Expanding on the Sunken Ruins

These are my thoughts thus far on the Sinking Ruins, my prospective mega non-dungeon that I may write up and run someday. Or not - I've got a lot of Savage Tides to run for my tabletop group first, and that means a fair bit of time spent converting it to GURPS DF first. It's useful to stash these kind of thoughts, anyway.

History of the Sunken Ruins

The origins and the name of the Sunken City have been lost to any history outside of its own buried archives. Indeed, the very existence of the city was lost when it was razed during the 7th Crusade. The area was resettled by the villagers of Shady Shore, who had only begun to discover the ruins below their fields when the orcish Il-Khan's army dispersed them. The orcs did not linger, and after they passed, Blessedborn monks established the Monastery of the Sacred Victor on the site. Within three generations, the monks had fallen to demon worship, and Templars of the King of Life besieged and burnt the place. Ten years later, rumors have sprung up about the treasures hoarded by the monks and left undiscovered in hidden parts of the cellars, but nothing definite is known.

A Note on Climate

The Sunken City was built in a quite northern climate, and densely packed buildings, covered arcades, and sheltered market areas are a common feature of the local architecture. In addition, ever since the 1st City was buried in the Cataclysm of the Scarlet Warlocks, the ground has been too soft to keep buildings from sinking, and the locals tended to periodically re-elevate their roads and reroof their buildings as ground levels sunk so deep as to become basements.

Levels of the Sunken Ruins

• Surface Level: The Ruined Village of Shady Shore and the Abandoned Monastery of the Sacred Victor - half sunken and burnt buildings, collapsed and ruined. Inhabited mostly by bandits and savages. A few half-collapsed delving tunnels, wells, and purple worm tunnels provide access to the deeper levels, and stairs and ladders go the buildings' basements.
• Sublevels 1-2: Mostly the cellars and subbasements of the village and the monastery. A few collapsed cellar floors provide access to the upper levels of the 3rd City.
• Levels 1-3: The levels of the 3rd City, built over the previous two cities. Consists of buried and collapsed buildings, connected by the purple worm tunnels that riddle the area and break into buried arcades and buildings, as well as the ancient and often collapsed covered streets. On level 2, the Dwarven Delving Hall contains a wealth of information about the 2nd city, including maps. On level 3, the old city cistern can be accessed from the surface through some of the wells. The dwarven delving tunnels descend through the sewers into the 2nd City. 
• Level 4: The sewers of the 3rd city, ancient brick tunnels pierced by delving shafts and a few purple worm tunnels.
• Levels 5-7: The levels of the 2nd City. Notable sites include the Cathedral (a multi-level vault that acts as an effective elevator for delvers in the 2nd City) and the Castle (with passages inside the walls). In addition to the buried roads, there are plenty of dwarven delving tunnels branching out between buildings and heading toward the Castle.
• Sublevel 7: The hard cap created by Cataclysm of the Scarlet Warlocks, forming a cavern over much of the 1st City. A few tunnels, wells, and magical portals pierce it.
• Sublevel 8: The Adamantite Fortress, a castle made of essential stone. Technically part of the 1st City, but on a hill and above the main floor of the city.
• Level 8: The nearly intact 1st City in a cavern. A good place to put a dragon. A lot of orichalcum weapons are here (that's what the dwarves of the 3rd City were seeking - they just didn't know about the 2nd City and weren't going deep enough). High level playground. Think of Xak Tsaroth. 
• Level 9: Mines of the 1st city, accessible through adits in the 1st City.
• Level 10: The ancient sewers of the 1st city, mostly made from abandoned mines. Some mines go through or below the sewer level.
• Levels 11-12: Natural caves. The sewers and some of the mines enter directly into these.
• Level 13: Hell. "Dug too deep" shouldn't mean "oh, and we found a balrog." It should mean "no, there's a literal Hell in the underworld and you can get there by going deep enough." (Just like you should be able to get to Heaven or at least the moon by flying high enough. Fantasy physics should be fantastic.) As a bonus, any delvers that actually reach the 13th level are going to be 1000 point Lords of Crazy Town, so you might as well send ST40 DR10 Skill-26 demons against them as mooks so there's some sense of challenge.

The Sinking Ruins, a mega (non) dungeon

I'm not a big fan of mega-dungeons. I'm not much of a fan of dungeons, really. I much prefer adventures set in abandoned cities or ruined castles or tangled forests or, well, anything with an open sky above. I'm not claustrophobic, so it's not like I'm afraid of dungeons, I just don't especially enjoy preparing them or playing in them extensively. I think that's a huge part of why Red Hand of Doom is one of my favorite modules: despite being a huge module, there's only two "dungeons" and the three other major set-pieces are an abandoned keep, the ruins of a sunken city, and a town undergoing a siege.

Nevertheless, I've been reading Peter V. Dell'Orto's articles on megadungeons, and a couple of things he's said sound interesting to me. The idea that it's impossible to completely clear the dungeon, or even clear a level, just sounds fascinating to me. Having to make some strategic choices as you enter the dungeon so that you always have a retreat path could be really cool. For various reasons, I don't know if that would work with my current tabletop group, but it could be really neat for the right group.

I'm currently running Savage Tides for my group, nominally in between running things we actually care about. I'm probably going to wrap it up later this year when they complete the Tides of Dread adventure, because after that the adventure rapidly goes to places that I'm pretty sure aren't going to work for my group (ie, literally to Hell, where Sister Joan's intolerance of other religions is not going to play well with the adventure's requirements that you cut deals with demons and devils). So what to run next?

One option would be to heavily adapt the later adventures in Savage Tide so they're workable with the group. I've also been inspired by Peter's reviews of Dragonlance, and it looks like it might be fun to ditch the stupid storyline and convert the early modules into delving sites for a bunch of murder-hobos. Or I could create a mega-dungeon of my own.

The Sinking Ruins

One thing I know I don't like about mega-dungeons is I often have a hard time believing that anyone would build the silly things in the first place. I know there are a few historical examples in history, but they're rare. And since mining is hard, real life examples don't have miles of extraneous corridors and widely spread out rooms, which serve important purposes in a mega-dungeon of making it plausible that the delvers don't fight the entire orc tribe at one time.

So my first problem with creating a megadungeon is coming up with a reason that I can accept for it to exist. And then I remembered that Chicago has been sinking almost since it was founded: the early settlers would periodically reraise the roads and build steps down to their buildings, and then eventually add new levels to the buildings to put them above the roads. There's a similar line about Discworld's Ankh-Morpork, "a fellow with a pick-axe and a good sense of direction could travel anywhere beneath the city by knocking down a few walls." If the mega-dungeon is the ruins of an ancient town that has been sinking into the ground forever, with multiple layers of buildings and roads built up around it, then that's very interesting and plausible for me.

So now I want to flesh out this concept, provide a few more details. Starting at the very bottom, there are some natural caves (I can totally accept natural caves in a mega-dungeon). Maybe a lot of natural caves, or some semi-unnatural caves that people only find by "digging too deep." In order to dig too deep, you've got to dig, so some layers of mines and/or sewers above that; maybe some of the sewers are played out mines. Above that, the original roads and buildings of the city, now buried and having become sub-cellars of the next few rebuildings of the city. I might add a nearby volcano or some other equivalent natural disaster producer, so that the city can have been knocked down or buried a couple of times and rebuilt, radically changing the layout and road plan.

I don't know if I'm going to go any farther in actually fleshing this out. Right now, it's an idea I don't have a huge amount of use for. But it's definitely something to reflect on, should I ever be in a position where I need a mega-dungeon. 

Blogger's Note

I posted twice today, so if you're following a direct link from someone's blog-roll, consider reading Daily Posting, Double Posting.

Also, I've expanded on this article with more detail.