underdark ecology

[da newt]

So how do the denizens of the underdark survive? Without sunlight / photosynthesis as the basis of the food chain how do they support the biomass? What is their oxygen source?

Fungi tend to need oxygen and organic matter to feed on so ...

[JackPhoenix]

Magic. Literally: Underdark fungi feed on Faerzress (or whatever it is spelled). And it's connected to the surface, so oxygen isn't a problem.

[Millstone85]

If not faerzress, I would use this in-character quote from MotM.


Once you discover that all oceans connect to the Elemental Plane of Water and that the Elemental Planes connect to all worlds, you begin to grasp the interconnectedness of the multiverse. Dive to the bottom of any sea, and you may later surface under an alien sky.

Existing in the depths of material worlds, the underdark would have many such places of overlap with the Elemental Planes, ensuring it fresh air and water.

I would even say that the reason why material worlds have an underdark to begin with is because of the balance between the elemental planes, which goes against the contribution of Air only being a thin layer of atmosphere on the surface.

[Lord Vukodlak]

So how do the denizens of the underdark survive? Without sunlight / photosynthesis as the basis of the food chain how do they support the biomass? What is their oxygen source?

Fungi tend to need oxygen and organic matter to feed on so ...

Because D&D does not conform to the laws of physics and nature of the real world.
Why don't the elemental planes of water and earth collapse into black holes because of the endless water and dirt? Because in D&D gravity is simply gravity it has no connection to the mass of the object. In the Greyhawk Campaign setting the sun orbits the earth.

I recall a line from a campaign that helps illustrate this.
"I had this theory that cold was not a form of energy but a lack of heat and after years of painstaking research I proved that... I was wrong cold is a form of energy."
This wasn't the wizard being dump that's a fact of D&D, cold is a form of energy. If it was

In real life COLD is a lack of heat, in D&D that's simply not true. Cold is another form of energy in D&D.

[LudicSavant]

So how do the denizens of the underdark survive? Without sunlight / photosynthesis as the basis of the food chain how do they support the biomass? What is their oxygen source?

Fungi tend to need oxygen and organic matter to feed on so ...

Do you want the canon answer or the one I wrote for my own underdark because I don't like the canon answer?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

So how do the denizens of the underdark survive? Without sunlight / photosynthesis as the basis of the food chain how do they support the biomass? What is their oxygen source?

Fungi tend to need oxygen and organic matter to feed on so ...

A bit of magic fluff. A bit of semi scientific excuses.

Do some reading about the great oxygen catastrophy for an insight into a functioning world very different from the one we live in.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

(My apologies if this is too real lifefor the forum but that seemed what you were going for in a very non offensive way.)

[da newt]

Ludic - I'd be happy to hear your version.

As for magic is the answer or 'cause it does' - those leave me wanting something more - something that at least approaches logical.

[Unoriginal]

Ludic - I'd be happy to hear your version.

As for magic is the answer or 'cause it does' - those leave me wanting something more - something that at least approaches logical.

Logic depends a lot on context.

It's entirely possible and logical that some of the mushrooms down there recycle the air and keep it breathable for humanoids.

It's equally possible and logical that some of the mushrooms are actually the result of people being curses by the Demon Princess of Molds and Fungi, but they keep breathing like normal humanoids, so she maintains a bubble of recycling air to make their punishment eternal.

And it's also entirely possible and logical that there is a portal to the Elemental Plane of Air deep beneath the earth, with scientists advancing the hypothesis that any sufficient concentration of an element will cause the other three to manifest in an effort to keep the nature balanced .

All three could be true, even. Depending on where, or maybe all at once.

[LudicSavant]

Ludic - I'd be happy to hear your version.

As for magic is the answer or 'cause it does' - those leave me wanting something more - something that at least approaches logical.

Canon version is basically 'magical radiation.' To be fair to this canon, it was established before humans had even explored the deeper parts of the world (and thus didn't understand the ways that life down there was a thing, and the mechanisms by which it worked). I have no such disadvantage, so incorporated knowledge of such things into my own take.

As for my version:

The Hidden Cities: Notes on the Ecology and Cultures of the Drow
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/e0/13/9b/e0139b47f7fd953f194aff200cc9e78f.jpg (http://theminttu.deviantart.com/art/Dunmer-338978449)

Ecology
- When the drow were driven underground, faith in Lolth became far more militant than it once was. To say that the deep underdark is a harsh environment would be a grave understatement. As if living in a cave wasn't hard enough, pretty much everything that lives down there is highly intelligent, fearsomely powerful, and mercilessly hostile. Mind flayers are just plain awful neighbors, really. To survive, the drow needed more than their Lady's good luck, and so the clergy of Lolth became something more. The clergy supporting the core of early underdark communities kept the people afloat with magical food production, procured ever more political control, and were forced to take increasingly drastic measures to ensure the long-term success of their people at a time when the other elves were sure that they had been given a death sentence. Most drow are descended from these particular early communities, because the others who fled to the underdark perished.

This is why so many drow societies are centered around the Lolth religion so closely; it was the functional rock their traditions were built upon (contrary to the high elf propaganda that their society somehow works despite their religious tendencies, rather than because of it). Not only did the priests cast magical spells that served fundamental societal functions, but they also espoused a discipline which bred a people capable of surviving in such a harsh environment. This was the birth of the system of Houses, theocratic communities ruled by clerical hierarchies. Today, the drow wear their race's survival in the underdark as a badge of pride, and offer thanks to Lolth for their survival.

Of course, this was merely a stopgap, and the drow quickly had to learn to master their new environment, as other creatures had done before them. But where does the energy come from to support so much life? Well, as it turns out, modern fantasy authors have access to a lot better explanations than "magical radiation," since our scientific understanding of sunless ecosystems has made great strides since the time of Gygax (seriously, when Original D&D was published, we still hadn't sent down the first deep sea submersible!). This is apparently even more true when it comes to things like the odd way mushrooms seem to get along with radiation at sites like Chernobyl, or bacteria making a living in the oceanic crust below thick layers of sediment, apart from hydrothermal vents.

Massive cave systems can support their own weather systems, complete with subterranean clouds (http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2014/08/18-first-ever-images-of-cave-so-massive.html). Many are thriving with life fed largely by energy sources other than the sun. Some even have verdant underground forests (though these can only go so deep, as far as I know). Perhaps most importantly, giant cave systems tend to be largely flooded, and no cave on planet earth compares to the scope of the underdark's cyclopean caverns. Vast underground oceans (think something like Sunless Sea (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhIk2PqPU3o)) fed by hydrothermal vents and other chemical energy sources drive a rich yet alien aquatic ecosystem which serves as a basis for less wet underdark life. This is also why the underdark is full of aberrations, since in this world aberrations are related to deep sea life (see "The Deep Ones (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?448397-The-Deep-Ones-Twisted-Seas-and-Alien-Light&p=19916829#post19916829)").

In the depths, chemosynthesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemosynthesis) is common, but apparently you don't even need sunlight for photosynthesis, either (http://www.asu.edu/feature/includes/summer05/readmore/photosyn.html). Molten rivers and geothermal vents provide heat and gasses, which in turn feed chemotrophic bacteria and small organisms, which in turn feed fungi and oozes and the like. This alone is sufficient to support a huge amount of biomass wherever those sources of energy are abundant. Think like, say, the Villa Luz caves in Mexico with their ecology based around hot hydrogen sulfide springs.

The drow generally don't build terribly large societies, due to the challenges of agriculture (which is... weird and relatively inadequate, when it's possible at all. It mostly relies on dredging stuff from around thermal vents or the odd Etrian-Odyssey-like underground forest, or impressive feats of engineering). The Houses are essentially glorified tribes unified by a need to stand against the horrors of the deep or raids from the surface. They rely on herding, hunting, gathering, raiding, magical food production, and access to the subterranean seas for fishing and aquaculture. They have some really cool floating gardens. They also often have to protect themselves from the very noxious gasses that allow the underground ecosystems to function.

But all of this still doesn't account for all of the food that more urban drow societies consume. What allowed such growth? Where does the rest come from? The answer is simple: Trade. The underdark might be full of horrors, but it's also full of treasures the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else... which is of course why adventurers are always spelunking around down there. The drow Houses that live in the Underdark export marvels of the deep, and import food (as well as other things that are tricky to get ahold of underground). Like many surface cities, they aren't self-sufficient at their population density simply because they don't have to be.

Culture
- The reason drow are known for revealing clothing isn't because of promiscuity, but because they are proudly displaying their fitness. A healthy physique is thought to represent evidence of discipline, mettle, strength, and superiority as a society... not to mention evidence of one's station. Note that there's a massive difference between that kind of dress and dressing like a stripper, though (where the goal is to be objectified, instead of aggrandized), and I thus feel many drow portrayals would still be inappropriate in my setting. (This difference is why, for instance, Conan (http://pre06.deviantart.net/d7f6/th/pre/f/2012/165/c/c/conan_by_volkanyenen-d53fl2f.jpg) wouldn't generally be considered objectified).

https://s8.postimg.cc/j5zs0x2s5/drow_by_jianjiagu-d64n0bo.jpg (http://jianjiagu.deviantart.com/art/Drow-370589028)
Dressed to impress, this revealing drow clothing is meant to be more imposing than risque.

- Drow (canonically) breed faster than other elves. Some say that this is because Lolth was the mother goddess of the elves, and her curse has hindered the childbirth of all but the drow. Others say that the knowledge of the auspicians has allowed for healthier children. There are many theories as to why this does not result in a population explosion for the drow. Some point to a lack of resources and a hostile environment. Others claim that drow society is self-destructive, and it is only because of their birthrate that their society can survive at all. Still others suggest that an advanced society with access to contraception and strong rights for women means that a society will constrain its own population growth. A few, however, speak of a hidden metropolises, concealed deep beneath the earth, where the drow thrive in numbers, awaiting the destined opportunity to rise up and retake the surface.

- Over the centuries, drow culture has learned to find beauty in nature such as it surrounds them, just as we have come to find beauty in the nature that surrounds us. For them, that means dark seas, giant vermin, and venomous fungus. While these things make them seem terrifying and alien to us, it is really just another manifestation of the elven connection to nature. The difference is that nothing is green or furry where they come from. This goes both ways; our furry creatures and greenery are strange to the drow just as their spiders and mushrooms are creepy to us.

https://s8.postimg.cc/xcfiw9vol/jumping-spiders-macro-photography-thomas-shahan-9.jpg (http://www.boredpanda.com/jumping-spiders-macro-photography-thomas-shahan/)
Drow see pest-eating spiders kinda like we see cats. And vice versa.

- Many drow cultures practice slavery, something that detractors are often quick to point out as proof of irredeemable racial evil (even if their own races have had or still have cultures that practice slavery, of course). A high elf might claim that his culture's language once had no word for slave, and that the word comes from Drow. A drow, however, might counter that she suspects fish once had no word for water, comparing the conditions of the lower classes of feudalism unfavorably to the lives of slaves in her own culture.

The truth is that the Drow houses rely relatively little on local agriculture, and there are no massive plantations that could require the sort of excessive, unintermitted labor of chattel slavery. Drow slaves, then, may resemble the slavery of less agricultural societies rather than the likes of Western Europe.

Drow society is not monolithic, and there are many different cultures and traditions when it comes to the handling of slaves. However, a few unique traditions are found in many slave-keeping societies of the dark elves.

Slaves in subterranean drow society aid in hunting, gathering, sailing, mining, aquaculture, industry, and domestic activities. The bearing of loads, in particular, is often considered an unfit task for a free person. While a slave must obey their master, they are typically afforded certain legal rights, and in some drow cultures might even be allowed to request a new master if their treatment breaks with a House's traditions; after all, all resources must be properly managed in the harsh environs of the Underdark, and humanoid resources are no exception.

In the complex hierarchies of the dark elves, even slaves hold a variety of social ranks. A slave may hold a title, own property (in some rare cases even becoming more wealthy than the master), own slaves themselves, swear an oath, serve as a legal witness, inherit property or title from a master, or intermarry with their children (though this last is often supervised by the breeding recommendations of the Auspicium). A slave might even hold command over free persons. For example, a military lieutenant may be a slave to her general, and command a force of free soldiers. In such societies, a slave must be loyal to their master, but not necessarily anyone else.

While drow slaves are often afforded certain rights, there is of course a nastier side as well. Many drow societies practice humanoid experimentation, and some practice blood sacrifice. Mining for certain materials can also be particularly dangerous and taxing work (albeit eased by the use of certain spells), and is often reserved for the lowest class of slaves.

Sorcerous slaves are of particular note. The Auspicium seeks to acquire slaves for experimentation or for breeding. The Auspicium's influence means that drow often interbreed with sorcerous slaves, including those of other races. This can vary from keeping slaves exclusively for the purpose of bearing children for sacrifice on an operating table, to having Sorcerers of other races intermarry with prodigious drow houses and become adopted members of the family.

Holy Day: The Festival of Silks
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/73/fc/87/73fc87d51c71f6dd180634c9e515c6e5.jpg
Think like this, but with wild dancing, arcane flares, painted drow, and hanging silks in an underground cavern

Not only are spiders a good equivalent to mousers and guard dogs... they also weave a valuable export. Giant spider silk is prized around the world, despite (or perhaps in part because of) the occasional association with sin or scandal by peoples of the surface.

In some of the subterranean lands where this industry thrives, there is a custom. Each year, drow gather to celebrate the harvesting of the silk. It is on this day that the underdark is awash in color. Colorful silk banners are draped from every surface, and elaborate patterns are carried through the streets. Painted dancers clothed in veils revel in the light of arcane flares, while acrobats swing from webbed ceilings. Children and slaves alike run happily through the streets dressed in fine silk clothes, trailing streamers. Even the spiders are painted, and allowed to crawl freely over the banners and patterns stretching from house to house.

During the celebration, priestesses unseal a cavern to unveil the grand weave, made by venerable spiders over the course of the whole year. Before the gathered people, auspicians interpret its beautiful patterns to predict the coming year. The announcements are concluded with such revelry and drink that even foreigners forget to care about the spiders crawling over everything; it all just blends into sensation and color.

By the end of the celebration, the fine silk distributed to the populace—clothing and streamers, veils and weaves—is gathered back up and, for the most part, prepared for export. After all, while silk and dyes are abundant, other things are not, and so they must trade. But they get to enjoy this abundance for a day.

[verbatim]

Veins of the Earth (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/209509/Veins-of-the-Earth), an osr campaign setting and game system that is the end all be all for all things underground, as well as the extra content (http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2017/09/feeding-cities-in-veins-of-earth.html) that didn't make the finished product has a lot of cool ideas to borrow for dnd's underdark. Here I am picking extensively from the latter, as well as adding some ideas of my own.:

Things that could support an underground society:

a source of water falling form the surface (or the Plane of Water) brings resources into the ecyosystem.


a source of heat (oceanic vent, portal to the Plane of Fire/baator/the Abyss, false sun, imprisoned fiend/celestial/dragon/elemental, etc) or perhaps radiation (this is the dnd 5e canon answer) feeds fungus that is then eaten by other things.


a foundation species (bacteria?) eats stone.


a surface society is used to transport needed materials and food down to the underground society. Maybe the surface society is financing the underground society as part of a mining project, or perhaps the underground one has total control over the surface one. A mountaintop community separated from the rest of the above ground world would have limited options to resist being subjugated by forces with superior military might from below.


most or all of the society is undead or mechanical.


a devil has established a colony of people underground that are dependent on signing their souls away in order to receive food. The devil has an interest in perpetuating the society such that it keeps producing souls, and having it be underground forces people to choose between signing their soul away or venturing out into the Underdark and almost certainly dying. Starting a city in an isolated underground area as a source of souls reduces the risk of adventurers/paladins/religions/nation states recognizing what is happening and intervening the way they might if a devil was making moves in a populous metropolis.

[lall]

Thanks for sharing Ludic.

[LudicSavant]

Thanks for sharing Ludic.
Sure thing!

Any thoughts or feedback would be welcome!

[deljzc]

Very cool Ludic. Excellent reading.

[Bohandas]

Others claim that drow society is self-destructive, and it is only because of their birthrate that their society can survive at all.

That's self-evident

[lall]

Any thoughts or feedback would be welcome!
“When the drow were driven underground…” I always find this topic interesting. Were they driven underground? Did they intentionally go there to avoid conflict? Or were all elves initially an underground race and Lloth expelled the non-drow? When I play a drow, I like to go with the last option. They were all enjoying their freedom in the Underdark when some drow grew evil by wanting to control others. They pushed for a government funded by taxation so that this or that need could be met. Lloth gave these creatures the name “elves”, a variant of “evil” and in self-defense drove the elves to the surface. And that’s why governments flourish on the surface, but not in any Lloth-centric society. I know almost none of that is canon (the 3.5 Drow of the Underdark touches on it), but I find it amusing.

[LudicSavant]

“When the drow were driven underground…” I always find this topic interesting. Were they driven underground?

In this case, yes. In the setting I wrote that for, the elves of yore were jerks who basically had a Romanesque empire that drove a lot of natives from their ancestral homelands. Also, it was arguable that Corellon was the bad guy and Gruumsh was right.


“When the drow were driven underground…” I always find this topic interesting. Were they driven underground? Did they intentionally go there to avoid conflict? Or were all elves initially an underground race and Lloth expelled the non-drow? When I play a drow, I like to go with the last option. They were all enjoying their freedom in the Underdark when some drow grew evil by wanting to control others. They pushed for a government funded by taxation so that this or that need could be met. Lloth gave these creatures the name “elves”, a variant of “evil” and in self-defense drove the elves to the surface. And that’s why governments flourish on the surface, but not in any Lloth-centric society. I know almost none of that is canon (the 3.5 Drow of the Underdark touches on it), but I find it amusing.

That's a fun take too!

[VladSlavhinsky]

I think answering these kinds of questions is one of the hardest parts of worldbuilding for a master. The classic elephant in the room, which is sometimes also treated by publishers, but in some abstruse manual or hard-to-find magazine, leaving the poor master with the task of creating a functional and logical ecosystem, or relying on the "it's magic!" which always leaves us very disappointed.
From my point of view, the underdark has its own ecosystem, based on fungi, molds and insects, which provide the primary food for the "prey" of the most famous entities that hunt below.

[LudicSavant]

Very cool Ludic. Excellent reading.


Thanks for sharing Ludic.

Glad you like it!

Here's another worldbuilding idea, if you wanna bring something like Faerzess back into the equation too -- but give it an interesting twist.

An old dwarven religion claims that magic -- all magic -- rises from the core of the plane. This is why the drow have more magic than even the high elves, or svirfneblin more than gnomes, or why there's so many terrifying magical monsters down there... not to mention the Deep Ones (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?448397-The-Deep-Ones-Twisted-Seas-and-Alien-Light). According to these dwarves, it only makes sense -- they're closer to the true source of magic, and benefit from its subtle radiation. Oh sure, they acknowledge all that stuff about chemosynthesis and the like (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25779481&postcount=9), they just believe some other power is giving the underdark's vicious ecology a good kick in the shins, too -- and they mean to find its source.

Pursuing this hypothesis, a breakaway faction began drilling deeper into the earth than any dwarf had gone before, going deeper and deeper, creating ever more elaborate constructs to burrow further and further into the earth, breaking through bedrock and diving through sunless seas. Now the descendants of this faction are known as the Duergar, with drills the size of cathedrals burrowing ever deeper (and with ever more disruptive consequences as they stop at nothing to secure power sources to crack open new layers of the plane with overdrawn arcane engines) in search of the secrets of deepest Faerzess to augment their magical and -- in their religion -- spiritual potential. After all, are not the holiest of dwarves those who delve deepest, those who are closest to the earth from which the dwarves were born? But the hidden source of power they pursue may also be a source of madness...

https://i.postimg.cc/m2qKJNBM/xqqf26dtzif41.jpg
The revered Deepest are warped by their obsession to draw out ever more of the power that sleeps beneath the earth.

[Starlit Dragon]

“When the drow were driven underground…” I always find this topic interesting. Were they driven underground? Did they intentionally go there to avoid conflict? Or were all elves initially an underground race and Lloth expelled the non-drow? When I play a drow, I like to go with the last option. They were all enjoying their freedom in the Underdark when some drow grew evil by wanting to control others. They pushed for a government funded by taxation so that this or that need could be met. Lloth gave these creatures the name “elves”, a variant of “evil” and in self-defense drove the elves to the surface. And that’s why governments flourish on the surface, but not in any Lloth-centric society. I know almost none of that is canon (the 3.5 Drow of the Underdark touches on it), but I find it amusing.

I have drow as the last scions of the ancient elven empire, who fled to the Underdark after losing a civil war rather than give up their slaves and treat with other races as equals.

To keep from derailing too much: I tend to have the deep underground places as being strange and fluid, with a weak boundary seperating it from other realms. Some people say that the core of the earth is fire and hot iron. They are not entirely wrong, for there are great tracks of land where the Plane of Fire bleeds into the Underdark. But there is just as much that bleak stone, dark ocean, or primordial chaos.

The drow do not live here. In the ground scheme of things, they're practically surface-dwellers. Or, perhaps they could be compared to the fish that flourish in shallow seas, far from the lightless depths of the true ocean.