Upheavology: The Great Delve · 2:11pm Dec 10th, 2016
The Great Delve
History
Originally, the Great Delve served as the home of Clan Corundum, then the largest of the earth pony clans at the time of the Outer Migration. They had built their mining outpost into the largest mountain in all of Equestria first, then slowly carved a settlement deeper in as their operations grew. By the time the windigos attacked, Clan Corundum's home was already a vast system of tunnels and caverns. Its unique position inside the mountain spared the settlement from the worst of the attacks, turning it into a haven for the beleagured ponies all over Equestria. With both unicorn and pegasi refugees pouring in, Clan Corundum further expanded their network to accomodate.
With the establishment of the Everlasting Kingdom, Clan Corundum split after a fight over succession, becoming Smart Cookie's Clan Sapphire and Rock Maven's Clan Ruby. While Clan Ruby intended to remain in their ancestral home despite the move to the Blasphemous Rift, they were defeated and forced into slavery. The ancestral home became largely abandoned as a result.
When the rebellions against the Everlasting Kingdom took place, Rock Maven led the united earth pony clans back to the ancestral home. Their newly-discovered ley channeling shaped the place into a heavily fortified mountain city, renamed "the Refuge Burrows", to serve as a home for all earth ponies.
At Lexarius's urging and the disapproval of some earth ponies, Rock Maven opened the city up to unicorns and pegasi, renaming the city "the Great Delve'. He oversaw the shaping of the Gemstone Quarter, the Under-Sun, and Stonetooth Aeries to accomodate the city's growing population, focusing on improving the city for all ponies until his sudden death. While most of the earth ponies accepted the changes under Lexarius, Rock Maven's apprentice, Magma Dart, led the channelers into the deeper tunnels of the Great Delve. Thus, the True Earth Ponies emerged, with the Deepstone Quarter serving as their new home.
The Great Delve continues to serve as the capital of the Barrier Lands up to the present, known throughout Equestria and beyond as the largest, richest, and best defended pony city.
Demographics
60% earth pony
25% unicorn
15% pegasus
Architecture
Most of the Great Delve still follows traditional mining clan earth pony architecture; stout, compound, squarish buildings with plain to no designs. This is because most of the buildings do indeed date back all the way to Clan Corundum's settlement. Like the rings of a tree, however, layers of increasingly newer buildings show the progress of time. Many Great Delve traditionalists still prefer to follow Clan Corundum's designs, but embellishments have been added along the way. Newer buildings reach heights that mining clan earth ponies don't use and decorative glass windows, indicating unicorn influence.
Many buildings in the Gemstone Quarter resemble the tall and thin structures favored by unicorns, though these ones are shaped from malachite and quartz by Rock Maven and his disciples. The homes in the Stonetooth Aeries resemble traditional pegasus homes, only built from stone. It is this variation that separates the Great Delve from the other elder cities.
Resources
The delvites, as the Great Delve's citizens are called, pride themselves for being both self-sufficient and an exporter of many useful goods to the rest of the Barrier Lands. Vast mines provide precious ore and gems for trading and crafting. Many of the Barrier Lands's greatest craftsponies reside in the Great Delve, producing the best weapons, armor, jewelry, and various other utensils.
The Great Delve is also famous for its great mushroom farms, which supply the Barrier Lands with a variety of edible and medicinal fungi. Though outside of the mountain, the many farms across the nearby valleys are also considered part of the city and supply the Delve with a steady stream of grains and vegetables. For water, a great underground river runs through the Delve, even forming a lake within the central cavern. As, perhaps, the most important trade center in the Barrier Lands, the Great Delve's markets are always teeming with goods from other settlements.
Security
The Delve Guard serve as the local police force, and they have occupied most of the many inner fortifications created by its earlier inhabitants. Rock Maven designed the city to hold against the Everlasting Kingdom, even if the main gates were breached. There are many small redoubts across the Delve, once designed to harass invaders, now outposts of order. The Legion holds a small fortress within the Central Cavern, where it maintains training grounds for recruits from the city's population and the nearby settlements. As far as outer defenses are concerned, the delvites are secure in their city's nigh impregnability. The Delve has never even come close to being besieged in its history.
Criminality and counterintelligence are more serious issues. The Empire of Ophidus frequently sends spies either in the form of ophidite "exiles" or indoctrinated ponies trying to blend in. The Delve Guard, thus, has a very robust intelligence unit that works together with Legion Special Operations. Vicious criminal gangs also fester in the Underbelly, where they frequently compete with one another in murderous power plays. Quite often, their members take their crime to the Central Cavern.
Government
The Great Delve's Mayor presides over a council of other elected representatives of the various districts and factions within the Delve: the Gemstone Quarter, the Stonetooth Aeries, the Mineral District, the Mushroom Farms, the Underbelly, and the Deepstone Quarter. Each quarter has its own hierarchy with the representative on top. The Deepstone Quarter in particular is a complicated mess as the True Earth Pony clans do not follow a strict hierarchy. The Underbelly is also influenced by the strongest gangs and the elected representative varies from hapless puppet to influential leader with criminal ties with each term.
Districts and Places of Interest
The Central Cavern - often just referred to as "Central", this massive cavern holds most of the Great Delve's population and industry, making it the "face" of the Great Delve when the topic of the city comes up. All of the city's gates lead to Central first and it holds several districts and City Hall at its center.
Central Island - a great underground lake lies at the heart of Central, manufactured by Rock Maven and his disciples by altering the course of an underground river. In its center rises a massive stalagmite-like rock with its point flattened for construction. Three important structures lie upon this makeshift island connected to the rest of Central by bridges; the Great Delve City Hall, the main Delve Guard Fortress, and, rising high above the two through thin, twisting, stone spires, the Under-Sun.
The Under-Sun, a project that combined the efforts of Rock Maven's channelers, Blade Gleam's Arcane Knights, and Lexarius, is a massive crystal that draws upon ley line energies to produce artificial light. The crystal is timed to coincide with the day cycle, gathering energy at night and slowly brightening, then dimming, during the day. Its light, while significantly weaker and softer than true sunlight, allows daily business to proceed for most delvites by illumInating most of Central.
Gemstone Quarter - the primary residential area of the city's unicorn population. The Gemstone Quarter lies along the sloped northern face of Central, rising high enough so that its highest buildings align with the Stonetooth Quarter's homes. The district is as much vertical as it is horizontal and is navigated more with stairs and lifts than ordinary streets. The Gemstone Quarter's buildings are renowned for their appearance; great, elegant spires of malachite, quartz, and other translucent materials. In terms of businesses, the Gemstone Quarter provides, jewelry, textiles, alchemical and magical products. Many of the Great Delve's libraries and museums are found in the Gemstone Quarter, and it boasts its own spellcasting academy, albeit one much smaller than Arcanotropolis's. As well as the famous Hall of Mage-blades, a center for a unique form of unicorn combat developed in the city.
Stonetooth Aeries - emerging from a portion of Central's high ceiling are great stalactite-like structures with homes built into them. Many of the Great Delve's pegasi reside here. Steel-cable bridges connect the stalactites with each other, and several great lifts provide access for ground-bound visitors. Few businesses are stationed in the Aeries themselves due to the difficulty of access, so most pegasi find employment below. The Great Delve post office can be found here, though, along with several miscellaneous shops.
Mineral District - this district occupies the southern end of the Delve, on a gentler slope than the northern end. This is where the majority of Clan Corundum's original buildings remain, making it the oldest district in the Great Delve. Problems ocassionally arise when tourists seeking historical locations find themselves underhoof with all the hard labor around. It is now occupied by a large portion of the earth pony population. As its namesake suggests, it contains many of the Delve's ore mines. It also holds the city's foundries, smithies, quarries, and metal works.
The Mushroom Farms - a vast, flat area of soil to the southwest serves as the Great Delve's unique source of food. The Mushroom Farms are the newest, relatively speaking, addition to the Great Delve's districts. It was establishing only durin the start of the Time of the Three. Prior to that, the Delve relied entirely on farms outside the mountain. The farms are a veritable forest of mushrooms, each variety cultivated to suit the city's varying tastes. Many are unique to the Delve, posing a great deal of demand and profit through exports. Though primarily populated by earth ponies, the farms are less homogeneous in their population than the Mineral District, which they frequently compete with in regards to their district's productivity and profitability to the Delve.
The Underbelly
A system of tunnels and smaller caverns along the base and beneath the mountain comprises the Underbelly. Originally used as storage then as a dumping ground for mining waste, they now serve as residences for the city's poorer population. As they are hidden from the Under-Sun's glow, Underbelly streets are lit by glowing mushrooms more common in the South. The residents of the Underbelly eke out a harsh existence through various miscellaneous occupations. A few escape to join the Legion or make their way up to the other districts, but most end up in a life of crime. The sprawling, twisting environment makes it difficult for the Delve Guard to monitor the place and all sorts of gangs infest the place, running various activities like protection rackets, gambling halls, drug dens, and prostitution rings. It is no secret that one can acquire nearly anything in the Underbelly's black markets if one were to look hard enough. Most homes are makeshift constructions, often built with broken rail ties from the mining carts, salvaged pieces of metal, and stolen lumber. Though it is illegal to dump garbage in the Underbelly, piles of junk still manage to end up in the district.
Deepstone Quarter
There are tunnels so deep that they extend even below the Underbelly. They serve as the district that houses the True Earth Ponies, supposedly the last remnants of the mining clans that first formed the Great Delve. Deepstone Quarter's tunnels are dimly lit, claustrophobic, and built like a maze. Even the entrances along the Underbelly send chills among pegasi and unicorns. The True Earth Ponies prefer this as even their non-channelers have such finely-honed earthen senses that they can easily navigate the tunnels.
There are stories among the True Earth Ponies that the tunnels of Deepstone Quarter were not formed by ponies. That they were home to a race of underground spiders that frequently raided Clan Corundum's settlement. Supposedly, it was a massive attack from them during the windigo troubles that killed Clan Corundum's leader, triggering the battle for succession between his children. When Rock Maven returned from the Everlasting Kingdom, the death if his father remained fresh in his mind. He led a massive expedition into the tunnels, killing these spiders by the thousands, and all but clearing them out from Equestria's underground, though a few might have escaped.
Though many, especially highly influential unicorns, have called for the removal of the True Earth Ponies, no order has ever been made. True, some of the more extreme clans are outright belligerent towards unicorns and pegasi, with stories of the kidnapping members of these races for dark purposes, there are also clans that do work with the rest of the Delve. For all their reclusiveness, the True Earth Ponies provide several unique services, especially the more amiable clans. Their channelers routinely ensure that the Under-Sun functions properly, and make stone constructions much easier. Their ley channeling also allows for the slow replenishment of ore and stone.
I love this kind of worldbuilding, not to mention mention underground cities just in general.
Your blogs need more attention. My ass kissing just isn't enough.
Another awesome lore post, I rather enjoy these sorts of blogs.
However I do have a question. The post mentions Ophidus and their spies, so am I correct in assuming the Great Delve is near the southern barrier lands. Underground/mountain cities always make me think of colder climates, so I'm having trouble placing this location on my mental map of the world.
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Ophidus is far to the South, so it's far from the Delve, which is close to the middle of the Western Barrier Land. The Empire has agents far afield, always plotting something. Even wolven to the far north keep their eyes out for the bands of "scale-tails" lurking in the wild. After all, the Empire employs kennel masters as they do stable masters.
The more complicated the political situation the more fun it will be to see Pinkie run circles around it.