Exchange of Realities

Not everybody’s got the situation for a grim, forbidding castle when constructing a base of operations. For some of us, the object of the game is to not exist; to have no footprint, leave no trace, show no signs that there might indeed be a Hand of Darkness there. For many of them, the Secret Underground Lair is the way to go.

While people occasionally get away with aboveground buildings in places too remote to have to worry about search parties, the secret underground lair is usually underground for a reason. Underground means not having to worry about people wondering what that building is. It occasionally lets you bend the limits of property lines, since who looks down? And it’s versatile; if you’re clever about it, particularly if you can use existing hollows and features, you can build one under almost anything, from a metropolis large enough to support a superhero team to a lonely field out in the middle of nowhere.

The biggest threat to a secret underground lair is, of course, discovery, either by someone explicitly looking for you or by people happening to blunder in while lost. Dealing with the first is decently straightforward: first, you build the base in such a way that it’s near-impossible to find by visual means until you’re right on top of it and even then you probably need to know how to look (needless to say, signs designating the secret lair are out. And second, you create defenses that ensure that those people who do find it don’t get away to tell the tale. Just remember that if you’re going to kill them you’ll need to figure out what to do about body disposal; I personally prefer using effects that render people unconscious without physical trauma, since then you can choose whether to interrogate them, to kill them, or (if they’re blundering-in travelers) to dump them somewhere else and let them figure they messed up somewhere.

But just because you can build anywhere doesn’t mean you should build just anywhere. For instance, it’s really tempting to stick a base under a national monument or important landmark. In most cases, though, that’s just asking for trouble; people tend to notice your guards walking around being Suspicious when they’re hanging around Big Symbolic Features. (On the other hand, if you don’t have to hide your existence and you’re most worried about blunderers, such a site can be perfect—you create a security company, get a contract with the local government to protect the place, and rejoice in having both a set of hand-picked guards and an extra source of income. Just be careful not to disturb the foundations too much.) Then there’s the volcano issue—on the one hand, volcanoes do provide defenses, deterrent against wanderers, and a near-inexhaustible source of heat, but on the other, there are both the geological considerations and the fact that people are getting used to volcano-lairs. When there are people who know to look for you, I personally recommend either setting up shop in the most nondescript place possible so they don’t have landmarks to orient on, or (if you can do it subtly enough) under a population center so you’ve got a load of noncombatants between yourself and the carpet-bombing/maginuke/whatever they plan on using to terminate you with extreme prejudice.

As a side note, I strongly recommend using devices that imitate sunlight in at least part of your lair, particularly if the minions aren’t allowed outside too often. Lack of sun can do odd things to their moods—and moreover, if you’re the kind of creature that has solar weakness issues, the artificial version may help you cultivate a resistance. (Warning: Ask your mad scientist before experimenting with sunlight resistance.)

In short, if you don’t want them seeing you, or if you don’t mind them knowing you exist but don’t want them knowing what you’re doing, you may want to go underground.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS