GREAT
UNDERGROUND HIGHWAY
The Great Underground Highway is an ancient system of subterranean
toll roads stretching
throughout both the Eastland and Westland
provinces. Constructed
during the reign of Duncanthrax in the mid to late seventh century, the
system has since fallen in ruin and much of it is in a state of
impassable disrepair.
The
highway system traverses caverns, crosses ravines (Great Underground Bridges), lines chasms,
and tunnels through the most stubborn rock stratas. The constructed
tunnels are vast, the ceiling unable to be seen in most locales, and
the width easily able to make way for a large army and frequently so
vast that one is unable to see the other wall. The road itself is made
of cobbled clay bricks that in many places, even today (where natural
disasters have not yet struck) retain their smoothness and look freshly
baked even though they are incredibly ancient. Entire structures of
supports are in
place to carry the weight of the earth overhead. Its walls are strong
enough to resist a grue's fist and claws.
In
the days when the highway was constructed, only the royalty of
ancient Quendor and the great wizards of the day used it, thus the
wizards and their apprentices put up an elaborate billboard system. The
walls are still are covered with symbols and writings in the ancient
Quendoran language, some of the plainer symbols looking like bottles,
weapons, or books. When FROTZ was cast upon a patch of script, the
letters begin to burn and glow with a dazzling flash of light, followed
by the next patch flaring to light, and the next and the next on both
sides of the highway. The endless corridors are revealed
in coruscations of white radiance and
blue and red. Some begin to blink on and off, while others begin to
twinkle
and sparkle in elaborate eye-catching patterns, and still others merely
gleam with steady luster. Those wizards in the advertising business did
not want their burning out unexpectedly, so they made the spell that
turned their on just as big and bright as the one next to it when it
was turned on that that just as soon as anyone using the road cast
FROTZ.
Originally
the magical complex was designed so that direction did not matter when
traversing the Great Underground Highway. It always took the traveller
exactly where they wanted to go. Now with the disrepair of the Highway,
much of this implementation is dormant or broken.
Rest stops and
toll gates are frequent along the Highway, as well as numerous "Great
Underground Secret Entrances" to the surface (#38967 near Port Foozle
lay at the bottom of an expansively deep well). In the ninth to tenth
centuries, the standard toll was one zorkmid, but tolls ran as
high as Zm3
depending on the point of departure. The numerous toll gates are
usually manned by
hired gnomes with their troll lackeys. Some
toll gates are complex, consisting of a main door, with a second door
that falls behind any traveler as they approach the main gate,
trapping them inside (and the noise wakes any lazy sleeping gnome).
Branches
of the GUH include: Number 2, near Egreth, goes from Bozbarland to the
Glass Maze;
Number 90 runs from the White Cliffs Beach to Port Foozle; Number 95
spans an immense distance from its northern terminus of Flatheadia to
Fublio Valley; and one
branch even extends all the way to the Gray Mountains. In the
Westlands, branches extended throughout Mauldwood, Greater Borphee, and
even as far south as Dolo Finis in the Jungles of Miznia.
HISTORY OF THE GREAT
UNDERGROUND HIGHWAY SYSTEM
History
tells us that with all Zork in his grasp and nothing left to conquer,
Pseudo-Duncanthrax (Drespo Molmocker) founded the Frobozz Magic
Construction Company to
undertake his massive underground project in Arch 19, 668 GUE, which
included the construction of an elaborate network of subterranean
roadways known as the Great Underground Highway. While the original
intention of the underground realm was simply to expand the empire,
there was one additional purpose behind the ambitious construction
project: Pseudo-Duncanthrax planned for them to link every major city
and castle in Quendor and the outlying provinces, and when they were
complete, scores and scores of its soldiers would pay each of them a
wonderful surprise visit. Then his rule would be truly complete.
Pseudo-Duncanthrax
required the
energy of the seven most powerful wizards of the Borphee Guild in
unison with every living being to complete his mammoth vision. In order
to maintain control of the Krepkit and the other six most powerful
wizards, the king continued to hold Berknip (their beloved child
wizard) hostage, although he relocated him to Antharia, thereby
manipulating the wizards to use their
powerful KATPIL spells to move earth wherever he wished.
The king
coaxed the remainder of the populace into laboring for the highways
with a cache of VAXUM scrolls. With both the wizards and
almost
every citizen of the empire employed for the project, work quickly
started on the new underground tunnels and Pseudo-Duncanthrax began
expanding downward in both the eastern and western lands. The natural
caverns in the eastern lands would be expanded tremendously, and new
caverns and passages would be dug in the western lands, chiefly in the
vicinity of Egreth Castle and Borphee. This outset of this entire
underground project would later become known as the Great Labor.
Once
the identity of Pseudo-Duncanthrax was discovered, and the rightful
king returned to the throne, a debate was held in the Borphee Royal
Palace on what was to be done with the tunnels. At the urging of the
newly appointed court wizard, Satchmoz the Incomparable, the decision
was made to complete them, as it was good to link all the great cities
of Quendor with one massive road system. The cost would be offset by
selling space on the walls to merchants who wished to advertise their
business. Thus for the next twenty years (668~688 GUE), cavern-building
continued at a breakneck pace, causing the true king to retain
the
title of Bellicose.
With the death of Dimwit Flathead in 789 and
the continual decay of the Flathead Dynasty thereafter, by 883
GUE, decades of non-maintenance of the Empire's infrastructure began to
take their toll with massive cave-ins and uncrossable fissures. Over
the next centuries, earthquakes and other natural disasters would
cripple many portions of the Great Underground Empire, though due to
their magical nature, many smaller segments still retain their full
functionality.
