Saturday, March 13, 2010

Step Wells


I have long imagined an ancient empire that sent its dead to the afterworld in tombs that resembled inverted pyramids. These sunken tombs as climates shift might turn into small lakes and sink holes. I found this interesting blog recently that describes the Indian step well. It isn't a tomb, in fact it is an entirely different beast, but does look very near what I had imagined my sunken architecture to look like.

4 comments:

  1. So I've been running this mega city ruins dungeon campaign setting and just yesterday I was trying to figure out the design of the tiered city and this is exactly what I came up with, except imagine the exterior mirroring the interior but extending further out, and multiple wells adjacent to one another forming the basis of another well that stacks upon it. Sort of like legos I guess, you keep stacking these pyramid wells on each other over the intersections of adjacent pyramid wells until you have a city that reaches a mile high. To break up the monotony, different pyramid/well designs are used based on the land, and subterranean forge/transportation cities are used below to connect the cities.

    I am crap at drawing and the link you posted is awesome, thanks for the post!

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  2. Awesome, I imagine that would be hard to map but interesting to explore.

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  3. Sweet - this is inspiring. I've been playing with underwater dungeon maps a lot lately and will have to try my hand at one of these.

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  4. Cool. These seem to be a natural kind of entrance to an underwater dungeon. And I could even see different parts of the dungeon being under water during different parts of the season.

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