Interesting Fantasy Cultures

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 4:33 pm

Open space is hard to maintain when there is a lot of force pushing down on it, but we know that there are caves that manage it. Rock columns can support rock many times their own weight - especially if they're vaulted or otherwise reinforced (such as with pillars).

Caves do collapse, though, and cave ins are a real thing. Again, the amount of weight above isn't the primary issue - you can have a trench cave in just as well as a deep mine shaft. Displacement of pressure is a major concern.

Real life materials like carbon-nano-tubes (though much larger than those that exist today) would be a real-world material that could provide a scaffolding. A net woven of that type of material would be able to contain 50x more burst pressure than a similar steel weave.

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 4:53 pm

The Stronghold Builder's Guide has a new material for walls, a metal called Obdurium. It's stronger than even adamantine, but described as "incredibly rare". Perhaps its ore could be co-opted for our Underdark suspension poles, and the reason it's still so "rare" is that scraping the poles for any industrial amount brings down the continent on your head, so you need to find small clusters of it that aren't buttressing the surface.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 5:27 pm

What's the likelihood that you could have two continental plates running into each other and both going up or delaminating high/low? I can imagine that creating caverns along the fault line.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 5:38 pm

Zaranthan wrote:The Stronghold Builder's Guide has a new material for walls, a metal called Obdurium. It's stronger than even adamantine, but described as "incredibly rare". Perhaps its ore could be co-opted for our Underdark suspension poles, and the reason it's still so "rare" is that scraping the poles for any industrial amount brings down the continent on your head, so you need to find small clusters of it that aren't buttressing the surface.

That means it would be really easy for someone who wanted to wipe out huge chunks of the setting to do so. The more reasonable underdark races would need to put guards around every pole to keep the demons and mad wizards away.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 6:15 pm

As deaddmwalking points out, pressure is the killer. It's not just from above, though: in the depths where metamorphic stone forms, pressure is coming from all sides at once, and cracks are spreading and propagating. If you get down to the igneous, then there's also magma to contend with. As our unnamed narrator from the Dwarf Monologues might have said:

Fuck magma. It hates you, it's only fair to hate it back.

Therefore, whatever we're looking for needs to be very strong. However, it also needs to not be Greyhawkable. Pillars that you can't scrape from safely is all very well, but Dwarves will totally scrape from them anyway via long distance or zombie miners or whatever, in order to cause a collapse so they can mine it safely once it's been reduced to merely another mineral layer.

My workaround is to make it a deliberately supernatural substance. It's the Underdark, it's not a natural place anyway. It has Illithids and Aboleths and Beholders and whatever else. So we'll define it as being a substance which has certain properties which make no scientific sense but can be applied consistently and which hopefully do not contradict the rest of the setting.

Firstly, it feeds on temperature and pressure. It likes it. It absorbs it. It's the perfect pressure vessel because it doesn't withstand pressure so much as devour it. This also means that the area inside it is non-magically at room temperature.

Secondly, it grows. Small filigrees snake through cracks in the rock, which over time turn into thick veins, which then gradually become thick layers. Once it's large enough it begins to grow a hollow centre, pushing the native stone apart and developing corridors and chasms inside. This process takes hundreds of years, which is to say that it's creeping and malevolent in real time but crazy bullshit fast in geological time.

Thirdly, it grows crystals on the inside which certain mosses can digest. They can in turn support a food web inside the underdark caverns.

Fourthly, it is fragile. While it feeds on temperature and pressure, it's actually really easy to break. All the pieces irrevocably lose their power and become a mundane crystalline rock thereafter. This lets people hew their way in and out of the underdark, and means that it doesn't get used anywhere except there. Nobody steals bits and grows an Underdark of their own.

Fifthly, it has some vague magically reactive nature meaning that you can't teleport in and out through it. This means that the only way Underdark beasties can eat your face is if they come up or you come down.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 6:32 pm

Hold on. We want floating islands anyway, right? If Arbitrarium is repelled by magic fields, this all solves itself. The Underdark ceiling is a layer rich with Arbitrarium; and the underdark is deeply magically irradiated (as the tomes suggest, which solves most of the other Underdark questions at the same time).

So. What's the easiest way to get a distinct, tough, thick layer full of some arbitrary material? For least impact, Arbitrarium should have shockingly poor material properties, but Arbitrarium ore should be very tough.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 8:29 pm

I believe brown mold 'eats heat'. That could certainly be used to reduce the temperatures associated with real-world deep earth environments. I was just reading about a clock that uses atmospheric pressure to power it.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 8:42 pm

fectin wrote:Hold on. We want floating islands anyway, right?

Do we? I mean, I'm not saying no, but I'm trying to think of realistic geology here.

fectin wrote:If Arbitrarium is repelled by magic fields, this all solves itself. The Underdark ceiling is a layer rich with Arbitrarium; and the underdark is deeply magically irradiated (as the tomes suggest, which solves most of the other Underdark questions at the same time).

I know I was in favour of it above, but I've had a change of heart on the fragility. I don't want to make the Underdark something which can be destroyed by cunning dwarven engineering, thus wiping out the Drow and Illithid and what-have-you races entirely. The Underdark needs to not be a deathtrap. It needs to be able to survive at least as well as any other place. If someone can rig it into a deathtrap then they would have already done so, and we wouldn't have an Underdark.

fectin wrote:So. What's the easiest way to get a distinct, tough, thick layer full of some arbitrary material? For least impact, Arbitrarium should have shockingly poor material properties, but Arbitrarium ore should be very tough.

I don't see why it needs to have an ore. I think it just needs to be a layer. And as for where it came from, I'd like to suggest that it be innately malevolent and intrusive to our work. Ideally it ties into some D&D power source which is fundamentally unnatural. Not evil, just malevolent, if that makes sense. The Underdark isn't a demon, it's just a tiger; and the same way tigers eat antelope, Underdarks eat planets.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 8:52 pm

Laertes wrote: The Underdark isn't a demon, it's just a tiger; and the same way tigers eat antelope, Underdarks eat planets.

I believe you've said you're from South Africa, so you might not be familiar with a US movie from the 80s called The Neverending Story. In this fantasy movie 'The Nothing' was destroying the world. I could see something like that starting below ground. I like how it ties in with how people import 'nothing'.

Edit - As a relatively realistic option, I think a single-cell organism that processes chemicals and produces an acid would be appropriate. Since this is a fantasy world, there is no real reason it could not consume a large number of minerals, and may also explain 'degradation' of underdark equipment. Exposed to light the 'nothing' may kick into overdrive and consume in minutes what would normally take a score of years.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 8:53 pm

Laertes wrote:I don't see why it needs to have an ore. I think it just needs to be a layer. And as for where it came from, I'd like to suggest that it be innately malevolent and intrusive to our work. Ideally it ties into some D&D power source which is fundamentally unnatural. Not evil, just malevolent, if that makes sense. The Underdark isn't a demon, it's just a tiger; and the same way tigers eat antelope, Underdarks eat planets.

Hmm... a kind of cavern-generating tiberium then?

EDIT: Does your proposed Umberite (a name I'm pulling out of no where, you can feel free to take or leave) generate anything of use other than Nothing? Are those crystals you alluded to mineral rich? Do the walls leech metals from the area? In other words, other than making a nice and extensive cave system, how would the mining value of the area change by going from being plain ol' Earth-like geology to being Umberite?

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:07 pm

Umberite is as cool a name as any.

I believe you've said you're from South Africa, so you might not be familiar with a US movie from the 80s called The Neverending Story. In this fantasy movie 'The Nothing' was destroying the world. I could see something like that starting below ground. I like how it ties in with how people import 'nothing'.

I am indeed South African, although I live in London nowadays. I saw The Neverending Story for the first time last year with a young lady; it was on a double bill with The Dark Crystal. I adored it but was somewhat distracted as you can imagine.

The idea of having The Nothing below the earth which is eating away at it reminds me of the final Sam Vimes book in the Discworld series. It's a very cool idea but I am not a hundred percent sure how it would tie into the existing D&D canon to do with the Underdark.

Edit - As a relatively realistic option, I think a single-cell organism that processes chemicals and produces an acid would be appropriate. Since this is a fantasy world, there is no real reason it could not consume a large number of minerals, and may also explain 'degradation' of underdark equipment. Exposed to light the 'nothing' may kick into overdrive and consume in minutes what would normally take a score of years.

Those exist in real life. The problem is that they can't escape their own acid waste products unless they live in water or some other drainage system; therefore they're common in aquifers and underground rivers, but deep down there cannot be either because it's too hot for liquid water. However, there's no reason we can't have a fantasy version which can exist directly as a lithovore because shut up.

How do spells like Cure Disease work? Can you use them to wipe out microbial colonies?

EDIT: Does your proposed Umberite (a name I'm pulling out of no where, you can feel free to take or leave) generate anything of use other than Nothing? Are those crystals you alluded to mineral rich? Do the walls leech metals from the area? In other words, other than making a nice and extensive cave system, how would the mining value of the area change by going from being plain ol' Earth-like geology to being Umberite?

Well, you can't create or destroy matter, nor would I want to. As such it might leach materials from the walls; however it's more likely to just push them aside and grow into the cracks between them. Since ores tend to accumulate at seams and discontinuities, which are the places that Umberite grows into, the immediate walls of the Underdark would end up as good places to mine; which makes Underdark dwellers happy and also means that Dwarf miners are constantly stumbling into the Underdark.

I'm thinking that Umberite would probably form a system much like GnomeWorks's picture of human bone: Thick walls with a honeycomb in between, which gradually expands until it's large enough to have underground seas inside it. Because underground seas are cool.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:15 pm

Cure disease removes a [disease] from a character. Exact mechanism is not discussed. You could reasonably rule that it's a perfect, targeted antibiotic, but that's only consistent, not supported.

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:17 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:That means it would be really easy for someone who wanted to wipe out huge chunks of the setting to do so. The more reasonable underdark races would need to put guards around every pole to keep the demons and mad wizards away.

This occurred to me over lunch, but I've missed the boat on addressing it.

Shatner wrote:Does your proposed Umberite generate anything of use other than Nothing? Are those crystals you alluded to mineral rich?

I would say the Nothing is plenty valuable, but you could say it also produces those crystal clusters as waste products. Mineral poor, since there should be less of what you eat in your poop than it started with, but with "magical properties" that drow and illithids pop boners over.

Laertes wrote:How do spells like Cure Disease work? Can you use them to wipe out microbial colonies?

As written, Cure Disease only removes disease that is actively infecting a creature, as the spell targets the creature to be cured and not the infection itself. Cleansing other surfaces would fall under other spells, like Purify Food and Drink for organic substances and Prestidigitation's cleaning power for inorganic surfaces.

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:57 pm

Laertes wrote:I'm thinking that Umberite would probably form a system much like GnomeWorks's picture of human bone: Thick walls with a honeycomb in between, which gradually expands until it's large enough to have underground seas inside it. Because underground seas are cool.

As awesome as underground seas are, though, haven't you pretty well established that water tends to be really hot and such that deep underground?

Or is there something about Umberite that's negating that, that I missed?

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:58 pm

As awesome as underground seas are, though, haven't you pretty well established that water tends to be really hot and such that deep underground?

Or is there something about Umberite that's negating that, that I missed?

We'll have to do something with that. Possibly Umberite does some bullshit magical stuff with heat to keep it cool; possibly it's brown mold. But yes, water that far down is usually well above its critical point and is only liquid due to the pressure. Water explosions are a very real thing.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:05 pm

Grek wrote:Both can happen in the same timeline

No. they can't. The aboleths existed in a time before mind flayers. Then one day, the mind flayers showed up and the aboleths don't know from where. This disturbs them, because they have a perfect genetic memory, so they all remember everything. That's their "current" official backstory. "Mind Flayers made the Aboleths" is almost as opposite as you can go from that. Which is fine if that's what you wanna do, you just have to be aware that that's what you're doing.

-

As to Umberite: If it should be everywhere, but it should also not be transportable, then perhaps the "entity" idea is the direction to go. It could be some sort of singular creature, hive mind, or the like, that spreads through what is otherwise solid rock, and when you're walking through the climate-controlled underdark full of green crystals and mosses and all that stuff making an active biosphere underground, you're actually inside the "bones" of the underdark entity. The underdark would physically be a series of tunnels and caverns with large pillars at weird angles going between the floor and ceiling through most of the smaller caverns. Like the spongy bone picture from before. A select few caverns would open up large enough to just be the great underground caverns that cities are built in and such. The underdark does "spread", but slowly.

Advantages of this explanation: There's nothing totally inert causing the ceiling to stay up, so you don't have to worry about people taking parts of it and trying to do weird things other places. If you cut off bits of it you just have normal rocks after a few hours, the same as if you cut bits off a tree you end up with dried out wood after a few hours.

disadvantages: This would make the underdark a particular feature of the prime material plane, and so if you care about having an underdark on other planes as well then it'd become pretty weird if other planes had the same thing going on. However, different worlds all within the prime could all have underdarks on them, because underdark entities might spread themselves from planet to planet, shooting off larvae that burrow into new planets and then spread out over the ages (Lavos style).

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:12 pm

disadvantages: This would make the underdark a particular feature of the prime material plane, and so if you care about having an underdark on other planes as well then it'd become pretty weird if other planes had the same thing going on. However, different worlds all within the prime could all have underdarks on them, because underdark entities might spread themselves from planet to planet, shooting off larvae that burrow into new planets and then spread out over the ages (Lavos style).

I think having the Underdark connect through multiple different planes, so much that it's almost trivial to stumble from plane to plane down there, would be awesome. The Underdark wouldn't just be a cancer eating this world, or indeed all worlds: it would be a cancer eating away at the concept that there are various distinct worlds instead of just one giant Underdark.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:14 pm

I... damn, that is the coolest option.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:17 pm

I'm beginning to feel this. Yeah, this is cool. The Aboleths and Illithids and Beholders and Drow and all that are nothing but set dressing. The Underdark itself is the real villain, in the same way that the jungle is the real villain in Apocalypse Now and in Lord of the Flies. You could do a bitchin' awesome campaign like that.

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:25 pm

That is a goddamn awesome idea.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:25 pm

I can't get behind the underdark as a malevolent entity that is eating the world. Because if that's the case then the underdark is evil, it has to be evil it can't be anything else because any being that exists only to consume and destroy can only be classified as evil. Basically you can't include Galactus in your setting and insist "no totally guys he's not evil, he just consumes everything in his path because he's hungry." So by doing that you make the only reasonable interaction with the underdark killing it because the underdark is evil under that paradigm.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:34 pm

Well if it was me making the decision and I had to throw out either a terrible, terrible alignment system or a badass world-eating geologic entity, it'd be a pretty easy choice.

I would totally buy that Galactus is just hungry, not evil. I don't see any problem with that at all. And that leaves killing him still a totally justifiable action anyway. Potentially a tragic one, but the choice is pretty straightforward.

I have a hard time with the idea that you can meaningfully categorize world-eating entities as evil for eating worlds any more than you can stars for going supernova.

Plus if you kill it, its corpse might still hold up the world... maybe not, though. And it almost definitely won't still work as a passage to other planes, so... there's a good chance you're doing more harm than good by killing it. Maybe find a way to tone down its growth instead. I dunno.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:37 pm

darkmaster wrote:I can't get behind the underdark as a malevolent entity that is eating the world. Because if that's the case then the underdark is evil, it has to be evil it can't be anything else because any being that exists only to consume and destroy can only be classified as evil. Basically you can't include Galactus in your setting and insist "no totally guys he's not evil, he just consumes everything in his path because he's hungry." So by doing that you make the only reasonable interaction with the underdark killing it because the underdark is evil under that paradigm.

I am very happy to make the only reasonable interaction with the Underdark be killing it. However, killing it is not straightforward; it's not something you can simply stab in the face. It would be more a case of trying to cure the planes that are infected with Underdark, in some nebulous sense.

First you'd have to realise that something was amiss, and find out what it was. Then you might have to rescue forgotten deities from long-lost corners, battle alchemical nightmares in order to get the necessary ingredients, and delve into the tombs of the primordials themselves in order to find the means to cure it. Then you'd need to make a whistlestop tour of the most badass and scary places in the Underdark in order to deliver it; and at each point the Underdark itself slowly gets more and more frantic, its dull instinctual protomind panicking in a primitive but powerful way and causing it to do whatever it can to stop you. Finally, you'd have to chase the infection to its source: a forgotten world in which the Underdark has totally metastasised and there is no "outside" any more. You'd heal this plane not by destroying the Underdark but by somehow reminding it of what it used to be; of reawakening the primordial spirits that created it and strengthening them, letting them gradually reclaim their world from the cancer that's wholly devoured it. Anything less than that would simply end up buying you time before the Underdark managed to break into another world and the whole cycle began again.

That's a Level 1 to Epic campaign right there. You're welcome.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:41 pm

But it's the only story you can tell with the underdark under this paradigm. Not explaining what the underdark is and how it works is actually far better from a story telling standpoint because that doesn't lock out any possible stories that can be told while your explanation does, in fact, lock out all other possible stories.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:44 pm

It's a threat on the timescale of thousands of years. Even an elf can ignore it as handily as many humans currently ignore global warming, and just treat it as a place to go adventuring. None of the characters even have to know what's up. I don't see how it removes any of the old "the Underdark is a place that just is" adventures.