Avernum Escape From the Pit

Avernum: Escape From the Pit is the first installment in Spiderweb Software's long-running Avernum series, set in a vast underground nation built by exiles from the surface. The premise is grim: the cruel Emperor Hawthorne rules the surface world, and anyone who speaks out, misbehaves or simply doesn't fit in is dropped into the dark, volcanic pits of Avernum and left to die from starvation, monsters or despair.

Most of the exiles do die. Some don't. The ones who survived have started carving out a nation of their own — building cities, training mages, hunting down magical artifacts, and slowly developing the means to either secure their new home or strike back at the surface that abandoned them. Your party of newly-arrived exiles joins that effort, and the game offers three completely separate game-winning quests: seek safety for the new nation, escape back to the surface, or take revenge on the Empire that condemned you. You can complete just one, or pursue all three.

The game world is enormous — huge outdoor regions plus eighty individual towns and dungeons, with hundreds of side quests and magical artifacts scattered throughout. The character system covers over 50 spells and battle disciplines and a multitude of beneficial character traits, all tunable per party member. The unique races and underworld setting give Avernum a distinct flavor against more typical surface-world fantasy RPGs, and Jeff Vogel's writing — wry, character-driven, occasionally bleak — gives the underworld real personality.