"We're below the city, below the subways. There's a whole world of tunnels and chambers that most people don't even know exists. There are no maps to where we are. It's a forgotten place. But it's warm, and it's safe, and we have all the room we need. So we live here and we try to live as well as we can. And we try to take care of each other. It's our city down here."
 .: History
Seattle began in 1852 as a tiny settlement, a chaotic place with a brilliant harbour, sadly built on tidal plain, with poor drainage and heavy rainfall. Horses regularly sank to their chests in mud and one unfortunate schoolboy drowned crossing downtown Jackson Street.
After the Great Fire of 1889, in which 25 to 60 blocks - depending on who you ask - of predominantly wooden buildings were destroyed, city planners wanted to raise the streets to solve the city's ever-growing sewage problems which was caused by Seattle's close proximity to the sea, where high tides would back-flush the sewer systems. The downtown building owners, unwilling to wait for the city to get to work, rebuilt their buildings at the original level.
Years later, the newest gold rush towards the Yukon, brought enough money and excitement into the city to start executing the elevation plans. They raised the streets, leaving sidewalks and entrances as much as 36 feet below street level. For a time, pedestrians clambered up and down between street level and building entrance on ladders, but in 1907 the building entrances were raised, and the old sidewalks covered over. Old ground floors became basements, and the old sidewalks became tunnels, creating the area called the Seattle Underground.
Throughout the Pioneer Square area, you can see grids of little glass squares inset into the sidewalks. These were the skylights into the lower-level sidewalks, which became a physical avatar of the suppression of skid-row pestilence in Victorian urbanization; rats and opium dealers circulating around cheap hookers, golddiggers gone broke and fugitives in darksome vaults, riddled with diseases and empty bottles of booze. In 1907, there was an outbreak of Bubonic Plague, which was blamed on the inhabitants of the underground. The underground was officially closed by the city, leaving it unoccupied until its rediscovery in 1964 when it was reopened as a tourist attraction.
.: Night of Rage
It was not until this century that the city's first Orks, Trolls and Dwarfs took control of the forgotten basements and paved-over streets, fleeing prosecution during the Night of Rage, and began building tunnels of their own. Once the legal problems (such as whether they could tunnel into the basements of existing buildings) and technical problems (what to do with the water that seeped into the tunnels) were solved, the Orks, Trolls and Dwarfs began to construct ornately carved tunnels and caves deep underground. Construction almost came to a complete halt when a violent disagreement between Dwarfs and Orks resulted in the Dwarfs leaving during the early 20s. Today, the Ork Underground is a complete city, with a city hall, private police force, and malls. There are many ways to enter the Underground, but the only safe ways for non-Orks are via the official tour entrances in the basement of the Seattle Utilities Building (Seneca Street and Frist Avenue, inside the Big Rhino Restaurant) and the basement of Lordstrung's Department Store on Fifth Avenue and Pine Street.
>>>>>[In addition to the 22 known entrances into the Underground, there are rumours of many secret ones. Ork thieves reputedly use some entrances to enter the basements of buildings they plan to rob. There are also rumours of an Ork government and a huge lore library in the center of the city.
Though I think the Orks have the right to live as they wish, I also believe that the more radical and criminal Ork elements are using racial prejudice as a front to create an impenetrable fortress beneath the streets. If I were running the city, I would make the Underground a district of Seattle, subject ot the city's laws and law enforcement. As it is, the Underground is an anarchist's dream.
Unofficially, Lone Star gives the area a big D on the security profile scale, but do little, if any aptrolling of the area. The Ork police force down there is little more than a good squad.]<<<<<
· SPD [12-08-2050 / 19:50:32]
|
