Dungeon Room Index: Mines

Mines

As always, here are the rooms:

"And they call it a mine!"

When I think of mines in the context of fantasy adventure games, two very different pictures come to mind. First, there is the simple, literal sense of a "mine"--more or less a human made cave chasing gold or whatever. Second, is the classic dwarven mine--part mine and part underground empire. Needless to say, the two images don't actually have a ton in common.

Additionally, the second sense of the word also functions a lot like our entry on Sewers: it's not that you think up endless "mine" rooms so much as you embed other kinds of rooms in and around a kind of dwarven-mine-aesthetic. (Or, whatever other mine-empire-creating civilization you've cooked up.)

Anyways, I've tried to do a little of both for this one. As such, some of these rooms were conceived by first considering a previous room category in the context of a fantastical mine.

Room Notes

Excavation

A large chamber, carved into terraces for simultaneous excavation at multiple layers.

Similar to the first, but work is conducted along a single cliff over a deep ravine.

Some mines are created by digging chambers beneath valuable deposits, then causing controlled collapses to collect the goods.

Some mines are created by literally carving pillars out of the stone. The result is a chamber much like our previously covered Great Halls.

A rail is dug into a massive geode, filled with water and amethysts.

Crossings

Miners walked one way, carts of ore rolled another.

  

Who hasn't wanted to ride a mine cart through an old mine like you're Donkey Kong? I think it would be a little disappointing to enter a "mine" dungeon and not find a single rail line for pushing or riding mine carts down.

Rickety rail bridges cross a deep, deep ravine. A mine cart might make for a quick ride across, or else you can walk across... slowly, and carefully--I did say they were rickety.

A rail line passes an adjoining submerged passage. Submerged passages are actually highly likely in an abandoned mine (unless its dug into high ground) as water will inevitable seep through the ground and settle into the mines chambers. In its heyday, the mine would have had methods of pumping this water out to prevent accumulation.

The mines are pocketed with water-logged caverns. In this one the miners built a cableway to move miners and valuables across the gap.

A crevice splits this passage. The miners boarded it over haphazardly to create a usable crossing. Some of the boards are quite fragile.

I love pits. Places to push enemies in, places to descend and find entirely new places and things. I've said it before, but don't put a pit in a room without at least having some idea of where it might lead.

Recently I was reminded of the phenomenal, fantastical depiction of the Vaults of Gringotts in the Harry Potter films. Mine carts shouldn't have to just be simple boxes on simple rails. This is fantasy! How about a gyroscopic railcar on an iron rail across a pool of lava?

Junctions

 

Separate tracks meet in a large chamber. Perhaps the rail lines were built at different times, or smaller carts from multiple sources are unloaded into larger carts leading to the exit.

A much more elaborate junction is accompanied by wooden buildings inside the mine. Perhaps these spaces are offices, supply rooms, housing for miners, etc.

Elevators

A wooden platform hangs from chains and pulleys. A winch lowers the elevator. Realistically, if you can get this elevator to move up and down it's probably going to be pretty noisy. But also realistically, I'm told that sound doesn't actually carry far in rough hewn caverns--the walls are too irregular. If that's true, I would still be sweating at the noise though.

A crane lowers a great platform into a deep pit, hauling up valuable minerals from glittering tunnels below.

Entrances

At the south, the entrance to the mine. At the north, 3 possible paths, deeper into the mine.

This cavern, with its grand doorway, marks the transition from sprawling caverns to dwarven strongholds, and carved halls of stone.

Libraries

Dwarves must keep their books somewhere. This room is a section of a library; it is one of many nearly identical floors, stacked around a central, spiral staircase. The ceilings are too low for any human to comfortably walk beneath.

Less library and more "record room". Even so, this chamber is carved out of the stone to accommodate rows upon rows of shelves. Useful reference materials are found here, along with records of the miners and their terms of employment.

As the previous, but smaller and more like a "front desk".

Great Halls

Great stalagmites have been carved into ornate pillars between stone doors. Great doorways lead to chambers of significance, while rails lead off to mining tunnels and other passageways.

Armories

This dwarven armory is characterized by a central corridor, punctuated by a great battering ram. Wall alcoves hold weapons and equipment, and raised platforms above are further adorned with barrels of weapons.

A simple supply room carved off a narrow crossing. Tools and equipment are densely packed into shelves, crates, and barrels.

Shrines

As a new tunnel was dug, a massive, flawless crystal was discovered. Instead of establishing a new mining tunnel, the miners expanded this chamber, clearly assigning some special reverence to their discovery. A pool of water discourages the profane from coming too close.

Tombs

A simple wooden platform was built above a deep, dark pit. Apparently, the miners would bring their fallen comrades here, wrapped in layers of cloth soaked in perfumes, and toss them into the pit in ceremonial fashion. Whatever it may have smelt like before, the stench is unbearable now. Who knows what might be found at the bottom of this pit today...

This special tunnel was dug for honoring fallen dwarven lords. Each statue is actually the deceased themself, cast in bronze. Space was planned for at least fourteen such memorials, but only eleven were ever actually commissioned before these tunnels were abandoned.

Living Quarters

A simple room is carved into the side of a passage, and simple wooden bunks are chained to the wall.

Bonus: mine details

It has been so long since my last entry, and the topic is so ripe that we have to spend some time considering interesting details to include in your mine-dungeons.

That said, I already have produced a lot of useful material for this purpose in my entry on Caverns. Even so, there are some more particular mine-coded ideas we can summarize here.

What were they mining down here?

This mine was established to collect:

• Coal.
• Stone. Just a big, underground quarry for a particularly useful sort of stone that isn't as easily found above ground.
• Chalk.
• Ore. Iron, copper, bronze. Raw materials that require refinement, smelting, etc.
• Precious metals. Gold, silver, mithril, orichalcum. More rare and valuable materials that require less processing to manifest their value.
• Edible Minerals. Like salt. (Or naturally occurring rock candy if you feel particularly silly.)
• Jewels/Crystals. Perhaps for their direct rarity, or perhaps because they possess special properties: magic fire rubies, psionic crystals, and so on.
• Lodestone. That's the fancy fantasy word for "natural magnets". Because magnets are cool and--let's be real--basically magic anyways.
• Liquids. I dunno. Like... digging for oil by hand. Or some other magical liquid substance that gathers deep underground. Why does a mine just have to be after hard stuff?

What's living down here?

• Creepy crawlies. I love bugs. Giant cave centipedes, spiders, crickets, glowworms, etc.
• Goblinoids. From a Tolkienien fantasy perspective, a massive goblin society is just as likely to be found deep in the earth as a dwarven one. Perhaps the mining operation simply breached the goblins caverns, and that's why the mine was abandoned in the first place.
• Constructs. Ancient automatons or golems, once employed to dig the mines, now abandoned. Either they continue with their original routines, or there purposes have been corrupted.
• Fungus. Every fantasy cavern is ripe for magical fungus, no matter how it came to be.
• Demons. This is that classic "Durin's Bane" trope. Ancient evils are either imprisoned deep in the earth, or the deep places of the earth are just literally hell, or else deep underground are ancient portals to demonic realms. I'm sure you can think of more reasons than that.
• Miners. They're still here. Or maybe just that one guy who never gave up, or maybe the miners are all undead and unable to leave their life's employment. Whatever the reason, it's not likely that they're happy to see you.
• Elementals. Particularly earth or fire elementals. I think you could even swing some water elementals considering all those waterlogged caverns and aquifers.
• A giant canary still wrapped in its cage. It's a monster now. Maybe its mutated by magic, or fungus, or greed incarnate.
• Abandoned beasts of burden. Mules, oxen, whatever. They've been here so long that they've adapted to the dark, with diminished or entirely missing eyes, and enhanced senses of smell or hearing. Their skin or fur has grown pale. They live off of cave fungus now.
• All other strange and exotic creatures. It deserves emphasis: the sorts of adaptations that may be of use deep underground are very different from those that are valuable on the surface. Creatures deep underground may be as alien as those found at the bottom of the ocean!

How did this mine come to be?

• Simple pursuit of resources. Your standard, stereotypical mine. Sourcing iron or other resources necessary for civilization.
• Trails left by rock boring creatures. Giant earthworms that eat gold or iron carved these passages in pursuit of their meal.
• Massive vanity project. A tyrannical ruler went desperately searching for gold for their coffers. Conquered peoples and rebellious peasants were carried off in the night and put to work in the mines pursuing gold and jewels that were never there to begin with.
• A fanciful quest. Legend told of great beasts with bones fossilized to gold. A farmer stumbled upon tangible evidence, and the excavation has continued deeper and deeper since.
• A cover up. Publicly, the mine was dug to find something mundane and useful, but in fact it is a front for a more esoteric project: a secret cultish compound, an attempt to make contact and contract with dark powers deep in the earth.
• Dwarven empire. Mines support a great underground city carved directly into the stone. Their craftsmanship in stonework and the grandness of their halls is nearly without comparison in the modern era. 

What other kinds of interesting hazards or ideas could be contained in this mine?

Mining is a complex and interesting practice. There are all kinds of hazards and discomforts to be found deep in the ground, and all kinds of practices used to cope with them. Consider:

• Natural gas. Pockets of non-breathable, maybe even highly flammable gases may be encountered deep underground. This can be an interesting hazard to overcome in it's own right, but a mine might include direct ventilation measures to mitigate this hazard, and that could mean interesting new passages or mechanisms dedicated to this purpose.
• Toxic spores. In a similar vein (that's a mining pun for you), underground fungus may fill the air periodically (or in response to stimuli) with dangerous spores. Perhaps the miners carried equipment to burn the offending fungi periodically, or took other measures to create an environment hostile to mold and mushrooms.
• Incredible heat. Whether because there are caverns of lava, or simply because the earth gets warmer the deeper you get. This may be an additional motive for ventilation (which might not be functioning properly anymore), or perhaps pipes along the roof spray cold water periodically to reduce the temperature to bearable levels. Perhaps that system is broken, and though the mine is unbearably warm, it's in fact much worse when the pipes spray near-boiling water instead.
• Incredible cold. Your world doesn't have a molten core, or some other magical or unexpected cause means that the mines are colder the deeper you get. Systems were put in place to heat the chambers, but those systems either no longer work, or malfunction unexpectedly. (This is a great excuse for unexpected jets of fire in an otherwise cold environment!)
• Magma. Worth it's own direct mention: chambers are filled with pools or rivers of magma. This makes navigation difficult, or certain areas unreachable by conventional means. Perhaps special means of transportation were constructed to cross these areas, adding a unique character to the mine. Perhaps the magma levels ebb and flow, presenting interesting time-based challenges (a passage is only temporarily passable every third dungeon turn, for example, or for pseudo-random intervals).
• Water. As alluded to before, it is not uncommon for ground water to seep into mines, flooding their chambers. This can add difficulty in similar fashion to magma, only less immediately lethal. But as we've mentioned on this blog before, water can cause all kinds of problems in it's own right. To add to the interest of this hazard: as this is a known problem in many mines, perhaps the mining complex includes sophisticated pumping mechanisms that are or are not currently functioning. At scale this could mean interesting passages with a distinct character. Even if not, this could form an interesting lock-and-key mechanism for restoring access to a portion of the dungeon. Even without this kind of issue, there are other ways a mine could become water-logged: for example, some minerals (when mined) may fill the air with deadly particles, so systems may have been put into place to pump water in to prevent clouds of dust from forming during mining operations.