Monster City: Welcome to Silverline!

[Lord Raziere]

Introduction:
“Monsters Are Not Created Equal. If we cannot be equal, we must strive for equity.”- Nalborich, Hobgoblin Founder of the Silverline Council, opening lines of his first speech.
Monsters have always lived in fear of adventurers. They have been hunted and killed since time immemorial. The reasons are various. But monsters themselves do not care for the reasons why. Some monsters tired of being killed, have ran, they have hid and they have gathered together, not to take revenge but to form a society, a city where they can be safe. A place where they can live without fear of being hunted and killed. A city of monsters, known as Silverline.

History:

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Two hundred years ago, various monsters fleeing from the constant raiding of armies on the surface and adventurers in dungeons, went deeper than normal. Seeking safety from their greed and wrath, the monsters found a big natural cavern under the earth full of edible fungi and drinkable water with a lake and underground river connecting to a far away sea. There they started settling as it was unlike the dungeons and ruins they had been using before. There were no legends or strange anomalies within, just an odd form of life that they could live off themselves. These small settlements discussed with one another their reasons for coming here, and they all eventually agreed on one commonality: adventurers. Driven from their homes, their previous lives, they were too tired and broken to seek revenge. What use was it, when these people seemed to be one man armies, capable of slaughtering them by the dozen?

From their stories, they pieced together a common motivation adventurers all came for them: Treasure, Magical items. Power. By constantly inhabiting things like dungeons, acquiring gold, magic items and artifacts and so on, they made themselves targets for their all-consuming greed. Thus did these first monster settlers decide that it would be tradition to shun gold, to get rid of magic items and live peaceful, uninteresting lives free of the kinds of wealth and power that adventurers desired. They decided to only use silver and copper pieces in their economy, and keep themselves secret and non-threatening.

For a while this worked since most people don't actually use or need gold pieces in their daily lives since the settlement was small. But over time the settlement expanded and it became impractical and slow to use silver pieces and there were storage problems due to the large amounts needed to manage. Then an enterprising goblin came along and had a great idea, opening up the Silver Linings Bank to store and manage all the silver pieces they used and make checks to more easily carry large amounts of silver pieces, thus jump starting its economy.

From then on, it grew into a city called “Silverline” where before simply called it “Monster Town” and some monsters these days still refer to it as “Monster City”. With its population growth, arguments came up about who is going to rule it, with larger more powerful races thinking they should rule as a tyrannical elite. After a civil war about a hundred years ago, they eventually settled into a compromise known as the Silverline Council, a system of elected officials where smaller and more populous races get more representatives while less populous and larger races get less representatives to balance out their greater power and size. They also established the Monster Legion and the Silverline Constabulary to both protect their citizens and enforce law and order. Determined to uplift and save monsterkind not through spell and sword, but through quill and ink, parchment and law. Through tireless work, the Silverline Council have made the city orderly and civilized. Many of the cities inhabitants today are far cries from their wandering wild counterparts, such as orcs taking a lot from hobgoblin discipline.

Over the years they have passed laws to not allow the use of gold pieces or magic items with city limits, rules to regulate the traffic and living areas of differently sized individuals, and after a series of out of nowhere violent outbursts and riots among the populace from random berserkers, established the Silverline Colosseum to provide a healthier outlet for the more violent races impulses and base natures and violent crime went down as a result. The next challenge they faced was monsters fighting a religious war over the Good and Evil deities, so the Silverline council in response banned both, sent the military to deal with them and only allowed the worship of Neutral deities and built the Carved Marble Temple for a place of official worship, determined to stay out of the cosmic conflict of divine beings. They furthermore set up dungeon towns to send criminals and the fool hardy to act as adventurer bait so that they find treasure elsewhere then leave so that they never find the city while dealing with undesirables. Soon the city stabilized and its economy is steadily growing even today.

However recently the city of Silverline has been facing new challenges over the years: With stability and growth, city-born monsters have been going forth into the dungeon towns and risky frontiers so they can use gold and magic items, the city is full of loan sharks and monsters in debt, mafias and smuggling rings have been smuggling in magic items, monsters have been forging counterfeit checks for silver pieces, there has been controversy over whether to consider certain beings as apart of monsterkind, underground cults of both good and evil fighting each other behind the scenes, a growing black market for using gold pieces and magic items is growing, the steady yet increasing arrival of refugees with little knowledge of how the city works over the years has led to slums and substandard housing built to accommodate them and thus contributing to the crime rate of the city, and finally a new generation of monster adventurers with many different motivations have been surging in numbers, and it may be up to these new monster adventurers whether Silverline stays the same, or changes forever- which scares the most conservative parts of Silverline the most.

The Avoidance Laws:

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To make sure adventurers never find this city, the monsters have made traditions and customs that have been passed into law that they believe will prevent adventurers from finding them and even if they do, will surely make sure they have no reason to come and kill them:
-No gold currency is allowed.
-No magic items allowed aside from alchemy and scrolls
-all buildings are to be made of non-flammable materials
-No gemstones, diamonds or any other valuables that an adventurer would conceivably kill you for and pick up and carry.
-No magical research allowed inside city limits, and no necromancy period
-No summoning from the Lower Planes
-No slavery
-The city does not take sides in the cosmic struggle of Good and Evil. Thus only Neutral deities are allowed to be openly worshiped within city limits.
-No nobility or noble titles

On Adventurers and Monsters Becoming Them:

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The widespread view of adventurers in Silverline is that they are all greedy murderous vagrants. Worse than bandits and just another form of raider to them. That every single of one them only cares about getting gold and magic items, will kill anyone to get these things, and burn down anything they don't care about. Some stories even tell of mad wizards doing anything to achieve ultimate power, crazy paladins who kill anyone they see as evil for distant uncaring gods, thieves who will back stab their own for treasure, berserkers who throw themselves into battle without care for their own life, and other tall tales and mysterious legends about them. Most monsters have not seen of them of course, but the tales come nevertheless and they grow in the telling.
Many of these tales and views of these adventurers are passed down as folk superstition, fairy tales and legends. Some are cautionary tales against greed where the monster acquires something valuable only to get killed for it by an adventurer that acquires even more wealth until other people kill them and take their wealth for themselves, warning against getting involved with the repeating cycle of violence. Some warn against building wooden houses with an adventurer serving as a warning against making anything that can't withstand the evils of the world. Some monsters even believe there are adventurer-attracting enchantments on magic items. Other tales warn against not getting near towns not built by monsters, warn against the sun, against groups that come in five, against walking on trails and roads, and even telling monsters to erase parts of maps where they want adventurers to go so they get curious to try and fill it in.
There are many rituals to try and “detect” if adventurers are coming like rolling bones or copper compasses pointing the direction of adventurers, but these are all superstition. Monsters furthermore know the most common races that are adventurers are: humans, elves, half eves, halflings, dwarves half orcs, and so on. They are often depicted as inhumanly beautiful and similar to the Fair Folk, some depictions make them outright evil, others depict as alien beings operating on strange rules no one understands, taking actions that confuse everyone else. Some monsters say adventurers can't cross running water, or are repelled by certain things like painting fangs on random objects lids to make them think they are mimics.
This makes it into their plays and the Mirage Theater often depicts heroic little goblins and kobolds coming up with ingenious traps to defend their homes against such invaders to provide some kind of hope against them. They are a favorite with children but adults often have problems with the simplistic plots and prefer to watch tragedies of brave orcs who do their best but have sacrifice themselves fighting against adventurers so that their families may escape. In any and all depictions no matter what the adventurer thinks, adventurers are always portrayed as villainous in Silverline. Bards are portrayed as bewitching sirens and evil hypnotic musicians, druids are turned into savage beasts with magic, monks as arrogant and prideful in their skill to the point where they kill anyone to demonstrate their superiority, and similar demonizing.
A monster generally assumes that any human, elf, dwarf, halfling or half-orc they meet is an adventurer, for what other kind of person from those races would come all the way out into the wilderness? Such encounters are filled with both fear and anger for monsters, but Silverline monsters generally choose flight over fight to escape back to their city or hiding place so they can live to fight another day.

It is quite simply, no secret that the monsters are no fans of adventurers in the least. They hate and fear them. They either want nothing to do with them, or they want to kill them for the vast majority of the time. A monster who forgives adventurers for what they've done and wishes to open diplomatic talks with them are considered saints too good for this world or foolish bleeding hearts. The entire purpose of Silverline, of this city is to hide from adventurers so they can live their lives in peace and stability. Everything in this city is built to avoid them, to be a safe sanctuary above all. There is no higher purpose, no greater goal of its government than the safety and secrecy of this city from they consider its greatest enemy that is adventurers. It is the primary purpose this city and its council was founded upon, and it is the primary issue it focuses on to ensure all the survival of all the people under its rule. The threat of adventurers are the great all-encompassing bogeyman that gives this city its identity. The Silverline Council in times of peril will do anything to defend against them, no matter what, even despite their differences between their own members.

Thus when a monster wants to be an adventurer despite all that, its kind of like a human claiming that they want to be a dragon when they grow up. At best everyone looks at the monster weirdly and at worst everyone is shocked that they want to become this sociopathic killer who values money and power over peoples lives. To declare one selves desire to be an adventurer, is to become an outcast among monster kind, at least in Silverline. But that is only the social consequences of such a profession. The legal ramifications are just as important: Unlike the surface which allows adventurers to run around unregulated and untracked, the Silverline Council insists that every monster adventurer has to register for it to be recognized as one. Among monster kind, there is a process for it, a period of learning where the monster is examined and tested for their sanity, sense of responsibility and trustworthiness. These tests are to make sure the monster in question is someone they can rely on in times of need. If they score high, the monster adventurer is more likely to be called upon to help the city for paid missions and other matters. If they score low, its more likely they are ignored or sent far away to be someone else's problem.

The Silver Standard:

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Using gold coins for currency is outlawed in Silverline. Despite its greater value, almost all monsters within the city have a superstitious fear and sometimes even hatred for the material, seeing it as nothing but cursed adventurer- bait. The enforcers of city law confiscate it as illegal contraband and will not be bribed by it. The cultural bias against gold is so strong, that it doesn't have any value in any legal Silverline establishment. Even those monsters who don't believe that gold is cursed to bring adventurers recognize that gold is strongly symbolic of adventurers in Silverline culture and the greed that comes with it and thus many don't use it out of not wanting to get hated for it.

Thus the city deals entirely in silver and copper, mostly silver. Dragons have to content themselves with lying on piles of silver, and everyone uses silver pieces to do their business. For most citizens, this doesn't change much- the value of most good commoners use rarely break above one gold after all. However this does change things drastically for people like merchants, the wealthy guilds, and any monster adventurers that become successful. The prices for expensive goods don't go away just because they're not using gold, and the weight of silver adds up to being unmanageable. To fix this, the city stores its silver in the bank from where its gets its name: the Silver Lining Bank. From it, to lighten the load they issue checks to all who have an account with them.

Thus much of the cities wealth is tied up in paper rather than actual coin. Among the rich, business is not done casually. The first meeting is often to determine what they want and how to much to pay for it. Since they probably aren't this money on their person, the transaction occurs at a later time or date with the item being reserved unless a better offer is given before payment. Thus every many wealthy transactions have a bit of tension to them: they can't have the item immediately, but at the same time they must pay before someone else does. If they go away, someone might give a better offer. If they send someone else to go retrieve a check, they might come back with an outdated sum that someone else could beat regardless. Carrying checks of large sums of money on your person can be risky and the thieves and pick-pockets of this city know the real money lies in finding the right documents. One can get richer from having the right scroll than any silver piece, as most people don't carry more than a hundred silver pieces on their person.

Thus auctions are popular in Silverline. Both for legal and illegal goods. Trade for the wealthy in these auctions are a competition to see how much they are willing to spend for the item in question and it can be a chaotic event of playing chicken to get them. However these events can be dangerous as criminals not only wish to steal the item, but the money that is being delivered as a check in a scroll to the auction from the bank when it ends. Armed mercenaries and Silverline constables stand ready to make sure the money is transported safely.

Thus many of the rich hire guards to not only guard themselves but their money as they transport it. The meetings of more certain transactions depending on the seriousness, can be secret and carried out in whispers to make sure no other offers are raised or thieves decide to take the money, and there are criminal organizations in Silverline dedicated to knowing about these deals and intercepting the money to take it for themselves and ruining the deal in the process for the buyer or seller, depending on whether they target the guards before or after the deal is made. Such transactions often become heists where the thieves must do their best to take the money without being recognized, with replica papers to fool people into thinking the payment is valid.

Of course the truly certain bet is for the rich is to order custom made items only they want and for them to approach the seller with multiple checks of smaller sums that add up to the needed amount. Much of the cities wealth stays in the bank and the ownership of it is moved around on the shuffling of papers, the numbers on those papers more important than the silver itself, for the papers can be more easily transported. None of which is valuable to most adventurers- Silverline's checks aren't legal tender outside itself and its outlying dungeon towns, so you can't spend them on the surface or any human or demi-human settlement. The only adventurers who do find silverline checks valuable are monster ones, and given the cities suspicions and thoughts about about adventurers in general, they generally remain on the good side of the law to not risk it. Though more than one monster adventurer has been made from a particularly good thief getting caught then being offered to do adventuring jobs for the Silverline Council, often ones they like to keep secret for the good of the city.

Over time more and more monsters have been asking for smaller more numerous checks to better do business with. The Silver Lining Bank is considering whether to start making a form of paper money to make the process even more efficient and replace gold entirely, and the Silverline economy is gradually starting to shift in that direction.

Spoiler: Index For Other Stuff

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To Be Updated

So yeah, just want to share this setting, created mostly for monster dnd campaigns, work it out and such. I hope people like it, been working on for a while, and this is only a part of what I've already got written.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Really cool concept! I love it! Currently too tired to meaningfully contribute but maybe when I'm awake?

[Tvtyrant]

So it is a game built around traditional RPG games, but banning most of the rewards systems and tropes that people play RPGs for? What is the draw? If I hated loot, leveling and running around in dungeons why would I want to play a game built around actively denying those instead of just playing something that doesn't involve them?

[Lord Raziere]

Who said they were banned on a game? The city banned such things within its limits, not the GM. and personally I never needed such reward so....*shrug* different strokes. what you do in this city is yours to decide. I'm just making the setting. though there is a major colony where gold and magic items are not banned, its just only one part of this. we'll get to it.

The Debt and Favor Trade:

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However that is not the only form of wealth in Silverline. The other form of wealth is debts and favors. However these aren't verbal. The Silver Lining Bank offers contracts for debts and favors as well without any money involved. The favor contracts are generally for a service in exchange for another service. The debt contracts are generally to pay off an item they can't pay all at once with they money they own. This leads to forms of wealth that aren't tied to physical money, ones which due to how they work can't really be stolen even if you take the paper, as both parties know who really owns the contract.

There are loan sharks in the city-Of course, the local name for them is “debt dragons”- who make their living off buying something for other people to rope them into signing a debt contract where the person given it has to pay it off in increments, leading to them paying more for whatever they wanted than if they just saved up for it, and these deb dragons have entire networks of indebted people they living off of. They hire thugs to rough up those who don't pay up to enforce their debt network. Of course its not always willing, sometimes they save others lives and they are foolish enough to proclaim they owe them a debt for saving it- and the debt dragon will insist upon getting that in writing, because life debts are legal debt in Silverline. One of the possible punishments of committing a crime is incurring debt to the injured party which is how the Silverline Council and others rope criminals into doing their dirty work to work off the debt.

The other kind are favor drakes, who constantly do favors for people, get that owed favor in writing and keep the favor contract. Many of these are one time deals instead of ongoing debt, and no money trades hands, but one can still have to work off a favor in some capacity. Thus there is incentive for monsters to help each other, but they are also wary of being helped because each service if someone insists the favor goes in writing, will be recorded and the person will eventually call in the favor with proof of it to serve them back, and if you don't fulfill your end, you can punished by the law for not returning the favor and while favor drakes can be predatory, there are also “favor leeches” who constantly ask favors of others and getting themselves into favor-debt but not paying any of their favors off when the time comes.

Some monster adventurers accumulate both people who them debt and people that owe them favors, becoming debt dragons and favor drakes themselves for a kind of wealth that no surface adventurer can aspire to, going around helping people in exchange for their help at later times and depending on how they go about it can be seen as friend-gathering heroes who are reasonable in what they call upon others to do to help them back and are patient with waiting for payments every month, or can be villains who prey upon the weak and needy, being parasites of Silverline. Particularly goodhearted monster adventurers often find themselves insisting that the person they help owes them nothing and that they were just helping a new friend they just made right now.

All this makes monsters wary of asking for help from others and of others offering to help them. Especially if the person is more powerful than them. You have to be careful about what help you accept in this city, and while friends, family and authorities they can trust to help them without any contract, for everyone else there is an underlying tension of whether the person will insist on making this an official debt or favor owed as well as being careful about risking needing to sign one if they want help from somebody without money to pay for it. Thus those less powerful who are most willing to favor and debt trade have a tinge of desperation to them. At the same time, even these desperate souls are wary and go by reputation of the person they are seeking to make a trade with, as debt dragons and favor drakes with good reputations for fair non-predatory dealing are the ones they will try to find first. To make sure their situation doesn't get worse. However there is always people who make unwise or foolish decisions.

Wealth Unstealable:

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Of course, some monsters don't go for silver or abstract favors on paper. Some seek to have more stable forms of income that stay forever. They take the money they have earned and use it to buy a home, hire people to carve various murals into it, buy themselves intricately designed ornate yet comfortable furniture to sit in, make glowing mushroom gardens, create big stained glass windows, decorate their homes with fabulous curtains. They buy various intricately woven clothes, which they wear and change out every day. They fill their homes with collectibles that only Silverline inhabitants find valuable, and ultimately do their most to make sure their home is the best it can be.

This is because homes are incredibly valuable to the inhabitants of Silverline, considering it the ultimate form of wealth that can't be stolen from them, since they are all stone. To own a stone home even a small one is seen as a symbol of triumph over adventurers and their wandering destructive ways.
It is their own personal fortress and monument, a structure that will outlast them and be able to be passed onto their children. Many of the older families in the city fondly regard the home they have lived in for generations as a point of pride and boast of its value that cannot be taken. They show big statues and pictures as conversation starters, bards use them as backdrops to tell stories, and the bigger the home the more prestigious it is.

Collections of iron and steel are desired for cutlery and candle sets as they are considered safe metals, while monsters prize wooden carvings and sculptures as wood is in short supply underground and many woodcarvers pay well to get wood to carve new art pieces to be bought for even more expensive prices from them, as wood carvings are considered good pieces of art that adventurers would not care about if they saw them. Same with many silk thread clothing or curtains. Another thing that monsters spend money on is big feasts and good drink, enjoying good food and experiences gone when they swallow.

The richest of Silverline's inhabitants go for even greater luxuries. They hire wizards to enchant entire rooms to be Magic Areas, skirting around the magic item restriction with enchanted rooms that can't be stolen by adventurers so they can have things like botanical gardens, rooms full of beautiful illusions, and anything else the mind can imagine. Some with the biggest homes fill their mansion or manor with traps and puzzles to hearken back to their roots turning them into dungeons themselves. Some say these wealthy monsters secretly hide magic items and stores of gold within that anyone if they found out could expose to the Silver council to ruin them- or take for themselves.

Of course people must have deeds to own their home. Furthermore with the limited space of being underground, there is never enough space and when one with a deed to the home dies, it can at times become a bit of a argumentative battle for who gets the house if there is no will specifying who gets it. The person who wins essentially decides who gets to continue living there so they can continue the family in their own home and who gets kicked out to start their own family somewhere else. Newer homes are often mined out at the edge of the city, starting as cavernous holes and gradually shaped into real stone homes by mining around them places where they are supposed to be. These newer homes are often smaller and form apartment like structures for the smaller races which reproduce the fastest. The most outermost ones are known as wall ghettos, and the people here work hard to someday spruce up their plain places into works of art that will be as beautiful as the mansions for they literally live inside the walls.

The Size Walks:

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Planning a city for monsters has many considerations that for others are not a concern. One of them is size. Much of the city's streets works on a pyramid-like scheme where the biggest paths for giants, dragons and such are built first, then raised walk ways for more normal size folk are built second beside them. A third walk is often built for tiny folk such as fairies and sprites, but they have other means of transportation. All this just to make sure a bigger folk won't stomp or bulldoze over smaller folk.

Keep in mind, the size walks have limits. Giants have an entire district all to their own just for their homes, and many parts of the city are just as outright inaccessible to giants because of limited space and need for more numerous homes and buildings for normal sized folk to do their business. Giants often have to go to specially designed outlets made on the edges of size walks to trade with smaller folk, and these often take the form of Giant Services where various normal sized monsters such as goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds and whatnot offer to act as runners and servants for them, often trying to set their prices lower than their competition to appeal to the giant trying to spend as much money they can on food or to act as messengers to folks they can't reach. Though some giant folk decide on hiring a permanent small helper they can trust to do such things. Giants can also pay a wizard to be shrunk down to normal size for a few hours, but must be efficient with their time as they do not want to be punished with a hefty debt contract for accidentally breaking peoples homes when they return to normal size and they are not outside the normal sized districts by that time.

For normal folk, guards of the Silverline Constabulary must remain on standby to regulate traffic so that they can make sure normal folk can across the giant roads safely without ticking off the giants. They are ever watchful and vigilant, carrying horns to blow for back up should a giant or dragon go on a rampage. However they will only issue warnings to those normal sized folk going into the giants district, not really able to enforce the law as well there as it as only limited amounts of size walks to traverse through safely.