How the Underground Came to Be

Once upon a time, long before any living thing remembers, there existed a void beneath our world. It was known as the Underground. The Underground was a limitless void containing an eternity of Magik, which is incorporeal.

Once, a breath of wind found its way down into the Underground. That small bit of the Aboveground set some of the magic to flesh, and from a breath of Aboveground wind and the Magik of the Underground came the Dream Dancer.

The Dream Dancer was a female being, the first being ever in the abyss that was the Underground.

Another puff of wind brought down dust from the Aboveground, and the Dream Dancer stepped on it, and the dust from the Aboveground became the first bit of land in the Underground.

The Dream Dancer danced, to no music at all, and wherever her foot touched the ground, another little bit of land came into existence from her magic and the dust. She danced a lot in many places, creating hills. After her dance was complete, the Dream Dancer had danced miles and miles of land across, and miles and miles of dust deep, and she had danced so violently, that within the land she had created, there was rock.

The wind from the Aboveground again blew, and brought pebbles down with it. The Dream Dancer had no use for the pebbles, and left them there. The pebbles absorbed the magic in the air, and they grew, and multiplied, until the Dream Dancer found boulders and rocks of many sizes, and there was also a large pile of cut stones, which the Dream Dancer had no use for. She left them be, and the Magik moved them, and formed them into a castle and Labyrinth. The Dream Dancer, seeing this hard edifice and twisty barrier, was puzzled as to what she could to with it. She asked the Wind what she could do.

The Wind was the wind that brought down the dust and pebbles, and was also the wind that stirred the magic to create the Dream Dancer. The Wind, however, needed a more corporeal form than simply wind, so by staying in the Underground, he built himself a form, the first male being in the Underground.

Wind’s corporeal form was the complete opposite of the Dream Dancer’s. Fluffy yellow-white locks opposite of the Dream Dancer’s straight black-green tresses. Grayish-blue eyes staring at orange ones. Male and female, complete opposites. Wind, wearing a white shirt, white tights and a while robe, complimenting the Dream Dancer’s black robes.

Wind handed the Dream Dancer a lump of brown clay, and she shaped it into an ugly little fellow, the first Goblin. Because Goblins were originally made of clay, they are dense creatures. The Magik in the air brought it to life and caused this one goblin to multiply so soon there were several dozen. Wind then blew down seeds to grow into all manner of plants, and water to drink. The plants flourished, and mutated from the Magik, and some grew into a hedge maze. The water remained mostly stagnant, owing to the fact that once water was brought to the Underground, it started to rain. The stagnant water got many types of vegetation and waste thrown into it, and this became the Bog of Eternal Stench.

The Dream Dancer lived in the castle, with the Goblins she had made, and Wind, who became her consort. By this time, Wind had taken on a name for his corporeal form. As the consort of the Dream Dancer and King of the Goblins, he was called Jereth. As the wind that blows, he was Wind. Wind liked to whisper to Aboveground children as they were sleeping. He whispered of a place, the Goblin City, where, if the child said the right words, the King and Queen of Goblins would whisk another child away to become a Goblin.

Children do not mix well with Magik. It morphs their human bodies into Goblins and other beasts that are indigenous to the Labyrinth where they reside. For many thousands of Aboveground years, Jereth and the Dream Dancer would take children away, and their families forgot about them.

The Magik mutated what was in the Underground more and more, until it became similar to what is the Underground as we know it. Around this time, the Dream Dancer taught Jereth, whose name had corrupted into Jareth, her magic. He called it the Dance Magic, and the Goblin King is famous for his Dance Magic.

Soon after teaching Jareth the Dance Magic, the Dream Dancer faded into the Magik. Jareth was heartbroken, and took his grief out on his subjects, the Goblins. The Goblins were terrified of Jareth, and no longer remembered their creator, the Dream Dancer, which further angered Jareth. Soon, children were afraid of summoning him, and he haunted nightmares from his castle, the Castle Beyond the Goblin City.

Jareth’s rage at the Dream Dancer’s leaving him caused him to hurl a ball of fire at the sky, creating the Underground’s sun. The Magik felt his pain, and created the moon, the opposite of the sun, just as the Dream Dancer was the opposite of Jareth himself.

Almost nothing has changed in the Underground since the creation of the Sun and Moon, it has been untouched since the Dream Dancer disappeared. The one place in the entire Underground where the Dream Dancer’s spirit is felt, is Jareth’s Escher Room, a room full of staircases that defy the laws of physics known in the Aboveground. The Escher Room is where Jareth’s Dance Magic is strongest, and he remains in the Underground to this day.