If you read Part I, you know that the undercity of Moscow is a modern day Moria from Lord of the Rings complete with the bones of the forgotten. It is a sprawling complex of natural and decidedly unnatural tunnels, rivers, caverns, and rail systems that lives just under the street and extends a little more than half a mile into the earth. It is the home of abandoned labs, uranium dumps, hidden libraries from antiquity, mass graves, and lost torture chambers. It is fodder for every fever dream known; a standard against which all such subterranean nightmares can be judged. So, how can an aspiring writer use this place?

Ironically, the undercity has become something of a cliche. The problem isn’t using it, it is using it effectively. A story or adventure featuring this massive labyrinth is overdone and comes off as somewhat silly. It doesn’t seem real or possible – even if it is real and possible. This is a case of the flavor overpowering the main course. It is unpalatable in its immensity but would add wonderful spice if  some of the ideas were distilled into their own pure form. These “accents” flavor the main dish rather than overpower it.

The Winter People

The first idea to find purchase is the winter migration of the homeless into the warmer shelter of the underground. One could imagine a valuable northern mining town where the winter is too hostile to survive. The miners and their families spend the coldest months of the winter deep within the mines, out of winters frigid embrace. They make jaunts to the surface as needed but November through February is spent in the “winter home.” The mines have all the amenities one would expect including places of worship, clean water, and private living quarters.

What makes this an exciting venue has more to do with the rituals and the unknowns. What kind of festivals would this culture have? Surly there would be an emerging festival where all the citizens worked as a community to clean and repair the surface town. This would be a lively time full of spring colors and witty songs. It’s a time for proposals and daring deeds. The festival of winter would not be such a gay affair. In preparation for several months of total darkness the town would have to send miners to shore up support, farmers would lay in food supplies, and the village council might make decisions about who could not survive the winter. It is a time of fear for hobbled elders who know that if not this year, maybe the next, they will be left above ground to fend for themselves. Food is to precious to waste on someone who is going to die anyway.

Such a village would take particular care about birthing rituals. Children born below might be viewed as troublemakers or ill-fated. While dying below ground might consign your fate to the underworld or maybe to a dark underground river. Burial rites would also change. Below ground, the remains of the dead might be dumped into a vast crevice where the bodies appease whatever dark things lurk below.

The writer has tremendous liberty to craft an alien culture. Retreating into caves for a substantial period of each year alludes to hidden secrets, usually the dark and creepy variety.  It hints at Persephone-like myths.

Suicide Springs

What attracts people to commit suicide in specific places? It is a phenomena known at both the Golden Gate Bridge and Niagara Falls but what compulsion could attract hundreds to end their lives in the dark pond below Moscow? Russians have long lionized the Roman statesman, Cato. Perhaps, like Cato, when they found that to live was to accept the mercy of those whom they opposed with every ounce of will, they saw suicide as a preferable option. The Russian Decemberist’s Revolution is one example that resulted in the suicides of several Russian officers rather than swear fealty to Nicolas II.  Yet, such suicides occurring in the hidden underground grotto doesn’t align with politically motivated acts of rebellion.

Russia certainly has its problems with cults ranging from the Skoptsy (the castrati) to the Vissarionites. Perhaps some sect of the Raskolniki (the old beliefs) skulks in the darkened corners of Moscow. Russia, even modern Russia, is ruled just as often from superstition as it is from legislation. Cries of witchcraft and hexs carry weight in a country stunted by decades of tight religious control. The Russians, to be blunt, haven’t had their doe-eyed faith driven from them by hucksters and charlatans. In a climate starved for spirituality, any faith will do – even ones that make little sense to citizens of more worldly nations. Perhaps there is some doomsday cult that believes the Suicide Springs are a gate to an alien land? But what if there is something more than the natural acting on the murky grotto?

Slavic legends speak of the Rusalka and the Vodianoi, lake dwelling spirits of malevolence. The Rusalka are envious of the living and desire the embrace of the unclean. They long to console jilted lovers in their watery embrace. Perhaps some ancient Slavic spirit still resides here having grown strong after feeding on the bones of her pond. Her song heard only by the diggerati who have recently been rejected or suffered the loss of a loved one. The suffering wakes the hungry Rusalka, who uses her soothing song to ease the suffering. One need only step into the pond to have their fears washed away… forever.

Gateway. Siren Spirit. Cult. The potential story use for the pond is limited only by the dark whimsy of the writer.

The Hidden Library

In 1472, a Princess and the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor married the Grand Prince of All Russia. Her dowry was an impressive collection of invaluable books and scrolls from Byzantium. Constantinople had fallen in 1453 under the brilliant, if doomed, leadership of Constantine XI. The empire was in exile as were the royalty who once walked it courts. The treasures of the greatest empire to grace the world were literally hers to give.

Sophia employed the Italian architect, Aristotle Fiorovanti, to build a library deep under the Kremlin where it would be safe from fire and sacking. It has remained safe since. Rumors hold the Ivan the Terrible found the library but revealed its location to no one. Maybe the contents of the Library were the midnight fuel for his madness that led to his increasingly erratic behavior? Certainly many older works carry with them reputations for evil such as the Gigas Codex or the Treaty on Evil Deeds but what of books so dark and twisted that they were shut away forever? Perhaps, Sophia the devout Catholic, built a tomb rather than a library in the hopes of purging the corruption of such vile works from the eyes of curious and easily influenced men?

The eerie call of the Hidden Library has called men of such caliber as Napoleon, who searched in vain. But what if the Library wants to be found? What if people who should not, go looking it those dark tunnels and access-ways hoping to steal the treasures of a Byzantine Princess.

The Underworld

The Preispodnyaya – the Netherworld. A dark place filled with the cloying scent of decay. It is the terrible unknown in a world without mystery. The depths hold secrets.

The end of the previous century swung on the two poles of the Cold War; Moscow and D.C.. But below Moscow, below the sunlit world of politics and entertainment, a thriving Underworld with imagery strait from a H.R. Geiger illustration was growing its own fame as one of the great mysteries of the modern world. The undercity of Moscow is filled with stories of ghosts, Satanists, discarded uranium, and the victims of one of the worlds most violent organized crime cartels. Ghost hunting sites routinely rank it as one of the worlds most haunted locations.

The History

Moscow was built on sandy soil that is easily excavated. The scattered huts of the village that would one day become Moscow not only grew out; they grew down. The czars built bunkers and treasure vaults. Ivan the Terrible excavated his torture chamber several hundred feet below and then killed those who labored to build it. According to legend he also hid one of the greatest libraries deep below what is the modern day Kremlin. Catherine the Great channeled the Neglina River into a network of subterranean  canals. The Moscow underground was already a crowded place even before the Soviet age and the cold war.

In the modern era, the Soviets installed all those things that a modern city might need including a subway and a secure telecom systems but the cold war ensured that there were far more secret projects completed under the cover of “city renovation.” D.C. has its bunkers, command centers, and supply depots buried deep into the snug embrace of mother earth; Moscow would not be found wanting in Cold War era projects, but the truth is surround by lies, ghost stories, and disinformation. The Preispodnyaya – The Netherworld – is an unmapped mystery and the domain of men like “The Diggers” who explore the bowels of the city like some modern day D&D adventure into Undermountain.  The Diggers and other sources estimate that central Moscow might have as many as 15 levels, plunging 700 meters below the streets and apartments where the rest of the world walks in ignorance.

Digging for Treasures Fair and Foul

Sorting truth from fiction about what actually rests in the sandy soil beneath the Russian capitol is the work of several lifetimes. Stories of hermetically sealed bunkers covered in concrete mix with government attempts to discourage civilians from wandering the dangerous tunnels and passageways. Mass graves have been reported alongside Organitzia killing grounds where the losers of criminal gang wars find their final peace – or not. Discarded uranium piles. CIA listening posts. Secret subways that speed the leaders of Russia from the city in the event of nuclear incidents, to an equally mind-blowing underground city that can bed anywhere between 4 and 30 thousand people for decades. The Netherworld has everything except Elvis sightings.

Metro II: In 1991, the US released details on an official subway system built to ferry the top men in the Russian government away from Moscow in an emergency or a war. The Russians and the Moscow Metro system have refused to comment on the rumor of up to 200 additional kilometers of hidden rail. This deep rail is surrounded by folk lore but many estimates place it at over 200 meters or 650 feet deep. The terminal point of the rail is the underground city-shelter of Ramenki, which is said to house 30,000 people with food and necessities for more than three decades.

Uranium: In 2006, the Diggers stumbled upon radioactive waste under a university. The estimate was more than 500 pounds of the toxic debris, which, if web sources are to be believed might explain a history of illness, hair loss, and infertility in the area. There isn’t a known source for the waste nor is one likely to ever emerge.

The Pond: Some places hold power, places like Amityville or asylums where inmates were subjected to inhuman treatment… places like  an underground pond and the site of mass suicides since the eighteenth century. There is said to be a palpable web of despair surrounding the pond and those of strong religious inclinations quickly grow uncomfortable.

The Residents: Like many northern cities Moscow has frigid winters but it also has thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of homeless. The hostile weather forces migrations to the one place in Moscow safe from the ice and snow – the underground. The Diggers and other groups report that the numbers of “tramps” living in the subterranean city may exceed ten thousand. Tours have found the remains of excrement, ubiquitous vodka bottles, spent fires, and even bodies in the hidden alcoves where the temperatures never reach -30 degrees. Complaints of winos, drug addicts, terrorists, and Satanists are frequent but Russia has never been forgiving of those who earn her ire. Dissidents, radicals, and literati have also sought the safety of the undercity when they faced death from above.

Hidden labs: One of the more unusual claims, if there is such a thing, is the discovery of a hidden laboratory complete with chemical-protection suits and old-fashioned respiration masks. The lab was in disarray and appeared to have been abandoned. In nearby rooms the floors were covered with crystals.

The Library of Ivan the Terrible: If it is ever found the greatest discovery would be the lost medieval library of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. In 1472, Ivan a Byzantine princess shortly before the empire fell. The dowry included invaluable books and scrolls from Byzantium. Fearing fire and theft, the Byzantine princess employed a famed architect, Aristotle Fiorovanti, to build a library under the Kremlin. Ivan the Terrible, the grandson of the princess, is rumored to have discovered the library but if he did the secret died with him. The search for the legendary library has interested the likes of Napoleon.

Recent Events

The Moscow Undercity has recently come to light in a series of catastrophes. Massive sink holes have shut down primary roads and swallow trucks. Terrorists have detonated explosives. Subway cars have raced into collapsed tunnels. And, during the Nord Ost Siege in 2002 (the theater hostages) the Underworld was used to prevent the escape of the bombers and to launch part of the police assault which left all of the terrorists and many of the hostages dead. Diggers were involved in scouting the tunnels.

Next week… Ideas on how to use the Moscow Undercity in fantasy and fiction.