Dwarves and Drow keeping food on the table

[Scalenex]

What feeds the Underdark? Usually the answer goes down to fungi. Various fungi grow underground, animals eat the fungi, other animals eat them and so forth.

Fungi requires decaying organic matter to survive. There needs to be something equivalent to photosynthesis that creates organic matter out of nothing or the underground creatures of the world will be forced to grow crops above ground.

So, how do you explain how so many things can live in the underdark barring an underground sun?

[Wooter]

Magic. Specifically strange types of underground plants that produce food by absorbing residual magic energy, in the same way that normal plants absorb light.

[de-trick]

Also roots of trees that reach far enough down works as food. But also trading works well or raiding surface areas

[bosssmiley]

Presenting: The Thermodynamicon, answering this very question since June 2006.

[Lemur]

The fungus uses the decaying corpses of dead catgirls. You bastard.


If I were going to think of a real answer though, I'd say that there are light-emitting fungi. Fungus like this probably coexists with plants that have adapted to photosynthesize the light that the fungus emits, thus creating the foundation for an underground ecosystem. There is precedent for this kind of plant-fungus symbiosis in the real world, so it's not too hard to imagine something like this happening.

Of course, you could always add your own special plants, animals, fungi, etc to flesh things out further.

Edit: Also, there are likely plants that use nearby lava flows for energy, much like some real world deep sea life does.

[Jack_Simth]

Well, I don't know if this is offical, but there's a lot of ways to set it up in Core.

Plants that do okay in mediocre light conditions and heavy use of the Continual Flame. Sure, it's expensive to set up, but you only need to do it once per colony of a particular size... and you can remove the expense by way of Lesser Planar Binding and a Lantern Archon (which can even fly to get the roof of the cavern).

For 4,000 gp and a 5th level spell slot from a cleric/druid, you can Hallow an area, and attach a Daylight spell to it. Has to be renewed every year, though.

Get a vine to grow through a Ring of Sustenance. For a 2,000 gp magic item, you can (eventually) get an arbitrary amount of plant matter.

Transmute Stone to Flesh makes a very large volume of meat very quickly.

A Periodic automatic-reset magic "trap" of Create Food and Water costs 7,500 gp and 60 xp to set up. As the "rules" for traps aren't particularly clear on how often a "trap" can reset itself, you could theoretically have the trap casting Create Food and Water at caster level 5 every round. The mess that will make could support a rather lot of creatures. (you can do similar things with daylight "traps").

[North]

Transmute Stone to Flesh makes a very large volume of meat very quickly.

That would taste terrible. No wonder the underdark is so evil. All they need is some food.

[Omniplex]

Well, you know how there are those little life communities deep in the thermal trenches. Maybe if you go deep enough, there will be volcanic sites where the heat could be converted to food. maybe. Or, the more rational explanation, mushrooms feed off plant roots, which feed on sunlight.

[Metal Head]

That would taste terrible. No wonder the underdark is so evil. All they need is some food.

Imagine what would happen if McDonalds decided to take it's franchise into the underdark. Drow, duergar, regular dwarfs, mindflayers, and everything subterranean would commit genocide on the surface world for hurting them so much.

[Count D20]

Not to contradict you scalex, but the first time I thought of this i came up with a inner world, Conan E. Howard style. the source of magic in this universe was to be the sun and stars ,thus why drow weapons are rumored to fail in sunlight. they used to be built to directly link to the inner sun and the normal sunlight is a different wavelegnth ,disrupting it.

[Demented]

Unlike your typical cave, the underdark has to be stupidly rich in nutrients, otherwise you aren't going to get all those fancy mushrooms, photosynthesis or not. Of course, with all the dead creatures, adventurers, and drow slave waste, I suppose it's not such a problem at the time.

Though, you will have a problem justifying how all that stuff got down there in the first place. Did a druid god get stuck down there a million years ago and start spawning things?

[sikyon]

Unlike your typical cave, the underdark has to be stupidly rich in nutrients, otherwise you aren't going to get all those fancy mushrooms, photosynthesis or not. Of course, with all the dead creatures, adventurers, and drow slave waste, I suppose it's not such a problem at the time.

Though, you will have a problem justifying how all that stuff got down there in the first place. Did a druid god get stuck down there a million years ago and start spawning things?

No, all you really need is a stupid amount of energy. Organic compounds are just hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and a few other elements. All pretty abundant underground, all plants need is the ability to gather energy to convert these into energy resources.

They could also have got down there by evolution, with their initial construction from magic.

[EvilElitest]

Rothe, magic, farming, fishing and raiding keep drow happy
from
EE

[Mephisto]

What feeds the Underdark? Usually the answer goes down to fungi. Various fungi grow underground, animals eat the fungi, other animals eat them and so forth.

Fungi requires decaying organic matter to survive. There needs to be something equivalent to photosynthesis that creates organic matter out of nothing or the underground creatures of the world will be forced to grow crops above ground.

So, how do you explain how so many things can live in the underdark barring an underground sun?

What do you think happens to luckless adventurers?

[Ganurath]

Dwarves: Clerics with the Creation Domain cast Create Food and Water, wolf meat from the carcasses of goblin mounts, and fungal beers.

Drow: Priestesses cast Create Food and Water for the rich who can afford the service regularly, fungi food products, hunted underground abberations, and dead slaves.

[EvilElitest]

What do you think happens to luckless adventurers?

Aren't Drow cannibals in some game?
from
EE

[seedjar]

I was going to insert some rock-eating critters into my game if it ever became a big question... You know, like xorn but manageable. It's basically the same as the mushroom explanation, but offers a little diversity. I was also thinking that, in suitably warm and/or magically appropriate locales, certain crystals or other minerals could form that make viable food for ordinary creatures. It will be a good day when I introduce my PCs to the Cave of Freeze-Dried Ice Cream.
~Joe

[mikeejimbo]

Presenting: The Thermodynamicon, answering this very question since June 2006.

That link is brilliant.

[Narmoth]

This is what I thought out for my campaign world:

Dwarfs:

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Are inspired by some aspects of humans, and would have ecologies similar to the human populations they were inspired by.
So, we have a large mining community. No, they don't eat rocks. Or metal. Or gems. Not directly. But they can sell a lot of raw materials and finished items that are much more expensive than the food they need to sustain their community.
So, their most important food source is trade.
They can also have smal heards of goats on the outside of the mountains, hearded by those dwarfen freeks that don't trive in the mines but still want to be part of the community (I have to make a dwarf goathearder sometime).
Since they dwell close to the surface, organic mater to be catabolised by fungus into food is easy to get. They'll simply have to get some dead branches and leafs down there.
This is also one of the chief dissagreements between dwarfs and elves, because dwarfs cut down trees with leaves so they both have firewood and food for the fungus or mushrums like champinions (spelling?).
In time of war they spend of their granaries, filled by trade, but can also create food by magic.

Orcs, Goblins and other underground dwelling rases without civilisations on their own:

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They live mostly by eating each other, or by eating captives. Or anything else edible they'll find.
In this way, many actually would see it as a blessing to be enslaved by drow or dwarfs, as they would at least get fed regularily. Unfortunately for themselves, they expect to be treated the same way as they treat their captives, and therefore don't surrender easily.

A few races, notably minotaurs and quaggoth (2nd ed psionic monster-bear) for aliances with the ilithids, capturing food for them in exchange for the bodies of the mind flayers victims.

All races are hunting rothe and adventurers down in the underdark, and might undertake raids to the overworld.
Some will follow large invation armies, feeding on the spoils of war and eating the fallen after battle.

Drow elves:

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This race has access to a lot of magic and resources. So they should be using some of it to stay well fed.
The nobles eat:
- heards of rothe that are grazing on fungi in wellguarded large caves.
- organic food grown by human slaves in magically lit rooms, this is also where they get their finer alcohol beverages from
- fish that dwell in underground lakes and rivers, which feed on algae that undergo chemosynthesis)
- some kinds of monster reptiles (tastes like chicken)

The commoners / slaves eat:
- fungi or algae that grows by chjemosynthesis, deriving energy from sulphur reactions or something like that
- fungi or algae that grow by catabolizing other fungi or algae
- fungi that grow on waste from the cities

[Zenos]

Why have no-one suggested the underground races eat insects? There should be a plentyful of burrowing insects if you're close enough to normal soil.

[Rollin]

See also here.

[AMX]

Well, I have sort of a soft spot for Radiophages - there is a lot of radioactive stuff underground, after all.

[Kami2awa]

Though, you will have a problem justifying how all that stuff got down there in the first place. Did a druid god get stuck down there a million years ago and start spawning things?

That's not a bad idea; make it one of the Elder Evils! This is v similar to HP Lovecraft's Ubbo-Sathlah, a giant ooze underground that continuously spontaneously generates monstrous spawn. This would also explain why a LOT of Underdark races are generically evil; if every living thing in the Underdark contains a tiny trace of an Elder Evil...

[Newtkeeper]

You folks are making this too hard. A wizard, a mere human, can summon obscene amounts of energy by thinking and doing funny gestures. Why can't a fungus summon energy by being fungusey. Or else the fungus leaches energy from an elemental plane. Then everyone happily eats the fungus, and life goes on.

[Solo]

Clerics casting Create Food and Water?

Not like the Drow are short on Clerics...

[Demented]

Doesn't that just create plain bread? Admittedly, better that it make bread than, say, cornmeal.

[Chronos]

It creates bland but nourishing fare of the caster's choice. So bread, rice, potatoes, or cabbages would all be options. Of course, you could then flavor it via Prestidigitation, or feed it to something else which you then eat.

[Doomsy]

Chemosynthesis.

Alternatively: There are bloody elves, fish-men, squat hairy fellas, and brain-eating psionic anthropomorphic squid men living down there. Your logic train should have derailed way before now.

[Scalenex]

Alternatively: There are bloody elves, fish-men, squat hairy fellas, and brain-eating psionic anthropomorphic squid men living down there. Your logic train should have derailed way before now.

I use this argument only as a last resort. This is a world with dragons and undead and _______ bothers you?

The thing is, a good fantasy world and a good sci-fi world frequently use the formula 90% familar, 10% unfamilar. Eating and the like is familar, though to be honest you almost never see sci fi or fantasy characters go to the bathroom and they only eat when they are celebrating a victory or you need a character building shot to complain about rations.

The best solution I see here is to have magical forces inject energy into the underdark ecosystem. It even works with my current homebrew pantheon. The god who manages the earth and underground now has more things to do, and the goddess who manages random magical energy can now be slightly less despised.

[Khanderas]

What feeds the Underdark? Usually the answer goes down to fungi. Various fungi grow underground, animals eat the fungi, other animals eat them and so forth.

Fungi requires decaying organic matter to survive. There needs to be something equivalent to photosynthesis that creates organic matter out of nothing or the underground creatures of the world will be forced to grow crops above ground.

So, how do you explain how so many things can live in the underdark barring an underground sun?

Fungi in generally grows without light. None needed whatsoever (no chlorophyl). The energy comes from absorbing ambient heat (thermosynthisis I think it would be) or from chemical combining (Matter A + Matter B becomes Matter AB plus a surplus of energy... aka chemeosynthisis). In a fantasy setting I am sure plants can naturally absorb ambient magical radiation for energy (like with absorbing heat. Just as heat-absorbing plants dont suck up heat fast enough to freeze the area, magic absorbing plants wont be sucking up magic so fast spell cease to function, its just "dimmer"... unless you want to have that as a DM).

Fungi do not require decaying organic matter to survive. I needs the nutrients sure, but some of that can actually be derived (slowly and painfully) from certain rocks (modern articifial fertilizer is made from basically 3 basic elements, Na, P and K in the periodic table. P is especially found in sediments underground). Once broken free from rock it is active in the underground "circle of life".

You dont need to cart organic materials down from the surface, because biomatter is biomatter. Eating a mushroom does not remove the nutrients or destroy the matter... Only energy really (thats the beauty of the ecological system), energy that on surface is replenished in plants with phytosynethis, but underground can work with chemo / thermo synthesis.

When you pick a mushroom in the forest, it may have several MILES (I kid you not) of "roots" that connects to other "roots" that redistributes the nutrients to where it is needed. Quite impressive really and that is before getting into fantasyrules a DM can decide upon.