XANADU, a Megadungeon occurring in Nature

[Von]

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean

-- S. T. Coleridge, 'Kubla Khan'

XANADU is a broad plateau of ice that separates the two main inhabitable regions of Titan. Shot through with deep entangled valleys and caves, from which dense fog issues forth during all seasons, Xanadu is said to be impassable on foot and not far off by ship. (Recall, of course that 'ship' means something that flies on Titan; what seas there are exist below the surface of the world.) The passes of Tui Regio and Hotei Arcus around the lower reaches of the plateau afford a navigable route around it; at the midpoint squats the city of Eir Macula, heart of the Schismatic Church and seat of the Pontiff and his Ghost Council. This stranglehold on navigation is the foundation of the Pontiff's political might and the key to his Church's survival; the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Orthodox Church would canonise the person or persons who found another way to cross Xanadu. Such efforts often begin in Vis Facula, the closest of the Faculae to the plateau's northern edge.

The harsh conditions are of course not the only threats to such travellers. Besides the all-pervading cold, the poor visibility, and the slippery unstable ice, there is the teeming sea beneath the glaciation, a crawling chaos of half-formed life in which all manner of perversities are brewed. Periodically the boiling, roiling pressure becomes too much and life erupts from the depths, fungal horrors and ghastly insects and seething torrents of flesh bursting through the skin of the world, heralded by a foulness, a stomach-churning throat-scouring eye-blinding reek on the wind. They do not live long - the air on the surface is too thin and clean for them - but in their dying throes and flailing they wreak great havoc, whether anyone is there to witness it or not.

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'The Kraken'

Furthermore, the diffuse nature of the Orthodox Church means that rival dungeoneering parties are likely to have been sponsored by other Patriarchs or Matriarchs, and they are prone to sabotaging one another's efforts. Agents of the Pontiff are active on the fringes of the plateau, 'discouraging' would-be explorers by fair means or foul. The folk of Menvra and Ksa range the eastern slopes and crevasses, patrolling against atrocities that might stray down into their holdings - and that often includes missionaries and Ancestor-botherers of all sorts.

[tetramorph]

Awesome.

[Von]

I'm going to start mapping the place later this month, I think. I intend to take part in National Novel Writing Month and misappropriate it into "force self to write up setting bible so I know how this place works and can start gaming in it".

[Necromancer]

This sounds cool. Always a treat to read new material from you!