Hades Hotel p3- The Increasing Evil

The history of the Thames Tunnel is a story of disappointment, death, disease, and civil engineering. It’s a monumental achievement conceived in genius, built-in hellish darkness, revealed in triumph, and abandoned to sleazy ignominy. Such a bizarre structure with such a checkered life makes a perfect lair for whatever malicious forces hide in Victorian London. As Brunel wrote in a letter describing the conditions eroding his workforce’s health and sanity, “The evil is increasing”. You just have to decide what that evil is.

Adventure Ideas

The criminal element of London loves the Hades Hotel. Its privacy, cheap admission, and lack of police oversight beg for more complex illegal ventures than simple thievery. Literal underground prizefights could take over one of the entry shafts for a fight night protected from the elements. Under the rotunda, the spiraling stairs ensure every customer a good seat, while outside, lookouts armed with signaling flares watch for trouble at both ends of the tunnel.

Brunel conceived of his revolutionary method of bricking up the tunnel as his shield inched forward from the Teredo Navalis (more often known as the Naval Shipworm), a mollusk which burrows into a ship’s timber as it’s excrement reinforces the walls of its hole.  After acquiring the loan from the government, perhaps Brunel resorted to desperate invention to ensure his tunnel’s completion and protect his laborers. Instead of a bigger, stronger tunneling shield, Brunel actually used a massive Teredo Navalis fed with necromantic magics to eat through the dirt, darkness, and disease. Some of the diggers remember a “big red worm”. Where is it now, and what effect did its presence have on the tunnel?

At least six diggers drowned in sudden floods during the tunnel’s construction. One ghostly digger remains trapped in the tunnel. He greets visitors garrulously claiming to have gotten mixed up and asks which direction is north and south. If told, he thanks them but as he walks away a huge brackish phantom wave sweeps him out of sight. If a good Samaritan would just walk him the whole way to daylight he might finally reach his final reward.

The grimy marble staircase leading underground suggests a modern temple dedicated to a Chthonic deity of the underworld. Perhaps the Hotel Hades is more than a nickname and the Thames Tunnel leads to the land of the dead.  Some vile force transforms a small part of the Thames’ rushing current into the Styx, the river dividing the land of the living from the Underworld in Greek mythology.

To make extra income during its troubled construction, the Thames Tunnel Company charged sightseers a shilling to brave the descent and visit the excavation to watch the digging underway. What might have been fortuitously dropped in the soggy dirt just before the bricklayers started their work? It makes a secure a hiding place.  Even if they could pinpoint its location, who would ever dare disaster by pulling up bricks from a tunnel under the Thames?

During the excavation, horrible fumes and disease-carrying water filtered up through the disturbed earth blighting the diggers with a multitude of maladies. Now the entire population of a certain street in the East End suffers from the same symptoms. A strange dark fog weakens the sunshine over the street. What else might have been disturbed from its hibernation when Brunel dug too greedily and too deep?