Dusk Raven
2016-01-25, 05:11 PM
Yes, yet another hypothetical world thread by Dusk Raven. Perhaps eventually I'll have so many of them that every day I'll be able to read a new post! Anyway, in this thread, I propose a setting where a lone bastion of humanity stands amidst a sea of monster-infested wilderness.
For inspiration, I mainly draw from an indie ecchi visual novel called Sakura Fantasy Chapter 1, which has that same premise of a world infested with monsters and humans holding out in a fortified city. Attack on Titan could be considered to have the same concept, as well as video games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Destiny, though I haven't played those games so I don't know for certain. Still, I trust that should be sufficient context.
I won't describe the full details of the setting at this time unless it becomes neccessary - right now, I'm interested in the implications, both economic and social, of having a society that basically consists of a single, fortified city surrounded by hostile monsters.
Some details will have to be stated, along with some issues that I anticipate coming up, so here's some info:
-The technology is roughly that of Dark Ages Europe, though since I don't believe in concrete "technology levels" I'm definitely willing to tweak things. I especially think being reduced to a single city would affect one's technology, and being surrounded by monsters might alter one's priorities.
-The monsters are supernatural in origin. This means, amongst other things, that they aren't neccessarily constrained by the same needs as natural predators, like carrying capacity. The almost exclusively target humans, and will organize and seek their enemies out. They are also created rather than born, and are being directed, vaguely, by a malign intelligence.
-Human territory used to be much larger, an empire spanning at least the size of modern-day England, probably even larger. This collapsed when the monsters appeared around 60-70 years ago (the date is by no means set in stone, but I thought it'd be useful to give a ballpark figure). First the rural villages were destroyed, leaving the cities isolated, but well-armed caravans could still travel between forts and cities, at least until the cities started falling. As of 10 years ago, the capital city is the only significant human enclave known to still exist. It's believed there are others, though this more stems from "we can't be the only ones left!" then from concrete evidence. There are, of course, scavengers or the like who spend extended periods in the wilderness, as well as nomads who move from place to place, not staying long enough for the monsters to organize to drive them out.
That's all I can think of at the moment for base assumptions. I can post more details on the setting later, as well as my own thoughts on some of the issues they'll face, but in the interest of keeping my OPs shorter I'll leave it at this for now.
This is essentially D&D 4e's Points of Light idea with the plural removed, right? You can probably find a bunch of words written on this elsewhere.
The first thing to come to mind is that there's no buffer against famine, you can't buy grain in from anywhere else. One bad harvest (weather or monsters interrupting) and people die to starvation. You really need the army in shape to keep fending off the monsters, so they get fed regardless; it's going to look like a pretty grim dictatorship. Likely worse than Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
Exile is probably a fairly common punishment for crime. Especially in bad years.
The PCs will probably become capable of operating without the city's support pretty quickly, if nomads can survive out there. The city doesn't look likely to attract loyalty from 21st century players so either you roll with that and work with them to set up/join a nomad clan or second city, or you find some unbreakable way of connecting their character's loyalty to the city.
Nobot
2016-01-26, 07:38 AM
Nice idea!
I'd be interested to know:
what they do for food. Is there a rural area around the city that is relatively monster-free? Do they grow it underground? Do they have a guild of spellcasters that casts create food and water all day to feed the masses (at a price);
what makes this city different from the ones that fell. Is it just farthest away from where the monsters originated and therefore the last place they reached? Or does it have a stronger military/better mages/better defenses?
about other planes. Surely some mages will consider life in a monster-infested world not very conducive to their happiness and/or research. Why not travel to another plane and settle it? And why wouldn't a benevolent mage seek to build a portal to offer everyone that option?
about subterranean warfare. If the monsters are intelligent, their tunnelers and sappers might be constantly at work under the City, occasionally breaking through to the City's lower levels (catacombs, yay), while the City's soldiers (perhaps an expert anti-miner/sapper force) will work around the clock to repel the underground invaders and undo the damage they did to the city.
what the City's composition is. Are there multiple races? Do they live together in the City? How's that working out for them? (See also last bullet point below.)
what they do with waste disposal. Just throw it down the walls? How about disease? (also see below.)
Some possible implications:
If the monsters caused other cities to fall they're likely to have at least some manner of military organization (perhaps even siege techniques), which may develop over time as the monsters try new things. This means that the City is constantly on the lookout for new enemy strategies and the City's defensive works will be very impressive. I would imagine a complicated rings of city walls, impressive fortifications, and perhaps even an air force to deal with airborne marauders. The City, however, is fighting a defensive war against a seemingly limitless foe, which brings me to my next point:
In a world that is completely hostile and people are confined to their City without much hope of winning a war/siege that has lasted nearly a century, I would expect depression to be a serious problem. Just think of it: you can't leave or you'll likely die. And even if you manage to leave, you'll not find a place better than this. A lot of people in the world need more freedom than that or they'll go mad and hurl themselves off the city walls in their desperate hour.
Everything's martial, war is constant. As avr says above, this is very likely going to be a military dictatorship; it almost needs to be. It would also be realistic that the dictator needs support of the generals. If the generals feel the dictator can't defend the City, they'll oust him and support a new candidate.
Genetics... One city (by Dark Age standards) might be a limited gene pool? You're not likely to notice much in 70 years, but maybe when you're a few centuries in. Maybe the City should develop some rules on who can wed who (I think this was in a movie once, I just can't remember which one).
Plague/disease is going to be a very serious issue, even more so than in real life. People in a city infect each other like crazy. Monsters might even want to use disease against their enemies: just set up a few catapults, fling filth or corpses into the city, and watch them die. Or poison/infect the water supply.
No trade. The City is going to (if it hasn't already) run out of steel, iron, food, cloth, leather, ink, paper, wood, rope, everything (although some may still be available if it's possible to go a-lumberjackin' or hunting to some extent).
Space is limited. Expanding a fortified city while keeping it fortified is difficult, especially if the boogeyman is waiting to kidnap any construction worker you send outside the city wall to perform some measurements. So people are tightly packed. That's likely to create tension, perhaps even ethnic or racial tension, which would be a threat to the City from within.
Dusk Raven
2016-01-27, 03:37 AM
The first thing to come to mind is that there's no buffer against famine, you can't buy grain in from anywhere else. One bad harvest (weather or monsters interrupting) and people die to starvation. You really need the army in shape to keep fending off the monsters, so they get fed regardless; it's going to look like a pretty grim dictatorship. Likely worse than Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
Hopefully the political situation I've come up with for the setting will avoid that, at least to some extent. I also wasn't think food would be too much of a problem - my intent is to have supply exceed demand. It'll be tricky to accomplish, but since they have a world actively trying to cull their population, it should be doable. More on that when I address Nobot's points.
The PCs will probably become capable of operating without the city's support pretty quickly, if nomads can survive out there. The city doesn't look likely to attract loyalty from 21st century players so either you roll with that and work with them to set up/join a nomad clan or second city, or you find some unbreakable way of connecting their character's loyalty to the city.
I dunno, if they don't feel like helping humanity survive, I'm playing with the wrong group. I also dunno about the PCs being able to survive on their own - you'd have to have a team pretty much geared specifically for that very thing, able to find themselves, repair their equipment, make new clothes, and everything that any group or society needs if it's going to be self-sufficient. The nomadic groups have dozens, sometimes hundreds of members to accomplish that. Although if the PCs joined up with nomads I probably wouldn't mind too much.
It should also be noted, this isn't for a tabletop RPG, though I could convert it to a campaign for one.
Anyway, I'm not sure whether to have nomads out there, or not. There are other small enclaves of survivors, I'd always planned that, but the people in the capitol don't know about them, just the migrants. On the one hand, being able to survive outside the city would help mitigate some of the problems you mentioned - if the people are oppressed too much, they'd just leave the city, and it makes exile a rather pointless punishment. On the other hand, I think I may have overstated the chances of survival the nomads have. A number of nomads are just wandering after their home was destroyed, and quite a few, upon finding the capitol, decide to stay there, where it's safer. Other times, entire groups of nomads just get wiped out. Much as I'd like to have a permanent migrant group, I'm not sure what it'd take for them to survive.
Nice idea!
Awesome! I will attempt to address your questions point by point!
what they do for food. Is there a rural area around the city that is relatively monster-free? Do they grow it underground? Do they have a guild of spellcasters that casts create food and water all day to feed the masses (at a price);
Well, cities with no apparent means of feeding them are a huge issue for me in fantasy settings, so I have thought about this one. Basically, there is a wall around the city that extends a bit past the old city limits. Within this wall is fertile farmland, so that accounts for some of the food supply. Otherwise, there is a bit of a way to use the outside land for food. You recall that I mentioned that the monsters only attack humans? Well, it means that ranchers can let their cattle graze outside the city walls, and the monsters won't kill them. There'd still be predations from wolves and such, although suitably trained shepard dogs could aid with that. In addition, I think there might be some low-maintenance crops that could basically be planted outside - basically, the farmers go out en masse, escorted by soldiers, and plant the crops, and then leave them for the most part until harvest time. The yield for that is likely to be small, though. Other than that, I imagine a lot of spare surfaces like rooftops have been converted to house gardens. It's going to be tough, but since I imagine the city's population is a bit lower than it used to be, there's room for everyone.
what makes this city different from the ones that fell. Is it just farthest away from where the monsters originated and therefore the last place they reached? Or does it have a stronger military/better mages/better defenses?
Partially, I think, it's a combination of central location (all roads lead to Rome!), political/cultural importance (seat of the government and the Witch-Empress). I haven't decided what the "spawn points" for the monsters are, but it's definitly not a single point, and they appeared throughout the Empire. The Capitol most likely survived due to a combination of old fortifications and the will to defend it.
about other planes. Surely some mages will consider life in a monster-infested world not very conducive to their happiness and/or research. Why not travel to another plane and settle it? And why wouldn't a benevolent mage seek to build a portal to offer everyone that option?
Since this isn't D&D cosmology, I hadn't considered the possibility of other planes. Other than the afterlife, of course. If they exist, I suspect they'd be rather... unsuitable for human civilization, at least as these people know it.
about subterranean warfare. If the monsters are intelligent, their tunnelers and sappers might be constantly at work under the City, occasionally breaking through to the City's lower levels (catacombs, yay), while the City's soldiers (perhaps an expert anti-miner/sapper force) will work around the clock to repel the underground invaders and undo the damage they did to the city.
An interesting thought. I don't know much about tunneling in sieges, but I think there are ways to deal with them, like making a wall extend underground. I suspect it's similar to the issue I anticipate with flyers - just as miners might have to stand ready for intrusions, archers must be ever-vigilant for enemies trying to fly over the walls. Although, at least with the flyers, I imagine the majority of them are comparatively weak. Of course, that catacomb thing gives me an idea... perhaps there are catacombs beneath the city, and if monsters can locate the entrances and find their way through, they could cause quite a problem. Having to dive into the catacombs to deal with a group of monsters would make a great side-quest...
what the City's composition is. Are there multiple races? Do they live together in the City? How's that working out for them? (See also last bullet point below.)
I'm of the opinion that, unless you have significant biological differences, there is no culture a non-human race could have that wouldn't be doable with humans. As a result, though I love concepts of multiple races, I avoid making any unless I'm sure I can flesh one out properly so that it's more than just a single alternate but shallow human culture when you get down to it. I'm not opposed to the idea, though, although I could also just have a couple different ethnic groups in the city, either displaced from elsewhere or the descendants of immigrants from a homeland that no longer exists.
what they do with waste disposal. Just throw it down the walls? How about disease? (also see below.)
Ah, an oft-ignored problem in fantasy settings! I'd rather avoid the medieval European method of just sort of dumping it into the streets... perhaps the remnants of a Roman-style aqueduct and sewer system?
Now, the implications:
If the monsters caused other cities to fall they're likely to have at least some manner of military organization (perhaps even siege techniques), which may develop over time as the monsters try new things. This means that the City is constantly on the lookout for new enemy strategies and the City's defensive works will be very impressive. I would imagine a complicated rings of city walls, impressive fortifications, and perhaps even an air force to deal with airborne marauders.
All true. It would be interesting to plot things out. Of course, I'm not sure how organized the monsters are on a tactical level. I hadn't thought much about their behavior beyond, "Gather, seek, throw at enemies" which I acknowledge only works through numbers, size, and supernatural power. It still took years and years to get humanity to this point. All the same, there are intelligent monsters among them, they are being directed on a strategic level, and new types appear from time to time, so... we'll see.
The City, however, is fighting a defensive war against a seemingly limitless foe, which brings me to my next point: In a world that is completely hostile and people are confined to their City without much hope of winning a war/siege that has lasted nearly a century, I would expect depression to be a serious problem. Just think of it: you can't leave or you'll likely die. And even if you manage to leave, you'll not find a place better than this. A lot of people in the world need more freedom than that or they'll go mad and hurl themselves off the city walls in their desperate hour.
An unfortunate reality. Unlike in my main inspiration, they are not in a totally stable state. There are many people who remember a time when other cities still stood, and I think that feeling of facing extinction, more than anything else, might contribute to morale problems. On the one hand, it's not like a typical war siege - people can leave the city, and they don't exactly see armies waiting at the gates, but they are kinda fighting a losing battle. Perhaps I should drag out the timeline a little - I didn't want to make the span of time too long, and I wanted there to be people who remembered the old days, but perhaps I should cultivate a frog-in-heating-water situation...
Everything's martial, war is constant. As avr says above, this is very likely going to be a military dictatorship; it almost needs to be. It would also be realistic that the dictator needs support of the generals. If the generals feel the dictator can't defend the City, they'll oust him and support a new candidate.
It is perhaps time I described my present rough draft of the government. In my inspiration, the Empire was ruled by an immortal, magically powerful Empress, but her involvement as of late had waned and a number of squabbling councilors. I'd hoped to replicate that situation somewhat, however, with the above point about morale, I think a figure of such importance as my Witch-Empress should really not withdraw at this kind of time. Hope is a powerful thing, as is despair - one can make a people survive, another can destroy from within. She would know that in this dark time, her people need her more than ever. It may, however, be interesting to see her focus largely on social matters, while various other factions vie for political or military power...
Genetics... One city (by Dark Age standards) might be a limited gene pool? You're not likely to notice much in 70 years, but maybe when you're a few centuries in. Maybe the City should develop some rules on who can wed who (I think this was in a movie once, I just can't remember which one).
Eh, some Dark Age cities could get reasonably big. I'm told medieval cities had an average of around 10,000 people, and the larger ones easily exceeded that. While this capitol has definitely seen better days, it's certainly got a population of around 10K. Seems good enough for population density in the short term, and they very much plan on expanding that number if they survive.
Plague/disease is going to be a very serious issue, even more so than in real life. People in a city infect each other like crazy. Monsters might even want to use disease against their enemies: just set up a few catapults, fling filth or corpses into the city, and watch them die. Or poison/infect the water supply.
Hmm... you got me there. Not much to do about disease other than try and space everyone out. Thankfully the monsters haven't thought about that yet. Some can transmit diseases, sure, but I don't think they can build catapults... at this time. Dealing with some creature messing with the water supply seems like another good side-quest, though.
No trade. The City is going to (if it hasn't already) run out of steel, iron, food, cloth, leather, ink, paper, wood, rope, everything (although some may still be available if it's possible to go a-lumberjackin' or hunting to some extent).
Hmm... yeah. The city likely had a lot of exotic supplies... before the monster genesis. While the elite may bemoan the loss of far-off fabrics and food, I imagine a lot of the essential supplies people have managed to gather locally, or adjust to shortages or find replacements. One problem will be metal. They'll most likely be desperately trying to scavenge weaponry and equipment from elsewhere, or maintain what they have.
Space is limited. Expanding a fortified city while keeping it fortified is difficult, especially if the boogeyman is waiting to kidnap any construction worker you send outside the city wall to perform some measurements. So people are tightly packed. That's likely to create tension, perhaps even ethnic or racial tension, which would be a threat to the City from within.
Easiest fix I can think of - there used to be more people. Granted, since the city limits now include a rather large wall and accompanying farmland, it may be a little less packed even with more people.
Hoo! Making a setting with this premise is hard work. It also makes me realize the setting's going to be pretty dark. I mean, they're fighting a desperate battle and everything's going to fall apart if things continue. But, perhaps there is hope... hope is such a splendid thing...
Yeah, there's no doubt that you can produce a food surplus on average. The key word there is 'average' though, with a fair degree of variability, and dark ages tech for preserving food is more inefficient than you can imagine; dry grain which loses much of its food value and may become infected with nasty fungi, some hard cheeses you can store at room temp, certain sausages/salamis (salt and/or spices required), and maybe pickles (if you have a significant supply of salt only). If you can substitute magic for tech here you can maybe avoid this issue.
With an entire civilization to scavenge from supporting a handful of people should be doable. If the city is less awful than I imagine or if the players support it no matter what this won't be an issue of course.
10 000 people can have enough genetic variability to support a culture indefinitely. At one time it looked like the entire human population passed thru that sort of bottleneck, though I believe they since revised the figure to 100 000. Inbreeding's not going to be a civ-ending problem ever.
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