Quote Originally Posted by Catullus64 View Post
Don't undersell the role that large urban centers play in the feel of an archetypal D&D setting. For me, lamplit dens of wine-sodden thieves, harbors flooded with the strange speech and goods of distant lands, and gorgeous palaces teeming with splendor and intrigue are all iconic vistas no less than villages, ruins, and keeps on the marches.
I think I view cities as somewhat orthogonal to standard D&D, actually. It's pretty heterodox even to iconic fantasy to have ton of urban focus. Maybe this is a generational thing, as I think a lot of newer authors like Sanderson and Scott Lynch are very much urban writers, but I don't tend to think of fantasy in that vein. Plus, part of reframing the orcs and other monstrous races is to reframe the imperialist urban core as being, you know, bad and the sunlit lands as the hinterlands of a whole different empire.

I'd probably push towards most cities still being orc dominated, partially or mostly underground. The orcish culture, to my mind, should be some mix of Shadowrun, the Antebellum South, and the Assyrian Empire. The Foundation Empire had a brutal a racial caste system, a master-class that literally fed on its subjects, and ancient pacts with demonic forces powering its armies - It wasn't a very habitable place. Now that it has formally collapsed, it's remnants are still lorded over by handfuls of vampiric masters and liches, necromantic pollution still chokes cities that are only getting poorer, it's deals with the demonic are in arrears, and the orcish leadership are trying to hold together. Anyone who is willing to risk life and abandon principle might make their fortune there, though.

I've been thinking on your other challenge and will get back to it when I can.