The Depthworld - An "Underdark" for the Shifting Seas

With all these ideas in the general discussion thread being thrown out for the equivalent of an Underdark in our setting, I thought it might be a good idea to branch out a new thread to discuss it.

The basic premise is to collaborate on ideas for how to realize our own unique version of an underground world. Of course, we can have traditional Underdarks on larger islands or continents such as Allaria, the Savage Lands, and other appropriate Near Lands and Far Lands, but this is focused on using underworld civilizations in connection with the more PC frequented Daunton and Proximate Isles - because these are small isles that in themselves probably don't have a great deal of underground society.

Codenaming this region the Depthworld for now (due to me lacking any creativity at the moment), it could be an extensive system of caverns and tunnels running under the ocean floor. There might be a variety of ways to access the region; using ideas from the general discussion thread a possible take could be this:

Daunton: Connected normally through landmass to the ocean floor. Access is gained by conventional travel deep down tunnels until crossing seamlessly to the Depthworld. Having Daunton rooted could be an incentive why the residents consider it the "main isle" - because while all the others drift back and forth, Daunton is the only certain point of reference.

Mykonos: Unconnected. Access is typically gained via diving bells or (for the wealthy) submarine-like vehicles. Using engineered devices adds to the idea of the Empire being industrious and the idea of dwarves being expert craftsmen – both of which are primary residents on Mykonos.

Kythira: Connected through one or more enormous living entities. Access is gained by travelling through tube-like organic passages, which might be hazardous at certain times or in certain areas where the entity try to “digest” or other bodily functions threaten travelers. Using living passageways adds weight to why Kythira is called “the Living Isle”.

Isle of Opposition: Unconnected. Using elemental rituals from their home that manipulate water and air, residents of the Kingdom of Jade typically gain access through magical resistant bubbles they can move up and down. Beast-tamers from the wild jungles of the Valley of Bone, however, more often used trained sea life to ferry them to and from the depths. The idea here is to play on themes from the respective Far Lands.

Bacarte: Connected through exotic flexible landmass. Perhaps Bacarte was once rooted like Daunton but some wild and/or powerful magic disturbed the foundation, so now transportation sometimes requires slipping and sliding down passages. I figured Bacarte should have travel be treacherous and unreliable, but I’m not really sure about this one (perhaps an alternative could be plentiful unstable portals).

This is all just random ideas and brainstorming, mostly coming from the general discussion thread. The above setup maintains that from the perspective of surface inhabitants, all the proximate isles still drift around relative to each other, but below the sea things may be interconnected in intriguing and fascinating ways.

Any thoughts?

covaithe said:

This immediately made me think of getting swallowed, which made me think of monsters growing upwards out of the underdark, that could swallow things such as, say, ships, and excrete them into the underdark.

I don't know whether that idea is really cool or really disturbing and I should go back to bed.

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Quoted from the discussion thread. I like that idea, especially the excreting ships into the Underdark (or whatever) part, and I see Dunamin has incorporated it in his summary/proposal quite well. And I think it's both really cool and disturbing

EDIT: Oooh, having a sub-ocean floor Underdark opens all sorts of cool environmental and terrain options. Huge, enormous waterfalls under openings to the ocean, geothermal vents, partially and wholly submerged caverns, etc..., and I think crustacean type monsters would be fabulous down there.

Seems like the sort of place you might find Genasi, too. Earth, Fire, and Water are obvious. A community living down there would need Air to breathe, so there'd be ventilation systems (and probably a continuous breeze). Not sure about Storm; maybe magnetism?

I'm a bit wary of nailing down exactly which places are connected to which others, and how. E.g. saying that Mykonos is not connected, or that Bacarte is only connected by exotic landmass (??) seems limiting. The connections between the rest of the world regions are much less concretely defined. E.g. how do you get from the Kingdom of Jade to Daunton? It's not at all clear, since we know that sea journeys are perilous, and we don't know of established portals. Yet, sufficiently determined people can travel from one to the other. How? Does it matter? When a DM needs to run an adventure in KoJ, they'll just make whatever transportation arrangements are suitable for their adventure. Maybe that's a portal, maybe it's a roundabout sailing journey that tries to stay close to coastlines. Heck, maybe it involves a detour through the Depthworld. But I don't really feel the need to pin it down at a setting level.

Uhmmm. I'll throw in my two cents. First of all, I like your short article, Dunamin. However, I think there's something that is opposed to the spirit of easyness I had in mind when I first proposed the idea (and that is obviously not necessarily what has to be the final approach). I think the places, the ways, and the nature of the places you can access the "Depthworld" from should remain vague. So not geographically discrete place, but "some places are unconnected, other are connected by teleportation magic, others..." etc. The idea is, making it a mysterious and unknown place, fluff-wise. And mechanically-wise, a place the DMs don't have to worry too much about, either if they include it in their adventure or not: they can just ignore it or just place it in the place they want an access to be. And if different adventures use and spread conflicting information, (like, "there is an access in Daunton" and "there is no access in Daunton nor the proximate isles"), that all just adds to the lack of info and knowledge about the place. Nobody knows much about it, and even who's been there entering from a known place, is not sure to find it again: if isles move on the surface of the Shifting Seas, Poseeydus only knows what happens on that ocean floor.

oh, and, the idea of huge monsters eating ships and excreting them in the depths is great. We should name the thing "Cariddi"

I like Ata's suggestion, and was thinking of suggesting something similar - that what we've thought of so far are things that the 'experts' in the game world have theorized. No one really knows how it's connected or to where, but there's some ideas and first-hand accounts (which may get contradicted later by other first-hand accounts )

Another couple ideas: Perhaps Ata's small entrance island from his original proposal is the easiest and most sure-fire way of getting to the Depthworld? And perhaps the Maze and the Depthworld are two different things, but maybe interconnected at some point(s)?

I definitely want both the Maze and the Depthworld as mostly distinct places.

Lord Sessadore said:

And perhaps the Maze and the Depthworld are two different things, but maybe interconnected at some point(s)?

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Actually, I was thinking something of the sort. But making it a great discovery and a potentillally world-shattering event in the course of a long plot -I suppose sooner or later we're gonna have those too. I suggest we leave some ideas for later-pcs are too young now to already know the true nature of the world

The Maze seems like the sort of place where you wouldn't be suprised to find it connected to anywhere. Back of your hasn't-been-cleaned-for-years closet? Check! Exterior door at the top of a mage's tower in the middle of nowhere? Why not? Behind a waterfall miles deep in the Depthworld? Sure.

But you're right that I'm definitely envisaging some of this for more powerful characters. In fact, insofar as any of this becomes canon instead of just tossing ideas around, I think it would be neat to cast it in the form of stories about adventures the Five went on.

Yeah, I think if this gets cast as canon now, it should be very vague and mostly just suggestions for DMs who would like to use it. The DMs can define it as they go, and if we keep an aura of mystery around it, different DMs don't even have to be consistent on the details (ie - travel, what connects to where and how, the residents of the area, etc...)

This was all just a dose of speculative fun on how one might implement a different and setting-appropriate Underdark - not a fixed suggestion to root in canon. It was intended as an entirely seperate conception than Ata's maze, as well.

Undefined or vaguely set travel connections to the Proximates' underground sound fine to me. Of course, we should be consistent at some point with whether or not an isle actually reached down to the ocean floor through its landmass, but that's not a pressing matter since we don't have any adventuring down there (to my knowledge).
I do like the idea that Daunton actually has a foundation like a normal isle, though, since it adds weight to why we deal with it as the "main isle".