The time is the present and the place is New York City, one of the biggest metropoles in the world. The PCs are a collection of normal, run-of-the-mill people who have been forced to take one of the last trains of the night bound for their destination. The game begins with everyone realizing that they'd nodded off for an indeterminate amount of time, and that they'd stopped at an old subway station they've never seen before, deep, deep, deep below the streets of NYC. Their goal is to try and work together to return to the city's surface, but what they'll discover is that they'll have to traverse a darkly mystical urban underworld to do it.
What locales will they visit? What sorts of people will they meet? What scenes will they stumble onto? What dangers will they face?
>>47271601
A USSR spybase.
>>47271601
pirates who ride subway trains
>The subway tunnels both coming to and going from the station the PCs awaken in appear to have been walled off with concrete and steel, making the arrival of the PCs and their train worryingly mysterious. What's even more worrying however is the fact that the stairway leading up to the street has likewise been sealed.
>The PCs find themselves followed or perhaps stalked for a time by the figure of a man bearing a very bright light like a miner's lamp on his person. The figure always keeps its distance, but projects extreme feelings of disquiet and menace whenever he is spotted.
>Eventually, the PCs reach "Deep Downtown," a large, populated station that acts as the capital of the Urban Underworld and is a place at which the PCs may be able to hire a guide to lead them back to the surface.
>>47271601
Rats large and smart enough to have their own disturbing civilisation ruled by a Rat King.
If they aren't threatening enough, add on domesticated sewer gators.
>>47271601
Several encounters with tunnels that end in a wall of impenetrable scutes the size of manhole covers.
Eventually, they find a titanic sleeping dragon wrapped in electrical lines, water piping, girders, etc. in a massive space.
With or without a creepy cult to actually threaten them.
Also, whole and complete fossils sticking out of the concrete if they go deep enough, with obvious tissue shadows.
underground rivers, theres a number of them in nyc. undead versions of various ethnic groups from various time periods, depending where you are in the city. zombie slaves and sailors from the 1700s, zombie street gangs from the late 1800s, zombie hobos from the 1920s and 30s.
If youre setting it on the south end of the island, toss in a dose of opium infused asian magic. If youre going with the north end, toss in some ancient african magic. If youre in midtown, maybe play with bioshock style wealthy socialites from the 40s or 50s who created an underground society to escape risk of war and ended up degenerating.
Best thing you can do is look up NYC history, and jump off from there
>One rather brightly lit tunnel that has been covered from the floors to the ceilings in intensely colorful graffiti, with bits of scaffolding and copious amounts of paint cans strewn about. As the PCs traverse the tunnel, the graffiti shifts and moves as if it were alive.
>A seemingly bottomless shaft surrounded by rusty railings and untrustworthy sawhorse barricades.
>A small hollow in the bedrock, accessible through a crack in the concrete wall, in which a number of makeshift tents have been left set up around a campfire, the residents of which seem to have stepped out.
>>47272621
>A small hollow in the bedrock, accessible through a crack in the concrete wall, in which a number of makeshift tents have been left set up around a campfire, the residents of which seem to have stepped out.
>>47271601
Read Neverwhere.
> Old Native American monsters that have been driven deep into the earth
>>47272286
Pirates? On a train? Preposterous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn2gOI3nHsw
>tfw you had the entire setting of Hellgate: London planned out 2 years before the game.
>tfw you showed people and they didn't believe you.
>tfw you loved the idea for years but hated it after the game came out and was shit.
>>47278058
Take and recycle, friend.
"Deep-Downers," the people who have actually been living in this Urban Underworld for a while, are a creole of different ethnicities, customs and religious beliefs that all carry a bit of truth to them so far down below the streets. "Tourists" are people like the PCs who have found their way into the tunnels, most often by accident but sometimes on purpose, who are almost always are ignorant of the ways and dangers of the Underworld.
I'm imagining the Urban Underworld as being part Metro 2033, part Miami Street Children Legends, and part Missy Elliot's "Get Your Freak On."
>>47275085
Have that guy be a friendly and nonchalant but sell slightly anarchronistic things e.g. magazine covers/newspaper headlines from the 80s, or the future. Candy that was discontinued in the 60s, shit like that.
>>47281378
He'll buy or sell anything you need down in the Underworld, but the goods and money he gives you may be from wildly different time periods, and you always get the unsettling feeling that he knows much more than you do and is getting a far better deal on any given transaction, no matter how good for you it seems.
>>47271601
From time to time, the Museum train stops at random stations.
Ordinary wagons from the outside, it contains numerous exhibitions containing fragments of New Yorks past, valuable art, weapons and every lost sock, pen and key of the city.
Some doors and train cars can only be opened by a particular type of coin from a particular time period, such as a silver ha'penny from 1882 London or a half-burned French livre from 1467 Paris.
While wandering through another abandoned subway station, the PCs are startled when an old payphone starts ringing. Should get pick up the phone, a scratchy pre-recorded female voice will ask if they want to accept payment on a collect call from "a friend." If the PCs can scrounge up the fee and accept the call, a voice on the other end will provide detailed instructions on how to safely pass through the dangerous stretch of tunnels between the station and the next settlement.
>>47271601
The labyrinthine sewers with savages and giant rats. The further in you go, the larger the tunnels get until it opens up into a great chamber and in the center is a once-beautiful Venetian-style town
A shanty town built into the sides of a HUGE vertical pipe. Strange things are always falling down into the town and this is where economy is fueled. There is no bottom, of if there is, no one has found it.
The wilds inhabited by giant bugs. Worms/centipedes using the subway tunnels, ants the size of puppies, trapdoor spiders under manholes
Ghost train. A train that has never stopped and that no one has ever gotten off of. Residents have made it into a home of sorts
Portal-style giant underground facility with helpful/harmful AIs
A Huge chamber with pillars hanging down so that there are city block-sized sections with one/two story ceilings. In between stalks a Godzilla sized creature.
A passenger liner, wedged across a ravine, or stuck tilted vertically
Aquifer bayou with surprisingly well kept twenties era mansions a la Great Gatsby. Alternatively, voodoo?
Crazy cannibal hermit setting booby traps in the crypt
>>47271601
Friendly Russian guide, and electrical ghosts.
![458px-The_Sewer-hunter_or_‘Tosher’,_1851[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eF9DYsb.jpg "458px-The_Sewer-hunter_or_‘Tosher’,_1851[1].jpg")
An underground population of Toshers (or the NYC equivalent), people who scavenged sewer muck for valuables, and ended up getting lost in the mystical underground labyrinth, eventually forming their own society.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/quite-likely-the-worst-job-ever-319843/
>>47272327
Possibly complete with an estranged mate, the Queen Rat (see above):
>This was a supernatural creature whose true appearance was that of a rat; she would follow the toshers about, invisibly, as they worked, and when she saw one that she fancied she would turn into a sexy-looking woman and accost him. If he gave her a night to remember, she would give him luck in his work; he would be sure to find plenty of money and valuables. He would not necessarily guess who she was, for though the Queen Rat did have certain peculiarities in her human form (her eyes reflected light like an animal’s, and she had claws on her toes), he probably would not notice them while making love in some dark corner. But if he did suspect, and talked about her, his luck would change at once; he might well drown, or meet with some horrible accident.
>>47286021
>>47272327
The Rats are the only creatures in New York City's Underworld that always know exactly where they're going and what dangers lay ahead. As such, many Toshers/Explorers among the Deep-Downtowners keep a pet rat in a cage on their person, almost like a miner's canary, to warn them when they are in danger.
The anguished spirits of people who've committed suicide haunt the lines. Electrical sparks fly from the rails into vague humanoid shapes, usually standing with their heads buried in their hands.
If you get close enough to them they may try to reach out to you
>"Listen closely to the words I tell you now, Tourist, because you will not last long here in the Underworld if you do not need them. Do not be making the mistake in believing that we Deep-Downers are backward and misguided on account of our superstitious ways. It is because of them, not in spite of them, that our lives here in the Underworld continue, such as they are. It is because of them too that you shall survive, if you are having a mind to follow our superstitious ways. You must remember, always, that every tunnel has a tale and every station has a story. Learn them well. Learn their histories and their dangers. Learn the rites and the rituals. Learn the words and the ways. Then you may, one day, return to the streets above."
- "Old Nick," Tourguide, Tosher, Tunnelman
You could learn a lot from this series, even if it was a bit nonsensical at times
>>47288537
for you
Have something like slime grow on the tubes, getting thicker until it seems you're actually walking in the bowels of some great beast. And then it swallows, the undulations pushing you surprisingly quickly until you land in the pit that works as its stomach. It's like a pitcher plant, the walls are slick and you're up to your knees in the digestive soup.
A living creature composed of the tunnels and pipes themselves
>>47281335
>I'm imagining the Urban Underworld as being part Metro 2033, part Miami Street Children Legends, and part Missy Elliot's "Get Your Freak On."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqEWfQ4zmh4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPoKiGQzbSQ
![14497[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3c4eZD8.jpg "14497[1].jpg")
>>47271601
There was a old tv series. The protagonists name was Vincent and he was a beast who guard the undercity people or something.
>>47289375
/thread.
