DARK CITY (The Underground)

A (formerly) secret hidden refuge for metahumans and others seeking to escape or hide from normal society, located deep beneath Superior City.

HISTORY

When the villainous Legion of Doom laid siege to Superior City in 1951 the entire city was on the verge of being destroyed by artificially-generated volcanoes and earthquakes. In the area now occupied by City Center and Market Square there were thousands of people in danger. While many of the heroes present worked to evacuate the area, the hero called Atlas used his mighty strength to hold back the lava, giving the others the time they needed to evacuate the populace. Before Atlas could escape, an earthquake sank park of city and it was quickly covered in molten rock. It was assumed that the neighborhoods had been destroyed and Atlas killed. What people didn't know was that somehow Atlas' powers kept the submerged section of the city intact and shielded it from the lava. The result was that a section of the city some six square miles in area had survived intact, but was now covered by a dome of earth and stone. The Dark City connects to a maze of caverns and volcanic tunnels that run deep beneath much of the city all the way out to Mount Superior.

It's existence virtually unknown, the Underground, or Dark City as it is sometimes called, has become home to hundreds of outcasts. Freaks and mutants, many of them victims of the Dominator Gene Bomb have made the Dark City their home, creating a hidden metahuman community similar to the Meta-zone in San Francisco and the Netherworld in Chicago. The federal government has been trying to legislate these metahuman zones for a while now but the legislation has been stuck in inter-party squabbles for years.

At the time that metahuman refugees first began establishing a home in the Dark City, the mayor of Superior City was a man named Ted Watkins. Mayor Watkins had been elected in the aftermath of Darkseid's attempt to destroy Earth's Legends and had won on the basis of a rabidly anti-metahuman platform. When Watkins learned of the presence of the metahuman city, he began plans to send in a tactical force to wipe out the population. Watkins considered metahumans an abomination and a threat to normal humans that had to be destroyed. Recruiting like-minded individuals from within the region's police and military, Mayor Watkins began building a covert paramilitary force, reinforcing the human troopers with sophisticated robotic soldiers secretly built by Orion Robotics. Before Watkins could put his plan into action, however, he was defeated in the next election by James Milton, a more moderate politician. Milton cleaned house in the city government, getting rid of anyone he could tie to Watkins' scheme, including the police chief. To avoid a major scandal, Mayor Milton and new police chief Richard Lock covered up the scheme. They managed to convince local officials and media to help keep the existence of the Dark City a secret from the general public, lest there be a resurgence of the anti-metahuman paranoia of the previous administration.

Though it did remain a secret from the majority of the public, a few people managed to learn of the Dark City's presence beneath Superior. The Dark City soon became an underground tourist zone, with adventurous people venturing into the area to get a taste of the dangerous life. More often than not these people were never seen again, one entered the Dark City at their own risk. A few years ago a metahuman “Fight Club” which started out as a means to settle some arguments between Dark City residents turned into a bloodsport for Superior City's elite with live tickets going for big dollars and an underground pay-per-view deal seen nationally.

During the villain Carnage's attempt to take over Superior City the existence of the Dark City was revealed to the general populace. The feared public backlash did not occur, mainly because several residents of the Dark City had been instrumental in helping Superior City's heroes in thwarting Carnage's plan. Local, State, and Federal agencies are now working out how best to integrate the Dark City's population into the normal population, assuming such a thing is even feasible. For the moment the Dark City remains autonomous, governed internally; though some of the metahuman children now attend Superior City Academy.

The public revelation of the Dark City's existence appears to have ended the public spectacle of the bloodsport matches. The upper-class audience members who once paid good money to watch the fights can't afford the public backlash should their exotic tastes be exposed.

Since the public became aware of the Dark City there have been other negative repercussions as well. The presence of so many disenfranchised metahumans has attracted the attention of super-villains like the Hell-Raisers hoping to find potential recruits. More recently, former mayor Ted Watkins resurfaced commanding a covert force like the one he'd tried to use to wipe out the Dark City years earlier. This time Watkins planned on assassinating current Superior City mayor Richard Lock and U.S. Senator Jefferson Archer (who is a publicly declared metahuman) and blaming the deaths on the Dark City. The incident would give Watkins the ideal situation in which to reveal his covert forces to the public, endearing them and himself to the public by destroying those believed responsible for the deaths and putting himself back in a position of power in the city. The plot was discovered by the local authorities and the federal Department of Extra-normal Operations and was thwarted with the help of the Enforcers of Justice and the New Adventurers.

SOCIETY

The Dark City is self-governed. Generally everyone keeps to themselves, but in matters concerning the whole Underground decisions are made by the Ruling Council. The Council enforces the Laws of the Dark City, which are kept mainly as an oral tradition. The chief record keeper is a metahuman called Blindman, who possesses perfect memory. It is not known exactly how many people are part of the Ruling Council, but the number seems to vary depending on the task the Council is called to perform. The two members of the Council most frequently encountered by outsiders are Brainchild, a powerful telepath whose body is underdeveloped and is incapable of supporting the weight of his enlarged cranium, and the Veteran, an elderly but powerful metahuman who is also a skilled physician. Veteran cannot remember his real name, but believes he was once a super-hero.

The Ruling Council is most commonly called together to punish a citizen of the Dark City for breaking one of the Laws. The punishment is usually some kind of public service, but greater crimes against the Dark City have been punished by exile. For the most severe crimes, the Judge is used.

No one knows who or what the Judge is. When a severe crime has been committed in the Dark City, the Judge simply appears. One of the citizens of the Dark City is chosen by Brainchild and Blindman to act as host to the Judge. This person voluntarily submits to the Judge's will, gaining a variety of powers in the process. While the Judge is in control, the host is surrounded by three floating globes which Judge calls the Jury. Judge used his Jury to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. The Jury appears to have some form of powerful telepathy with which the mind of the accused is scanned. If the three members of the Jury agree that the accused is guilty, the Judge will use his various powers to mete out an appropriate punishment. Given the extent of the Judge's powers, it is more that possible that he could kill the accused, but it is unknown if that has ever happened. If an accused flees before he can be judged, the Ruling Council will form a Posse of selected citizens, led by the Judge, to hunt down the accused. In all cases the Judge's decision is final.

The citizens of the Dark City for the most part want to be left alone, though this has become increasingly difficult since the Underground's public exposure. A variety of means are used to detect when an outsider has entered the Dark City. In addition to technological detection systems, there are regular patrols, and many of the City's metahuman residents have powers that make it easy to detect intruders. Unless a visitor has been expressly invited, they will usually be intercepted. In general the visitor can be dispatched easily and quietly usually with an illusion blocking his path, or physically blocking the passage by use of various powers. In cases where the visitor is unwelcome but known to the Ruling Council, they may receive a telepathic warning from Brainchild. If the intruders ignore the warning they are soon met by a patrol who will use whatever means necessary to dissuade the unwelcome guests from proceeding further.

GEOGRAPHY

The core of the Dark City is built around an area consisting of several dozen city blocks that survived intact when they were buried during the 1951 disaster. This core area lies between 150 and 200 feet below the streets of Superior City. The Dark City can be reached through doors and tunnels that connect it to the water, sewer, and power tunnels beneath the streets of Superior. There are also entrances to the Underground from parts of the SPARTaN subway network and a major entrance deep beneath the Metroplex.

The majority of the people living in the Dark City live in the buildings that were once part of Superior City's downtown. Water and power has been hijacked from Superior's utility system to supply the Dark City. Extending out from this core are a network of tunnels, natural and man-made. This maze of passageways and caverns extends beneath nearly every part of Superior City and the longest tunnels connect to the cave and lava tunnel network beneath Mount Superior. Not even the most knowledgeable of the citizens of the Dark City can claim to know all of the tunnels.

Places of Interest

• City Hall: among the buildings that survived the creation of the Underground was the original City Hall building of Superior City. The building serves a similar purpose as it did aboveground, as the seat of the government (such as it is) of the Dark City.
• Animal Farm: this corner of the Dark City is home to the metahumans whose mutations have made them appear as human-animal hybrids and other similar non-human creatures. Alongside the mutants are beings created in the numerous genetic labs of super-villains and secret government agencies. Some of the human-animal hybrids are in reality not human at all, they are in reality exiled members of the Adoax, a hidden society of intelligent animals evolved from native wildlife after centuries of exposure to the radiation from a meteor.
• The Temple: the most sacred place in the Underground, deep beneath the heart of the Dark City. The Temple is a large cavern containing what appears to be a stone statue of a man. This cavern is a place of worship and meditation for the people of the Dark City and it is forbidden for an outsider to set foot there. What no one knows is that the sacred statue is in fact the hero Atlas, transformed into stone by his own powers during his valiant defense of the city in 1951 and trapped in suspended animation waiting to be awakened.