A city of artists

[Pictogram]

Hi everyone. I’m looking for ideas and inspiration for a city my players will be hanging around for awhile. The context of the city is that it’s built in a forest, an over abundance of resources, and little danger to the city. The city itself is built and ruled by philosophers and artist.

Anyone have any ideas for a city like this, things to do, important people, cultural values/ taboos. Maybe ideas for encounters, whatever!

[Adamantrue]

The ruling population could be all artists, philosophers, politicians, scholars, etc, but the concept of menial labor is beneath them.

Even if there is an abundance of resources, they may not be the ones actually doing the work. Do they have slave labor? Maybe they have constructs doing the bulk of the work? Or, maybe they are shrewd negotiators, and allow foreigners to do the work in their mines/farms/miscellaneous properties in exchange for a cut of the profits?

[brian 333]

Among 'The Arts' is magic. The city would be home to several colleges of magic, each competing to produce the most reknowned magi in the world.

The School of Alchemy and Thaumaturgy
A popular choice due to its low tuition and its practice of offering *gasp!* scholarships! to 'worthy' candidates, the school rarely produces candidates for the Arena Arcana. It is largely financed through alumni dnnations and the sale of low-level potions and items at the Bazaar.

The Monestery of Saint Panater

Saint Panater, (pan-AH-der) was a holy warrior devoted to the celestial patron of magic.

An order of warriors and priests, The Guardians of the Secret Flame, maintain a school for adventurers. They take an oath to seek out and preserve magic that it never be forgotten.

Three monastic orders, the Librarians, the Curators, and the Teachers, work to preserve and diseminate magic while the more adventurous warrior-priests delve into ruins or follow ancient maps in the hopes of recovering lost magic.

A retirement home for aged adventurers encorsages mentorships and ongoing research.

Unlike the other schools in the city, the staff of Panater seek out and train sorcerors, considering them to be blessed by their deity.

The sale of magic items and copies of books of and about magic fund this school.

The Marcora Institution

Funded entirely by the donations of nobles and the tuitions they pay to educate their children, this school has a low regard for diversity.it also has a high drop/fail rate.

Given that their clients are goal-oriented and favor individual acheivement, the curriculum of the Institution is largely geared toward success in the Arena, the Institute often has multiple entrants to the arena

[Quizatzhaderac]

The city exports it's art which eventually make it's way to the far ends of the world.

It's able to make such better art ultimately comes down to secret techniques for making dyes. There are (of course) are schools and drawing techniques, and philosophies of what makes a good painting/statue/etc, but other places don't imamate them because they'll never be able to make an equal product without the dyes.

Describe the colors with analogies and avoid technical terminology. A color isn't red, it's "a bloody hue", or "like the surface of a ruby". Black either "creates the appearance of a deep hole in the object" (matte black) or "like a mirror made of onyx" (glossy). Green is "fresh like the spring growth".

[Elves]

Who's going to take out the trash?

[brian 333]

The city exports it's art which eventually make it's way to the far ends of the world.

It's able to make such better art ultimately comes down to secret techniques for making dyes. There are (of course) are schools and drawing techniques, and philosophies of what makes a good painting/statue/etc, but other places don't imamate them because they'll never be able to make an equal product without the dyes.

Describe the colors with analogies and avoid technical terminology. A color isn't red, it's "a bloody hue", or "like the surface of a ruby". Black either "creates the appearance of a deep hole in the object" (matte black) or "like a mirror made of onyx" (glossy). Green is "fresh like the spring growth".

Oooh! The River of Rainbows, due to the Dyers' Guild making pigments and dying cloth on an industrial scale!

Venice had a similar problem.

A trade network based on acquiring dye feedstocks and cloth and selling patterned cloth and fashionable clothing and housewares.

A secret silk-dyeing process which involves feeding dyed mulberry leaves to silk caterpillars to produce no-fade colored silk. The secret is magically rendering the dyes non-toxic.

[Lemmy]

I'm pretty sure such a city would starve to death in a matter of months... Unless they have golems or magic or something to do the hard labor...

Let's be honest here... There's a reason the "starving artist" is such a common stereotype.

Art is many things... But it isn't the most productive of occupations. Even a wealthy society would have A LOT of difficulty surviving (nevermind thriving) if all they do is art.

so... I don't know... Maybe their singers and dancers are Bards, sculptors are golem-makers, writers are wizards, and so on... That can help explain how the city survives.

[Accelerator]

Who's going to take out the trash?

The perfect formula for high art and culture. Make others do the drudgery

[Bohandas]

Who's going to take out the trash?

The trash is piled in the town square and forms an exhibition titled "The Culture of Waste"

[brian 333]

Like any city, a minority of the population engages in a traditional occupation that everyone knows about while the majority does what people do everywhere.

New York= bankers
Chicago= hog butchers
Los Angeles= movie stars
New Orleans= party!
And of course everyone in Honolulu wears grass skirts and dances on the beach.

Ancient Athens was known for philosophers, but there were only a dozen. The rest of the city had real jobs.

[Quizatzhaderac]

Another possible tact is that art isn't typically a thing people do vocationally, but it's just a thing typical people do.

Like Dancing, singing, cleaning, cooking, and home decoration are all things that can be a vocation, but it's typically people doing it because they enjoy it or because they want it done for themselves.

Walls typically have murals painted by those that live there. Trinkets, sculptures and portraits and mementos are often given as gifts (even expected in some situations).

[thefantodayhtml]

I've thought of a possible backstory for it: At one point it in the past was part of a powerful empire. It wasn't actually ruled by artists (yet), but even then it was known as a haven for artists and one of the more notable sites of a religion dedicated to a god of the arts. While the god's rather lassie-fair attitude towards worship (viewing the creation of art in and of itself as an adequate form of worship) meant that the religion was as much about facilitating the creation of art as active worship, their religion was nevertheless prominent in the city and influential in its politics. Then the empire completely imploded. With normal civil authority having more-or-less collapsed, the priesthood were the only entity with the structure in place to organize the city's administration and defense, and over time they became the city's de-facto rulers, and of course they put in place policies to encourage the development of the arts. TLDR: it's basically a prince-bishopric but for followers of an artist-god.

Edit: actually nevermind the backstory bit, the point I was really trying to get at is that it would be having a group that would normally be mainly artistic in nature, whether that be a bardic collage, the followers of a specific god, or what have you, pulling double duty as the city's civil administration.

[brian 333]

The Temple of Baldr and the University of The Arts

At the southern end of the city a mesa rises, atop which stands the Temple of Baldr. It is said to be the ultimate expression of the arts of architecture and engineering.

Each of its sixty-four columns is a statue one hundred feet tall which represents one of the gods. Built of limestone and lavishly decorated with colored marble inlays, frescoes, and statuary, it is one of, if not the, largest works of art in the world.
In the center of the temple a seventy-five foot tall statue of Baldr sits on a throne supported by his nine daughters, each of whom is the patron deity of one of the arts.

From its southeast side one looks over the cliff edge to a broad river valley divided into farms and pastures, beyond which rise majestic white-capped peaks.

Its southwest cliff face plunges down into the green sea and the view takes in the tiny nearby islands which guard the sea lanes to the city.

The northwest side overlooks the mansions and terraced gardens of the patrons which step down to the broad, deep harbor in which ships from around the world seek safety, wealth, and cargo.

The northeast side overlooks the roofs of the University of The Arts and slopes down to the city wall whose gates open to the villages and farms of the river valley and the land-bound trade routes.

The temple maintains a staff of artists, craftsmen, and engineers, and when something mars the beauty of the view they are dispatched to repair, embellish, or remove the offending obstruction.

The university sprawls along the upper rim of the mesa on several terraces, and houses almost 5,000 students with a staff of 250 teachers and administrators, making it one of the larger educational institutions in the world, and certainly the largest devoted to the arts.

A student typically is sponsored by a patron who gains prestige for the number and quality of their proteges, whom are often shown off at the patrons' homes either displaying or performing their art. There is a complex game of prestige associated with these parties which consume the attention, and a great deal of the wealth, of the patrons.

In fact, party planning and catering are prestigeous carreers, and the top positions in such firms are often held by the children of patrons who have squandered their fortunes.

[brian 333]

A breakwater forms a semicircle on the southern side of the harbor with a lighthouse at its end. Along the protected side of this structure a road runs from the shore to the deep water. Beyond the lighthouse it meanders east for a half mile to the low spot between the barrier islands and the shoreline. There corals of all kinds have been sculpted into an ampitheater that humans call the Coral Castle.

The road and castle are enchanted with a permanent Airy Water spell which allows both air and water breathers to breathe and move in a way that is natural to them. Here aquatic elves and merfolk trade with humans and other sea people, and the merfolk hold concerts which are reknowned for their vocal artistry. Humans and other land dwellers often come from every corner of the world to witness a Concert Beneath The Waves.

On rare occasions a mer druid will assemble an 'orchestra' of creatures and on summer nights of the new moon they will have light shows using the phosphorescent and photophoric effects such creatures can produce.

During one such event a company of sehaugin arrived but after the initial panic it was discovered that they wished to trade, and by dawn they were gone, apparently satisfied with their bargains.

[Maat Mons]

Is architecture an art? If not, I'd be warry of any multi-story buildings in this city.

They might not be magic item crafters, but they could be the ones who craft the mundane items that are later imbued with magical abilities. I've always imagined that my Wizard with Craft Wonderous Item isn't doing a bunch of silversmithing, gemcutting, or whatever. I figure he just commissions the mundane parts, and then weaves magic into them.

Anyway, with the ludicrous sums of money some people in the game world have, there could easily be large numbers of people making expensive things for them to buy.

But let's be real. The artists aren't going to be in charge. There is going to be a business interest making this city tick and paying lipservice to the idea of art for art's sake.

And there are also going to be a lot of minimum-wage workers doing all the various necessary things and talking crap about the artists behind their backs.

[brian 333]

Is architecture an art? If not, I'd be warry of any multi-story buildings in this city.

They might not be magic item crafters, but they could be the ones who craft the mundane items that are later imbued with magical abilities. I've always imagined that my Wizard with Craft Wonderous Item isn't doing a bunch of silversmithing, gemcutting, or whatever. I figure he just commissions the mundane parts, and then weaves magic into them.

Anyway, with the ludicrous sums of money some people in the game world have, there could easily be large numbers of people making expensive things for them to buy.

But let's be real. The artists aren't going to be in charge. There is going to be a business interest making this city tick and paying lipservice to the idea of art for art's sake.

And there are also going to be a lot of minimum-wage workers doing all the various necessary things and talking crap about the artists behind their backs.

Agreed. The girl who leads tge tour group to the famous fountain will encourage the tourists to toss coins in it so they will have luck and prosperity. (And because her boyfriend cleans the fountain after the tourists are gone.)

Any city is composed of a majority of working class folks, otherwise nobody eats and the sewerage piles up and then you no longer have a city. But a city devoted to a particular industry can make money off of that industry in many ways.

[Martin Greywolf]

Anyone have any ideas for a city like this, things to do, important people, cultural values/ taboos. Maybe ideas for encounters, whatever!

I'd encourage you to read up on Greek city-states, they were sort of run like this. Well, some of them, it's not like they were a unified nation.

The "democracy" that Athens had would, for example, be a good governmental system, everyone gets to vote provided everyone means a guy who managed to create X works of art displayed in city's gallery. You get an artistocracy that way, while still having other jobs in the city living as second class citizens, which was the norm until these last two centuries.