This is the fourth and final article in our series on 2026’s new Maladum expansions. If you missed the others, you can find them here:
These new products are available to pre-order on Gamefound now, via the Kingdom of Hyberia pledge manager. They can be pre-ordered whether you’ve pledged for the terrain or not, and not only will you get them early, but you’ll get them cheaper too!
As we’ll explore in this article, the new sets can be used even if you only have the Maladum starter set, but are also designed to work with our new terrain – the Ingonsburn Township and Ur’ghaal Badlands. Let’s find out more.
The Dominion of Ur’ghaal expansion is not just a collection of new mechanics and monsters, it’s a full-blown narrative experience. Inside you will find not one, but two brand new campaigns, each offering a different flavour of adventure and challenge.
Second Sun
The Second Sun campaign has been designed to follow on from the Maladum: Dungeons of Enveron starter set. Every quest within this sprawling narrative uses the starter set components combined with the new features and mechanics introduced in Dominion of Ur’ghaal, so you do not need to own anything else to play through the Second Sun campaign.
Just like the Dungeons of Enveron campaign, Second Sun features 20 branching, linked scenarios, with each one shaped by the decisions you make along the way. Depending on your choices and your success within the quests, you will play between 10 and 16 scenarios during your journey. This allows for replayability with different choices second time around.
While Dungeons of Enveron took you across vast kingdoms and cities from one end of Enveron to the other, Second Sun focuses inward, drawing your party deep into a single, colossal, ancient dungeon complex hidden within the highlands of Hyberia. This underground labyrinth is more than a ruin; it is the pulsing heart of the Urmeck resurgence, and at its centre lies the mind behind it all: the Hexweaver.
The Madness of the Hexweaver
In Second Sun, the Hexweaver’s plans have reached terrible heights. In its fractured mind, it has conceived a vision of divine rebirth – to ignite a second sun in the heavens above Enveron.
To most, this would be a myth or metaphor, but the Hexweaver’s experiments are dangerously real. Drawing on aetheric power from deep beneath the earth, it seeks to fuse a magic and science that could burn a hole in the heavens themselves. If it succeeds, the result will be catastrophic, perhaps even the unmaking of the world itself.
Your party’s mission is to descend into the depths, uncover the nature of this unholy project, and stop the Hexweaver before the skies burn.
A Campaign of Escalation
The unpredictable nature of Maladum’s gameplay can lead to a lot of variation in success rates. In terms of narrative, the original campaign was written to work regardless of how well you actually complete the objectives, but in terms of balance, it was pitched towards the less tactical or unlucky players – we wanted to be as inclusive as possible, and make sure that even if you did quite badly throughout you could still complete the story. On the other hand of course, the tactically brilliant (or luckiest!) players did tend to find that towards the end of the campaign their Adventurers needed more of a challenge.
Based on customer feedback, the Second Sun campaign is deliberately designed as a step up in difficulty from Dungeons of Enveron. The Urmeck are faster. They arrive more often. Their new abilities demand fresh strategies and careful planning to overcome.
Brand-new parties of inexperienced Adventurers will struggle to survive the first few missions, so much so that we recommend attempting the campaign with a more experienced party, maybe one that has already completed the Dungeons of Enveron campaign. If you really want to start with a fresh party, however, we have added an improved starting budget, and the potential to spend that budget on levelling up, to help you on your way before setting foot in Hyberia’s depths.
Township Allies
Like the previous campaigns, Second Sun has a Campaign Log used to track various achievements and rewards as the campaign progresses, allowing objectives completed (or not) early in the story to have a knock-on effect later. I won’t spoil the story here, but I will highlight one of this campaign’s unique features.
During your descent, you may encounter the remains of previous expeditions – battered heroes who once ventured into the Urmeck-infested ruins and never returned.
If you are fortunate, you may find these adventurers still alive and in need of rescue. Do so, and you can recruit these lost Adventurers as Township Allies. Their questing days are behind them, but these allies return to their civilian jobs and offer a range of special abilities to aid your party when back in the town between quests. The Apothecary can offer provisions and heal your Adventurers, the Alchemist can brew potions for you, and the Master-at-Arms can train you up.
Choosing which role they will fill is critical. Once assigned, their roles cannot be changed, and you may not find enough survivors to fill every slot. Each decision carries weight, and each loss will be felt keenly as the campaign unfolds.
Shields of the Frontier
Where Second Sun traps you underground, Shields of the Frontier pushes the battle into the open world. This campaign takes you out of the catacombs and into the sun-scorched plains and frontier towns of Hyberia, where the Urmeck threat has begun to spill above ground.
We poured heart and soul into developing the Ur’ghaal Badlands and Ingonsburn Township terrain sets and Shields of the Frontier is built to showcase them at their full potential. This ten-scenario campaign is designed as a completely standalone narrative for players who own both of the new terrain sets.
Defend the Frontier
In this campaign, the Hexweaver’s ambitions are simpler, but no less terrifying – the complete and total conquest of the surface world. Urmeck legions surge across the plains, razing villages and poisoning the land. Their advance has brought them to the doorstep of Ingonsburn, a frontier township standing as the last line of defence between the Badlands and the civilized heart of Hyberia.
Your party’s mission is twofold, with five quests set in each location:
- Defend Ingonsburn from relentless Urmeck assaults.
- Strike back into the wilderness to destroy the Hexweaver’s forces before they can overrun the town.
Each scenario pushes you to make difficult choices between offense and defence. Do you venture out to hunt down enemy leaders, or stay behind to protect the people who depend on you?
Citizens and Reputation
A new feature introduced in Shields of the Frontier is the addition of Citizen counters*, representing the everyday people of Ingonsburn: merchants, farmers, and families struggling to survive the invasion. They usually require protection and salvation, and your actions decide their fate. Not defending them leads to tragedy, and the more lives lost, the greater the cost to your party’s reputation.
* You can of course use spare miniatures to represent the citizens if you wish.
A feature of the Shields of the Frontier Campaign Log, the Reputation Tracker keeps a running tally of your successes and failures. Good reputation brings support, morale, and supplies from the townsfolk. But let too many die, and your name becomes a curse, leaving you no longer welcome at the inn, and overcharged and underpaid by the town’s stores. The frontier does not forgive failure easily.
Two Paths, One War
Together, Second Sun and Shields of the Frontier show two sides of the same conflict, one fought in the shadows below, the other under the skies of Hyberia. Each campaign offers branching storylines, unique rewards, and lasting consequences that ripple across your world.
Dominion of Ur’ghaal is more than an expansion, it’s the next chapter in the saga of Maladum, a test of courage, cunning, and the will to stand against the dark.
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