Credits

Credits
Original Concept and Design: Jeff Combos
Additional Design: Colin Chapman, M. Sechin Tower
Written by: Jeff Combos, Eric Cagle, Jason Carl, Colin Chapman, Will Hindmarch,
Melissa McNally, M. Sechin Tower
Additional Material: Bob Bretz, Tom Cadorette, Shawn Hilton, Ed Matuskey, Andrew
McColl, Melissa McNally, Daniel Potter, Nestor Rodriguez
Creative Director: Jeff Combos
Lead Editor: Melissa McNally
Editor: Jodi T. Black
Additional Editing: Tom Cadorette, John Kahane
Proofreaders: Bob Bretz, Tom Cadorette, Mike Demchak, John Kahane, Kate Masters,
Daniel Potter, Nestor Rodriguez, Gary Thompson
Art Director: Stephen Daniele
Additional Art Direction: Jeff Combos
Graphics and Layout: Ginormous Industries, LLC.
Cover Art: Stephen Daniele
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Cartographer: Stephen Daniele
Interior Art: Stephen Daniele, Nicole Cardiff, Ben Freedman, Matt McFarren, Jeff Menges,
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Will Nichols, William O’Connor, Brian Snoddy

Photographer: Aaron Nanto (www.chronicleproductions.com)
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Playtesters: Tom Cadorette, Colin Chapman, Shawn Hilton, Amy Hunter, John Kahane,
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Andrew McColl, Melissa McNally, Daniel Potter, Nestor Rodriguez, Justin Speyer,
Kathryn Speyer, Katie Tower, M. Sechin Tower, Mark Walling, Tammy Walling
Acknowledgement: Thanks go to the following people: Stephen, for continuing to lend
his considerable talents to this endeavor; Sechin, for his unflagging support, creativity,
and can-do attitude; and Melissa, for her hard work, keen eye, and uncompromising
commitment to quality. Also, special thanks to all the Hollow Earth Expedition fans for
their patience and understanding while we worked on this book, but mostly for their
infectious enthusiasm, boundless creativity, and unwavering support.

4509 Interlake Ave N. #318 Seattle, WA 98103 USA

©2009 Exile Game Studio, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except
for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. Exile Game Studio, Secrets of the Surface
World, Hollow Earth Expedition, Ubiquity Roleplaying System and logos are trademarks of Exile Game Studio, LLC. All rights reserved. All
characters, names, places, and distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Exile Game Studio, LLC. All characters, names, places, and text herein
are copyrighted by Exile Game Studio, LLC.
The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned.
This product is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, places, or events is purely coincidental. This book contains mature
content. Reader discretion is advised.

2 PRINTED IN THAILAND
 Table of Contents

Contents
Rite of Passage 4
Introduction 8
Chapter 1: Characters 10
Sample Characters 34
Chapter 2: Supernatural Powers 50
Chapter 3: Natives 66
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Chapter 4: Beastmen 92
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Chapter 5: The Hollow Earth 118

Chapter 6: Bestiary 144
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Sample Adventure: Fate of Atlantis 190

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Index 202

3
 RITE OF PASSAGE
It had been a mistake to leave the path. She under-
stood that now. But at the time, stepping off the path
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had seemed to Yree the only possible course of action,
the only alternative to failure. She was tracking an ado-
lescent velociraptor—it was unusual to find one alone,
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but not unheard of. Sometimes the young ones wander
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off and get lost, and it was her good fortune that she
had come across one on her sacred hunt.
The raptor’s spoor led directly away from the game
trail and into the rocky outcropping. Of this she was
certain. Wasn’t she the daughter of a master tracker?
Wasn’t her father able to follow a shadow through a
trackless field in a raging storm? Hadn’t he trained her
well? Yes, yes, and yes. So away from the path and into
the rocks she went.
The tracks gradually led her into a long, narrow valley,
with steep cliffs on either side rising gently around her
like stone giants slowly lifting their heads, until she found
herself surrounded on all sides by sheer walls of pale lime-
stone. A stream, almost dry, trickled through the narrow
defile, its rocky banks lined by small, leafless trees. Yree
picked her way carefully around jagged rocks and gnarled
tree roots as thick as a man’s arm. It was slow going, and
she paused several times to drink from the stream. She
had no fear of the water: her father had trained her well to
sense any taint that would have made her ill.
Her lips curled into a grim smile of satisfaction—it
would not be long now. Soon the beast would curl up
in a hole or a cave to rest, and she would have it. She
4
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would get her raptor, the hunt would be over, and she
would return in triumph to her village, to be hailed a
woman and a valued daughter of the Red Bear Tribe.
Yree had been working toward this goal all her life and
soon—very soon—she would take her rightful place
among the trackers and hunters of her tribe.
Shadows deepened among the boulders as the cliff
walls rose still higher, and as Yree walked she crouched
low from time to time to examine a patch of disturbed
ground, a broken twig, a bit of fresh dung. A tingle of
unease grew deep in her belly. Where was her quarry?
She should have found some sign by now to indicate that
it had gone to ground. The velociraptor she followed was
young, hardly as tall as her younger brother, but still dan-
gerous. If she had underestimated the length of time since
it had last eaten, it might not be looking for a safe sleep-
ing place after all. Instead it could be lurking anywhere,
waiting for her to blunder into its razor-sharp claws.
Yree traveled on, steeling herself for a confrontation
with a clever predator. She walked quickly but with
feather-light steps, making barely a sound. She had not
gone far when her attention was drawn by the sound
of a snapping branch. She whipped her head around to
see her prey standing in the shadow of what she quickly
realized was its mother. In the space of a heartbeat,
Yree’s lifelong training kicked in and she knew with
certainty that she had walked into an ambush. Where
there was an adolescent and its parent, there would
be another parent nearby. She whirled with her spear

raised, just as a full-grown raptor leaped down upon
her. Whether through luck, skill, or a combination of
both, the attacking beast landed on her spear, causing
the end of it to dig into the ground. The impact pushed
Yree back, away from the deadly sickle-shaped claw
protruding from the raptor’s foot. But it wasn’t quite
far enough away—the wounded creature managed to
rake her side with his forearm claw even as the spear
tip drove fatally deep into his heart.
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Rite of Passage
The raptor crashed heavily to the ground with an
ungodly scream, splintering and breaking the spear
with the momentum of its fall. In its death throes, her
opponent no longer concerned her, and she whirled
quickly to face the other pair, the adrenaline in her sys-
tem making her oblivious to the wound on her side.
The other two raptors were chittering wildly, but
they made no move toward Yree. She knew they would
not immediately attack now that she had proven her-
5
 Intro Fiction
self to be a danger. She also knew that without her
spear, she had no chance of fighting off a single raptor,
much less two of them. Still, as clever as they were, they
wouldn’t understand that her broken spear was next to
useless. Yree yanked the broken end out of the ground.
She couldn’t afford the time it would take to pull the
spear tip out of the now-dead raptor. Nothing went to
waste in this land—scavengers would be upon the carcass
shortly, and few of them limited themselves to scaveng-
ing. She was not interested in becoming a tasty morsel.
Yree turned and glared aggressively at the two rap-
tors for a moment, then turned her back on them delib-
erately and continued striding through the valley. She
wanted desperately to head back to her village, but the
path home was blocked, and the beasts would view it as
a confrontation if she walked toward them.
With a start, Yree became aware of a throbbing pain
and wet stickiness on her side. She glanced down as
she continued to walk; her wound was bleeding, but
not heavily. Her relief was short-lived as she came to
the realization that the raptors would continue track-
ing her, waiting for her to weaken from loss of blood
and weariness. Her only hope was to keep going and
pray that she could get assistance from a friendly tribe,
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or find shelter that the raptors couldn’t access.
She did not like this place, and she liked it less and
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less the more she traversed its rocky confines. Ferns and
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shrubs, dispersed widely over the stony ground, seemed
to quiver of their own volition in the dim light. Again
and again, she imagined that she saw movement in the
corner of her eye, only to be mocked by boulders and
rocks and plants and nothing else. She reminded her-
self that her body and mind were slowing as a result of
her exertions and injury. Her growing weariness gave
power to her imagination, persuading her eyes that a
thick clump of roots was a nest of writhing snakes, or
that a fallen log was the tail of a great beast preparing
to leap on her from the shadows.
Nothing looked familiar, and she was in territory
completely unknown to her. Where in the name of
the gods was she? She could hear the raptors following
behind her, making no effort to be stealthy and pur-
posely calling out in an attempt to unnerve her. She
tried to reassure herself; she was following the direc-
tion of the stream, which meant she was probably
headed toward a larger body of water. Eventually, she
would find people. She simply needed to keep moving.
To stay still was death.
A warm breeze sighed through the valley. Sounds
and sights continued to be deceptive, uncertain: in the
6
stirring of the leaves she heard the sound of men’s voices,
of women moaning, snakes hissing. Strange phantoms
seemed to appear in the spaces between the boulders—
twisted faces, tormented bodies, impossible shapes—
then just as suddenly vanished, as if into the stones
themselves. She shook her head and ordered herself to be
calm. She was a trained tracker and hunter, and would
not give in to her fears. She continued on, renewed in
her confidence, striving not to slow her pace.
She came abruptly to the end of the rocky maze.
The stream curved away to her left. The stone cliff to
her right opened in a great semicircular curve, like a
vast stone amphitheater of the sort she had seen once in
the great ruined city near her village. A thin waterfall
trickled from the overhanging summit, and ferns and
moss grew out of the stones at its base.
Surrounding this place was a neglected wall. Her
heart sank. The people who once lived here had long
since left. She would find no help here. Two stone
pylons, carved from blocks of grayish-green stone and
engraved with symbols she did not recognize, marked
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a break in the wall. No, not a break: a gateway. Along
with the symbols were graven images of men, but they
were people of a sort she had never seen. The men
were fighting—some sort of battle scene, like those her
cousin was sometimes called upon to craft after another
successful foray against the great hairy apemen of the
far jungle. The victors wore clothing of outlandish sort
and carried ornate sticks, from which emitted some
kind of ray or lightning. The vanquished wore a kind
of crested helmet and little else, and they fought with
clubs and spears. Beyond the gateway, broken paving
stones choked with weeds led to a small, triangular
building with a strange roof that seemed to be made of
some shiny golden metal.
Yree struggled to keep moving at a strong pace, but
her body was weakening. The distance between her and
the raptors lessened. She used her spear as a cane as she
hobbled up the overgrown pathway. Though she wanted
nothing more than to stop and rest, she did not pause at
the steps leading to the building. She focused on the walls
ahead of her and steadfastly made her way upward. The
outer walls were covered with carvings in relief that sloped
up and away toward the point of the roof, but from this
angle she could not discern the images. The door, a mas-
sive thing of bronze studded with unfamiliar metal, stood
ajar. Could this be her sanctuary? If she could get inside
and close that heavy door before the raptors got to it, she
would be safe!
Her hunters were distressingly close, and would
surely see that she would have the advantage once she
 Rite of Passage
made it through that door. She drew deep from
her last reservoir of strength and ran—fled!—
up the stairs toward her last chance for survival.
Her heart was beating in her throat, and a frisson
of fear ran down her spine when she heard clawed
feet scrabbling up the steps behind her. She reached
the door and squeezed through the opening a mil-
lisecond before the mother raptor snapped its jaws
on the empty air where her body had just been. Yree
shoved desperately at the heavy bronze door even as
the beast was trying to push its way in. She lacked
the strength to budge it, and the raptor was slowly
gaining ground on her. She wasn’t going to make it.
She would die in this strange, dark building, and
never see her family again. She pushed in vain
at the door, her vision blurring from the effort,
finally falling to her knees.
Yree awaited the sharp claws and teeth in
dread, hoping for a quick end. She heard
some loud bangs and pops, and men’s
voices, and felt the thud as the raptor fell
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to the ground. With a mixture of alarm
and hope, Yree weakly pulled herself up,
took a few steps back, and crouched in a
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defensive position. In her hand the shaft

of the broken spear was slippery with
her sweat and blood.
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She watched with trepidation as the

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door opened to reveal the silhouette of a

man wearing garb of which she had never seen
the like. He barked at her in a strange, guttural
tongue, and gestured her toward him. Yree hesi-
tated, took a tentative step forward and was overcome
with dizziness from her blood loss. The ground came
rushing at her and then there was nothing but darkness.

*****
The man in gray moved to the collapsed girl’s side
and looked down at her dispassionately, squatting down
to check her pulse. Another man came to the doorway
and looked in at them curiously.
“Is she dead?”
“No. She’s just wounded.”
“Is she the one von Wartenburg is looking for?”
The first man shrugged, hoisted the girl up,
and replied, “Who knows? Let’s take her to
the flying disc with the others. Wartenburg
will have to figure it out himself.”

7
 Introduction
Enter a world of action and adventure, where prehis-
toric beasts walk among the ruins of lost cities. Here you
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will find untamed wilderness, hostile natives, and ancient
treasures. Half-men prowl the shadows, the caves, and
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the trees while cannibals, dinosaurs, and stranger things
seek to hunt you down. The few bastions of civilization
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here are usually more cruel and deadly than the jungles
that surround them. Even if you can survive, will you
be able to uncover the truths of the ancients and escape
from this savage and uncharted world?
What is Mysteries of the
Hollow Earth?
Mysteries of the Hollow Earth is a source book for the
Hollow Earth Expedition roleplaying game. It expands
the game world and provides an infinite number of pos-
sibilities for new adventures. With Mysteries in hand,
your campaign can remain entirely within the Hol-
low Earth with player characters consisting entirely of
natives or permanently lost travelers. You may also use
this setting as a touchstone or a destination for stories
that begin or end on the surface world. As a pulp adven-
ture sourcebook, Mysteries provides more information
about the things you’ve come to expect from Hollow
Earth Expedition: strange creatures, supernatural pow-
ers, and lost technology from an ancient civilization!
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How to Use this Book
Mysteries of the Hollow Earth is divided into chap-
ters, each dedicated to a different aspect of the game.
Chapter 1: Characters provides additional mate-
rial for creating native characters, including beastmen
characters.
Sample Characters features eight new Hollow
Earth characters.
Chapter 2: Supernatural Powers includes
shamanism—a new sorcery path, and rules for creating
arcane artifacts.
Chapter 3: The Hollow Earth describes some of
the most intriguing Hollow Earth locations.
Chapter 4: Natives details the larger and more
influential cultures your character might encounter.
Chapter 5: Beastmen outlines the behavior and
biology of the half-human, half-animal species found
within the Hollow Earth.
Chapter 6: Bestiary offers descriptions and statis-
tics for numerous species that populate the wilderness,
as well as rules for designing your own creatures.
Sample Adventure takes the characters on a thrill-
ing adventure set in the lost city of Atlantis.
Brace yourself for intrigue, excitement, and action
as you investigate the Mysteries of the Hollow Earth…