Origins of the Concept of the Mega-Dungeon 001

What are the origins of the concept of the mega-dungeon? Here are a few sources and some REH quotes. What others can you think of and what kind of a vibe do they bring to mind?

Edgar Rice Burroughs had some huge dungeons in the Barsoom books beneath the ancient Barsoomian cities.

Back in 2010, I had been  reading "The Horror Stories of Robert E Howard" when I got to the story "The Dwellers Under the Tomb" which was first published posthumously in "Lost Fantasies" in 1976. Since it was not published until after D&D was written, it was not a source, but it is, I think, a literary use of a mega-dungeon written during the 1930's and had it been published then and read by Gygax or Arneson it clearly would have been an inspiration.

    "I wonder how old Jacob Kiles discovered these subterranean ways. He did not construct them. They were carved out of dim caverns and sold rock by the hands of forgotten men - how long ago I dare not venture a conjecture."

    ... ...

    "I have found that they are far more extensive than I have suspected. The hills must be honeycombed with them, and they sink into the earth to an incredible depth, tier below tier, like stories of a building, each tier connected to the one below by a single stairway."

    ... ...

    "I have wondered much as to the identity of the race which must once have inhabited these labyrinths. ... ... One gets a fantastic impression of an emprisoned race burrowing deeper and deeper into the black earth, century by century, and losing more and more of their human attributes as they sank to each new level."

    "The fifteenth tier is without rhyme or reason, the tunnels running aimlessly, without apparent plan - so striking a contrast to the top-most tier, which is a triumph of primitive architecture, that it is difficult to believe them to have been constructed by the same race. Many centuries must have elapsed between the building of the two tiers, and the builders must have become greatly degraded. But the fifteenth tier is not the end of these mysterious burrows."

    ... ...

    "For some reason, the realization that the fifteenth tier is not the ultimate boundary of the labyrinths was a shock. The sight of the unstepped shaft gave me a strangely creepy feeling, and led me to fantastic conjectures regarding the ultimate fate of the race which once lived in these hills."

kesher wrote:

Excellent find!

I will say, though, that it reads to me a bit like REH being influenced by HPL, as it were. "At the Mountains of Madness", frex, though I can't remember the publishing date, has a classic example of a mega-dungeon, as does "The Shadow out of Time".

The fifteenth tier is without rhyme or reason, the tunnels running aimlessly, without apparent plan - so striking a contrast to the top-most tier, which is a triumph of primitive architecture, that it is difficult to believe them to have been constructed by the same race. Many centuries must have elapsed between the building of the two tiers, and the builders must have become greatly degraded. But the fifteenth tier is not the end of these mysterious burrows.

That is pure "dungeon as mythic underworld", though... :)

You can find decent, inexpensive collections of H.P. Lovecraft's major stories in any bookstore, but it's pretty much all in the public domain at this point!

At the Mountains of Madness

The Shadow out of Time

And, if you've never really read Lovecraft before, then you should maybe start with The Call of Cthulhu, which is, arguably, the center of the Cthulhu Mythos, and has, for my money, one of the best opening lines of all time. :)

arcadayn wrote:

There are several stories in which Howard makes reference to mega-dungoen type complexes inhabited by degenerate races. Worms in the Earth immediately comes to mind.

Thorulfr wrote:

Another source for the Megadungeon motif would be Quarmall, from the Fafhard and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Lieber.

REH was an enthusiastic member of the "Lovecraft Circle", and there are a number of stories that Lovecraft did that use this whole 'underworld' motif: Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, The Mound, The Rats in the Walls; even The Outsider to some extent.
The entity in Lovecraft's revision The Mound, Tsathoggua, was snagged from Clark Ashton Smith, but I haven't read enough of his stories to know how much use of the 'underworld' he makes.

I don't know where Lovecraft might have gotten his inspiration...Poe and the Cask of Amontillado, perhaps?

Falconer wrote:

Another great tale by Lovecraft, “The Nameless City,” really sticks in my imagination as a great megadungeon.

rabindranath72 wrote:

Don't forget Red Nails, and The Slithering Shadow, nice examples of labyrinthine city complexes.

geoffrey wrote:

Lovecraft's three greatest stories are:

At the Mountains of Madness
"The Shadow out of Time"
"The Mound" (this one already mentioned by Thorulfr)

All three feature vast (miles upon miles upon miles), alien, subterranean cities.

Ghul wrote:

Red Nails, I must concur, really strikes a mega-dungeon chord for me, personally.

These are a few thoughts of mine and those of my friends online a few years back. What say you? What do you think? What idea sources can you think of? Dante's Inferno, would you consider that a mega-dungeon?