Step Well

When we think of being subterranean, we immediately think of being "under" ground, but this is not always the case.For some reason, photos of stepwells (bawdi, or baoli, or vav, in Indian dialects) have been tumbling out of 'blogs lately. Perhaps it has to do with the increasing interest in ecologically sustainable lifestyles. Stepwells are in most cases ancient Indian structures built in part to make use of a three-month monsoon season in the course of an entire year, but they have also come to serve cultural and religious purposes. To this end, the stepwells can be beautifully and ornately decorated. The structure of the steps themselves is a simple, pleasing pattern, but look to this post on DesignFlute for examples of how ornate and unique a stepwell can be.In essence, stepwells serve two very basic functions: to collect rain water, and to make it accessible. This account for the enormous basin shape, and the steps. From there, the designs can vary wildly, in part because these structures don't present any of the dangers of reservoirs or other continually renewing or flow-based water management structures. When the water only comes once a year, you might imagine a great deal of ritual can be built up around it, and the common necessity for these structures from place to place also inspires people to take creative responsibility, and identify with the particular details of their design and structure.
Stepwells present all sorts of fascinating combinations of pragmatic use and cultural significance, including a certain synergy of design and natural process. The silt that gathers in these structures comes to act as a natural water filter, for example, which is a quality that can be appreciated by animals as well as humans. One can imagine, too, the way in which a stepwell being the primary source for water during most of the year can develop into elaborate rituals and an appreciation for simple quantity. Just imagine the excitement and bounty of an enormous, full basin of clean water, and very gradually watching as it sinks lower, and lower, revealing more and more layers of steps to traverse, as the year progresses.Not all stepwells are wide-open to the sky, either. Many have structures built across their upper levels that allow rain through, but also provide shade and useful rooms and sub-levels for various uses in the drier season.
And then again, there's the steps.

Oh, those steps...
I have to imagine that every community has one or two epic legends about folks taking a tumble down the local stepwell just before the monsoon season, when it would take a particularly long (and jarring) time to reach the inevitable conclusion. I can't help but wonder, too, if some folks get especially adroit with maneuvering on those myriad pyramid-like step structures. Errol Flynn truly missed a great environment for showcasing his legwork, that's all I'm saying further on the matter.
Stepwells are water temples. They represent a magnificent, ancient solution to an absolute necessity.

Profound thanks to InfraNet Lab for a far more informative, yet somehow succinct, explanation of the function of these structures than any other source I was able to find.

"Smugglers Build an Underground World"

Via "Smugglers Build an Underground World" NYT, Dec 2007:

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

TECATE, Calif., Dec. 6 — The tunnel opening cut into the floor of a shipping container here drops three levels, each accessible by ladders, first a metal one and then two others fashioned from wood pallets. The tunnel stretches 1,300 feet to the south, crossing the Mexican border some 50 feet below ground and proceeding to a sky-blue office building in sight of the steel-plated border fence.

Three or four feet wide and six feet high, the passageway is illuminated by compact fluorescent bulbs (wired to the Mexican side), supported by carefully placed wooden beams and kept dry by two pumps. The neatly squared walls, carved through solid rock, bear the signs of engineering skill and professional drilling tools.

...

Most of the tunnels are of the “gopher” variety, dug quickly and probably by small-time smugglers who may be engaged in moving either people or limited amounts of drugs across the border. But more than a dozen have been fairly elaborate affairs like this one, with lighting, drainage, ventilation, pulleys for moving loads and other features that point to big spending by drug cartels. Engineers have clearly been consulted in the construction of these detailed corridors.

While a 1300' tunnel isn't exactly an 'Underground World', the idea does have some possibilities to it. What would a more complicated underground complex dedicated to smuggling look like? Where would such a complex be located? What would its inhabitants be like?

1)Where are smuggling tunnels found? Smuggling takes place where some commodity or service is cheaper on one side of a border of some sort, and profit can be made by selling it on the pricier side of the border. Once it's across the border, further smuggling tunnels/complexes/methods may be used to continue the commodity's journey to the center of maximum profit for the smuggler.

Top places to find smuggling tunnels in the real world today are places like the US/Mexico border - there are people who want to cross, and there is also a commodity (drugs) which is easier/cheaper to produce on the Mexican side and smuggle across than it is to produce on the 'denied' US side of the border. Another place smuggling tunnels may be found today is on the Egypt/Gaza Strip border, where weapons and other denied goods that can be obtained in Egypt are smuggled into Gaza. These borders are not 100% hostile, but neither are they tension-free.

2)What is being transported? You name it. Drugs, money, people (with or without their consent), weapons, and other goods get smuggled through a variety of means. Perhaps in a fantasy setting, monsters that have been eradicated and outlawed in a peaceful kingdom are smuggled in for underground bloodsport arenas. Deep elves pay handsomely for surface elves captured and transported below as slaves. Salt is taxed heavily in one kingdom but plentiful next door, and the salt mines connect directly to passages that circumvent the border.

3)What features might a smuggler's complex have? Well, for starters, its about transportation, so there will be systems of pulleys, tracks, elevators, slides, and other means of conveying things from one part of the complex to another with relative ease. Even so, a smuggler must be able to stop things getting from one place to another too easily when law enforcement (or delvers!) show up, so any such transport system will be peppered with defenses, traps, diversions, false pathways, and portions which can be shut off by the complex's controllers. It will have hidden entrances at least on the denied side (but probably on both sides), and may have 'dead drops' for cargo so that suppliers or customers never actually come face to face with the smugglers.

If the complex is inside a borderland mountain, it might have lookout towers on both sides of the border, to warn of pending invasion on the denied side and of incoming shipments on the production side. It might also contain warehouses for storing goods, housing areas for the smugglers (or any living traffic). It might have communication systems of speaking tubes built in to allow various parts of the complex to coordinate moving goods or people. If the complex ever falls into disuse and becomes inhabited by other denizens, these features will still make it distinct from other subterranean complexes. The speaking tubes may instead be used for taunting other denizens, and controlling the chokepoints in the transportation system will always indicate who the real powerholders are.

Am I forgetting anything?

Dungeon Design in 'Shadow Complex'

Via MTV Multiplayer, some discussion of how a drawn side-view map of the subterranean complex of a game was crucial to its development:

For [Donald] Mustard, the map was one of his proudest achievements. "We always considered the main character in 'Shadow Complex' to be the world itself. The idea that it's this massively unfolding, layered world, and the more you get the power-ups, the more the world opens up to you."

Clearly it wasn't as simple as just designing as they went. For a game like this it requires a huge amount of planning. Said Mustard, "Even before we started making the game at all, we designed the entire game on paper first. We knew where every power-up was going to be, where every secret was. And that planning phase took a long, long time."

Before you start building, it pays to spend a long time in the design phase. I also like that to the developers, the map is the protagonist. How true that is sometimes for those of us in the subterranean design and construction business. Sure, delvers and denizens come and they fight, but the map itself often sticks more strongly in my mind. More from Donald Mustard:

"We created these little grid blocks and lines. We did a lot of it by hand at first, but then we went and transcribed it all into [Adobe] Illustrator…you could literally see a side view of the map, it was all just gray, with lines and stuff. And we had a stick figure that represented the player, and we'd say, 'Ok, the player can jump this many units high.' And we had a little graph that showed how high you could jump and how long it would take to build up to a speed run and stuff like that. So we'd 'play through' the entire game with this little stick figure guy."

Say, that's not a bad idea - maybe we could take some of the maps of subterranean complexes we've designed and, before committing to building schedules and excavation subcontractors and all the other headaches of production, maybe we could, like, pretend to have imaginary delvers visit the dungeons, but do it all on paper! Oh man, this is going to save me so much trouble. But where am I going to find people willing to pretend to be imaginary dungeon delvers?

Dungeon Design: How to Host a Dungeon

How to Host a Dungeon by Tony Dowler. Solo play (but can be done as a group); takes a few hours and you'll end up with a good side-view of a subterranean dungeon complex for fantasy play and a good sense of its history and how each part of it was formed and populated.

This can be a satisfying activity in itself, or it can be done as a precursor to 'overhead-view' traditional dungeon mapping for an RPG.