed to the sun. All stored items are now forever lost.

STRENGTH’S SHADOW WALK
Intensity 6
Casting Time: Combative
Duration: Width in minutes
Attunement: Yes
Effect: Strength’s Shadow Walk is almost identical to Shadow Dive except the caster can jump into an in between Shadow Refuge space for the duration before choosing a shadow to exit. Unlike Shadow Dive the night-binder suffers no damage.

DARK HORROR INSIDE
Intensity 4
Casting Time: Combative
Duration: Width in Hours
Attunement: Yes
Effect: This spell makes the fell spirit inside the shadow-binder shifty and testy and dangerous. When the shadow-mage attacks or is attacked, the spirit of darkness within him strikes from the shadows about his body, snaking out from under his clothes and limbs and orifices. Those too close are bitten by insect or animal jaws.

The spirit lashes out with viscously sharp soot-black segmented tentacles as a Threat 4 Unworthy Opponent but only against opponents the shadow-binder could attack, parry, or dodge in melee combat.

The black claws and tentacles can attack or parry against as many attackers around the caster equal to the Height of the Dark Horror Inside roll.

Only the caster can dodge but the flailing dark pincers and tentacles can parry and attack for WL damage. If the caster is injured in any way so he cannot walk, the claws and jointed limbs will operate as legs but only awkwardly.

The spell lasts and is active for hours and it does not exist past the death of the dark-attuned magician. The problem is that while the spirit is active it slides and shuffles under the clothes with disconcerting whisper and chittering – the sorcerer’s Charm-based skill checks are rolled with a 4 difficulty.

Duration: Hours +1
Height x Threat 4 +5
Parried and Dodge-able -2/Can be blocked by AR -2

DOG STONE’S BLEAK FINGERS
Intensity: 4
Casting Time: Slow 1
Duration: Width in Rounds
Attunement: Yes
Effect: The caster can extend insect-like pincers and feelers from the interior of his own body. The caster cannot use multiple actions with his new fingers but he can feel them as securely and use them as well as his regular hands with fair ability.

The caster can do any Coordination + Skill pool as long as it is not higher than the caster’s Sense + Sorcery pool.

Any action performed by Bleak Fingers operates under no penalty, though.

THE GRIM MIRE OF A HUNGRY HELL
Intensity: 5
Casting Time: Slow 2
Duration: Height + Width in rounds
Attunement: Yes
Effect: The caster needs to dig up a lump of fresh clay from a river bed at night, because it is important it does not see the sunlight. It must be cleaned and shaped into a regular lumpy discus shape. After formed it must dry out in a dark room over a monthly period. To activate the spell the unfired bread-shaped clay must be smashed while caster invites the shadows to eat.

Everyone in short range radius of the caster is caught, dragged in, and sucked down into shadows, especially their own, as if the surface area is like syrupy quicksand.

Anyone in the area of effect must make a Body + Athletics or Coordination + Dodge roll, multiple sets will not help.

The Height rolled determines up to what part of your body is sunk and trapped, and it acts as a difficulty to all future rolls.

Every round you make another roll. If it’s successful, your character does not sink any further. If it’s unsuccessful, raise the Height by +1 as you sink and another location is trapped.

The moment you hit Height 9 you are immobilised up to their necks and cannot roll any further. At 10, their heads are swallowed and they start suffocating, entombed in earth.

With Unworthy Opponents roll their numbers as a dice pool. All the Waste Dice are considered people that got sucked right into their shadows and died in shallow graves.