by Wanderer Werewolf ©2010 Wanderer Werewolf

   For those who may misunderstand the title, allow me to assure my readers that I’m not quitting the writing game. My brief and unplanned hiatus was the result of an e-mail server changeover on my end frustrating communications between Cubist and myself at a crucial time—not to mention interruptions. I just had to find all three pieces of my good microphone after my five-year-old autistic nephew quietly took them apart and scattered them through the hall…

---

   As promised previously, the topic of the day is sewers. Specifically, the infamous trope of the Absurdly Spacious Sewer. These are no ordinary passages for effluent; these are those well-known fictional locations where three men can walk abreast, ninja mutants can hold pitched martial arts battles, and whole societies can live off a city’s cast-off detritus.
   Now, a certain amount of this is caused by the average author and a bit of confusion.
   Confusion: The main and originating cause of this is the fact that most people don’t closely study sewer systems. In the United States of America, for example, storm drains are not only part of the sewers, but occasionally called ‘storm sewers’. Which is fine… except that storm drains run to the large side (some truly large enough to stand up in), while sanitary sewers (where everything that goes down the toilet winds up) do not. (Sanitary sewer lines are rarely big enough for a child to get through… and extremely unhealthy to visit besides.)
   It only gets worse when catacombs intrude. A catacomb, naturally enough, is going to be very big; they’re built by people for people to get into, after all. But where sewer systems have hit catacomb systems (as in Paris, France), there’s an unfortunate tendency to call the resulting combination ‘sewers’.
   The author’s part: Well, bluntly, the average author really needs a place for things to happen out of the public eye. Whether it’s fantasy, urban horror, steampunk, or even far-flung science fiction gaming, there are some things (and creatures) that need to be kept out of the view of John and Klaatu Q. Public. Buildings and special strongholds are fine for the wealthier characters, but the poorer characters (including the local underworld, possibly in both senses) need a place, too. Throw in the above confusion, and the sheer number of characters traipsing through ‘sewers’ could overflow Grand Central Station. (Yes, I said ‘overflow’ in an article on sewers. Sorry about that.)
   First, let’s address reality: Are there really some very big sewer systems where action could take place?
   Well, yes. To begin with, the earliest sewer systems (dating all the way back to Rome) were really storm drains; the average toilet, privy or ‘easement room’ dumped (I’m sorry, some of these puns really are unavoidable) the contents into cesspits. Once they’d dried and aged, they were collected for use as fertilizer. (The occupation in question, that of carting away the contents of the cesspits, was politely called ‘oozeman’ in English. The less polite terms need no explanation from me.) And since a storm drain has to be of large enough diameter to carry the largest recorded rainfall in the area, some of those pipes were pretty big. The Cloaca Maxima (big drain) of Rome, for instance, is certainly big enough to walk through… as long as it hasn’t rained recently.
   The problem is, cesspits take time to build… and, like Rome’s defensive walls, were always a mile behind the population growth. Officially, of course, it was forbidden to dump your personal ‘outflow’ into the Cloaca Maxima… but public ‘easement rooms’ and the baths were another story. Then, too, cesspits need a certain amount of ‘down time’ in which to dry and age; without that, as Paris, France found out when their local subsoil started to putrefy, things quickly turn to rot. (This was well before the Paris Sewers could be built, however; they turned to cesspools (lined, covered cisterns) instead. Of course, those had to be emptied more often…)
   And, of course, nearly everyone knows someone who would throw their personal chamberpot contents down the storm drain because “everybody does it”. (Some medieval-to-Renaissance people were inconsiderate enough to toss it out second-story windows, to the point of the French inventing the understated exclamation, “Garde l’eau!” (“Watch out for the water!”) as a chamberpot-related “Look out below!”) Properly against the law, of course… nobody wants to walk in someone else’s feces… but it could be very hard to prosecute in the days before DNA evidence. “Why, no, officer, I would never throw my feces in the road…”
   The modern answer, the separated sewer system, was developed in Memphis, Tennessee in the United States of America, back in the 1890s. It gives ‘biological waste’ its own separate channel to the treatment plant, drawing on both an original design by Col. George E. Waring, Jr and design improvements by the English engineer, Sir Robert Rawlinson. (Waring’s original design had one gaping flaw; the ‘lamp-hole’ accesses were often too small for use. Rawlinson added manholes.)
   But I digress. The point is, yes, as long as you’re in storm drains, there are indeed ‘sewers’ big enough to have adventures in. In some cities, such as New York, there are even whole sub-communities living in them between rainstorms (although visiting them is… inadvisable; as with any homeless population, there may be some good people, but there are likely to be a few dangerous nuts here and there). And if there are catacombs (as in Seattle, Washington, USA, or Paris, France), things can really get interesting.
   The next question, of course, is: How do I get my characters/the PCs down there? After all, we now have a reasonable (if shaky) justification for setting adventures down there; how do we get the adventure in?
   To begin with, while the classic manhole as we know it is recent, the idea is not. Ever since Rome paved over a bunch of streams to make the Cloaca Maxima, you’ve had to have someone get in there and unclog it. (Not to mention, where the wicked will take advantage, authorities shall seek to punish. While most cities have locked or welded grates over their exit pipe openings, Vienna, Hungary, actually has its own sewer police (a division of their Wiener EinsatzGruppe Alarmabteilung (WEGA) forces) to search the storm drains for criminal activity. And yes, they did appear in Orson Welles’ movie, The Third Man.) No matter where or when you are, any sewer system is going to need a maintenance access.
   Of course, there are problems. Manhole covers started out made of stone (Ancient Rome used cheap sandstone squares), and have only gotten heavier. (Modern manhole covers are cast iron, many with a cement filling. Weights of over 100 pounds (45 kg) are average.) Lifting them off with a pick from above is hard enough; pulling the age-old fictional trick of lifting it one-handed from below, over your head… well, it just isn’t too likely with that little leverage.) So it’s a lot easier to get in than to get out.
   Of course, there are always the exit pipes; they’re big enough, and you don’t have to worry about lifting 100+ pounds of lid. Depending on the setting, you might even get royal/governmental permission to go in that way. (And if not, well, lockpicks are lockpicks and guards are guards.) The trade-off, naturally, is convenience; starting from the nearest large body of water, you can wind up walking miles through those pipes before you get to your destination. Hope you brought a map…
   (Materials note: While modern systems are made with cement pipes, the original ones were made with laid stonework. The Cloaca Maxima is downright beautiful, with mile upon mile of well-laid stones and archways. Not bad for a storm drain.)
   And that’s before you consider that the local government knows exactly where each and every opening is…
   Of course, there are always alternates to these reality-based answers. Depending on setting, you can get characters in through the local catacombs, a teleporter of one sort or another, or even a trapdoor. Then they just have to figure a way out…
   Finally, assuming you decide to set action in a storm drain, there are important setting notes to consider:

• Most importantly, when does it rain and over how large an area? A medieval city street could be 50-60 feet wide (High Street in England being an example); if only an inch of rain falls over that area over a mile length, that’s roughly 535 gallons of water for just one street. (Courtesy of the rainfall calculators at VirtualSecrets.com and a bit of extra math.) For a sizable medieval or modern city, that adds up in a big hurry; effectively, your spacious hallway turns into a river. And since even the earliest sewer designers figured out smooth pipes were best, you can forget about handholds… unless something clogs in the pipe. (Then you just have to worry about getting smashed against the clog. Oh, and drowning.)
     Gives a whole new meaning to, “There must be a reason everybody left in a hurry”, doesn’t it? The second time all the drain-dwellers make for the walls, the characters will follow… assuming they survive the first time.
• The next thing to consider is the size of the drains. Sewer systems tended to be built and improved after major flooding, so they were often overdesigned. Rome’s Cloaca Maxima is almost 14 feet (4.27m) in diameter. Typically, a storm drain will go from 5 ft. (1.5m) on the branches, to roughly the Cloaca’s size on the main waterway. For junctions (the best place to put access), follow the simple rule of thumb: A junction should contain a volume at least as great as the sum of the pipes flowing into it. (Usually, as in Vienna, it expands upward. One shot in the British Film Institute’s archives shows the cast of The Third Man in a junction area, with the WEGA officers still on the walkway above.)
     (For RPG mappers, this can be all kinds of complicated. The one-square-wide corridors debouch into three-square-wide rooms feeding three-square-wide corridors. When in doubt, remember: The farther downhill, the more water, the bigger the pipe.)
• The senses. Between careless people ‘forgetting’ that a storm sewer and a sanitary sewer are two separate things, and the habits of city-dwelling animals (especially a medieval setting’s horses)… well, it won’t be as bad as a sanitary sewer, but it won’t be nice. (Sanitary sewers are also called ‘foul’ sewers, and with good reason.) Detergents, dead animals (and the occasional dead person… another item dating back to Rome), people pouring things down the storm drain they really shouldn’t (medieval tanneries are arguably the worst, excepting occasional goofs like that of Cornell University’s Veterinary College in February of 2010)… the sense of smell reels (and reeks) at the sheer mess.
     Touch should also come into play. Dark and periodically dampened tunnels are going to be slick to the touch… or worse. Remember, organic material decomposing in water bloats and softens (and I hope nobody’s eating while reading this part), and the resulting sensation can be… well, ‘disgusting’ is a pretty pale word for it, but it’ll have to do.
     Sight, of course, is a major sense for anyone traveling through tunnels, but you won’t find much light in storm drains unless you bring your own. The slits that allow water in may be large enough for most domestic animals to crawl into, but they don’t do much for illumination even under sunny conditions outside. You’ll need to allow for light sources… oh, and I should mention that decomposing organic material produces a little lighter-than-air gas called methane, which is rather flammable. (The people of Atlanta, GA found this out in March of 2010, when methane collected in a sewer vault detonated, damaging three manhole covers and parts of southbound Lawrenceville Highway.)
     Finally, sound must be considered. (If you think I’m bringing taste into this discussion, you must be joking.) In any set of tunnels with high sound reflectivity (whether concrete or stone), echoes abound, making it hard to tell where a given sound originated. Of course, it helps when listening for the sound of incoming water… but not when trying to follow your quarry’s footsteps.
• As a last setting note, look to materials. Real-world storm drains are made of stone (like the Cloaca Maxima) and concrete (as in most of urban America). They’re strong and durable. In fantasy, of course, anything is possible… you can have an elven city’s storm drains be made of ceramic or wood, a dwarf city’s drains of lead (shades of Rome) or quartz. You can have a science-fiction city’s drains be made of nano-engineered supermetal, or a series of linked teleport tubes. The sky’s the limit with fantasy: As long as the material is smooth and strong and at least reasonably easy to shape, it’s justified. (Heck, in colonial America, some sanitary sewer ‘pipes’ were made of logs. In some areas, this continued into the Nineteenth Century, just because wood was cheap and easy to replace.)

   (Of course, you can also skip having sewers altogether… but where’s the fun in that? No, I kid. Just remember that every society has to do something with waste and runoff, and plan accordingly.)
   Above all, though, remember that a storm drain should never be ‘just another room’. Even under the dry streets of Las Vegas, the storm drains are damp, dark and dirty. That’s the true absurdity of the Absurdly Spacious Sewer trope: Treating a storm drain as though it were a dry and well-lit room. Just remember what normally flows through that ‘room’, and you’ll be fine.
   Now, how can storm drains be used in your adventures? Consider:

• Beginning adventurers often get scut-work. Why not give your brash young things a taste of honest labor? After all, someone has to go down there and find out what’s clogging the storm drains! And given that such clogs can be anything from a tree branch to a dead body… Some of the items found in the catch basins for the real Los Angeles, California storm drains include:
  
  
  • A motorcycle
  • Stuffed animals
  • Baby carriages
  • Bicycles and Tricycles
  • Auto parts
  • Mattresses
  • Sports equipment (Basketballs, footballs, and even a Ping-Pong table)
     … and even purses and wallets. If you can’t start an adventure from some of those, you’re probably not that interested in storm drains. (I still wonder about that ping-pong table…)
     Besides, as you can well imagine, the pay is pretty good. (It kind of has to be.)
• Drain-dwellers, aside from being stock characters in many urban fantasies (even the animated Double Dragon TV series) can be excellent sources of information, as well as helping to retrieve lost items… for consideration, of course. For that matter, this can even be the ‘Low’ Lifestyle choice in games such as Shadowrun. After all, people live like this in Las Vegas…
• For that matter, in the four-color reality of many RPGs and books, the strange substances involved can produce truly unusual drain-dwellers. No, not just things like C.H.U.D. (though that's definitely a possibility), but also mutants of various sorts. And that’s before you even get into the kinds of people (and, er, ‘things’) that would use a storm drain as a hideout.
• Abandoned storm drains, while much cleaner than current ones (though seldom much drier) can be excellent alternate locations. Hey, if it’s good enough for the turtles, why not? These out-of-the-way corners of a bygone day (or even a bygone civilization) can hide anything from mystic portals to hidden aliens, from secret headquarters to Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. And, of course, they make great locations for deathtraps, since you can get them cheap.
• And, of course, the storm drains can even be a passage to another world, as in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Gareth-Michael Skarka’s Underworld RPG. (Or even the beginning of the movie Warriors of Virtue.) From light into darkness into light… the mythic parallels should be obvious.

   All in all, storm drains make a useful—if somewhat intermittent, depending on weather—addition to your terrain catalog. Just watch out for summer showers…
   From a species-neutral topic, next time we’ll be looking at a similar item with more individuation: Catacombs. What they are, how big they can be, and some notable historical instances (and discoveries) to shed light into these underground demesnes (along with the sorts of variations you could reasonably expect from certain species… and not just rats, either). Until next time, friends!

   Sources:
   The History of Sanitary Sewers: Specifically, their multi-page timeline, Tracking Down The Roots Of our Sanitary Sewers, a good recounting of some of the sewer’s finest moments in history. Put together by Jon Schladweiler, the historian of the Arizona Water Association. One of the few I know to get the story of Thomas Crapper right in every detail. As good as you’d expect from the sewer advisor to the Modern Marvels series. (Includes full bibliography, as well.)
   American Architect and Architecture, Volume I: A complete (if long and dry) recounting of the history of Memphis’ sewer system can be found in these pages.