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Cyanidesoul
2010-06-15, 04:41 AM
Fungi, rats, bats...rothe (those underground ox things), fungi, blind fish and yeah some more fungi because nobody asked for it. That about sums most of what I've read on what's available in terms of food in the Underdark. How have you, as fellow gamers and dungeon masters added spice,flavor and flair to your underdark ecologies? Specific types of flora and fauna? Im looking to run an extensive dungeon crawl where the players aren't likely to see the sun anytime soon and would like to have some intresting food fluff beyond the normal staples to describe to them. Any ideas?

Eloi
2010-06-15, 04:46 AM
Baked worms, rothe cheese, rothe milk, fried bat on a stick, rothe marshmellows, bat blood as a nice drizzle sauce, hm, I'll tell you more as I think of them.

dr.cello
2010-06-15, 05:09 AM
Don't forget insects and spiders. Maggots that produce milk, good old-fashioned spider steaks...

Schylerwalker
2010-06-15, 05:09 AM
Dwarves subsist mostly on trade and surface outposts when it comes to food. I mean, dwarves like beer. Lots and lots of beer. And you can't grow the grain to make the beer underground, so they have to have, say, terraced farms on the mountain slopes to get the necessary materials. But, yeah, the dwarves mine stone and metal, craft it into weapons and armor and other fine goods, and trade it for food and other supplies you can't yank out of the underbelly of a mountain. The same goes for deep gnomes and drow, to a lesser extent. Drow also conduct raids on the surface world, for slaves to trade to other Underdark races, and for things to eat that isn't mushroom related.

But yeah, bats, lizards, fish, crustaceans, each other...all sorts of things underground, if you've got the guts to crawl through the labyrinthine corridors of the Underdark to find it.

Eloi
2010-06-15, 05:10 AM
Don't forget insects and spiders. Maggots that produce milk, good old-fashioned spider steaks...

That'd be like Indians eating cow! Or an American eating a dog! They rever spiders religiously and have them as pets they would not eat them! They do eat half-orc and human slaves, however.

Cyanidesoul
2010-06-15, 05:13 AM
Cannibalistic Drow, maybe?

Eldan
2010-06-15, 05:13 AM
Well, the first thing you want in any ecology largely independent of the sun is an alternate energy source. Cave organisms on earth mostly live on substances dissolved in the ground water, but that's a little boring for an underdark, and most likely not feasible on that scale.

I see several good alternatives: geothermal and chemical, radiation and magical.
The first two are grounded in reality, at least remotely. Geothermal/chemo-synthetic would mean that your organisms use hot springs or even the heat of magma, along with dissolved high-energy compounds (sulphur and hydrogen compounds, iron works as well) like some deep sea organisms do on earth. Radiation, as in gamma-rays, can actually be done by some fungi, similar to photosynthesis and could occur deep below ground. Similar to that one would be magical background radiation or similar "a wizard did it" explanations, where organisms evolve to feed on the magical field around them.

That would give you a bottom level of organisms the rest could feed on, mostly worm- or fungus-like. I'd actually describe most of the underdark as covered by these. It should also be hot and wet down there, for this to work.

From there up, you need enough "herbivores" (in ""'s because it's not actually plants they are eating) to sustain carnivores higher up the chain and you hae a functioning ecology. Note that large predators would most likely still be rare.

Now just start introducing weird critters. I have found that describing small, but harmless animals and plants can add a lot of atmosphere.

Cyanidesoul
2010-06-15, 05:16 AM
Well, the first thing you want in any ecology largely independent of the sun is an alternate energy source. Cave organisms on earth mostly live on substances dissolved in the ground water, but that's a little boring for an underdark, and most likely not feasible on that scale.

I see several good alternatives: geothermal and chemical, radiation and magical.
The first two are grounded in reality, at least remotely. Geothermal/chemo-synthetic would mean that your organisms use hot springs or even the heat of magma, along with dissolved high-energy compounds (sulphur and hydrogen compounds, iron works as well) like some deep sea organisms do on earth. Radiation, as in gamma-rays, can actually be done by some fungi, similar to photosynthesis and could occur deep below ground. Similar to that one would be magical background radiation or similar "a wizard did it" explanations, where organisms evolve to feed on the magical field around them.

That would give you a bottom level of organisms the rest could feed on, mostly worm- or fungus-like. I'd actually describe most of the underdark as covered by these. It should also be hot and wet down there, for this to work.

From there up, you need enough "herbivores" (in ""'s because it's not actually plants they are eating) to sustain carnivores higher up the chain and you hae a functioning ecology. Note that large predators would most likely still be rare.

Now just start introducing weird critters. I have found that describing small, but harmless animals and plants can add a lot of atmosphere.

That's what I'm going for: small, harmless animals and plants.:smallsmile:

dr.cello
2010-06-15, 05:17 AM
I didn't say the Drow were the ones eating the spiders. Dwarves with spider and maggot farms, now...

I take a lot of my cues for underground civilizations from Dwarf Fortress. Dwarves don't need to trade with the surface because they live entirely on fungus!

Eloi
2010-06-15, 05:17 AM
That's what I'm going for: small, harmless animals and plants.
How about black-furred Tribbles that inhabit the Underdark?

Zeta Kai
2010-06-15, 05:29 AM
The bottom of the food chain in my version of the Underdark is a bio-luminescent crystalline fungus that feeds off of geothermal vents & sends out long shooters which burrow into the nearby rock & draw out minerals. This fungus is eaten by worms & insects, which are in turn eaten by small lizards, all drawn to the light of the fungal growths. The lizards & insects are also the prey of larger lizards (deep Underdark) & small mammals (shallow Underdark), which are both staple foods of the drow diet.

Cyanidesoul
2010-06-15, 05:31 AM
How about black-furred Tribbles that inhabit the Underdark?

Well I saw this huge mound of guano on youtube crawling with cockroaches... and I think roaches are edible if cleaned... but I can't imagine deep dwarves and gnomes lowering themselves to eat such things... Goblins, on the other hand probably have no such qualms.

Debihuman
2010-06-15, 05:31 AM
Food in the Underdark can also include crabs and lobsters, eyeless fish and such. You can even throw in the albino crocodiles for leather products that can easily be dyed any color.

You won't find plants that rely on photosynthsis, but you could find plants that have adapted to life underground. They are probably found in smaller patches but if they have access to any nutrients (waste from monsters pr decomposition) you can probably find edible berries on scraggly bushes and edible fruit on some vines. I could imagine a variety of very pale strawberries or tomatoes for example. Potatoes and other tubers would work too since they grow underground. They just need a nutriounal source and water. You won't necessarily find drow wine but you could find Drow vodka made from underground potatoes.

There may be areas of artificial sunlight that are used for growing food by the native inhabitants. Drow and Druegar certainly would do this. These areas would be guarded against vermin and poachers as they would be rare and valuable areas.

Stray dogs sometime find their way into the underdark. Some of the races may find them, kennel them and breed them. Other surface animals can be found in the underdark (raccoons, frogs, etc.).

Debby

Eldan
2010-06-15, 05:42 AM
Oooh, I know!

Cave urchins. Like sea urchins, but in caves.

The common cave urchin is about a foot in diameter, but most of that are it's vicious, protective spikes. Nevertheless, it is almost entirely harmless to the prepared traveler. Like many underdark organisms, it is blind, but has instead developed extremely well developed scent, enabling it to smell predators from hundreds of feet away. It has no limbs, but moves very slowly, about an inch every minute, by using tube feet. It mostly eats fungi and bacterial growths by walking over them and scraping them off the rocks.

Cyanidesoul
2010-06-15, 06:22 AM
Oooh, I know!

Cave urchins. Like sea urchins, but in caves.

The common cave urchin is about a foot in diameter, but most of that are it's vicious, protective spikes. Nevertheless, it is almost entirely harmless to the prepared traveler. Like many underdark organisms, it is blind, but has instead developed extremely well developed scent, enabling it to smell predators from hundreds of feet away. It has no limbs, but moves very slowly, about an inch every minute, by using tube feet. It mostly eats fungi and bacterial growths by walking over them and scraping them off the rocks.

I like this. Maybe it's attracted to geothermal pools?

Eldan
2010-06-15, 06:23 AM
Why not. It's a land-living variety, though.

You know, this underdark=deep sea metaphor can really be stretched in all kinds of different directions. And the deep sea is full of weird critters. I'll have a look at what I can find later.

Cyanidesoul
2010-06-15, 07:22 AM
I should really search through my collection for everything underdark related...

Eloi
2010-06-15, 07:29 AM
How about immortal underdark jellyfish?

Megaduck
2010-06-15, 07:34 AM
Well, the first thing you want in any ecology largely independent of the sun is an alternate energy source. Cave organisms on earth mostly live on substances dissolved in the ground water, but that's a little boring for an underdark, and most likely not feasible on that scale.

I see several good alternatives: geothermal and chemical, radiation and magical.

I normally use Geothermal and Magical as my energy sources.

Magic in my game comes from the center of the planet. So Magic and heat both rise upwards to the surface. Plants tap into both to form the base of the food chain.

(On the surface energy falls down from the sun, underground the energy moves up from the core. A nice little bit of symmetry I think. It also explains why go underground. Magic is stronger down there.)

Fungus sends out tendrils through the rock to find heat and magic and when those tendrils die they help create the caverns that the party adventures through.

Shpadoinkle
2010-06-15, 08:29 AM
How about immortal underdark jellyfish?

Something like... a big blob of flesh with lots of tendrils everywhere, that moves around (mostly on walls and ceilings) by slowly rolling and pulling itself along with its tendrils. It 'eats' by absorbing things like the fungi and bugs it crawls over directly through its skin. It would probably live above or near underground pools and rivers for the easy access to water and fungus.

Also look up real cave life. There's lots of weird stuff down there.

lightningcat
2010-06-15, 09:00 PM
While I don't remember which book it is in, one of the novels mentions that most of the food that the drow eat is rather bland and repetitive, as not much down there is worth eating. Which, as a side note, makes spices incredible trade goods.