The Megadungeon of Tomorrow

 

Once again, I find myself thinking about THE LINE, the absurd megastructure the Saudis are erecting in the desert near the Red Sea. And yeah, they're actually doing it! They've dug much of the foundation pit. They're putting down pilings. It's happening.

No, they're never actually going to finish it, but we are going to end up with some kind of vast and trunkless ruin out there in the desert. Maybe the people of the future will get to explore it. In fact:

The Line is designed to be divided into 140 modules—each 200 meters wide, 800 meters long, and 500 meters high. Each module could house up to 80,000 people. The first five modules will be each be designed by a different architecture studio.

That…kinda sounds like a megadungeon. Actually, it really sounds like a megadungeon. So without further ado, here are some tables for exploring a deserted desert megastructure composed of modules approximately 200 by 800 by 500 meters, which once housed up to 80,000 people apiece.

* * *

This module of the megastructure is…

1. Unfinished, with wind-flayed tarps flapping raggedly over gaping holes. Building materials and construction equipment are piled all around.
2. Half ruined—just the skeletal superstructure remains in some places, while others are intact and still sealed off from the wilderness.
3. Rent open near ground level, letting the sand penetrate the broken interior.
4. Punctured higher above, allowing something from inside (a stream of snowmelt water, a riot of plant life, a noxious gas) to spill into the desert.
5. Weathered but unbroken, perhaps accessible through a door or vent where security systems have failed.
6. Immaculate, gleaming, reflective, and impenetrable. Try the next module.

 

The dominant animals in or around this module are…

1. Nothing. Just wind and ghosts.
2. Baboons, whose chattering, grunting, and barking create a constant din.
3. Striped hyenas, eerily silent, watching from every shadowy corner.
4. An innumerable horde of goats. The clatter of horns resounds regularly as bucks fight over mates. Goat shit is everywhere underfoot.
5. Vultures, which roost high above by the thousands. What can they all be eating?
6. Wolves, lean and cunning, who gather in small packs and spar over territory. There is an almost human wisdom in their eyes.
7. Snakes of all descriptions, basking in the sun or lying torpid in the shade. Might actually be jinn in serpent form.
8. Feral humans who answer to no language but their own.
9. Muscular four-armed apes with photosynthetic fur, escaped from a secret lab somewhere else in the ruins.
10. Lizard people with chameleonic skin and prehensile tongues. They didn't escape from a lab; they've always been here.

 

The ground-level and lower floors of this module…

1. Were a mixed-use community, with middle-class apartments, shopping, offices, schools, and more.
2. Constituted an immense automated factory, churning out weapons for export. Maybe the machines are still operable?
3. Were one huge self-aggrandizing exhibit about the genius of the megastructure's designers and the wisdom of its financiers. Lots of holograms.
4. Featured a panoptic security station, the hub of an endless network of cameras and recording devices. There's a beefy armory, too.
5. Was Venice-themed, with canals leading everywhere and no way to get around except by gondola.
6. Are stuffed with what mostly seems to be building-services machinery, but some of which serves no discernible purpose.
7. Were dedicated to power generation and transmission. The solar panels and wind turbines are long dead, but the battery banks still have juice.
8. Were a transit hub where a high-speed overland rail station met a cluster of vertical lifts and a small airport for E-VTOL aircraft.
9. Are a necropolitan labyrinth of niches containing millions of perfectly preserved human corpses. Who were they? What are they doing here?
10. Were a colossal convention center with vaulted ceilings and multiple theaters. All the trappings of the last convention are still here.
11. Contained a few of those secret labs that the carnivorous mushrooms and four-armed apes keep escaping from.
12. Were all just one vast warehouse for storing salt from the megastructure's desalinization systems.

 

The garden atrium in the middle of this module…

1. Is mostly dead, a half-petrified tangle of decaying logs, bone-dry tinder, and strangling vines.
2. Is completely overgrown, one contiguous vertical jungle through which you can barely see the platforms and walkways. Watch your step.
3. Has been overtaken by strange invasive plant (or fungal) life, perhaps escaped from one of the megastructure's many secret labs.
4. Is somehow operating exactly within parameters despite decades (or centuries) without any human input.
5. Was replaced with giant aquariums and pools, which hopefully haven't all sprung leaks.
6. Is largely taken up by a titanic theme park, including roller coasters several hundred meters high.
7. Contained a towering artificial mountain, half ski resort and half alpine-climate zoo. Watch out for snow leopards!
8. Is the only way to reach the upper floors; none of the elevators, trams, gondolas, or E-VTOL craft in this module are functional. Hope you aren't afraid of heights.

 

The upper floors of this module…

1. Were a mammoth business district. Angular towers of steel, glass, and marble rise above atria featuring austere fountains and abstract sculptures.
2. Were colonized by refugees from the lower levels, who rebuilt the whole structure as a warren of tiny homes and cramped alleys like Kowloon Walled City.
3. Were a sprawling recreational complex, including sports stadiums open to the sky.
4. Are covered with arcane symbols and incomprehensible messages scrawled in old blood, and scattered with the desiccated corpses of long-dead sacrificial victims.
5. Were either a high-concept mall or an enormous art installation; it's hard to tell. Lots of pedestals, plinths, dramatic lighting, and fake waterfalls.
6. Are a reason-defying maze of tunnels and corridors that somehow keep leading you back to the ground level, though you never descend.
7. Are a self-contained luxury community still inhabited by trapped, long-isolated elites who are living out a longer, even grimmer version of J. G. Ballard's High-Rise.
8. Are surmounted by a spire that stretches hundreds of meters beyond the roof of the megastructure, tapering to a single room just big enough for one person to sit in.
   
9. Are periodically visited by outsiders who land their VTOL aircraft on the roof and then do ruin-porn photoshoots and/or hunt poor people for sport.
10. Dissolve into a welter of gravity-defying concrete structures and geometric forms. Previous travelers have lashed some of them together with rope bridges.

 

If you search every nook and cranny of the module, you might find…

1. A literal Olympic-sized swimming pool filled two-thirds of the way up with gems and precious stones.
2. An improbably complete collection of game-worn Lionel Messi jerseys.
3. A Samsonite attaché case containing incontrovertible proof that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. (Nobody cares about this anymore except eccentric old history nerds, though.)
   
4. At least one magical lamp with a powerful jinni trapped inside. The jinni will grant you one wish. (You were expecting three? Don't be greedy.)
5. One 15-kiloton tactical nuclear warhead of French manufacture, 1974 vintage. Does it still work? Probably not. But who knows, give it a try!
   
6. A trove of arcane tomes long believed lost to posterity (and perhaps for the better).
7. A malign entity that knows your heart's deepest and most shameful desire. Unlike the jinni, it doesn't grant wishes; it just mocks you.
8. A vault containing 57% of all the South African Krugerrands ever minted.

 

The strangest thing about this whole module is…

1. How humid it is. You can barely breathe, the air is so thick.
2. The way the ambient light periodically changes color and intensity. Where is it even coming from?
3. The video projected on every blank surface and blasting silently from every screen: an unending loop of a man delivering an angry speech. 
4. The higher you go, the weaker gravity seems to become. You already felt about 20% lighter by the time you got inside the ground floor.
5. It smells like fresh bread. Everywhere there's something that should stink—a dead animal, rotting garbage—the bread smell just gets stronger.
6. The constant wailing, so faint that it seems like any other noise would drown it out. But you always hear it. It's always just loud enough.