Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Granite26]

1: Dwarves aren't people

No, dwarfs are people. What dwarfs are not is human.

Human is not synonymous with person.

....

.......

I'll yield the point....

[Granite26]

Oblivion...

Entire rivers flowing every downward underground.  Some simple pipes draining a trickle, some giant subterrainian rivers.  All carrying the worthless discarded detritus of the sunworld, and all dumping into the e'erswirling maelstrom, never to be seen again.

Spiraling down to nothingness is everything from tattered teddybears to ruined wrecks of sunken ships.  Spiraling downward.

[Silverionmox]

An underworld, where the dregs of the overworld wash up.. that should give the opportunity for some interesting quests. And finally, we know where all the stuff we dump into chasms ends up.


http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/MayorGeomythology.pdf

Short article with much relevance for the subject of UD.

[Granite26]

Good find.  Thanks for posting it

[zagibu]

I wholeheartedly support the Oblivion suggestion. Big underground caves full of above-ground trash and accompanying fauna that lives within sounds intriguing. Maybe the rat-men could have their central hives in such places?

[SirHoneyBadger]

This whole idea-and I like it very much-reminds me of the old tales about the Seven Seas. If you're not familiar at all (and I wasn't, much, 'till recently), here's the Wiki article about them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_seas

I particularly suggest the bit about the 'Route to China'.

Having read that, imagine if you will, a similar series of seas in the DF world, only underground. Each one distinctly different (perhaps each with it's own biome, since there's no law that says all of the underground has to be the same), and each one on the path leading to (perhaps, occasionally, from) the Dwarf version of Hell/the Underworld.

We could have fun coming up with each underground sea's properties, their respective names, and the various points of interest along the waterway to Hell.

And, surrounding the seas themselves, there might be new lands to explore, or even whole new worlds, since there's also nothing to say that the seas have to all exist within the same world, they might just be a way of linking different worlds together.

If we do a good enough job of it, it just might help better define the DF world.

[Silverionmox]

Where tectonic plates meet in a volcanic pool

According to search, tectonics hasn't been mentioned yet. It's more something for worldgen, but it would be great if future earthquakes etc. weren't random. It would also cause a lot of related features to occur close together in a small area, which causes interesting configurations to happen, as in the above example.

[xadism]

This should be very rare, but could be fun if possible.  Beyond natural gas pockets...

Once the poison arc is in, occasionally mining should release a pocket of, or expose a vent of, poisonous gas and/or narcotic gasses.    Narcotic gasses could make your dwarves go loopy and do weirder things than they already do.

The inspiration is the contemporary hypothesis that the <a href="http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/ethylene/ethylene_history1.shtml>oracle of delphi may have been situated on a gas vent that was releasing ethylene[/url].  The building around the vent concentrated the gas, and the priestesses who went down to breathe it came up in an intoxicated state to pronounce their visions.

This could potentially be implemented perhaps in ways that dovetail with existing suggestions about recreational drugs and/or underground natural gas pockets/vents.

[Cheshire Cat]

oh gosh. striking a pocket of madness gas sounds extremely fun.

i remember reading in an interview with toady somewhere about how dwarves currently dont act on grudges or jealousy of anothers possesions/living status, and how he wanted to add this in. having pockets of gas or other substances that make your dwarves go mental and behave even more insanely sounds like a great idea. having them running around starting random fights and messing with each other to destabilize things would be a really interesting disaster, one that could destroy your fort if things are bad allready, or just be plain amusing if things are going great. i can imagine trying to lock doors and build walls to prevent the affected dwarves from roaming around while intoxicated. imagine the announcement that a group of very rowdy legendary miners has just been dosed up on ethylene or some fantasy underground substance, and are making their way back to your fort to cause trouble.

also, ive not heard the suggestion of addictive substances in DF before. what about underground growths, perhaps near certain underground features, that spread all over the place like tower caps do when you discover the feature. dwarves could covet them and when they eat them, they get beligerant or withdrawn or whatever depending on their personality. the issue would be to then contain and get rid of the growths. perhaps they have valuable properties when harvested by a herbalist, processed and then used at the alchemists workshop. this along with asosciated erratic behaviour like fights or item thefts would actually give your fortress guard something to do for a change, and you could have the option of setting how aggressive your guard are, and how they deal with the problem. and if your nobles dont like the way your managing things, they could unleash the hammerer.

hammerer on a drug bust would be epic.

and imagine the stat boosts to large numbers of dwarves trying to surreptuously harvest hallucinogenic cave river fungus behind your back and levelling up the herbalist skill.

[xadism]

having pockets of gas or other substances that make your dwarves go mental and behave even more insanely sounds like a great idea. having them running around starting random fights and messing with each other to destabilize things would be a really interesting disaster,

Indeed.  They could also go into hallucinogenic strange moods.   

Urist McHighMiner is having a bad trip!
Urist McHighMiner slinks off to a den...
Urist McHighMiner has claimed a kitchen!

(...after a few months Urist emerges with...)

"Lucydiamonds", a minced bauxite roast.

This is a finely minced bauxite roast.  Not all craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality ... particularly not this one.  It is studded with cave spider silk and encircled with bands of kitten meat and microcline.  This object menaces with spikes of rotten kobold corpse.
On the item is an image of an octopus and dwarves in dwarven rum.   The octopus is mutating into the dwarves. 
On the item is an image of plump helmet spawn and plump helmet spawn in adamantium.  The plump helmet spawn and plump helmet spawn are attending a party at Marble Table.

Value, -120,000.  But it's a masterpiece artifact, so Urist will refuse to let go of it.

[Old-Man-Gator]

I was reading somewhere, I suspect a primer for a campaign setting, about fungi that grow in specific conditions in dwarven communities. Mushrooms that grow in iron deposits, that sort of thing.

[Othob Rithol]

Plate Tectonics is an overall underlying theme behind a great deal of the suggestions in the first category as well as the magma (obviously) category. Other than listing specific aspects (ie folding strata) I can't really see an advantage of mentioning something Toady has already clearly imitated but not actually implemented.

Recreational pharmaceutical use is clearly off topic.

The most recent note, about underground herbs/plants, was one I thought about going into, but really represents a whole other arc in filling in the detail of the total (not just underground) ecosystem. A great source for those herbs/plants by the way, are ICE's old Middle Earth Roleplaying modules/sourcebooks for their Rolemaster game. Ones that come to mind are the books on Moria, Goblin Gate, and the Treasures of Middle Earth compendium. Old and hard to find, but great reading.

[xadism]

Recreational pharmaceutical use is clearly off topic.

I wasn't talking about recreational use, though.   Exposure to psychoactive gasses is in fact a real risk of mining, plus there's the geological science behind delphi and subterranean ethylene gas that I cited above.   It would add a great new challenge to the game if your miners occasionally struck a gas fissure that caused them to go crazy for awhile, and that seems to me quite on topic for this thread.   (It's your thread though, so I'll bow to your greater wisdom.)

[Othob Rithol]

point taken.

and there is no greater wisdom, only greater hubris.

added an extra bit to the natural gas pockets for other dangers (hallucination etc)

[Osmosis Jones]

Your formatting is a bit out after the pockets entry, Othob. Also (shameless self promotion here) did you see my suggestion on the previous page?