!!insidediv!!



Being the Official Discussion Forum for HYPERBOREA®, a role-playing game of swords, sorcery, and weird science-fantasy


Visit us at the HYPERBOREA web site!


You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?

7/06/2014 5:59 pm  #1


Thickness of Hyperborea

Has anyone ever thought about how far "down" Hyperborea goes?  The question is based on dungeons; the classic "megadungeon" is several levels deep and can carry people who knows how far from the surface.  What if a megadungeon was horizontal instead of vertical?  I think this idea fits both megadungeons and Hyperborea specifically, especially when you are not in mountainous regions.  You can account for multiple entrances/exits easier, as well, when most of the "levels" actually lie on the same horizontal plane.  Just a thought.

 

7/06/2014 7:12 pm  #2


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Yeah, interesting idea. You may want to consider checking out Barrowmaze I and II, as these two dungeons basically riff off of that concept.


Blackadder23: Insanely long villain soliloquy, then "Your action?"
BORGO'S PLAYER: I shoot him in the face
 

7/06/2014 10:15 pm  #3


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

I've used Barrowmaze in my campaign a bit. It's a big horizontal dungeon. In a vertical dungeon, deeper generally means more difficult/dangerous. Without those clues, my players found themselves wandering into parts of the dungeon that were well beyond their capabilities without realizing they were doing so. Just something to keep in mind.

 

7/07/2014 8:39 am  #4


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

I really like the idea that Hyperborea isn't very thick and that it is possible to reach the " bottom side" via Underborea. I wonder what adventurers would find there?

 

7/07/2014 8:48 am  #5


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

I hate to be evasive, but I'm not quite ready to "show my hand" on this score yet, because it directly relates to how I intend to present my own mega-dungeon for Mount Vhuurmithadon.


HYPERBOREA- A Role-Playing Game of Swords, Sorcery, and Weird Science-Fantasy
 

7/07/2014 11:39 am  #6


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Very interesting. Meshes in with my on-again off-again project of Hyperborean Bathymetry. Extremely interested in a Mount Vhuurmithadon mega dungeon.

 

7/07/2014 9:56 pm  #7


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

I like Barrowmaze a lot. I am actually using it in my own campaign, as part of the Hobby Shop Dungeon environs! 

Another dungeon that uses that "vertical plane" approach is the self-proclaimed "World's Largest Dungeon", which is not that great, to tell you the truth, but does include some pretty cool bits in places. 

I'm personally not a big fan of the concept on its own, as a megadungeon itself. I like it when it's part of a wider and deeper complex (see above allusion to my own campaign), When used on its own, I feel like it's just one big level and not a "real" dungeon.


 

 

7/07/2014 10:06 pm  #8


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

My main thinking is this: the further you excavate down, the further you have to carry dirt to the top. One big sprawling level that maybe rises or falls no more than 50 feet from the surface and uses secret doors and teleportation to separate "higher" and "lower" levels is better for me. That's why mountains make some sense to me; you can basically hollow out a cone. Regular megadungeons that just go down forever don't interest me as much; plus, I find it easier to drop in other dungeon modules. Also, it has some relevance to hexcrawling, which I think is neat.

     Thread Starter
 

7/08/2014 7:52 am  #9


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

chrisj wrote:

I really like the idea that Hyperborea isn't very thick and that it is possible to reach the " bottom side" via Underborea. I wonder what adventurers would find there?

Might be the best place to hang out in the year of the Bat!
 


“How can I wear the harness of toil
And sweat at the daily round,
While in my soul forever
The drums of Pictdom sound?” 
 

7/08/2014 11:43 am  #10


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

I've gone for pretty deep in my campaign. Using the 7 Geases as inspiration I imagine it being at least a a couple of tens of miles deep. I haven't really defined a bottom.

"he further you excavate down, the further you have to carry dirt to the top"

a constant problem in Dwarf Fortress, which has just had a 2014 release. 
 

 

7/08/2014 12:17 pm  #11


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

At the risk of sounding dismissive, I really do not worry too much about the realities of megadungeon engineering. Isn't that a long way up to carry up dirt during construction? Don't walls need to be thicker to support the structure? What about a proper ventilation system? What about plumbing and waste removal?

If you enjoy thinking through those issues, maybe because it sparks creative output or because you enjoy the challenge of making it work "realistically," then that is all well and good. Personally, it's just not that much fun for me, so I chalk it up to "because mythical underworld" and focus more on creating interesting rooms and monsters and situations.


Blackadder23: Insanely long villain soliloquy, then "Your action?"
BORGO'S PLAYER: I shoot him in the face
 

7/08/2014 2:22 pm  #12


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

I generally make my dungeons as otherworldly as possible to make it clear that the usual rules don't apply. That's mainly because I'm too lazy to try to figure out a way to make it all seem plausible.

 

7/08/2014 3:04 pm  #13


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Maybe ancient Hyperboreans built the mega-dungeon.  Or Atlanteans.  Or Lemurians.  Or snake-men.  Or dwarves.  Or Xathoqqua and his kin.  Maybe the "worms of the earth" toiled tirelessly for countless centuries with flint tools to shape some lightless abyss.

The point is, you're not really limited to what medieval guys with shovels could do.


Michael Sipe 1979-2018
Rest in peace, brother.
 

7/08/2014 3:57 pm  #14


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Great. This thread reminds me of a planned dungeon for my setting which I hadn't added to my notes and not thought about for years.

Basically an extremely long winding stair that effectively has lots of small dungeons branching off it.


"Steel isn't strong, boy. Flesh is stronger. What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?"

Spriggan's Den
 

7/08/2014 6:56 pm  #15


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Here's a page from one of my Hyperborea notebooks. At the bottom is my estimate for continental and oceanic crust thickness.



Ciao,
Geffyl


Beyond the North Wind - My AS&SH Blog
 

7/08/2014 8:05 pm  #16


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Impressive!


Blackadder23: Insanely long villain soliloquy, then "Your action?"
BORGO'S PLAYER: I shoot him in the face
 

7/09/2014 6:56 am  #17


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

That is extremely interesting! Can you go into depth about how you arrived at this. Thanks for posting that!

 

7/09/2014 8:45 am  #18


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Geffyl is actually touching on what I was imagining when I came up with the hexagonal cut of Hyperborea, with a black obelisk at each point. The separation of the continent from Old Earth remains a thing only vaguely alluded to in the descriptive text of the setting material, but one thing I did study while making some of these choices was the continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, specifically the depth of its basins and sub-basins. Imagine, if you will, that entire basin having been at one time occupied by a continent that roughly conforms to our Hyperborea's size, and maybe close to connecting to Greenland. Now, imagine that "plate" ripped from, or teleported, or launched from (whatever yhou might imagine!) Earth, leaving behind a series of basins of substantial depth. At present, the deepest of these basins is nearly 4,000 meters. That's almost 2.5 miles. These numbers do not need to dictate how we imagine the depth of the oceanic and continental crusts, but they are (to me!) interesting points of reference.



 


HYPERBOREA- A Role-Playing Game of Swords, Sorcery, and Weird Science-Fantasy
 

7/09/2014 8:51 am  #19


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Blackadder23 wrote:

Maybe ancient Hyperboreans built the mega-dungeon.  Or Atlanteans.  Or Lemurians.  Or snake-men.  Or dwarves.  Or Xathoqqua and his kin.  Maybe the "worms of the earth" toiled tirelessly for countless centuries with flint tools to shape some lightless abyss.

The point is, you're not really limited to what medieval guys with shovels could do.

Nietzsche wrote:

There would be no science if it concerned itself only with that one naked goddess and with nothing else. For then its disciples would have to feel like people who wanted to dig a hole straight through the earth, and each of them sees that, even with the greatest lifelong effort, he is in a position to dig through only a really small piece of the immense depths, and that piece will be covered over in front of his eyes by the work of the person who comes after him, so that a third person would apparently do well to select on his own initiative a new place for his tunnelling efforts. Well, if someone now convincingly demonstrates that it is impossible to reach the antipodes by this direct route, who will still want to continue working on in the old depths, unless in the meantime he lets himself be satisfied with the possibility of finding some valuable rock or discovering some natural law?

 

 

7/09/2014 9:08 am  #20


Re: Thickness of Hyperborea

Ghul wrote:

Geffyl is actually touching on what I was imagining when I came up with the hexagonal cut of Hyperborea, with a black obelisk at each point. The separation of the continent from Old Earth remains a thing only vaguely alluded to in the descriptive text of the setting material, but one thing I did study while making some of these choices was the continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, specifically the depth of its basins and sub-basins. Imagine, if you will, that entire basin having been at one time occupied by a continent that roughly conforms to our Hyperborea's size, and maybe close to connecting to Greenland. Now, imagine that "plate" ripped from, or teleported, or launched from (whatever yhou might imagine!) Earth, leaving behind a series of basins of substantial depth. At present, the deepest of these basins is nearly 4,000 meters. That's almost 2.5 miles. These numbers do not need to dictate how we imagine the depth of the oceanic and continental crusts, but they are (to me!) interesting points of reference.
 

I try my best, Ghul.

I admit to not  being a master of tectonophysics, but I researched the general information available on continental  crusts (avg 25 - 40 km) and oceanic crusts (avg 5 - 10 k m). I also looked into several of Old Earth's larger mountain ranges, noting the "root" thickness of the tectonic plates, which are  nearly double of the average thickness for the rest of the planet.

I imagined Hyperborea to be removed almost like a lense from an eyeball, generally concave in a hexagonal shape. Afterall, Old Earth wasn't left with a flat top. More likely, any violent removal may have left Old Earth filling in the wound as much as it could beneath molten core and the settling oceans, leaving basins of a seeming lesser depth than the original land's removal.

Magical and extradimensional forces withstanding, it's not a perfect estimate. YMMV.

Ciao,
Geffyl

Last edited by Geffyl (7/09/2014 9:13 am)


Beyond the North Wind - My AS&SH Blog
 

Board footera






© 2009-2024 North Wind Adventures, LLC. “HYPERBOREA” is a registered trademark of North Wind Adventures, LLC. “Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea,” “AS&SH,” and all other North Wind Adventures product names and their respective logos are trademarks of North Wind Adventures, LLC in the USA and other countries. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.