It seems to be a law of nature that every fantasy world must have vast, subterranean cavern complexes which are all somehow connected with each other and house terrible monsters and strange civilizations.
I've started on my own version for Urbis - which I have called "Terra Profunda" (http://urbis.wikidot.com/terra-profunda) (I didn't want to recycle "Underdark" and "Underworld" was already used for a different concept within the setting), and I could use some more inspiration.
So, what is the Underdark like in your setting?
[This relates to my Necropact setting, of course.]
I actually hadn't give much thought about an underdark in my setting at all. There would be plenty of caves and whatnot but I don't see any connection between them. Of course, with this setting I want to avoid the normal stuff.
Quote from: Ninja D!Of course, with this setting I want to avoid the normal stuff.
So do I - which is why I actually came up with an explanation for all those tunnels. See [link=http://urbis.wikidot.com/fire-worm]this entry[/url] for details.
My present campaign world doesn't have an Underdark, though there are a few very large limestone cave systems that are inhabited. It's more of an earth-like situation, and there aren't massive city-sized caverns or huge underground seas like there are in the classic FR underdark, and the cave complexes aren't all linked together. The creatures that do live there are not "civilized," and don't have cities or agriculture or other such things.
One of my previous campaign settings (that I've actually run games in before), however, was disk-shaped, with either side of the disk inhabited and the interior of the disk one enormous cave system called the "Inner Realm," which easily had more space in it than both surfaces combined. The only way to travel from one side to the other was to go through it, essentially "digging to China" and coming out on the other side. That was a lot more classically Underdark-ish, with entire underground kingdoms and such.
I find that the setting above ground often dictates the setting below ground. Having huge FR-style underground realms just seem to work better in certain environments than others, depending on whether the designer is going for a more pronounced, high fantasy or a lower, more nuanced fantasy setting. I've designed both and played both and it's just a matter of what works best with the rest of the material.
My campaign setting is almost entirely underground. The surface is to dangerous for most lifeforms. Originally it didn't have too many underground caverns, but as the surface became increasingly dangerous more and more creatures moved underground and expanded the caves. Over the course of hundreds of years the tunnels and caves were connected. Of course they aren't all connected but there are many large complexes and megacaves.
Eschaton takes place on Earth, so it's got the same caves and stuff. No underdark.
While some of my earlier Avayevnon stuff made reference to what was essentially an Underdark, it never got focussed on, and may not be relevant in the current incarnation. There's a good chance it will be removed.
Underground? Yes. Tunnels? Of course. In fact, I have figured at least in passing that there would be numerous underground trade routes established by Issachar, but probably not a totally interconnected Underdark system.
I haven't yet decided how much the subterranean should feature in the Savage Age. I'm almost 100% sure that there won't be anything like a global cavern network, though. I'm tempted to go for a more mythical Underworld feel, with a blurred line between actual caves beneath the common soil on the one hand and a kind of metaphysical "plane" on the other.
Basically, as my planet is larger than real earth, it has a vast underdark that streches down almost 30 miles total, through it varies in deta, only half of which cna substane human life. Near the surface we have tings like real life caves and what not, but the offical underdark starts about a mile down. Near the top you have humanoid cities, and ancient civilations (drow, deep dwarves, deep gnomes ect), but as you get further down the populations decrease, until eventually it becomes inhabeted by only ancient evils long forgotten. When you thing you've reach as far down as you can go, you might find that you've in fact reached a new plan located at the bottom, an entire new realm run by the gods of the underground. There.....well you don't want to go there.
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EE
Karros doesn't have an underdark, though it does of course have cave systems. These though don't connect to form a massive singular underdark.
Like many of the posters above, my primary setting doesn't have an underdark per se. It does have large subterranean cave/tunnel networks. Most of these are the vast, scum-slathered undercities of the seven Twilight Cities - sewers, old streets, ruins, caverns, catacombs, etc, all blending into one another. I'm trying to give each undercity a very distinctive flavor tied to the city above it, so the undercity of Lophius is a barnacle-encrusted cave complex merging with flooded ruins, whereas the undercity of Baranauskas is a Gothic stony labyrinth, a jumble of baroque tombs and brickwork sewers. The other major subterranean edifices of the world are going to be the underground cities of the defunct Cestoid Imperium in places like the Chelicerae Mountains - huge, vaguely non-Euclidean or Lovecraftian structures built by intelligent centipede/tapeworm people. I want a very R'lyeh feel to these, a very warped, surreal texture - if Skein's organic towers resemble a Gigeresque biomechanoid landscape, I want the abandoned cities of the cestoids to look like Ernst's Silence (http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/647/silenceernstoa7.jpg) or Europe After the Rain.
I now have a question that stems from the responses in this thread; If your setting has no "underdark", why not?
Quote from: Ninja D!I now have a question that stems from the responses in this thread; If your setting has no "underdark", why not?
Er, why would we?
It seems like an exotic element that fits well in certain settings, more like flying islands or underwater cities, not something inherently necessary to all fantasy.
For myself, because I'm mostly working with historical fantasy, I try to avoid diverging too much from the real world. I could forsee other worlds--and have had them in the past--where such a conceit is appropriate. But I see those more as the exception.
Memory Fading has no underdark. There are two large underground cities, about one hundred miles apart, that one can travel between if needed - other than that, just regular ol' caves, caverns, and chasms.
My setting mostly has natural caves, But the Maze Mountains are a huge mountain range that had been turned into a fortress even before humans first set foot on the planet. Now it is riddled with several thousand miles of corridors, casemattes, bunkers, arcane technological devices and gun emplacements, all partially destroyed, abandoned and decyaing. Most of the stuff the humans built is above sea level and inside the mountains, but below sea level, natural and huge artificial caves and thousands of years old fortifications stretch almost five miles down into the crust. Some of these caves are overgrown with fungi and inhabitated by huge spider-like creatures, others have abandoned cities or fortresses made from something that looks like smooth, black resin inside.
in the deepest levels, the original inhabitants still live. For a certain value of "living".
Quote from: PhoenixQuote from: Ninja D!I now have a question that stems from the responses in this thread; If your setting has no "underdark", why not?
Er, why would we?
It seems like an exotic element that fits well in certain settings, more like flying islands or underwater cities, not something inherently necessary to all fantasy.
For myself, because I'm mostly working with historical fantasy, I try to avoid diverging too much from the real world. I could forsee other worlds--and have had them in the past--where such a conceit is appropriate. But I see those more as the exception.
What he said (well except the historical part... replace that with similar to earth).
My underdark, unlike so many others, is actually a quite pleasant place. It does have it's fair share of inhabitants, but they usually don't do much harm. Occasionally, they will spread out and explore other areas, but they don't tend to stay in other places for very long. While it is usually a very friendly place, it is unfortunately rare for outsiders to visit. Awhile back, though, there were some outsiders that wanted to hurt my underdark, but ended up leaving much, much more worn down then when they came.
True story.
Most of my, as of now unnamed setting takes place underground so the whole setting is the underdark.
Why no Underdark?
A natural Underdark - a vastly connected subterranean cave-system - seems implausible. It might work in certain worlds that have no problem with such implausabilities, and those worlds can be awesome in their own right, but assuming something approaching an earth-like norm for the planet, it's much more likely that a series of discrete cavern networks rather than a continent-spanning network would develop.
An artifical Underdark or an artificial extension to a natural cavern system presupposes an intensely advanced troglodytic civilization with enough resources to devote to the extremely difficult process of tunneling out large areas - Drow or Illithid or Dwarves, etc. Such a civilzation would have affected lots of other aspects of the world, so not everyone wants to include an artificial Underdark since it necessitates the creation of a civilzation to build that Underdark.
That said, I'm not anti-Underdark in any way - the Underdark is probably my favorite aspect of Faerun. It does, however, necessitate the inclusion of lots of subterranean civilizations or a certain level of implausability.
well mine is a mix. Due to the extreme dangers of the surface of my world almost everything has, over time gone underground. As they moved further down they expanded their caverns, found new ones, and eventually created the connected underdark. Underdark is not the name of the underground area. It's name varies by culture.
Example: Dwarves call the underdark "The Gift of the Gods", which is one word in Dwarven.
Alright, I've only used an Underdark equivalent kinda thing once, in the Calm setting. The Great Caverns are a system of massive caves and interconnecting tunnels under the continent of Otiron. These are inhabited by Dungeon Elves (banished there by the Surface Elves a long time ago).
In the same setting the continent of Skeir was blasted into the sky (its a giant floating continent now). roughly half of its volume is filled with tunnels. Both these tunnels and the Great Caverns are infested by The Hive.
The only other possible thing is in my largest setting, Divergence, the Fourth Divergence is a kind of Hollow Earth. Its basically Earth but its hollow with four inhabitable layers, the surface and three underground layers that vary quite a bit. This is an example of a natural Underdark kinda thing that is plausible (well positing that the Hollow Earth theory is true :P )
I tend to treat the underdark as the uppermost reaches of hell. No natural life exists deep down, just twisting mazes and metaphysical horrors. So basically it's one big dungeon.
I wish i knew cave geography better, i could do so much more with this idea
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EE
Quote from: SteerpikeAn artifical Underdark or an artificial extension to a natural cavern system presupposes an intensely advanced troglodytic civilization with enough resources to devote to the extremely difficult process of tunneling out large areas - Drow or Illithid or Dwarves, etc. Such a civilzation would have affected lots of other aspects of the world, so not everyone wants to include an artificial Underdark since it necessitates the creation of a civilzation to build that Underdark.
It seems to me that any people with access to magic are going to turn that magic first and foremost to things that actually matter to them - and though warfare is important, especially to adventurers, to most other people this means stuff like making the crops grow, curing disease, turning 1 gold coin into 10 (and then a subsequent spell to deal with inflation), and building things. If, for whatever reason, your particular folk live underground, coming up with ways to make more space is probably going to be your biggest priority as a society. Digging a cave the size of a continent? Yeah, that seems a bit much. But an underground society whose best minds are able to fly around and throw meteors at each other - and yet doesn't have a phenomenal grasp of earth-moving (and earth-disposal) magic to go with it - really doesn't deserve to be called an underground society.
True, Polycarp. It is going to take them a lot more effort than a corresponding surface society takes to build cities and highways, though.
One could well argue that building something like a paved stone road is a pretty complex procedure - dig quarry, cut blocks, move blocks, survey route, level ground, place blocks, and so on - whereas simply digging is not, if all you're after is a rough-cut tunnel.
In the end, however, I imagine it has a lot to do with how your magic system works. Unless you're going for a situation where "a more advanced civilization made this a long time ago," you'll want to at least roughly match what exists with the capabilities people have to make such things. A world with rare, subtle, low-power magic with a world-spanning system of artificial catacombs has some explaining to do.
Crazy thought here but what if a chain of now extinct volcanoes had been tunneled out so as to connect lava tubes and chambers? Those things can get pretty big and while it wouldn't be world spanning I am sure it could be quite massive. I mean, how awesome would it be to have a civilization living and moving about in a labyrinthine series of these:
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(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Thurston_Lava_Tube.jpg)
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Of corse, such realism arguments become rather moot when the world in question is literally a giant disc resting on the shell of a giant turtle, while the sun is a flaming chariot driven by a giant dude, and all the twinkling stars in the sky are candles held by winged, flying dudes. You could simply state that the world was created with all those caves below...