The Task
"okay so the generic premise of Katabasis is that there is one big city (all roads lead to Rome, equivalent) called The City, and underneath the city there is The Dungeon, which goes on forever and has lots of treasure but also monsters and you gotta go down there and get the treasure
The Response
In the time long ago, almost lost to memory now, the sky fell. A star broke free from the heavenly dome and came to earth in a moment of fire and violence. The ground shook, forests were flattened. For three days strange screams and the smell of burning flesh drifted on the wind. Within five days, plants began to die as the land blackened. Within a week, the first adventures grew brave enough to investigate.
In the center of the ashy wastes a crater was found, lined with chunks of strange metals, and a shaft delving into a system of caves, where none had been known before. The adventurers returned to civilization with reports of strange creatures, lurking in the tunnels, as well as pieces of the new metal - now named void iron and platinum by metallurgists - and bars of pressed gold struck with strange markings. This was enough to suppress fears and attract interests.
Centuries passed and, despite the poisoned landscape and tainted water sources, a town formed, overtime growing into the City, center of an economic empire built around the Dungeon. Merchants grew rich and fat selling last minute items to adventurers heading into the Dungeon. Wizards, Potionists, Willsmiths (heh heh), Rope makers. All turned a profit.
Save the cartographers.
The nature of the Dungeon is such that even the most detailed of maps become unusable within seventy six and a half hours. Caverns shift, slopes form, rivers appear. There's even rumors of masonry found deep within, and further levels to be found beyond a stone door. Despite centuries of adventuring and plundering, treasure still seems to appear. Void iron, gold, items of master craftsmanship. Their source remains unknown, as does the source of the monsters.
For safety purposes the City Council - composed of the seven richest merchants in the city; membership determined by strictly kept books - emptied the homeless population from the upper levels of the Dungeon, and built the Gate, an adamantine portcullis built to keep dangers of the Dungeon out, and to charge hopeful adventurers an entrance fee. Though, as urban homesteaders are as difficult to track as cats, it is likely some found their way deeper inside and have devolved into strange halfmen creatures "surviving" on fresh adventurer meat.
Many questions (obviously) surround the Dungeon. Where did it come from? How was it built? Just what in the nine hells is going on? For answers, some have attempted Divination upon the Dungeon, only to have their senses and wits wrenched from them; many screaming about being watched as they gouged out their own eyes, or of being listened to as they cleaved their tongues from their mouth.
Only one is known to have survived, by loosest terms, divination attempts against the Dungeon: Arcanist Cumberpatch, 12th Degree, A.A, Torch Lighter. It is said that as the Divination Madness overtook him, he lunged for the throat of an elven servant, and drank the more thing dry. He had shown no vampiric tendencies before, nor since. When asked about his experience the poor man will only drift off, his gaze becoming distant, and whisper "The Dungeon has never truly be entered. Find the door. All answers await within."
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