Tunnels, Caves and Underground Cities

The Lost City of Ballogfar is a massive setting.  It not only incorporates an above ground ruin of 15 miles by 8 miles, but it also has a five story Palace that is a half mile in diameter, a “sunken city” of turtle-men, and miles of mining tunnels under the ruin and the mountains that surround it.  But how much of this makes sense and how much if pure fantasy?  OK, it’s all pure fantasy, but how much of it requires a healthy dose of willful suspension of disbelief?

Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is considered the world’s longest cave system with over 400 miles (probably at least 415 miles) surveyed.  Number two is in Mexico and only about 230 miles.  With over 400 miles of passageways, Mammoth Cave’s above ground park only covers about 80 square miles.

Let’s not quibble - 415 miles is a long way!  80 square miles is a lot of acreage!  But neither of these comes close to the awe inspiring types of tunnels and underground cavern systems we find in many FRPG worlds.  For as massive as Mammoth Cave is, most of it is explored on your hands and knees.  The reason it was called “mammoth” in the first place was because several of its chambers are truly gargantuan.  The ceiling of the Rotunda is 70’ tall (there is some argument about this, but let’s assume this is close enough).  If you haven’t guessed, I think this place is really cool and have been there four or five times.  That doesn’t make me an expert, but I’m not completely talking out my hindside.

The point is this:  caves that allow someone to travel from one place to another via miles and miles of underground passages don’t exist on Earth.  That’s not to say they cannot exist in your fantasy world, but it seems to imply that they wouldn’t be natural.

OK, then could they be unnatural or crafted in some manner?  Probably yes.  Millennia ago, the titans had an interest in tunnels and caves, and they crafted mine shafts that do some pretty amazing things.  It is certainly plausible that in a world where there are underground dwelling creatures, there could be all manner of underground construction projects that Earth never saw due to the nature of humans to live on the surface. 

But this is an important piece!  Have you put in tunnels that were built?  If they were built, by who?  And why?  This is world building at its best, because you get to tell a story.  OK, you might be telling the story to yourself, because no one will ever discover it, but sometimes, that’s alright.

We know there are a lot of fantasy worlds out there that have “the underdark” or other worlds within the center of the planet or just huge kingdoms found at the other end of a rabbit’s hole.  We’re not here to bash the idea of huge underground “worlds”.  We’re here to ask you to think them through as you are placing them into your game worlds.

Look - We get it!  The aldar (underground elves) have a passage that leads from one side of a massive river to the other, ending at Ballogfar.  How does that work?  Well, magic, but not just the open ended concept of magic, a reasonably well defined style of magic with magical workers and spell casters.  Yes, we absolutely encourage groups exploring the Tunnel World, but we still think that those sections of it that are not simply natural need to be explained.

Beneath Ballogfar, there is a honeycomb of mining tunnels, because this was one of the largest copper ore deposits ever found on the World of Fletnern.  Honestly, most of the mining tunnels are dead-ends and empty, because they were dug as mining tunnels and when the ore ran out, they dug somewhere else.  But they dug carelessly, and things happened like the Sunken City.

The Sunken City is not a city.  It is a cathedral and a few other buildings from the neighborhood.  Of the nine or ten buildings that fell into the mining tunnels below, five or six survived in the same general shape they were before they fell.  Still, they are actual buildings underground, and it is fun to design them and run adventures that start there.

Who lives there now?  It isn’t the folks that built the buildings, so how does their mythology justify the buildings?  What do they eat?  What do they do for fuel, or do they just eat raw meat and have magical eyes?  Sorry, but we have long believed that infravision, ultravision, darkvision, supersonic vision and whatever else they have out there is really a cop-out and a cheat.  The early gamers couldn’t explain certain things, so they just came up with stuff that they didn’t really think through.  OK, that’s for another time!

If you’re reading this, you are probably a world builder or at least a game master.  If you want to have a kobold kingdom that stretches for miles and miles of tunnels in every direction, you get to do that.  We hope you put a little thought into it and determine why it does what it does.  Not only do we think it would help you design the thing, but preventing massive plot holes is always for the best.

 

This post was written as part of The Lost City of Ballogfar Part III aka All About Characters, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing characters, specifically adventurers, the types who would come running when they heard about this fabulous fantasy ruin.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 68 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.