Underdark Ecology

[Sejs]

With the plethora of evil races, and the scarcity of food, undead labor becomes attractive. Skeletons and zombies never tire, never talk back, can perform basic tasks, don't need sustenance...

Skeletons - zombies have fleshy bits that could be harvested and put to other purposes before the animation process. As an added bonus, skeletons store better and take up less space when they're not working.

^_^

 

[Ron]

A few suggestions:

1) Include some sort of energy source. Geothermic will do it. As many have pointed before, there is no way you can have an ecosystem without an energy source. Then you can create some fantastic lifeforms that can use this energy and be the base of the food web. Additionally, an energy source can also be responsible to move the air around, helping to turn the atmosphere breathable.

2) Get rid of the dark beings. Real cave fauna is always albinolike.

3) Give a look in Shadow Elves, one of the Basic D&D Gazetteers, freely available to download here at Wizards site. It's the best treatment of the an underdark setting I've seen.

 

[Agback]

So why not use medieval ideas instead? ... lower creatures were spontaneously generated from matter. So they just automatically come into being from water, earth, rock, filth, decomposing organic material, or whatever depending upon the creature being generated.

Further to this idea, I'll mention that it was not until the 18th century that oxygen was discovered, and its role in supporting combustion and respiration was established. Before Lavoisier (or was it Francis Bacon?) it was generally understood that air that had been breathed or whatever was not depleted of a resource (oxygen), but 'fouled' by having waste products and phlogiston added to it. So by ancient and mediaeval understanding, foul air ought to have be rendered re-breatheable by some sort of washing or purifying process (contact with running water, perhaps) in which foulness and phlogistion could be filtered out or soaked up.

This is certainly going to get you further than supposing that fungi release oxygen, or that a beast can gain energy by breaking minerals down into oxygen and reduced 'waste'. Those ideas jibe neither with ancient/mediaeval nor with modern ideas.

Myself, I have always liked the hydroponic tunnels lit by Everlasting Torches, and the dual-purpose tunnelling/food-producing Stone to Flesh spell.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Nightfall]

Well, aside from buying Into the Black or Underdark, which have a LOT of detail on the ecology and conditions of the underground (especially Into the Black), I'd basically imagine an ecology based on mushrooms and fungus instead of green plants, devoid of large herbivores, and replete with insects and arachnids of various styles and sizes.

Have to side with KM. I think BOTH books would serve your need admirably.

 

[RangerWickett]

Has anyone considered the possibility, albeit a mild cop-out, of having daylight spells feed plantlife?

I'll have to think up some of my own ideas along these lines some day.

 

[Nightfall]

My idea of an Underdark is just some small cave and maybe some planes that decided to come and visit.

 

[Orius]

As an added bonus, skeletons store better and take up less space when they're not working.

And they don't stink....

 

[Nightfall]

And they don't stink....

Yeah something Hollowfaustians can relate to. Not to mention skeletons are far more study than zombies/meatbags. Especially if you reinforce the bones. Plus they make good golems too.