Dungeons

Blatant evidence of the evil in the hearts of the living, dungeons are constructed most often by the living for use on others like them. They are dank, impregnable stone halls dug into the ground, in which criminals and innocents alike can be thrown by Feudal Lords, Imperial Governors or even City Councils to die, starved, bereft and forgotten.

The best-kept and best-intentioned are yet rife with plague, rats and starvation between lit guardposts and ordered cell blocks, while the worst are dotted with black oubliettes, flooded passages and halls choked by the stacked bodies of generations of lost men whose crime was nothing more than the displeasure of their liege.

Within the realm of the dungeon, there are no great treasures to be found. Generally, the best one can hope for is to find and rescue a lost soul, as a trespasser, or escape, as a resident. One will most often face armed and capable guards as opponents, though swarms of vermin are not uncommon, and darker, more wretched diggers in the earth may be found when guards grow few and the light grows faint.

BACKGROUND

In the Age of Kings, we’re talking about traditional dungeons, built to house criminals and undesirables, to pay for their crimes or to sit and rot, at the whim of the local authority.

In the Age of the Empires, dungeons are repurposed to not simply hold prisoners, but to extract magic from them in a vaguely sustainable way. Guard complements shrink and attendants grow as prisoners are kept insensate while their magical energy is drained from them. Instead of cold, rough-hewn pits, they become much cleaner and better-kept, with some areas kept apart for housing of non-prisoners.

After the Age of the Empires, the design modifications from the Imperial period remain, but the knowledge of how to maintain the technology quickly fades, and dungeons soon revert back to their original usage. However, the neglect of the magical apparati within, combined with the abandonment of entire wings of the facilities, sometimes results in unexpected difficulties for the authorities tenuously hanging on to power.

BUILDING

Ultimately, dungeons are built by men for incarceration, so cells and tunnels with rooms at intersections are all we’re looking for here. A traditional symmetrical branching-tunnel structure, with central chambers at intersections for guards, interrogations, and supplies. Passages between the central chambers are lined with tiny cells where prisoners are kept.