Lit-Up Drow

You know something about the dark elves, the lost race, the Drow? They've adapted over millennia to an underground environment. Through melanism?

Really?

Here's the real story. Those glowing fungi that light up the Underdark? That are distilled and concentrated by the dark elves for their witch-lamps? They illuminate in reverse.

Black turns to white under that light ... orange to blue ... green to red. Early Underdark explorers glimpsed the Drow under those conditions and leapt to conclusions. But out of their element -- say, if one of them were to become all broody and alienated because his society like totally didn't respect his alignment choices, and skip town -- the Drow are pale, dark-haired ectomorphs styling the very finest in white and yellow apparel. Not that different, really, from the regular kind of high elf.

Well ... it's a good story, anyway.

Mundus Subterraneus

You're going to regret not putting your campaign in historical Europe when you hear about the Mundus Subterraneus of Athanasius Kircher. You may even want to put that book in your campaign regardless - a tome of strange lore containing dizzying hints and tidbits about the world below..

Like the Utriusque Cosmi of Robert Fludd, Kircher's two-volume work from 1664 hurls together a vast array of topics that today sit in very different buildings on campus. He tells us of geometry, physics, geology, astronomy, alchemy, even the reputed magical properties of gems...

Alabaster for stomachache ... Amethyst to resist drunkenness ...

but the emphasis keeps coming back to the "subterranean world" of the title, with how-to on mining and metallurgy, and a section explaining fossils as forms spontaneously generated by the earth - a precursor, perhaps, of Richard Shaver's strange ideas. There is a particularly rich section in the middle where Kircher describes his adventures in the craters of active volcanoes, and then indulges in sober speculation about the networks of fire, airy caves and water spanning the center of the earth, leading eventually to Hell and possibly Purgatory ...

and lays the seeds for generations of hollow-earth fictions and crackpots to come with lengthy passages about the underground ocean that creates the tides, and the creatures that lurk within the underworld - races of subterranean men, giants, demons, and several species of dragon and basilisk.

The possibilities for pseudo-historical adventure campaigning under the assumption that Kircher's ideas were mostly true cannot be underestimated.  Fantasy writers from Verne to Burroughs to Lovecraft have resonated with Kircher's "underdark." Even early on in the D&D universe, the existence of a vast network of tunnels and dwellings deep underground provided a logical continuation for players who had exhausted the depths of their local dungeon. What makes the better endgame, I ask: becoming lord of a castle and hearing the grievances of peasants all day, or equipping for the ultimate delve down rivers of flame and straight through the gates of Hell itself?

Articles and posts on the Mundus:

OU History of Science Collections
Public Domain Review 
Original text, e-book format

Distinctive Areas Underground

The Alexandrian recently put into words a preference I've followed in my own adventure design.

The monsters in the dungeon are ephemeral. It's the geography that's going to stick around. Minimalist keys are fine, but use them to make memorable locales. 

When it comes to any adventure area, varied architectural regions and features really make discovery and investigation mean something. The physical environment, along with the things and creatures found in the dungeon, all provide a clue to its former uses and present story. Finding a new area of the level with its own feel and mysteries gives some of the thrill that, in a more standard design, can only be found by going down to a new level.

A while back I presented a table of six questions that could help define an adventuring area's past and present. Now here are some ideas for designing underground areas in ways that give the players an idea of this history.

Height: Are the areas extra-high? (Built for giants; the builder wanted to impress; built so that missiles, refuse, or spectators at a higher level can have a clear shot below...) Are they extra-low? (built for dwarves or kobolds; the builder needed to make economies; built to inconvenience passers-through, so that some nasty trap or ambush will find them crouched or prone)

Width: Are the areas extra-wide? (Built to handle impressive processions and ceremonies, large bodies of troops or workers moving in multiple lanes) Or are they very narrow? (Built to economy; natural passages; intentionally restricting intruders to a dangerous single file.)

Length: Do long passages separate rooms? (Some kind of hierarchy is asserting itself; either a leader or holy place that must be kept separate from another area, or a despised group or thing that must be accessed, but at a long remove. Also, the long passage could be needed to connect two previously dug areas.) Or are rooms jammed together with hardly any intervening passages? (Economy of construction, and perhaps a military or commercial installment where the different rooms need to communicate quickly with each other.)

Design: Are rooms and passages laid out at regular angles? (Indicates the builders valued planning and a sense of order.) Or do they veer and jut at crazy angles from each other? (Indicates haphazard construction: either slowly over time, rapidly without organization, building upon natural features, or intentionally as a way to confuse intruders or honor a Chaotic worldview.) Consistent features in an area's mapping, like rounded corners, oblique or right-angled room layout, complex or simple shapes, single or multiple floor levels: all can make an area of the underground distinctive.

Material: What are the walls, ceiling and floor made of in this area? Are they - from cheapest to most expensive - natural cavern stone? Crudely worked, roughly hewn stone passages? Timber-beamed and packed earth in the shallower levels? Carefully leveled and finished stone? Facing blocks on the walls, and flagstone on the floor, of a more attractive stone than that available naturally? Or is the material and workmanship truly ornate, exotic, or alien? Is there a distinctive style to the construction: ponderous, squarish, gracious, angled, arched, rounded, pillared, curved?

Features: Are there recent tracks, layers of dust or grime, blackened marks from a fire, water marks, standing water, areas worn smooth by centuries of passage? Have rails, pipes, or gutters been laid to convey air, water, and useful goods? Is it wet or dry down here, warm or chilly? Does mold and fungus grow? Are there tools, furnishings, machines, doors - and what themes does their construction follow, and what condition are they in?

Explorers of my Cellars of the Castle Ruins - my home-brewed first level for Castle of the Mad Archmage - have found the standard granite faced and dressed dungeon construction; a hollowed out area filled with floor-to ceiling walled storerooms, made of red brick and half-timber and having a cut-cornered design; another area of yellow brick with strange floor decorations; and a crudely carved area of former wine cellars. And there are still several special areas as yet undiscovered by anyone ...

Sewers and Subways

Continuing the urban dungeon. Back in the 90's, I started a novel, The O Line, about some people like these and what they found in the New York subway, delving deep enough.

Naturally, I never finished it. Good to see the dungeoneering going on, though. Now let's just weird it up a notch ...

UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo.

NEW YORK UNDERGROUND WANDERING ENCOUNTER TABLE

Roll 2d12, take the lowest. Add 1 to each roll for each additional level underground.

On active lines, trains come every 11-20 minutes. After midnight, 20% chance the train is a work train (some flatcars that can be jumped on), 5% chance it's the money train with 5-10 armed guards.

1: 2d8 workers
2: 1d4 transit cops
3: 1d8 homeless
4: 1d6 graffiti writers
5: Rat swarm
6: Bat swarm
7: 1d8 giant rats
8: 2d6 possessed/zombies/cultists
9: 1d8 ghouls
10: 1d4 giant albino sewer alligators
11: Ghost train (subway)/ ghost barge (sewers)
12: Giant slug
13: Purple worm
14: The Unnameable One

Why's There A Dungeon Under Your City?

1. The city was flooded over 100 years ago. After the flood, the powers that be decided to raise the ground level 10-15 feet by importing massive amounts of earth. On top of the flood deposits, this buried - partially or completely - all the buildings in the flooded area. The underground rooms are the remains of completely buried buildings, cellars that once were ground floors, and tunnels that once were alleys and thoroughfares connecting them all. (Chattanooga, Tennessee)

2. The city is built on sandstone hills, with natural caverns underneath that were used for storage and cellars, and latter enlarged, connected, and linked with other chambers and complexes cut into the soft sedimentary rock. At one time or another the caverns have housed inns, taverns, breweries, bowling alleys, industrial shops, and sewage disposal. (Nottingham, England)

3. The city prospered at an amazing rate, but was hampered by natural barriers - rivers, gorges, steep rock faces. A bridge built across one of the dry gorges proved more popular as a place to settle under than to cross, owing to a superstitious incident that cursed the span in the eyes of the cityfolk.The bridge arches were walled and floored, and a series of vaults created, which held masses of the dregs of society living in appalling conditions. The vault-dungeon today is inhabited by a few degenerate hold-outs, the ghosts of murdered people, and whatever it was that caused the exodus of squatters some twenty years ago ... (Edinburgh, Scotland)

4. Followers of a persecuted religion needed a place to bury their dead. In the outskirts of the city, they tunnelled into deposits of soft tufa stone. A refuge in times of danger, these catacombs also housed rich treasures of devotional objects and grave goods. (Rome, Italy)

5. In the busy and disreputable seaport, captains who needed sailors could turn to gangs of waylayers, who used elaborate ruses and trapdoors to abduct able-bodied men. A network of tunnels, chambers and holding cells supported all kinds of kidnapping, forced prostitution and slavery. When contraband substances came to the city, the tunnels were not just the means of smuggling, but housed sordid vice dens where anything could be had ... for a price. (Portland, Oregon)

6. As the city grew, the stench grew intolerable until the king ordered a sewer to be dug. Later monarchs hired more and more sophisticated architects until the sewer network branched all over the city, on many levels, and with some tunnels big enough to drive a cart through. "Crime, intelligence, social protest, liberty of conscience, thought, theft, all that human laws pursue or have pursued, have hidden in this hole..." Yes, and rats. (Paris, France)