Editing Underground Polis (section)

=== The Sewers ===

Ancient, extensive and exceedingly complex, the sewer system of Artheia is one of the unsung wonders of the world.

It is constantly under repair and modification, and has been for a thousand years. There are still open sewers in some parts of the City, but mostly the system comprises a baroque network of aqueducts, sewage drains, storm drains, ventilation shafts, access tunnels, storage rooms, forgotten cellars, ancient streets and buildings, abandoned catacombs, natural caverns and gods alone know what else dug out or buried under the streets. The very bedrock is essentially porous on a gigantic scale.

Every now and then someone makes an effort to map the whole mess out, but no one has ever devised a sufficiently accurate means of navigating underground, nor been able to keep up with the constant changes brought on by all the repairs, expansions and alterations. For that matter, no one has any idea of the full extent of the system. It underlies the entire City and spreads some distance outside the walls, too, but exactly how far is unclear. According to some explorers it seems to reach further afield the deeper you go, and it goes deeper than anybody you've ever heard of can tell.

===== Coworkers =====

Many of the people you run into underground are also working for the City. Teams of engineers and craftsmen are always busy repairing or expanding or improving something, somewhere. An army of muckrakers armed with their ten-foot poking poles (the "rakes") make daily rounds all through the active drains, keeping a watch for blockages and making sure the black and clear waters keep flowing as they should. Many other Guard units are also patrolling down here, and aside from quibbling over patrol routes and jurisdictions (no, we gotta be beyond the Vesulla Canal here, this is ''your'' headache, mate) might even come to your aid when called.

===== Crocodiles =====

The sewers are also home to a small but tenacious population of salt water crocodiles. Some swim in from the sea or the Erion, some are abandoned pets, some have lived down here for generations. All are hungry, vicious ''bastards''.

===== Deep Town =====

A region of persistently clogged storm drains roughly between the Market and Seaport, taken over and turned into a transitory village by the homeless. Every few months the Sewer Guard is ordered to evict them but, of course, they simply scatter for a moment and resettle right around the corner as soon as you're gone. This has lead to a strictly unspoken mutual understanding that if they don't put up too much of a fight, you won't be too rough about it, and everyone can just get on with their lives with a minimum of hassle. Not a good place to visit, let alone live, but criminals have sometimes found it useful for laying low.

===== Explorers =====

There are several reasons for people to explore the system. Rich kids sometimes go down there for kicks, to seek out weird places (or beat up vagrants); the poor scavenge for profitable salvage; occasionally an official exploration party is sent to try and map out at least a part of the system; wanted criminals hide in the uncharted nooks and crannies, and bounty hunters pursue them; and sometimes adventurers foreign and domestic descend to the depths on some more or less ill-conceived quest for treasure or thrills. Most of the time you simply question the people you come across, just in case, and let them go on looking for whatever trouble they're after, but now and then you need to keep some affluent brat from getting himself killed or stop a misguided adventurer from stirring up trouble that might come back to bite ''you''.

===== Gas =====

Snicker all you want. Various obnoxious and dangerous gases often get trapped in chambers and tunnels and gather into large pockets of vaporous ''evil''. Sometimes they explode on contact with an open flame, like the one in your lantern. Sometimes they smell really bad. Sometimes they snuff out your lamp and leave you groping in the dark while you slowly choke to death. Any guard who survives his first week in the job will learn the warning signs - strange odors, visible haze, sputtering or oddly colored flames, a giddy, breathless feeling...

===== Old Nellie =====

A monstrous creature that lurks in the deeper sewers. She hates and shuns light, so nobody's ever seen her, but she's always ready to fall upon any guardsman caught alone without a light and drag them screaming into the dark. Or so your senior handmates tell you.

===== Rats =====

Half the guard will swear rats grow bigger, bolder and more cunning the deeper you go; the other half are quick to laugh off such nonsense and change the subject. Some grizzled old veterans speak in hushed tones of an empire of rats, somewhere deep down, ruled by a giant white King Rat with a scepter of human bone, and a strange temple where the vermin swarm by the thousands to worship before a foul and beastly idol.

===== The Slime =====

A sickly yellow slime mold that sometimes starts to spread out from the neglected tunnels beyond the City's west wall, like a sudden fungal tide, known to cover at worst maybe a quarter mile per day. Brief exposure only causes a mild burning sensation, but people caught unaware by it (typically people sleeping in or under the streets) have sometimes been found ''digested'' to the bone; on some particularly disastrous occasions the slime has grown under and up into houses and entire neighborhoods before being noticed, with tragic consequences. Fortunately, burning and shoveling it back have always been sufficient to check its advance, and it usually only happens once a decade or three.

There's probably some significance to the way it spreads out from the direction of the old graveyard, just outside the walls, but everybody has a different theory on what this means (aside from the Pits usually getting the worst of it). Nobody's volunteered to go and explore - aside from that one brave squad, as the elder guardsmen are happy to tell, that never returned. You never met them, it was before your time.

===== Spies and Smugglers =====

The various tunnels opening to the river or seashore are often used by people trying to slip into or out of the City unnoticed and, in times of war, enemies have been known to try and get past the walls this way. Preventing these transgressions is one of the main tasks of the Sewer Guard. There's actually a small scale, low key war on between the Guard and the Horseless Soljaks, a foreign gang of fences and smugglers from the eastern steppes.