Those caves would be based on the real world Cave of the Crystals or Giant Crystal Cave. Those are a series of natural caves, some yet to be explored, discovered by the miners of the Naica Mine, in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico.
“Crystals are the flowers of the mineral kingdom.”
- Edward Abbey
Imagine our PCs finding, exploring, and then mining caves filled with magical crystals used for creating magical artifacts. Who knows what type of natural magic is within these crystals. Such huge crystals could be worth tens of thousands of gold coins each. Hiring a team of miners to free, bring these to the surface, and then transport these to the buyers would challenge even a high level PC team.
I would certainly avoid setting in literally these caves!
Firstly, they were artificially drained and after this brief exploration, they were reflooded to protect the crystals.
Secondly, when not flooded the air is extremely damp, and warm - warmer than your body heat. Which means when you breathe in in these caves, the moisture in the air condensates within your lungs, like a breath on cold glass. Those respirators aren't there because the air has gas in it, they're because it has water in it!
Essentially, if you stood in these caves for too long, you would drown; either because they were flooded, or because they weren't!
So far as cool crystal caverns are concerned, this would definitely form a good inspiration for a magical and less death-by-physics setting!
Those caves would be based on the real world Cave of the Crystals or Giant Crystal Cave. Those are a series of natural caves, some yet to be explored, discovered by the miners of the Naica Mine, in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Crystals
“Crystals are the flowers of the mineral kingdom.”
- Edward Abbey
Imagine our PCs finding, exploring, and then mining caves filled with magical crystals used for creating magical artifacts. Who knows what type of natural magic is within these crystals. Such huge crystals could be worth tens of thousands of gold coins each. Hiring a team of miners to free, bring these to the surface, and then transport these to the buyers would challenge even a high level PC team.
I would certainly avoid setting in literally these caves!
Firstly, they were artificially drained and after this brief exploration, they were reflooded to protect the crystals.
Secondly, when not flooded the air is extremely damp, and warm - warmer than your body heat. Which means when you breathe in in these caves, the moisture in the air condensates within your lungs, like a breath on cold glass. Those respirators aren't there because the air has gas in it, they're because it has water in it!
Essentially, if you stood in these caves for too long, you would drown; either because they were flooded, or because they weren't!
So far as cool crystal caverns are concerned, this would definitely form a good inspiration for a magical and less death-by-physics setting!
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Reminds me of the crystals in the caves in the introductory module of Star Frontiers, Volturnus: Planet of Mystery. Fun times.
Made me think of The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart.
it made me think about UK 1 Beyond the Crystal Caves