The Caverns of Madness
Mar. 17th, 2010 02:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkOn the skin of the world the races of light live and love, fight and die beneath the sun, moon, and stars. But there is another world beneath their feet. If you could sink down through the earth you would first find the land of earthworms and moles, full of animal burrows and networks of roots digging deep. This is the thinnest tissue covering the greater depths. Beneath it lies the realm of stone, where dwarven tunnels twist in search of gold, mithril, and gems. But deeper still there is another realm. A strange and dangerous place. When the dwarven tunnels encounter it, the dwarves block them up, no matter how rich the seam they followed there.
They call that place the Caverns of Madness.
The sunlight never reaches there, but it is not always dark. Fungi grow in great, luminous forests, lighting many of the deeper caverns. Strange insects twinkle like stars where they cling to the rock. And there are places with lights that are stranger yet. Caverns lit with a dim, sourceless glow that seems to come from the air itself. Caverns where apparent sunlight streams down as though the sky lay overhead, though miles of stone may lie between them and the world above. And other, less easily described places, where unspeakable colors cast indescribable lights and shadows on the cavern walls.
The inhabitants of this realm are many and varied. Most were born there, perhaps created by the bizarre ancient gods who are said to have made the caverns themselves. Some have crawled down from the world above, but those do not remain unchanged, and most such would not be recognized by their light-dwelling kin.
Some of the tunnels and caverns seem purely natural. Others have been built by sentient hands, or by things perhaps less sentient, colonies of mindless burrowers and builders like and yet profoundly unlike the ants, termites, and bees of the sunlight world. Those inhabiting any given area are not necessarily those who built it. The only constant in the Caverns of Madness is change.
Great civilizations have risen there, and fallen too. In some places vast, bustling cities fill massive caverns, or crawl through tunneled mazes like giant ant's nests. In other places abandoned cities lie fallen to dusty ruin, the debased remnants of their former builders living in squalor amid the fading glory of their ancestors. Hunting tribes of bizarre creatures roam from cavern to cavern, and sessile sages squat, glued to the stone itself. Anything and everything might live there.
The magic there is as twisted as anything else. In the surface world magic lies like a vast shallow sea, everywhere much the same. But in the Caverns of Madness magic itself has gone mad. Large areas may abide by the same rules, but the same spell, cast in two spots mere yards apart, might have two wildly differing results. What causes a fireball on the surface might cause a devastating explosion in the depths, or harmless foxfire, or a shower of fireflies, or a flood of gelatin, or any number of peculiar results. Any given area has its own rules, but the rules differ wildly from place to place, so no traveling mage can depend on his magic.
These, then, are the Caverns of Madness, a thousand tiny worlds, each with its own inhabitants, its own rules, and its own dangers. Explore them if you dare.
Edited to add a few things:
1. You don't have to commit to doing anything now in order to join up. Just a generic willingness to do something someday is fine. This is hardly time sensitive.
2. We have a chat room now, #madness on irc.nightstar.net
3. We also have forums now, http://sparkcostumes.com/topsekrit/index.php Feel free to see what's been contributed so far.
I love collaboration. I don't get the chance to do it nearly often enough, either artistically or literarily. So I am launching a collaborative fantasy setting.
I would like to create a place where stories can be told. That would be the purpose. NOT roleplaying. NOT combat either. *Stories.* The kind you write. If you don't enjoy writing, this project may not be for you. (Though you can substitute drawing for writing, if you like.)
The base idea was inspired, actually, by Ursula Vernon's gearworld. I do not want to in any way imitate the gearworld (I don't think I could if I tried) but the notion of a vast underground realm full of the relics of past civilizations and strange manifestations of current ones is interesting. There's a touch of Lovecraft in some of my notions as well, and also a bit of Weis and Hickman's Starsheild universe, which you've probably never heard of.
So, a huge realm underground. Some natural caverns, some dug tunnels. Inhabited by plants, animals, and people but not necessarily humans. Each little pocket has its own rules for how magic works, and may also have its own laws of nature as well. If that sounds interesting, and you like writing, you may want to join.
Requirements to join:
1. Read at least a few pages of Gearworld. Gearworld can be found here: http://gearworld.livejournal.com/2005/08/30/ (Ideally you'd read the whole thing, but at least read a few pages. Notice that although it's surrealist and bizarre, it follows a certain peculiar internal logic. Realism is not a must in this setting, only internal consistancy.)
2.Be willing to write a short story. (Or create a comic, or illustrate a scene, or *something* creative.) When we have enough material to make it worth while, a short story collection is the end goal of this project. Design with that in mind.
3. Be willing to follow the rules of the setting.
Hard rules of the setting:
1. This is not the Underdark. NO DARK ELVES. Nothing that even looks or sounds like a dark elf in any way. And nothing else lifted wholesale from DnD/Forgotten Realms/etc. either, please. Try to be at least a *little* bit original.
2. No wars. This setting is about storytelling, not combat. Absolutely no wars. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. If the only reason you want to invent a race or nation is to have them conquer their neighbors, this setting is not for you. NO WARS. No battles, no skirmishes, no fighting unless it's one-on-one. Races or polities can be enemies. They can have been at war in the recent past or they can be planning to go to war in the near future, but in the here and now of this setting there are NO WARS. (It happens. Is America at war with our immediate neighbors? And we're not exactly pacifists here. It *is* actually possible to live bordering somebody who is not exactly like you, even if you're a military-minded nation, and not conquer them or be conquered by them. Shocking, I know.)
General guidelines:
There are no standard rules of magic or of technology for the entire maze/world. Each area operates on a local system. We can hammer out an over-arching rule for how that works if you like, but not every polity/race has to have the same sort of magic/tech/whatever. However local rules are *local* so travelers will have to deal with changing rules as they go along. What the consequences of this might be is part of what I'd like to discover as we build the world and tell the stories in it.
Each participant can create as many species, civilizations, and whatever else as they please. The varying nature of magic frees you to do whatever you like. (And also makes magic less of a tool of war, which will save us a lot of "but if you have X ability you could squish everybody else, so it's not fair" arguments, also see rule #2. Conquest, honestly, is impractical when the defenders will always have working magic but the attackers almost never will.) As this is collaborative, do try to make your creations suitable for interaction with other people's creations, and do be open to suggestions from others for improvement. Please also be polite in offering suggestions to others. Their creations belong to them, even if they do live in a shared world, so nobody is obligated to throw out or alter their ideas just because somebody else doesn't like them.
The main guideline, however, is be creative! The weirder and wilder your ideas, the better. This is not a setting where things need to be realistic. There will be no sanity committees here. (Though we may need frequent sanity *checks* a-la the Call of Cthulhu game.)
What I need from potential members right now:
1. Lemme know if you're in. Pretty simple.
2. What discussion format(s) would you prefer? The options readily available to me are a forum, a livejournal community, and an irc chat. I'm leaning personally towards using a forum and an irc chat in conjunction, since that would cover both real time discussion and archiving of ideas. I may create a wiki, when we get enough information together, but a wiki isn't really a good discussion format.
If you don't irc, I'll note that it's pretty easy, I can walk you through getting it setup. Though you'll be able to participate if you just want to use the forums and not the chat, of course.
Anybody who's interested can reply here. :) Or you can drop me a line over irc.
Further suggestions about how this should be run are welcome.
*crosses fingers* I really hope something fun and creative comes of this. I really, really do.
They call that place the Caverns of Madness.
The sunlight never reaches there, but it is not always dark. Fungi grow in great, luminous forests, lighting many of the deeper caverns. Strange insects twinkle like stars where they cling to the rock. And there are places with lights that are stranger yet. Caverns lit with a dim, sourceless glow that seems to come from the air itself. Caverns where apparent sunlight streams down as though the sky lay overhead, though miles of stone may lie between them and the world above. And other, less easily described places, where unspeakable colors cast indescribable lights and shadows on the cavern walls.
The inhabitants of this realm are many and varied. Most were born there, perhaps created by the bizarre ancient gods who are said to have made the caverns themselves. Some have crawled down from the world above, but those do not remain unchanged, and most such would not be recognized by their light-dwelling kin.
Some of the tunnels and caverns seem purely natural. Others have been built by sentient hands, or by things perhaps less sentient, colonies of mindless burrowers and builders like and yet profoundly unlike the ants, termites, and bees of the sunlight world. Those inhabiting any given area are not necessarily those who built it. The only constant in the Caverns of Madness is change.
Great civilizations have risen there, and fallen too. In some places vast, bustling cities fill massive caverns, or crawl through tunneled mazes like giant ant's nests. In other places abandoned cities lie fallen to dusty ruin, the debased remnants of their former builders living in squalor amid the fading glory of their ancestors. Hunting tribes of bizarre creatures roam from cavern to cavern, and sessile sages squat, glued to the stone itself. Anything and everything might live there.
The magic there is as twisted as anything else. In the surface world magic lies like a vast shallow sea, everywhere much the same. But in the Caverns of Madness magic itself has gone mad. Large areas may abide by the same rules, but the same spell, cast in two spots mere yards apart, might have two wildly differing results. What causes a fireball on the surface might cause a devastating explosion in the depths, or harmless foxfire, or a shower of fireflies, or a flood of gelatin, or any number of peculiar results. Any given area has its own rules, but the rules differ wildly from place to place, so no traveling mage can depend on his magic.
These, then, are the Caverns of Madness, a thousand tiny worlds, each with its own inhabitants, its own rules, and its own dangers. Explore them if you dare.
Edited to add a few things:
1. You don't have to commit to doing anything now in order to join up. Just a generic willingness to do something someday is fine. This is hardly time sensitive.
2. We have a chat room now, #madness on irc.nightstar.net
3. We also have forums now, http://sparkcostumes.com/topsekrit/index.php Feel free to see what's been contributed so far.
I love collaboration. I don't get the chance to do it nearly often enough, either artistically or literarily. So I am launching a collaborative fantasy setting.
I would like to create a place where stories can be told. That would be the purpose. NOT roleplaying. NOT combat either. *Stories.* The kind you write. If you don't enjoy writing, this project may not be for you. (Though you can substitute drawing for writing, if you like.)
The base idea was inspired, actually, by Ursula Vernon's gearworld. I do not want to in any way imitate the gearworld (I don't think I could if I tried) but the notion of a vast underground realm full of the relics of past civilizations and strange manifestations of current ones is interesting. There's a touch of Lovecraft in some of my notions as well, and also a bit of Weis and Hickman's Starsheild universe, which you've probably never heard of.
So, a huge realm underground. Some natural caverns, some dug tunnels. Inhabited by plants, animals, and people but not necessarily humans. Each little pocket has its own rules for how magic works, and may also have its own laws of nature as well. If that sounds interesting, and you like writing, you may want to join.
Requirements to join:
1. Read at least a few pages of Gearworld. Gearworld can be found here: http://gearworld.livejournal.com/2005/08/30/ (Ideally you'd read the whole thing, but at least read a few pages. Notice that although it's surrealist and bizarre, it follows a certain peculiar internal logic. Realism is not a must in this setting, only internal consistancy.)
2.Be willing to write a short story. (Or create a comic, or illustrate a scene, or *something* creative.) When we have enough material to make it worth while, a short story collection is the end goal of this project. Design with that in mind.
3. Be willing to follow the rules of the setting.
Hard rules of the setting:
1. This is not the Underdark. NO DARK ELVES. Nothing that even looks or sounds like a dark elf in any way. And nothing else lifted wholesale from DnD/Forgotten Realms/etc. either, please. Try to be at least a *little* bit original.
2. No wars. This setting is about storytelling, not combat. Absolutely no wars. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. If the only reason you want to invent a race or nation is to have them conquer their neighbors, this setting is not for you. NO WARS. No battles, no skirmishes, no fighting unless it's one-on-one. Races or polities can be enemies. They can have been at war in the recent past or they can be planning to go to war in the near future, but in the here and now of this setting there are NO WARS. (It happens. Is America at war with our immediate neighbors? And we're not exactly pacifists here. It *is* actually possible to live bordering somebody who is not exactly like you, even if you're a military-minded nation, and not conquer them or be conquered by them. Shocking, I know.)
General guidelines:
There are no standard rules of magic or of technology for the entire maze/world. Each area operates on a local system. We can hammer out an over-arching rule for how that works if you like, but not every polity/race has to have the same sort of magic/tech/whatever. However local rules are *local* so travelers will have to deal with changing rules as they go along. What the consequences of this might be is part of what I'd like to discover as we build the world and tell the stories in it.
Each participant can create as many species, civilizations, and whatever else as they please. The varying nature of magic frees you to do whatever you like. (And also makes magic less of a tool of war, which will save us a lot of "but if you have X ability you could squish everybody else, so it's not fair" arguments, also see rule #2. Conquest, honestly, is impractical when the defenders will always have working magic but the attackers almost never will.) As this is collaborative, do try to make your creations suitable for interaction with other people's creations, and do be open to suggestions from others for improvement. Please also be polite in offering suggestions to others. Their creations belong to them, even if they do live in a shared world, so nobody is obligated to throw out or alter their ideas just because somebody else doesn't like them.
The main guideline, however, is be creative! The weirder and wilder your ideas, the better. This is not a setting where things need to be realistic. There will be no sanity committees here. (Though we may need frequent sanity *checks* a-la the Call of Cthulhu game.)
What I need from potential members right now:
1. Lemme know if you're in. Pretty simple.
2. What discussion format(s) would you prefer? The options readily available to me are a forum, a livejournal community, and an irc chat. I'm leaning personally towards using a forum and an irc chat in conjunction, since that would cover both real time discussion and archiving of ideas. I may create a wiki, when we get enough information together, but a wiki isn't really a good discussion format.
If you don't irc, I'll note that it's pretty easy, I can walk you through getting it setup. Though you'll be able to participate if you just want to use the forums and not the chat, of course.
Anybody who's interested can reply here. :) Or you can drop me a line over irc.
Further suggestions about how this should be run are welcome.
*crosses fingers* I really hope something fun and creative comes of this. I really, really do.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 01:23 pm (UTC)Side note, last night Tech and I were laughing our butts off at some Top ___(however many) stupid D&D monsters... And my ideas are definitely not *that* bad.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 02:39 am (UTC)And since nobody seems to be particular about how/where we discuss this, I went and made a forum, and a chat room
Forum can be found here: http://sparkcostumes.com/topsekrit/index.php If you have any trouble signing up let me know. I *think* I got all of the bugs out, but I may not have.
Chat room is on irc.nightstar.net in #madness
no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 07:34 pm (UTC)For the wheel-folk of Laran, that whirr is a heartbeat, the sound of their giant internal gyroscope driving them upright and onwards across the graceful green rolling curves of the underland; it stops only when they stop, when their headlong life comes to an end.
There are few cliffs in Laran, and so the herds of wheel-folk forge constantly ahead with only a few outriders to warn them of a fallen fellow or raptor-built obstacle in their path and to turn them aside from the danger of falling - fatal, eventually, except in the rarest of circumstances.
The younger wheels - scarcely the height of a car tyre - swoop crazily about the steadfast progression of the six-foot patriarchs, trusting in their young, strong gyroscopes to keep them steady and their reflexes to avoid slips and gouges. The occasional raptor watches from a safe distance, unwilling to risk the wrath of the protective elders for an uncertain meal.
This late into the strange pseudospring of the caverns, the sporing season is well over. The carapaces of the breeding males - held high and proud above the ever-spinning gyro and wheel-rims - are festooned with the limp remnants of emptied spore pouches. They will detach soon, and fall to the sward where the caves' tiny ratlike scavengers will consume them.
A late-spawning mother still has her two offspring attached to her axle, the tiny young wheel-folk looking like training wheels. Her maneuverability is terrible; she will be glad to be free of them when their gyros spin up and they take the first wobbling revs into their own lives. She is still young enough to enjoy the feeling of the wind against her tiny, wind-shielded eyes and charge over the plains for the sheer joy of movement.
Not so her own mother, keeping her close company as the family travels as one unit. The old wheel's treads are worn down to almost nothing, the shine on her leathery skin buffed away to nothing by the striations of a long life well led. Her gyro still hums strong, but she can no longer pull the tight corners she once did to attract the herd's leader in their mating dance all those years ago. Eventually she will slow, and fall, and be food for the raptors and the ratlings; for now, though, she enjoys the closeness of family.
It is not certain if the wheel-folk are sentient; certainly nothing else in Laran is, and none can keep up with their steady pace long enough to ask them directly. What is certain is that life, even for a wheel, is good.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 10:23 pm (UTC)