XANADU, a Megadungeon occurring in Nature
Sept 30, 2015 2:55:23 GMT -5
Admin Pete, tetramorph, and 2 more like this
Post by Von on Sept 30, 2015 2:55:23 GMT -5
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'
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'
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'
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'