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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nifft" data-source="post: 3192497" data-attributes="member: 6562">Just the Underdark? Fantasy realms have huge energy problems. How do you sustain such large populations of man-eating monsters, even on the surface?Magic is the usual hand-wave, and it works fine for the Underdark, too.- Beholders eat raw magical chaos energy. That's what their big eye does, suck in and consume ambient magical energy. Their skin, which constantly flakes off, leaves a dusting of reasonably fertile (if odd-smelling) soil wherever they go.- Some deep denizens commonly eat the microscopic trans-planar "plankton" that drift and migrate from the Prime to the various Elemental planes and back. This keeps them from starving, but doesn't taste great, so these critters are always hungry for more substantial (material) food.- Darkvision clearly works off some kind of radiation, right? So how about a plant that feeds on that radiation. Perhaps some plants have evolved to synthesize energy using neutrinos.- Death Energy. What happens to the souls of the dead when you bury them? Maybe they become food for monsters in the Underdark. (This would make for a rather dark campaign setting.)Cheers, -- N</blockquote>