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[LumenPlacidum]

I don't know that what is this has to do with the underground diversity at all.

Where else would they go?

[SirHoneyBadger]

Norway?

[inaluct]

I like the idea of a palpable darkness in a fortress being represented by black floor tiles; it would give an incentive other than the prevention of cave adaptation to dig skylights.

[Tormy]

I don't know that what is this has to do with the underground diversity at all.

Where else would they go?

I am not sure...perhaps a new topic is needed for ideas like this. "Race specific traits" or something like that.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'm not the OP, but it's my opinion that trolls are a significant enough underground species that, if people can come up with ideas for how they interact with the underground-in such a way that it be more diverse-then I don't really see a problem.

A serious thread just on trolls would be nice, though, except that it'd be likely to get more than the usual amount of forum troll attention.

[Othob Rithol]

This is a brainstorming thread about features, creatures and events underground. Please feel free to contribute your ideas, point out flaws, or provide useful images, links or source materials.
This is not a discussion about game mechanics, balance issues, bugs or anything else not related to features, races, plants or animals under the surface.

It's in the charter

Tormy does have a point (which I commented on earlier) that lighting effects/petrification are really beyond the scope of this thread.

Unless something else new comes up I am adding this to the list: (I'll add some links to wiki etc when it is back up later)

• The Trolls: Adversely affected by the sunlight, the true troll "civilization" dwells underground. These trolls are much stronger, smarter, and better organized than would be expected. With low technology, massive appetites, and barren caverns their population remains small. They are also plagued by goblin kidnappers taking their young to serve as living siege weapons, or alternately, they are actually the outcasts : 1 in 100 goblin children born abysmally mutated.
  

and declaring all discussion of lighting, darkness, day or night as game mechanics and off topic.

A bit long of an entry, but on par with the other entries for the classical races.

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

What about  plants underground that grow near/in petroleum and can be used as a primitive Molotov cocktail? they might need to be processed in a certain way to make them useable. Perhaps there could be an entire petroleum based ecosystem, it would have to be very fire-retardant though.

[Granite26]

What about  plants underground that grow near/in petroleum and can be used as a primitive Molotov cocktail? they might need to be processed in a certain way to make them useable. Perhaps there could be an entire petroleum based ecosystem, it would have to be very fire-retardant though.

Or live in a naturally oxygen poor environment

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, you could have fungi who live in an anoxic environment, but if they're real plants, they're gonna make oxygen of their own.

Although that might be a part of their life cycle, an explosion, and the resulting fire, being a way they spread and then initially fertilize their fire-retardant seeds.

[Aldaris]

Well, you could have fungi who live in an anoxic environment, but if they're real plants, they're gonna make oxygen of their own.

Although that might be a part of their life cycle, an explosion, and the resulting fire, being a way they spread and then initially fertilize their fire-retardant seeds.

You have struck a fire plant pocket! Flee!
Urist Mcpoorbastard has died in the heat.
Cog mcotherpoorbastard has died in the heat.
Maybe have these connected to magma vents and inhabited by fire creatures?

[Urist McDetective]

Are you possibly suggesting that magma pipes could do more than only go straight up?
Oh ... I like this idea. Z level traversing branches in Magma pipes.

[Sinergistic]

Not reading the entire thread to see if this has been suggested yet, but I didn't see it listed in water features or general features, so here goes.

I would like to see the underground river system behave like the aboveground river system.

The aboveground system kinda works like: Brooks -> (merge into) streams -> minor rivers -> rivers -> major rivers.

In order to preserve the chances of getting a (small) chasm with an underground river, streams could have small 1-2 tile wide offshoots leading to small chasms, and minor/normal/major rivers could have stream sized offshoots leading to chasms.

Major rivers would generally end in bottomless pits.

I would also like it if underground river systems where somewhat more condensed than there aboveground counterparts, leading to more underground river/major river systems than aboveground. Hm. For example, take an entire aboveground watershed and compress it into a single mountain range. (in game) Small mountain range could fit streams, and not much more. Maybe a minor river. A big mountain range could fit a major river.

[sweitx]

Wonder if this has been suggested (been inactive for a long time).
I know active, eruption volcano, has been suggested.  But how about the effect of the eruption extending multiple embark tiles away from the volcano source?  So if you settle somewhat near a volcano, a sufficiently major eruption would toss chunks of magma out resulting in a fire rain.  Maybe a new type of rain with a high temperature that results in a lot of fire (and a lot of pain for those above ground?).

[SirHoneyBadger]

I second the idea for the underground water sources acting more like aboveground, with the caveat that I'd like to see rivers flowing into lakes, great lakes, seas, and oceans.

Has anyone come up with any defined/refined ideas about some of the really bizarre monsters that might be living underground, in murky pools, or in oil? Since that's also been suggested.

I know these are the sorts of things that usually are vaguely handwaved at, for the creepyness/horror factor, but this being a computer game, that option really isn't there, in absolute terms.

The idea of a complex, yet really alien ecology, that would fit the nature of DF-containing top predators, prey, food sources, etc, and that would be able to contain some of the more stupendous and outlandish Cthonic horror type critters, in an atleast vaguely realistic (or just sensical) way-is quite appealing.

Maybe not in the shallower caves and tunnels, which might be pretty close to Earth, but in the really deep, deep depths where the unnamable squamous things play.

To give an example: I'm trying to develop my Protean species, which will be an intelligent civish species (doesn't have any hands, so can't really make much, but has other civ traits) that lives (or atleast spawns) in murky pools. They're an amphibious combination of a DF sea monster, a carp, and a cave catfish, with some borrowed traits from D&D Aboleths (one of the few original D&D monsters).

Basically in an effort to take the DF carp to it's nastiest extreme. So they'd be a top predator, existing in a very limited environment. Very slow moving on land though, so they wouldn't be able to just take everything over. 

[Guy Montag]

I like the idea of "unnamable horrors in the depth" like you are saying. Its a little trite and might be overly done in fiction but I like it anyways.

I'd imagine these sorts of things would be living at the bottom of bottomless pits and chasms. Something alive down there must be making that miasma cloud that pours from the depth on a regular basis.

A "deep mountain" enviroment, the stuff going on at the bottom of the chasm, the enviroment where the underground rivers empties, ect, would be cool to impliment, with whatever critters and unique features that might dwell there. Maybe toss it in with the hellish HFS.

No idea how this might be programmed into the game, since you can't really embark at the bottom of a chasm or 90 z-levels down. Maybe the unknowable horrors down there will just have to remain unknowable.