Benoist
Active Pubber
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2017
- Messages
- 27
- Reaction score
- 41
"You will find of course all sorts of subterranean forms of habitat scattered throughout the depths of the Eurth. Tunnels and caverns, sinkholes and chasms are natural places for all sorts of predators to dwell, find sustenance or protection. Humans and Demi-humans will also shape living quarters, basements and other systems of tunnels during both peace and war time, using their own ingenuity and unique engineering abilities for similar if more enlightened reasons. Lairs after a fashion.
Extensions of these natural needs and inclinations would include tombs and burial grounds to keep the dead away, mines to recover ores necessary for a myriad of trades and crafts they all engage in. These are lair extensions that follow and are required for the sustenance of the group and society developing in their midst.
There is yet a very different kind of subterranean network, which is purposefully aimed at either becoming its own Underworld or connect to the broader metaphysical concept thereof. Their architects, as you know, are usually Priests and Magic Users versed into the subtleties of the Invisible Art, and how it can use the powers and flows of the Eurth for greater arcane purposes, hence the deliberate North-South, East-West orientation of 10 foot wide corridors following the cardinal directions flowing from the Axis Mundi, as well as variants following ley lines and loci of power.
These have come to be known as Dungeons, perhaps because they originally spread from the underground levels of the early city states of men, how they were used to seclude slaves and more terrifying, dark things away from the light of day.
Yet it might surprise you that not all Dungeons are built by sentient beings studying architectural patterns and the way they can perform as dweomers channeling the forces of the Eurth.
There is another kind of Dungeon which to my mind is much more mysterious and therefore, much more dangerous in nature, for it springs forth from the metaphysical Underworld itself and may spread under our feet undetected, like a tumour reaching from the ethereal and astral planes, from the unending labyrinth of the netherworld, with its adjunct rooms, corridors and entire levels tainting and melding with the material plane. These may be discovered and populated by creatures from this world, as well as all the shades of the Eurth, but they well and truly hail from Beyond. What intelligence if any devised them, what exact purpose their existence follows, and what rhyme or reason their seemingly random appearances in this world translate, I am not sure. That is the part that scares me."
Eriop of the Flame, to the Colorless Mage of Perrengaard.
Pictured: The Hearth of Chaos, level 3 of the Marmoreal Tomb.
Extensions of these natural needs and inclinations would include tombs and burial grounds to keep the dead away, mines to recover ores necessary for a myriad of trades and crafts they all engage in. These are lair extensions that follow and are required for the sustenance of the group and society developing in their midst.
There is yet a very different kind of subterranean network, which is purposefully aimed at either becoming its own Underworld or connect to the broader metaphysical concept thereof. Their architects, as you know, are usually Priests and Magic Users versed into the subtleties of the Invisible Art, and how it can use the powers and flows of the Eurth for greater arcane purposes, hence the deliberate North-South, East-West orientation of 10 foot wide corridors following the cardinal directions flowing from the Axis Mundi, as well as variants following ley lines and loci of power.
These have come to be known as Dungeons, perhaps because they originally spread from the underground levels of the early city states of men, how they were used to seclude slaves and more terrifying, dark things away from the light of day.
Yet it might surprise you that not all Dungeons are built by sentient beings studying architectural patterns and the way they can perform as dweomers channeling the forces of the Eurth.
There is another kind of Dungeon which to my mind is much more mysterious and therefore, much more dangerous in nature, for it springs forth from the metaphysical Underworld itself and may spread under our feet undetected, like a tumour reaching from the ethereal and astral planes, from the unending labyrinth of the netherworld, with its adjunct rooms, corridors and entire levels tainting and melding with the material plane. These may be discovered and populated by creatures from this world, as well as all the shades of the Eurth, but they well and truly hail from Beyond. What intelligence if any devised them, what exact purpose their existence follows, and what rhyme or reason their seemingly random appearances in this world translate, I am not sure. That is the part that scares me."
Eriop of the Flame, to the Colorless Mage of Perrengaard.
Pictured: The Hearth of Chaos, level 3 of the Marmoreal Tomb.