In the real world, the first evidence of human settlement in and around London can be found in Bronze Age settlements located near a natural crossing point on the river Thames, with evidence of people in the wider area for thousands of years before that. Since that first settlement, London has been steadily adding layers on top of itself like a cake made of stone and steel. The glittering city on the Thames that millions call home is only the latest version, built atop long-buried landscapes and histories that have been hidden or lost. Buried rivers, ancient catacombs, cisterns, Victorian-era diggings, cesspools, abandoned Underground stations, mass graves full of the bones of plague victims — all these lurk below the surface if one knows where to look. And that’s in the real world.

In the World of Darkness, things go even deeper and get even more tangled.

Subterranean London is our name for the world that exists beneath the city proper — the labyrinthine tangle of ruins, tunnels, tombs and caverns that lies beneath the streets. The Tube system, the city sewers, and the underground infrastructure necessary to keep the city alive are only the start. Subterranean London encompasses far more than that, ranging wider and digging deeper, providing access to places that those in control would not be entirely comfortable with. This fictional version stitches together all manner of forgotten galleries, catacombs, tunnels, shafts, and passageways, and posits connections between the different parts of this underworld that make it possible to travel throughout the urban parts of the city without ever coming aboveground. Few people venture there, and fewer still stay for long — you can wander for days without coming across another soul — but if you do encounter someone, or something, your journey could get exciting in a hurry.

In OOC terms, Subterranean London serves several purposes:

• It’s a deliberate counterpoint to the dystopian nightmare that is surface London. In contrast to the city above, the subterranean world doesn’t have surveillance cameras. There’s no one there to ask if you have a license for anything — because, frankly, anyone who’s down there has far more important things to worry about. Outside of a few mortal-centric places, Human law doesn’t exist down there. And up to a point, that’s great — until you want the police to be around, need ambulance service, stable electricity, clean food or water, or a place to sleep where you don’t have to keep one eye open.
• It’s a place where characters can have a little more freedom of action. Things that would get the entire Metropolitan Police Force sent after you if done on the surface will pass with barely a shrug in the under-London. Make too much of a fuss and you run the risk of attracting some of the other things that inhabit the dark places, but sometimes that’s worth the risk.
• It’s a source of antagonists. Subterranean London is far too vast for anyone, or even any faction, to control any part of it for long. Even keeping track of it all quickly became impossible in the early days of the city. It is sparsely populated — there are no nightclubs, bars, markets, and so on — but there’s always space for a couple of Fomori, or a Kindred lost to Wassail, or a Thallain war party, or a Nephandi searching for some horrible secret.
• It’s a place that allows storytelling outside of the existing framework of London, and that can have a wide variety of threat levels. To characters, it will always be a risky place to visit, but it can play host to antagonists as dangerous or as harmless as a storyteller wishes. It’s meant to be a setting for and a means to allow greater creativity in a players’ storytelling, as well as allowing players to get from point A to point B unobserved by the mortal world.

Players are welcome to use Subterranean London in their own storylines, for any of the purposes above, with the following restrictions:

• Things that happen in Subterranean London should not directly affect the surface city. Brawling with a handful of Sabbat Nosferatu is fine as long as that fight stays underground. Similarly, the outcome of a story might involve an underworld cavern collapsing, and that’s fine, but it should not cause any significant effect on the surface without prior permission from staff. The city, after all, is a living thing, and any wounds caused from below will scab over with roadworks and asphalt patches almost as soon as they are made.
• Antagonists should be on the level of starting characters or appropriate threats for starting characters. Fighting a couple of Black Spiral Dancer cliaths is no problem. Fighting a Baali Methuselah is a different matter — remember, most denizens are just there to get from one place to another, or to accomplish something specific and then leave.
• Antagonists should generally come from the antagonist factions. Mages are probably not going into under-London to oppose other mages from the Order of Hermes — they’re going there to oppose Technocrats, Marauders, or Nephandi.
• Underground ruins should not be older than the Norman Conquest, and the older ruins should generally carry with them a higher difficulty level.
• Storylines should not affect the entirety of the subterranean world; they should have limited regional impact. Subterranean London is a resource for all players, so please be considerate of others.
• Subterranean London is a wilderness, and not a whole underground civilization. It’s more like the Underdark than Neverwhere‘s London Below: there may be small outposts of the surface world, and if you go deep enough you may find outposts of subterranean creatures instead, but for the most part it’s a tangle of abandoned tunnels, natural caverns, or decaying ruins. Outside of a small number of areas close to the surface, you’re unlikely to encounter more than a handful of other explorers at a time.

Outside of a few known and heavily used routes, the subterranean world is in a state of constant flux, with passageways changing, collapsing, or meandering in ways that may not make much sense to the sane mind. Maps of the underworld do exist, but reliable maps that show more than the usual points of interest are exceedingly rare, and whatever they purport to provide directions to may or may not be there when you arrive.

As detailed in the section on Umbral Cosmology, the under-London is at various points connected to the Umbra, and it is entirely possible, with Storyteller permission, to end up on the far side of the Gauntlet, in a place you probably do not want — ICly, at least — to be. Rumors and legends hint at all manner of things hidden deep beneath the city streets, and, with the right (or wrong) choices or dice rolls, you may find yourself stumbling into one of them. These journeys are likely to be extremely dangerous, but they do carry reward commensurate with the risk.

If you’d like to do something that violates these guidelines, please check in with staff first, or contact a Sanctioned Storyteller.

At some point in the hopefully near future, we’ll have additional details on some of the landmarks of the under-London, what it’s like down there, how it fits together, and so forth. It’s expected that parts of the area will become lost or become newly accessible over the course of the game.