Your adventure teems with horrors: aberrations, constructs, beasts, undead, and ancient titans, each adding its own flavor of terror and wonder to the world of Vordan.
Shandar, the Mindrender – An ancient eldritch horror and living gateway to the Farrealm.
The Starved Apostate – A self-devouring celestial exile whose bites unravel the laws of physics.
The Archivist of Hollow Names – A parchment-skinned scribe whose records erase living beings from existence.
The Womb of the One – A pulsing, organic entity that births malformed lookalike aberrations.
The Orb of Dissonance – A floating psychic anomaly that distorts thoughts and balance.
The All-Consuming Whisper – A creeping swarm of fanged mouths that whisper incomprehensible secrets that spread madness.
The False Awakening – A dream-parasite trapping victims in looping, indistinguishable nightmares.
Mindrend Beast – A four-legged aberrant hunter whose psychic aura numbs the mind.
Iron Giant – A colossal metal titan with magnetic telekinesis and metal-shaping power.
Rust Dragon – A dragon capable of melting magical and mundane metal with a corrosive breath weapon.
Serpentbear – A large, furred serpentine creature with a massive bear’s head and crushing coils.
Mountain Chimera – A white dragon–goat–bear hybrid of frost, horns, and crushing strength.
Dorrakh – Savage, mutated, ork-like drow with blindsight and tremorsense.
Krampus – A horned winter fiend that hunts the guilty and desperate.
Tsukumogami – A ghost that possesses objects and animates them into violent constructs.
Broodroot Pine – A colossal, monstrous, root-twisted tree that spawns ravenous plant creatures.
Ironhoof Rider – A Vordani berserker mounted on a massive ibex equipped with a portable siege engine.
Beast Rider – A mounted Vordani fighter bonded to deadly wilderness creatures.
Oreworm – Burrowing molten-metal-eating giant worms erupting in blasts of burning ore.
Dynadog – A mechanical canine construct built for patrol, pursuit, and precision.
Scrav – Vulture-like humanoids with predatory instincts and a sense for the dying.
Wendigo – A gaunt, frost-bitten revenant driven by endless hunger, stalking the wilderness with predatory silence and cannibalistic fury.
Qalupalik – A slick, seaweed-cloaked fey that lurks along icy shores, luring and stealing small creatures from the edge of the frozen waters.
Mahaha – A shrieking ice-spirit whose chilling laughter freezes flesh solid, leaving victims locked in helpless, frostbound terror.
Kallikantzaros – A malicious winter trickster that rides the backs of the weary, tormenting its victims as it feeds on exhaustion and despair.
Velithid Spawnling – A spider-like aberration that leaps onto prey to suffocate and cocoon them, hibernating without food while sensing nearby life.
Vote to Shape the Adventure
Don't forget to cast your vote on our latest poll that decides the nature of the creature(s) that inhabit the dungeon we are about to create.
A Word From Our Friend, Bob World Builder
Under the Shadow of Helfast Spire is a zine of new material designed for Shadowdark RPG, by Bob World Builder! Inspired by binge-reading pulp fantasy novels, this 64-page zine includes the following:
4 New Classes! - The Berserker sacrificing themself to protect their allies, the Mountaineer crafting makeshift weapons and defenses, the Tunneler tinkering with explosives, and the Necromancer grappling with Death itself!
16 New Monsters, each with Unique Loot! - From the cursed bitu-men to Uldruun the Great Black Heron!
30 New Magic Items, Gear & Hazards! - Including dangerous cavern fumes (inspired by real coal mines) and the fantastical mushrooms used to detect them!
10 Hexcrawl Wilderness Sites! - From a vengeful village to a volcanic chasm to Helfast Spire itself!
The Coal Catacombs Dungeon! - The 22-room, Jaquays-style, vertical dungeon crawl where even Death is no escape!
The zine is already written, the campaign is already funded, and it'll ship out later this year! But for a limited time, you can still join the campaign with a late pledge to get the Helfast Spire zine plus all the Stretch Goal rewards for free!
We wanted to highlight another Shadowdark RPG project that’s been also getting a lot of attention lately: Druskara, a third-party campaign setting.
Druskara is a brutal sandbox campaign built around rival factions, forbidden magic, and a world that doesn’t sit still. Light is fading, harvests are unreliable, and the shadowdark is encroaching on the surface world.
You don’t have to go looking for danger—it’s already here, and dungeons are only the beginning.
There’s been a strong response from the community:
“Druskara has the potential to be Shadowdark’s Dragonlance.” — Aiden, Flippant Wizard Ink
“It’s about exploring what’s possible in Shadowdark itself.” — Seven Winds Okinawa Gaming Collective
"It’s a fascinating, well-built setting full of lovingly crafted details, layers of truth to keep players digging, and enough random tables to make it all feel both uniquely yours and vibrantly alive!” – Matt Forbeck, lead writer/designer, Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game
If you’re running Shadowdark and want something with more movement, more pressure, and more consequence, this is worth a look. And you'd better do it right away! The campaign wraps up in just a few days. So don't hesitate and visit their page now!
