Five Leagues from the Borderlands: Deep Below

What is Deep Below

Five Leagues from the Borderlands: Deep Below is a fantasy warband game by Ivan Sorensen, published by Modiphius in 2025. It’s set in the caverns and tunnels of a fallen underworld kingdom, and you lead a band of adventurers through its collapsed keeps and caves looking for treasure and magic.

It’s built on the rules of Five Leagues from the Borderlands, streamlined in places, but it is its own game. You don’t need the core book. Play it on its own for as long as you like, or move up to the bigger game later. Conversion rules let characters go from Five Leagues to Deep Below and back again.

New in this one: Rune Magic, archetype-based character creation, and four new origins to go with Humans: Grey Elves, Derzkan, Weaslings, and Windspite Clan Dwarves. Sorensen wrote it, and Christian Quintot did the cover and interior art.

How it plays

Written for solo. You play against the system, and the book gives you everything you need. For co-op, split the warband between players, with no rule changes. You can also run it with a Game Master who writes scenarios.
A campaign turn has three parts. Preparation, a tabletop battle, then resolution, where you find out what you looted and whether the injured live.
Noise gives you away. Each round, find your largest group of figures and roll a D6. Roll equal to or under the group’s size and something has heard you, so a Noise marker goes on the table.
The table fills itself in. Peculiar Features and Investigations are placed at the start. Wanderers and Noise turn up during the game. Get a figure within 4” and line of sight of one and you roll D100 to see what it is.
Win by exploring. Resolve five of those markers, in any mix, and you’ve won the scenario.
The enemy is generated. Foes are built from a combat profile, traits, and classes, so you use whatever monsters you own.
Build a home base. You get a Build Point for each campaign turn you play a scenario, and 3 of them buys a new structure in your underworld Settlement.

You need six-sided dice, two ten-sided dice to roll as percentiles, a tape measure in inches, and some miniatures and terrain.

How to start

Get the PDF. £12 from Modiphius, 116 pages. It’s also on DriveThruRPG.
Want a printed copy? Deep Below is only in print inside the Compendium (£40 hardback, 276 pages). That book also has the first two Five Leagues expansions, The Ancient Land of Dust and Paths in the Wilderness. The Compendium PDF is £20.
Find some figures. Any scale works, and 15mm and 28mm are the most common. If you already play a fantasy game you likely have enough. The book suggests historical ranges too.
Already playing Five Leagues? Bring your warband down. The book’s conversion rules move characters in both directions.