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[SirHoneyBadger]

Thanks for the enlightenment!  I thought it had...heck, I thought I'd discussed it myself, before.

Along the "strange caves with unusual properties" line, it might be fun to see evidences of ancient...I guess the best term would be "Clarketech", as in "technology that's indistinguishable from magic".
Although, in this case, I'm thinking "magic that's indistinguishable from technology", but it amounts to the same thing.

You might therefore discover ruins that are so old they could only have been built by gods, demons, titans, and the like, thousands of generations ago. They might have things like instant teleportation caves, scrying pools, inscrutible artifacts, horrible automaton killing machines, wonderful treasures, living art, or lost libraries of knowledge in languages only the dead can speak.

Basically, what I'm thinking is whole rooms that are artifacts, artifact creatures, and artifacts that might be linked to one another. These would be all but impossible to find, but once in a while your dwarfs might stumble on one.

[Retro42]

Along those same lines

What about a magicians crypt:
  Filled with the "dead" magicians corpse and all his possession from before.  Magical artifacts, gold, gems, rare objects.  Not to mention traps and guardians to protect it all.

  IF you manage to survive all that there the chance touching the wrong thing and having the "dead" magician take over your body.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Malevolent forces possessing your dwarfs? It's already in the game, but having it triggered by touching an item is an interesting concept. As a concept, it might go better under a general "magic" thread, but it's definitely got my support.

[Pure_W]

:Pokes Topic With Stick:

Is this dead?

[Mephansteras]

Not so much dead as toughly discussed. I think at this point we're just waiting to see what Toady ends up putting in the next release, since some UD is in the works.

[Footkerchief]

Not so much dead as toughly discussed. I think at this point we're just waiting to see what Toady ends up putting in the next release, since some UD is in the works.

We already have some hints toward stuff like antmen invading your map through tunnels that reach the map edge, etc.

[flabort]

not sure weather it's been mentioned or not, but salt water under ground rivers do exist in RL, it's just that they aren't very big. but this could be a rare feature in DF.

also, most caves are only 1 or two tiles wide. huge natual caves 5 or even 12 tiles wide, going many more tiles deep would be a nice feature.

also, how about several z levels below you, a hidden goblin civilization, trapped there for many (world) generations, ever since a cave in, has finally breached to the surface, and due to, say, LOS, although you can see some of the underground cave that has just opened up and erupted with golblins, you can't see all of the new area until you send in a dwarf to explore, in which case you find the goblins have invented 23rd century-type technology, and a space-ship wing takes off the dwarfs head.

translation: lost civilizations could invent technology way beyond your own, depending how old the world is,but not be able to show the world until they are freed from thier underground prison(s).

a page back, i read about how certain features dissapear fast. i can agree. ever find a tropical glacier? turns out it was a flying wagon 7 z levels off the ground, and 15/7 water, with not a trace of ice.

[Jack_Bread]

On the topic of meteor crash sites... (takes out Dungeon Master's Guide) ...I don't know if someone already said this but adamantine is also found in meteors (along with the rare veins)

[Cheshire Cat]

hah, ive totally had the wagon falling from the sky thing with a play now character in adventure mode. weirdest thing ever for me at the time. i seem to remember from several versions ago that getting through the aquifer in a glacier area involved exposing it to the outside, letting it freeze, then digging through and roofing it so the area was livable. being inside seemed to keep things in whatever state they were to begin with. you can also melt glaciers with magma, and ice melts when its in contact with a hot wall or floor.

on topic - it may have been here, or elsewhere in the forum that i posted about uses for salt and brimstone, mainly making acid for acid etching metal objects like armor and weapons, which would give your alchemists lab more uses, though im unsure as to whether this is within the scope of this thread and its list. perhaps you could use acid for funky things like traps, requiring glass vials of acid loaded into them like traps with crossbows. its also worth remarking that salt comes from salty water as well. toady willing such things make it in someday, i really like the idea of more difficult multistep craft and decorating options which have interesting uses.

i really like the ideas involving haunted crypts and underground (or even surface) areas which when encountered give you troubles. i also liked the suggestion of your dead champions coming back to cause problems . could be something that can start happening when you unearth a feature, like tower caps happen when you find underground water.

also interesting is the uncovered artifacts. i like the idea of dwarves encountering things that cause strange moods. perhaps the haunted zombie causing crypts also induce fell moods, whereas more benign ruins can incite other mental states. if people know the author terry pratchet, in his novel "thud", dwarves have mechanical objects found deep under the mountains, some of which provide an infinite amount of mechanical power and others which hold ancient stored knowledge.

i also endorse better caves. there are already some nice underground places in the game, ive once found a dark fortress linking to an underground road which was pretty awesome, but caves are cramped and maze like. while this follows roguelike tradition, it would be nice to have ramps instead of stairs, and more variety like large open areas and multilevel pits and things.

adamantium meteors would probably need some kind of threatening payoff, like the current HFS provides.  people have already speculated that craters could be full of nasty things. there should be no such thing as free adamantium.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Realizing that this thread is about underGROUND features, and that this is technically off-topic, it still might be really interesting to see what's going on deep inside, and under, glaciers. I mean, on Earth, aside from core samples and satellite images, we don't know a whole lot about what's under various glaciers, particularly Antarctica, and the Arctic Circle.

Glaciers are mysterious places, and this could be extended to DF, profitably. There could even be rare substances (ice that's stronger than steel, for example, but that still melts if it gets too warm) and hfs that could only be found underneath glaciers.

[Cheshire Cat]

Antarctica has massive freshwater lakes deep under the ice that have been isolated from everything else for millions of years. scientists haven't breached them yet for fear of contaminating something so pristine, and they contain goodness knows what. thats a yummy idea there sirhoneybadger.

[SirHoneyBadger]

*tips hat*

[Belteshazzar]

A little expedition to the Mountains of Madness Ehh? Just remember if you start hearing gibbering and voices from the deep shafts, just colapse the whole deal and move far away.

[Vattic]

For some reason the idea of finding strange things deep underground remind me of Quatermass and the pit. Then again that's science fiction rather than fantasy.

I hope it hasn't already been mentioned but when laying the subway in new your they found an ancient wood that had been caught and preserved in a landslide, they hand to get chainsaws to chop them down. It could be an interesting one off source of wood, I like the idea of digging them out and leaving the trees though just to have a quirky room. The wood itself could be rare and valuable too.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I don't know how true it is, but I've heard that waterlogged lumber (wood that's been underwater for decades, but hasn't rotted, due to the low oxygen environment) is quite a bit more valuable than other wood. It seems reasonable, considering that the coloration would certainly be affected, not to mention the time and effort involved recovering it--and ofcourse, it's a novelty.

Maybe your dwarfs could recover wood that's been lost down in a deep underground lake, and be rewarded with a valuable resource and trade-item.

At the Mountains of Madness is a great story. Really fun to read (and available online, for free). You can definitely see a bit of it's influence in the movie 'The Thing' (both the 50's version, and the John Carpenter version. Both are *highly* recommended, and worth watching, if you haven't seen them before.).

'The Mountains of Madness' is even better though, although admittedly somewhat less accessible.

If you like 'At The Mountains of Madness', I also recommend Jeff Vandermeer's fantastic 'The City of Saints and Madmen'. Definitely takes a cue from Lovecraft, although the setting couldn't be more different, and in this case, the "elder race" lives underground.

Which ofcourse makes it all the more valuable for DF.