The real Lechuguilla is a mind-boggling vast, terrifyingly beautiful system of caverns in Mexico. My Lechuguilla (I’m using the name as a placeholder until I can create a fitting name) is an underground city constructed after the surface of the world became uninhabitable. I drew a new version of the city today, and I wanted to share it on the blog.
As I imagine it, the main feature of the city would be a pair of hollow spheres whose walls are lined with tiles of glass. A magical light source would hover in the center of the spheres, creating something like a lighthouse, with the light spilling down two long shafts, which lead to the main chambers below. As day changes to night, one shaft would be illuminated with strong light, creating a “day” in one chamber, while the other shaft would have weaker light, creating a “night” in the other chamber.
Both chambers have several stone pyramids, sort of like NERV HQ in Evangelion. Each pyramid has a second, upside-down pyramid attached to the bottom, which hangs down in an even larger lower subterranean chamber, where a series of columns meet the apexes of the pyramids. The pillars hold up both the lower and upper chambers and extend into a vast underground lake, which is heated by subterranean magma channels.
One of the toughest parts of creating an underground city is devising the layout in three dimensions. On the right side of the image above, I included a vertical look at the city, which shows some of the lateral chambers.