the underdark

[kourkenko]

Hello, lett's go back to a campaign where i left it four years ago, i would like to try a travel in the underdark, but i hadn't create something obviously surprising dor my players, i'm unable to leave the classical thing we can find on the Forgotten realms for example. Is there some of you who arrived to create some orginal and playable domains ?
I've went idealess lol.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Ravenloft doesn't really have an "Underdark" in the usual sense. It has caves and dungeons, but AFAIK they aren't linked up into one continuous subterranean world.

Timor is probably the most Underdark-like of Ravenloft's domains, and Bluetspur is home to illithids. Most of the traditional "Underdark" races, like drow or duergar, have little or no presence in the Land of Mists.

[VAN]

You can always do the simplest thing if you want to play Underdark like the Forgotten, create your own domain! You can put it as isle of terror, do a darklord with a cool curse and you are ready to play.

[DocBeard]

Another angle might be in the old ruins of Arak and Keening. The dwarves of Darkon have been working on recolonizing that area for a while; if you want subterranian adventure, I can't think of a better place on the Core for it. Clear out old shadow fey domains, temples of the Spider-Queen, fight the sinister Dark Delver conspiracy, and even Kargat agents who fear that the Dwarves are going to declair indipendence after they finish repopulating that part of Darkon.

[cure]

There is the Cult of the Hated Mother that has explored further and more deeply than any other non-natives. There activities certainly includes the Moutains of Misery and they even have a working relationship there with Ebb. Tunnels in this region that are full of abominations would be topical and could reach into the realms of Keening, with its undead Fey, Tepest, with its goblin tribes, and the Shadow Rift with its Fey.

[NeoTiamat]

Another, to my mind interesting, idea is to turn the Shadow Rift into Ravenloft's Underdark. Most of the fey in myth lived inside mounds or barrows or what not, so having the Shadow Rift be an underground 'faerie kingdom' has a certain cachet.

Not my idea by the way, but I forget where I read it on the boards.

[Catman Jim]

Ravenloft doesn't really have an "Underdark" in the usual sense. It has caves and dungeons, but AFAIK they aren't linked up into one continuous subterranean world.

The Spellfire Card game - Underdark Expansion included a card called "The Underdread" claiming it to be under Ravenloft (and I've never seen any further reference to it!).

[alhoon]

I second VAN's comment:
Make your own domain with the feel you want it to have. However, fantasy elements in an underdark domain cannot be avoided IMO.
For start take a domain you like from above and turn it to an underdark type.

Example: Let's take Barovia for example: Claustophobic, xenophobic, ruled by a vampire lord. They are utterly afraid to go out after dark and they are near forested mountains.

OK, forested mountains are out of the question.

Now, an underdark type could be a system of interconnected caverns. Some of them are huge, 2-3 miles in diameter or so. These hold large villages where a race of xenophobic "people" can be found. The "people" work the mushroom farms and subteranean animal pens and fish from the streams and rivers. Large corridors and other caverns connect these settled caverns and the "people" have marked the safe ones used for hunting or traveling.
However, there are numerous other small passages branching left or right and leading to other unexplored caverns. Less than 1/3rd of the domain's cavern area is used by the "people" and less than 1/10th of the corridors.
Many of these corridors have difficult or even dangerous terrain, like unstable roofs, slimy and slippery floors, poisonous mold or fungi etc. However, monsters and unknown horrors also live there and pray on the adventurous. Every once a while some of these monsters is hungry enough to cross in the "civilized" and well used areas. Most of the time, the "people" can deal with such individual dangers in their land.
These "people" however, are dreadfully afraid to step out of these civilized and well used areas. They view explorers with awe and consider them mad. They are as afraid of the unexplored as the Barovians are of the night. Every once a while some young people or some fools would dare explore the unexplored! Most of these meet dreadful ends. Some also bring horrors to the "settled" lands. Most of the people are "sane" enough to not try it but outsiders are generally discouraged too in case they draw the attention of something lurking "out there".

A despotic leader, rarely seen rules the people from his remote castle, in the far corner of one of the "settled" areas. Uncomfortably near the "unexplored" lands. His law is obeyed or he deals swift and deadly "justice". To defy him is to invite death.

Who are these "people"? You choose. Dwarves perhaps. Or some humans with darkvision. Or a race of calibans...

PS. There is a subteranean mirror of Falkovnian cities ruled by vampyr's. I don't remember more. Check the Gaz.

[cure]

There is a subteranean mirror of Falkovnian cities ruled by vampyr's. I don't remember more. Check the Gaz.

Not really. You are forging two seperate and almost certainly unrelated ideas into one.

First, the underworld, as in criminal, is dominated by a sunglass wearing slum lord and vampyr non-native whose name escapes me just now.

Second, there is rumoured to be shadow doubles of Falkovnian cities, perhaps as bubbles in the frontier that Ravenloft shares with the Shadow Plane or, less likely, as highly developed ethereal resonance. Whether they are fully inhabited by shadow doubles or largely uninhabited is left to the imagination.

[Jonathan Winters]

You might want to check out Open Design's (Wolfgang Baur) Empire of the Ghouls for another take on the Underdark...

http://wolfgangbaur.com/opendesign/empire_ghouls.aspx

You need to suscribe to the Arabian Adventures project to buy it though... (Not sure what kind of budget you're working with here.) I like AA even though it's not my favorite setting. BUT Wolfgang did a neat article about Dark Arabia years ago in Dungeon (and I think it referenced RL directly too). Parts of the project will be just plain fun, other parts will have that dark tone he does very well.

Empire of the Ghouls is set for 10th to 12th levels. I will most likely adapt it for my own RL campaign down the line (my PCs are 3rd level right now). From what I have read, it should be feasible. Some parts will be harder, but still...

Also, I don't know if it's still being sold, but Castle Shadowcrag is VERY RL-ish. Again, it is set for 8th or 9th level, but I am starting to sow seeds about it already... (And it would be nice if Joël-I-buy-everything-so-I-am-hard-to-surprise-in-a-RL-game only buys this if he promises NOT to read it until we have played! )

I hope this helps out! (And I hope I made sense, I am working nights this week and am in a slightly confused state...)

Patrick

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Ooooohh ... After what Alhoon said, I suddenly had this idea: what about an Underdark where the fantasy elements are heavily impaired? Instead of areas where magic becomes wild and unpredictable, you have pockets of dead magic, meaning that any kind of supernatural power becomes extremely difficult to impossible to use throughout the domain. Potentially, you could enter such an area through the caverns underneath Lamordia's Sleeping Beast mountains - one-way Mistway, perhaps? PCs would have to rely on common sense, climbing skills and explosives to make their way, where portals do not even exist and the shifting of the earth can change the lay of the land at a moment's notice. Throw in some burrowing monsters, some tribes of creatures who, for lack of magic, have regressed to barbarism and even cannibalism to survive, fighting each other for very meager resources ... Claustrophobic, terrifying and very, very difficult to get out of. Maybe there'd be just one exit from the tunnel complex, a tunnel that seems to lead to open air, but is actually a one-way Mistway into another domain.

[kourkenko]

With years without playing ravenloft, yours ideas will really help me !
THank you all !
the domain my players really fear is falkovnia. Since the beginning they tend to avoid it at any cost ^^, i 'll follow yours piece of advice alhoon.

[ChrisNichols]

First, the underworld, as in criminal, is dominated by a sunglass wearing slum lord and vampyr non-native whose name escapes me just now.

Vladimir Ludzig.

Second, there is rumoured to be shadow doubles of Falkovnian cities, perhaps as bubbles in the frontier that Ravenloft shares with the Shadow Plane or, less likely, as highly developed ethereal resonance. Whether they are fully inhabited by shadow doubles or largely uninhabited is left to the imagination.

Ugh. That was one of the things I'm least happy with in the Falkovnia material. I really wish I'd cut that, especially since it was a leftover bit from a scrapped section on Falkovnian beliefs about the afterlife.

Chris Nichols

[Brandi]

Ugh. That was one of the things I'm least happy with in the Falkovnia material. I really wish I'd cut that, especially since it was a leftover bit from a scrapped section on Falkovnian beliefs about the afterlife.

Hm... so at one point you were sort of seeing the Falkovnians as thinking of their afterlife as rather like the Classical Greek one? Interesting. (Also, given Falkovnian life, rather depressing.)

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Ugh. That was one of the things I'm least happy with in the Falkovnia material. I really wish I'd cut that, especially since it was a leftover bit from a scrapped section on Falkovnian beliefs about the afterlife.

Hm... so at one point you were sort of seeing the Falkovnians as thinking of their afterlife as rather like the Classical Greek one? Interesting. (Also, given Falkovnian life, rather depressing.)

Well, at least most of the dead in Hades weren't actively tormented. Their existence was just pretty empty, if I recall correctly. Heh ... The Greek dead wanted to go back to the world of life or interact with it. The Falkovnian dead might consider Hades to be a respite from life ...