Underpeople Perhaps the most numerous of the Nameless Hordes are exotic humans known as underpeople. Numerous types of underpeople exist, many mutated by exposure to the Wyld or uncapped demesnes. The underpeople have dwelled beneath the earth since the time of the Primordial War, when the effects of that conflict forced many humans to seek shelter beneath the earth. Since then, many other events— the Usurpation, the Great Contagion, the Balorian Crusade—have driven folk underground for the same reason: safety. Often, it is just individuals or family units who move into the subterranean world, but larger groups occasionally do so or the individuals or families unite to form tribes or join with larger groups of underpeople already living where they have fled. Many groups die out in a generation or two, but some survive. Large tribes of such under- people dwell in the tunnel systems beneath many of Creation’s First Age ruins: Rathess, Nexus, Meru, et cetera. These underpeople are basically human, though they may have developed a Wyld mutation or two better adapting them to their subterranean lives. They may be modeled with the mortal or Wyld mutant traits in Exalted, pages 278–281 and pages 287–288. Such underpeople are often extras. Two stable breeds, however, have dwelt beneath the earth since the time of the Primordial War. One lives in the cave systems underneath the North (particularly near Gethamane), while a second dwells in the many volcanic caverns of the South. Both appear human in basic shape but possess an inhuman nature that is apparent in the fine details of their appearance. Their pearlescent gray skin is wrinkled and hangs loosely on their compact frames. Rather than proper hands and feet, they possess fleshy palpi covered with small suckers. Rather than proper faces, they possess two large, faintly glowing eyes and a small slit of a mouth, but are otherwise entirely devoid of features. The Northern underpeople have eerie violet eyes, while the South’s underpeople have wan green eyes.
