Dungeons!

[Micamo]

What types of locations from your conworld(s) would make good video game dungeon locations?

For me, a good dungeon location has to have the following:

• The place must have at least once served a purpose outside of being a time sink for the player to explore. Games that have "dungeons" that are basically vast expanses of randomly meshed hallways, I'm looking at you.
• The dungeon must have a believable, non-constructed reason for a player to choose to explore it on their own. Something being deliberately placed down there, then the player being sent on a fetch quest to find it, does not count. However, it does count if the item has a believable reason to be there, and the player is/can be sent in to go get it.

Here are a few of mine to start things off:

Drake Dens
Location - General Dinyoran. They prefer caves at high altitudes when available but will settle for any enclosed structure of appropriate size.
Dangers - The drakes, of course! Drakes do not hunt in packs smaller than 5, and each pack shares a single den. Pack sizes can be as large as 30 members. Drakes are highly territorial and will not back down once challenged. If you dare enter a den to collect its spoils, be prepared to kill all of them.
Treasures - Miscellaneous. In their radings, Drakes don't discriminate in what they steal. They take whatever they can get their claws on, then sort it all out later. They eat the food, then stash the rest in their lairs in sort of a "trash pit."

Serek Tombs
Location - The black desert of Maurogc. A few have entrances still available on the surface, but most are now long-buried and their only available entrances are those created by unlucky miners.
Dangers - The Serek Tombs are filled with hordes of undead to protect against the desecration of the tombs of their ancestors. They do not dwell far outside of their resident tomb, but will fight against any and all intruders. A single tomb can contain thousands upon thousands of soldiers, consisting not only of the original guardians but also the risen bodies of intruders who were slain. Do not enter unprepared.
Treasures - All of those undead soldiers are controlled and maintained by an artifact called a Gadtanet, bound with a powerful demon. The process of creating them has been lost to the mists of time, so one retrieved is absolutely priceless. As an additional bonus, taking the Gadtanet out of the tomb will cause all the soldiers inside to cease functioning, making it safe to re-enter the tomb to take various other treasures, such as the offerings of gems and gold given there.

[Pirka]

Huh, interesting topic...

Well, I have a couple, actually.

Yospet (Kaynur Pitak) - Haka Aval (Hezek Erbol) - the Dark Forest
Location - A large swath of taiga. Exact location in Sápmi undetermined (I really need to establish my geography...).
Dangers - It's a dark, thick forest in which it is easy to lose track of time because it is difficult to see the sun, disorienting travelers, and making it all too easy to get lost. Purga-blizzards constantly sweep the forest floor, killing anything foolish enough to stick its head out during one of these babies. Food and water are extremely scarce, and if you get lost without provisions, you're pretty much screwed.
Treasures - A branch of the Kaynur race used to live in this forest before it became uninhabitable. They extracted an element, kersan (bright-rock), from beneath the forest floor in tiny, claustrophobic caverns that apparently has magical qualities to it. They stored it in little birch-bark pouches throughout the forest. This metal would be very precious - as it has gained mythical status - and buy many reindeer. Some rich individuals have funded expeditions into Yospet, but so far none have been successful. Also, there are fabled to be many religious artifacts, pieces of Yospet Kaynur art, and other vestiges of their culture in their abandoned settlements, which are rather well hidden, be it in the trees, underground, or camouflaged.

Corgum Parmakn - the Fjørd of Cave-Tombs
Location - Somewhere on the fjørdy coast of Sápmi. It only has a Hezek name because it is unknown to the Kaynur. There are an insane amount of caves with skeletons and carvings and inscription in an obscure extinct dialect of Hezek Erbol, and some caves are more accessible than others.
Dangers - Corgum Parmakn has incredibly steep cliffs from which it is easy to fall. Many of the caves are unstable and could collapse at any moment. Ghosts are rumored to haunt the tombs, but these are actually tomb-raiders acting creepy to scare other tomb-raiders off.
Treasures - Basically nothing. It's a common myth that the race who built the Cave-Tombs put incredible riches into the tombs, but actually the builders were a very humble race and despised possessions. As this myth became more and more debased, Corgum Parmakn became a place where individuals would go to test their endurance, skill, and get a shot of adrenaline. However, most believe that there actually are treasures hidden in some of the tombs.

[Pirka]

Too bad this topic didn't seem to kick off. It's a really nice idea and it'd be interesting to see what other people have, but oh well, I guess.

[stinger]

Caves of Time
Location- the northeast highlands, inside/beneath a mountain where the (above ground) capital of the dwarves once stood. The mountain and caves are the dwarves' great pyramid covered in thousands of years of earth and plants.
Dangers- Because of the amount of magical energies around and inside the former pyramid and the cave systems the total amount of space is greater than it would appear from the outside, so it's a labryinth that's easy to get lost in. The magic has also messed up the flow of time within the space, so what feels like an hour for the adventurer may be a day or more for those outside. As you deeper into the cave system the greater the time distortion. There may also be some beasts still surviving from when the mountain was just a pyramid.
Treasures- The royal regalia of the dwarves are found in the deeper chambers that are part of the pyramid. At the very center of the cave system there is an infinite source of earth magic, but it's immobile so adventurers will only be able to take the source with them, just absorb/collect a lot of magic.

[intermundi]

Pirate hideouts
Location: along the rocky southern coast of Tergrinta.
Dangers: guarding pirates, booby traps.
Treasures: the pirates' treasure.

[Micamo]

-- Paroki --

History - Long ago, the countryside of Moshta was safe from demons: Countless fortresses, the Paroki, were always filled to the brim with professional soldiers, always ready on a moment's notice to take out any monster who appeared. The relative safety of Moshta attracted businessmen, farmers, and traders from far and wide, and the region grew into a wealthy, affluent society. However, the neighboring Court of Dragost began to envy the riches of Moshta, and soon made plans to capture the region for themselves. The conquerers succeeded, and the new masters allowed the Paroki to fall into disrepair, and sent the elite fighters to do their own petty tasks. Moshta was safe no more, and the prosperous society the Dragost were so wanting of withered away.

Dangers - Though the Paroki are devoid of activity from Human and Moshten alike, but they are now absolutely crawling with demons: Mindless monsters sent to do battle with the soldiers there long ago, having no idea that anything has changed. Adventurers beware: These demons are not kind enough to take prisoners.

Treasure - The Paroki are filled with relics and antiques from the long gone golden age of Moshta: Priceless artifacts of gold and ivory whose secrets of construction have been lost to the mists of time. If you can route the demons there, you can take home more than a few of them as your reward. Even more lucrative for the adventuring type is the long-lost armory of the Paroki soldiers: Powerful, enchanted weapons and armors designed to do battle with demons, and VERY efficient at doing so. Previously threatening demons will become totally harmless to anyone who possess these items. The armory items however are much rarer than the golden knick-knacks; Most of them were taken, looted, and melted down by the Dragost invaders, having no idea of their true utility. You'd be lucky to find a single piece of usable demon-slaying equipment in each Paroki you visit.

[Tanni]

What types of locations from your conworld(s) would make good video game dungeon locations?

In my story preliminary titled ''In the land of the rainbow demon'' there'll be a gigantic reef conglomerate built up of huge cavernous roots/stems of a special kind of trees. This will serve as a cache for a special thing, provided I'll go this storyline.

Besides the spiders living in a huge canyon system, there will also some living in an earth cavern system.

In every case, in a game, one could search for things, for other beings, be it human or human-line, spider, caty or whatever, or simply searching for a way out.

[Testyal]

[Pirka]

*sigh*

[Mind]

They say there is a witch in ziwa forest who lives in a nasty cave underground. She is said to have magic powers and whoever rips her heart out and eats it gains her powers. But many fail. Great tribes have even tried but they fail because of the small spaces of the cave. That's about it for me...

[Avjunza]

While Niocaci don't bury their dead, they do build comemorative tombs for kings, heroes, important figures, and at battle grounds; above ground the tombs are three-sided pyramids of varying size, but below ground they are webs of hallways and rooms, filled with carvings and statues that detail the events that led to the building of the tomb. The statues are usually marble or gold, but sometimes they are tingron, which is extremely valuable. Also, treasures of the individual who's tomb it is may be kept there; a family sword, a heavily enchanted amulet, a device or formula they didn't want to share; but these are always locked away, or sometimes even guarded by traps.
Apart from battle ground tombs, they are almost always located in or near cities, however, and so are often open to (and guarded by) the general public.

There are also abandoned temples, settlements, or even castles, here and there throughout Nioca; generally they had been raided at or around the time of their abandonment (often had something to do with advancing armies) but every now and then a little trinket or expensive this or that has been overlooked. Their previous owners do have a habit of setting traps before they leave, so sometimes you could get lucky and find one that has never been raided, but these are the ones which entire armies didn't have either to time or the ability to enter.

Also, ghettoes of magic energy can spawn anywhere and at any time; usually of smallish size, but sometimes they can be pretty big. They dry up eventually (especially after heavy exploitation), but the remaining formations can sometimes hide small pools of energy or even tingron.

Mercenary companies tend not to have their true headquarters near population centres; and when they go to war with other companies, they sometimes hide their loot too well, so that if there are any survivors afterwards, they might not have had the rank to be informed about the whereabouts of the treasury.

Mages, weird fellows as they often are, sometimes become hermits and hide stuff out in the wilderness. One pretty famous story tells of how one mage built an entire underground city near a magic ghetto, and formed an army of golems which nearly destroyed the capital of Etania. No one ever found the city, but treasure hunters became obsessed with it.