Devouring Deeps are the natural feeding structures of a dungeon, and quite unlike the natural entrances they form, entering a Deep is always a terrible idea.
1. Entrance/Guardian
Access to a Devouring Deep is typically not immediately obvious. Despite their name, a Deep is not a Sarlaac-like pit to be found, fought, and then entered like a cheat code entrance to the dungeon. Deeps are near the dungeon but reach the surface. These structures allow a dungeon to breathe, which is vital for their cultivation of essence. If a dungeon has no airflow, things living inside it will start to languish, and then go into a torpid state. Essense flow slows and can eventually stall, and then the dungeon itself might become dormant. This is a rare issue because it can respirate through the regular entrances as well. This sort of state is usually caused by a massive surface disaster, or a concentrated effort to shut a dungeon down. It is worth noting that dungeons are not going to attack something through a devouring deep. If someone accidentally falls into a Deep, that's on them. But the dungeons do not use them as active feeding orifices, but passive ones, like sponges or other sessile marine life.
The Gygaxian Gyre has a large number of Devouring Deeps. Some are as mundane as openings that are hard to find in the swamps and fens near the city of Terrasquestone. These Deeps consume biomass from these swamps as well as occasionally swallowing hapless travelers, wandering monsters, and the like. Others include the latrine cistern under the great keep, or the red midden near the slaughterhouse district. The midden is rank with unused pieces of animals, manure, and the rest of the refuse from the ward, but it always seems to stay down to a manageable level.
The Hanzek Abyss has large fissures that slope down to razor sharp rock lined pits. Anything that falls into one of these deep fissures is almost certain to either fall into the deep, or perish from exposure and then their corpse will slide into the deep.
Limberlost and New Limberlost both use sinkholes that periodically appear near refuse sites. Roots emerge like tentacles and grab inanimate objects to pull down into the dungeon and consume.
2. Puzzle/RP Challenge
Once through the entrance of a Devouring Deep, the next chamber is the masticator. This is a great place to put in crushing wall traps. Walls with spikes are even better! In reality this isn't a place designed to thwart adventurers from entering the next zone, it is a structure that crushes the things that are dropped or drawn into it.
The RP/Puzzle comes in because almost all dungeons will have a way to move things through a Deep. The Gyre uses its Devouring Deeps not just as feeding apertures, but as a fast travel system for its monsters and minions. That being said, that means that there is a way to bypass the function of the Crushing Chamber. A puzzle, a riddle, a password, a specific spell, or something like that.
Up to you, I hate puzzles in games.
3. Trick/Setback
The consumption process of a Devouring Deep is slow. The crushers don't move quickly, and chambers lacking crushers might be reached by deft and quick-footed heroes, or those who figure out how to get through them unharmed. Everything has a near vertical drop, and the debris falling from the crusher enters resting chambers. These might be closed off for weeks or even months depending on how active the dungeon is. In some ancient and huge dungeons, these might spend years closed until the resting chamber has enough inside it to be worth dealing with.
The game part here isn't waiting out the cycling of the chambers, its dealing with what is inside it. This is a great place to put ambush creatures like cloakers, piercers, otyughs, ropers, carrion crawlers, and the larval forms of giant insects writhing and feeding on the accumulated biomass and rot. Plenty of space for heroes to fight scavenger monsters, fungal monsters, and the rest.
The scent should be revolting, even sickening.
4. Climax/Big Battle
Then the resting chamber opens and dumps its contents into the most horrific part of a devouring deep, the break-down chamber. In a sci-fi setting, this would be a vat of acid or a furnace that turns everything that falls into it into energy and ash. Each dungeon will have slightly different versions of the contents of this chamber, but it is almost always going to be some sort of ooze, slime, jelly, or pudding. These mindless entities live in the stomach of the devouring deep and are part of the dungeon ecology, where they turn everything that falls into the deep into dissolved essence and more of whatever they are.
A dungeon completely has the power to break down anything that is lost inside it. It is easier for the dungeon to let something like an ooze or slime do this, liberating the item's pattern and essence for the dungeon to collect, rather than the dungeon to do it directly itself. This takes a great deal of concentration, and a dungeon that is manually breaking things down is distracted and completely unaware of anything else while in this process.
The Gygaxian Gyre's Devouring Deeps are stocked with black puddings. The chambers have restricted access because if the deep was even slightly open, the puddings could get out. While this is of minor inconvenience to the dungeon, equivalent to a really hot nasty belch, too much becomes a problem. Thus, the puddings are regularly fed to keep them quiescent. When they become too large or too many, the dungeon will cull the mindless creatures, liberating the essence they contain and the patterns of the things they have consumed.
5. Reward/Revelation/Twist
The indigestible matter the puddings leave behind will accumulate at the bottom of the chamber, and in a similar periodic fashion, the Deep's stomach will be emptied. There are two routes leading out of the pudding chamber. The larger of the two passes the metal, stone, and other inorganic materials down into the Mullock Ward of Understone. This is not quite the same thing as a Devouring Deep for wights, but it is close. The worst of the worst, the poorest and most downtrodden of that dread city are expected to pick through the Mullock and bring valuable things to the ward keepers. The dream is to find a trinket or bauble of magical power and buy freedom. A few find weapons and armor and fight their way out of the ward to live feral in the dungeon's depths. Most pick the heaps, sorting the debris for scrap they trade for food or water until they die. Going in this direction dumps an unexpecting hero into the waste district of the poorest and most crime-ridden part of Understone where they themselves become a treasure for the wretched to capture and trade in, or kill and eat and then trade their gear.
A twist could be a side access opening and the people sliding down the chute are diverted to somewhere else in the dungeon. As these are controlled by the core, this could exit them into a receiving area before the Fortress at the Heart of the World, dump them into the vast lake that surrounds Understone, or even into another pudding chamber. Hey, sometimes there is overflow and a higher stomach gets drained into a larger lower stomach. The absolute worst and most cursed outcome would be the dungeon shifting the access canals and simply dumping something it doesn't want to deal with to its ultimate tool.
Imagine penetrating Devouring Deep, getting through the crusher, fighting the carrion eaters, defeating the puddings and at the moment of triumph being dropped into the maw of the terrasque. Even in its slumber it will bite and swallow anything that tickles the inside of its mouth.
Author's Note
The Devouring Deeps are a process mechanism for dungeon ecology and thinking of breaking into a dungeon by going through a Devouring Deep is going to range from impossible to just stupid to outright suicidal. The basic ecology/contract of the dungeon in the DungeonVerse is to circulate essence, refine essence, and provide a place for heroes to advance and gain power, with the trade-off of losers dying and being consumed by the dungeon. The goal isn't TPK, nor is it to destroy the dungeon core, but to simply let it run like an engine. Attacking a dungeon through a deep is like trying to kill a monster by climbing into its nose, sneaking into its mouth, or climbing up its bum. Dungeons have accessible entrances for a reason.
Its also completely worth noticing that the Devouring Deep of the article is based around the Gygaxian Gyre, which is the largest dungeon in the DungeonVerse and has multiple huge Devouring Deeps, some of which are known to the elite of the city above the Gyre. Other dungeons might have completely different designs on their systems and might not favor the gastric gizzard and stomach layout of a large reptile.
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