Elevator to Hell. Going Down.

[Atarax]

A tale reaches the PCs of a bottomless hole not far from a small community nearby. Asking around, they hear all kinds of wild stories. Peasants throw stones down and don't hear an impact. They dump refuse down there- it never fills up. One local dumped a dead goat down there. It came back to his house that night. Winged creatures emerge from it at night. A shadowy figure lurks about the area, and has been blamed for several disappearances.

Some of these rumors are probably just nonsense. The hole may be deep, but it isn't bottomless and it doesn't lead to hell. There's probably some kind of dungeon down there though...

What in D&D 3.5 could cause a hole to appear to seem bottomless from the surface when it isn't?

[sakuuya]

Permanent Image far enough down the hole that people can't easily interact with it, plus a couple otyughs at the bottom to eat the trash that gets thrown down.

[Vizzerdrix]

Being deep. :smallbiggrin:

Or a sphere of annihilation.

[Particle_Man]

An intermittent Gate, perhaps?

[Inevitability]

Magical darkness, placed a good distance down to prevent people with darkvision from figuring out what it is.

If anyone drops a torch down the hole, it may reveal this, as it'll appear to suddenly go out. However, this might very well be blamed on the monsters down in the hole.

[Telonius]

A patient Beholder using their Disintegrate ray could make a pretty big hole fairly quickly.

[DrMotives]

A Silence effect lower into the pit will also help it seem more bottomless.

Also, I saw the title and immediately thought of the "Doorway to Hell", aka the Darvaza Crater in Turkmenistan. It's a giant hole in the ground in the middle of an empty desert. The hole has been full of a raging fire since 1971, which still looks like something supernatural today.

[jmax]

Wrinkles in the space-cheese continuum due to template stacking. Happens every time :-P

[Atarax]

Why are these various magical effects in this hole? What're they hiding?


A Silence Also, I saw the title and immediately thought of the "Doorway to Hell", aka the Darvaza Crater in Turkmenistan. It's a giant hole in the ground in the middle of an empty desert. The hole has been full of a raging fire since 1971, which still looks like something supernatural today.

You're right on with my question. I listen/read about urban legends for DM inspiration. I was reading about a few of the gateway to hell locations. That was one of them. There're videos on YouTube that show that place. The scale is incredible. And it's in the middle of NOTHING.


And about the template stacking...yeah lol. It's like there's a higher power behind the campaign world, making sure things don't get too complicated 👍. Mortals, particularly PCs, were not meant to look so deeply into fabric of reality.

[Bohandas]

A magic portal

[Inevitability]

Also, I saw the title and immediately thought of the "Doorway to Hell", aka the Darvaza Crater in Turkmenistan. It's a giant hole in the ground in the middle of an empty desert. The hole has been full of a raging fire since 1971, which still looks like something supernatural today.

Something you forgot to mention: we made that thing. Some Sovjet researchers stumbled upon a gas pocket when drilling for oil and decided to set it alight so that the gases wouldn't get out. More than four decades later, it's still burning.

[Bohandas]

undead shadows that obstruct light and also catch anything thrown down (and possibly bring it into an attached cave complex)

[dhasenan]

A mid-level Bard using Glibness.

[Flickerdart]

Something you forgot to mention: we made that thing. Some Sovjet researchers stumbled upon a gas pocket when drilling for oil and decided to set it alight so that the gases wouldn't get out. More than four decades later, it's still burning.

The "related links" at the bottom of the Wikipedia page will lead you to half a dozen more eternally burning holes in the ground.

Interestingly, the USSR had another famous hole - the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which is 12km deep.