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Fan Works
Proton looked up and saw the rocky cone of Mount Terror, the solar reflector leaning over the armorcrete rim, and the curved magnalloy blades of a blast iris retracted into the sides. The purpose of this construction was suddenly clear. They were inside a depthscraper — a legacy of the time when entire cities were built underground in fear of another atomic war.
Literature
Did he not live in a town which lay deeper under the earth than the underground stations of Metropolis, with their thousand shafts - in a town the houses of which storied just as high above squares and streets as, above in the night, did the houses of Metropolis, which towered so high, one above the other?
Had he ever known anything else than the horrible sobriety of these houses, in which there lived not men, but numbers, recognizable only by the enormous placards by the house-doors?
Had his life ever had any purpose other than to go out from these doors, framed with numbers, out to work, when the sirens of Metropolis howled for him - and ten hours later, crushed and tired to death, to stumble into the house by the door of which his number stood?
Had he ever known anything else than the horrible sobriety of these houses, in which there lived not men, but numbers, recognizable only by the enormous placards by the house-doors?
Had his life ever had any purpose other than to go out from these doors, framed with numbers, out to work, when the sirens of Metropolis howled for him - and ten hours later, crushed and tired to death, to stumble into the house by the door of which his number stood?
— Metropolis, by Thea von Harbou
Within the cavern on the other side lay a large, ancient city. Stone and mud structures rose out of the sand - some intact, others in ruins - but all showing the unmistakable ravages of age. Streets littered with the detritus of everyday lives led to dunes so high, they nearly touched the stone overhead. Farther in, the damage became less random and indistinct. Signs of fire could be seen, accompanied by the occasional arrow. Pieces of pottery lay broken across the floors of ransacked buildings. The gates to food stores hung awkwardly off their hinges, open to the world they'd unsuccessfully tried to keep out.
And scribbled everywhere were messages from the long dead. Warnings pocked the walls, some informing desperate neighbors to keep away, others to prevent future travelers like himself from venturing farther. Pleas marked those inches that warnings did not scar. The people in their final days, begging their gods for food, for rain, for deliverance. Then every so often, though more frequently as you approached the center of the city, carved onto the doors was the same message over and over again. Part curse, part denouncement, what it actually said was eloquent and terrible, but what it amounted to was quite simple: I ate my neighbor. It never failed to make Yulric smile.
And scribbled everywhere were messages from the long dead. Warnings pocked the walls, some informing desperate neighbors to keep away, others to prevent future travelers like himself from venturing farther. Pleas marked those inches that warnings did not scar. The people in their final days, begging their gods for food, for rain, for deliverance. Then every so often, though more frequently as you approached the center of the city, carved onto the doors was the same message over and over again. Part curse, part denouncement, what it actually said was eloquent and terrible, but what it amounted to was quite simple: I ate my neighbor. It never failed to make Yulric smile.
— An Unattractive Vampire by Jim McDoniel
Maybe the entire population is underground, tooling away on endless war projects, while their "Great Leader" continues to anesthetize himself with Western liquor and American pornography. Do they even know the war is over? Have their leaders lied to them again and told them that the world as they know it has ceased to be? Maybe the rise of the dead was "good" thing in their eyes, an excuse to tighten the yoke even further in a society built on blind subjugation. The Great Leader always wanted to be a living God, and now, as master not only of the food his people eat, the air they breathe, but the very light of their artificial suns, maybe his twisted fantasy has become a reality. Maybe that was the original plan, but something went disastrously wrong. Look at what happened to the "mole city" underneath Paris. What if that occurred in the North on a national level? Maybe those caverns are teeming with twenty-three million zombies, emaciated automatons howling in the darkness and just waiting to be unleashed.
— Hyungchol Choi, World War Z
Tabletop Games
Just as the Ventrue have erected glass and steel spires to the heavens and the Toreador have encrusted the middle with frescoes, bas-reliefs and gargoyles, so the Nosferatu have carved their own dark kingdoms among the bowels of humanity's works.
— Vampire: The Masquerade - Clanbook: Nosferatu
Located within the near-impenetrable Blighted Marshes, Skavenblight is a sunken, labyrinthine city, rumoured to be the birthplace of the unnatural race. Its deep, twisted tunnels and streets have been so extensively excavated and continually expanded that the true size of the city is unfathomable, spreading beneath the Blight Marshes in all directions like a creeping plague. The squalor of the deepest level of Skavenblight is filled with countless thousands of Skaven from the lesser warlord clans, their mercifully short lives filled with endless darkness and ever-present filth and disease, as well as the constant threat of cave-ins and enforced slavery from stronger clans.
— Warhammer: Skaven Army Book (6th edition)
Video Games
LONDON STOLEN BY BATS!
Nation's beloved capital dragged into godless abyss. Citizens energetically express concern.
"City now one mile beneath surface," geographers say.
Nation's beloved capital dragged into godless abyss. Citizens energetically express concern.
"City now one mile beneath surface," geographers say.
Underground bases are easy to defend. The downside is that people go crazy spending too long underground. And giant insects.
— RimWorld
