Gee it's awfully clean and spacious...

Sewer, or stormwater? Makes a difference. Granted, the two will tie together in some places, but they are separate at points. It's much nicer to walk around in stormwater drainage systems.

You might find this an interesting article. Personally, I'd believe the forgotten sewers premise, whether it's been documented or not. It sounds plausible enough, especially if something got bricked off that was built in, let's say, the 1800's.

Edited to add: if a homeless person can live undiscovered in a tunnel, maintained or not, for over twenty years, I imagine a goblin could manage. It's not as if maintenance crews are down in these sewers 24/7, or check every cranny.

Darkshore said:

Just wondering in general how "realistic" it would be to assume that even a small section of sewer or stormwater drains could be abandoned or forgotten and become a place for supernatural critters to make use of.

Click to expand...

I'd say pretty realistic. Engineers are always changing things, then losing their drawings. Over a 100 year period, it's entirely possible that city planners would build a new sewer, connect in a certain point to the old sewer, then abandon the rest. Then they'd likely forget about it as someone lost the drawings.

One of my colleagues had a project where his entire job was to figure out where old infrastructure in SF was buried. I guess the city knew that there'd once been various tunnels (for rail, sewage, etc.) but had no idea where they were. (It was an issue as they wanted to build over them.)

In addition, I echo the thought that even in an existing sewer/rain water pipe, people would tend to ignore someone/something living in them. As noted - people almost never go down there, so as long as the goblin was able to move whenever someone investigated, he/she would be just fine.

A quick link to a little general information (okay, it's wikipedia, but it's an okay overview) on Underground Seattle, part of the old city that was essentially buried. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground There's a similar, but much smaller, area in New Westminster, B.C., and possibly in other cities with a similar geography and history - settlement along a waterway, later burned out and rebuilt.
Just as an example of how much city can be hidden.

Some years ago, there was a news report about a London jewellers that had bricked up a substantial part of its stock during the Blitz...and then forgotten all about it. The most amazing things get lost.

Glad to help. Also, if you like the subject, google for urban exploration and tunnel hacking. Other terms include "vadding" and urban spelunking. You may be surprised at what you come up with.

This article should give you a brief overview.

Oh, an' one more thing... If you can find old, early maps of the city you're using--sometimes such things are even digitized--you can make a pretty good guess as to where the old lines might have run.

Subterranea Brittanica is also a good website:

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/