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    Default Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Years ago, I remember seeing many posts discussing a venerable member's world, where they had theorized the natural result of D&D magic RAW resulting in mage-controlled city-states, conducting trade via teleportation circles, with wilderness between. Problem is, that I don't remember enough details to do a successful search for the topic.


    Does this sound familiar to anyone? How does 5e change things?
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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    It sounds like you might be referring to the Tippyverse.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by SouthpawSoldier View Post
    Years ago, I remember seeing many posts discussing a venerable member's world, where they had theorized the natural result of D&D magic RAW resulting in mage-controlled city-states, conducting trade via teleportation circles, with wilderness between. Problem is, that I don't remember enough details to do a successful search for the topic.


    Does this sound familiar to anyone? How does 5e change things?
    The Tippyverse. The biggest mechanical conceits were permanent Teleportation Cirlces, together with resetting traps that created food and water. And of course, RAW on the cost to create magic items based on spell level, combined with fairly-available shenanigans that trivialized gold as a resource. (If you can chain-bind efreets etc, you can create arbitrary amounts of gold, which makes your magic item creation effectively free.)

    In Emperor Tippy's own words....

    https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...-Emperor-Tippy

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Batcathat View Post
    It sounds like you might be referring to the Tippyverse.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    Obviously this is how a Beholder's anti-magic eye works. It's not just negating magic, it's gathering valuable Vitamin A(rcane).
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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    What was the source for resetting traps? It's a cornerstone to the entire concept, but I've never been clear if it was core or splat.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    What was the source for resetting traps? It's a cornerstone to the entire concept, but I've never been clear if it was core or splat.
    Core as core can be, use-activated magic item. SL * CL * 2000 gp.
    For Teleportation Circle, 9 * 17 * 2000 = 306,000 gp.
    For Create Food and Water 3 * 5 * 2000 = 30,000 gp.

    https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItem...MagicItems.htm

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by johnbragg View Post
    Core as core can be, use-activated magic item. SL * CL * 2000 gp.
    For Teleportation Circle, 9 * 17 * 2000 = 306,000 gp.
    For Create Food and Water 3 * 5 * 2000 = 30,000 gp.

    https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItem...MagicItems.htm
    SRD doesn't really tell me much. But if it was 3.5 DMG magic item creation, that'd be core.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    What was the source for resetting traps? It's a cornerstone to the entire concept, but I've never been clear if it was core or splat.
    It's perfectly possible to do the Tippyverse without automatic resetting traps, it just requires a greater degree of dumpster diving for items. For example, you can provide infinite food using an Everful Larder.
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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Wasn't the deal with the traps some kind of resetting once per round for a ridiculously cheap price and therefore being utterly broken and banned in most games ?

    But you don't really need that. Pearls of Power, Eternal Wands and custum items will still get you eventually arbitrary magic more than good enough to support a post-scarcity magic society.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Wasn't the deal with the traps some kind of resetting once per round for a ridiculously cheap price and therefore being utterly broken and banned in most games ?
    The biggest piece of the puzzle is the Teleportation Circles, which can be permanency'ed for a listed price of 4500 xp each. Or if you use the item creation rules, 306,000 gp. https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm

    Next on the agenda is Create Food and Water stations, for 30,000 gp each. The spell creates bland food, but that's fixable with a Prestidigitation trap for SL 0.5 * CL 1 * 2,000 gp = 1,000 gp a pop, which makes your soy-bugpaste porridge taste like filet mignon or starfruit or chicken nuggets with szechuan sauce or a McRib or whatever.

    Now, the initial cost is enough to limit these shenanigans in table games. Not a lot of 15th-20th level PCs are going to sink half their WBL into a public works Teleportation Circle between Westford City and Port Stormsea for a campaign that only has a few levels left. But sorcerer-kings and vampire merchant dukes and lich-pharoahs and dwarf lords and Shadow Councils and elven high kings and dragon-emperors operate on 1000 year lifespans.

    OF course it doesn't work if you start banning things from RAW as implausible and stupidly broken. The point was to assume that RAW was accurate, and think through how a magical society would develop (assuming that the gods don't drop a mountain on the first city to put the pieces together.)

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    SRD doesn't really tell me much. But if it was 3.5 DMG magic item creation, that'd be core.
    The rules for magic item creation in the SRD are just about word for word identical to the DMG 3.5.

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    Exclamation Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Beleriphon View Post
    The rules for magic item creation in the SRD are just about word for word identical to the DMG 3.5.
    Thanks for confirming. I've wondered for a while now.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by johnbragg View Post
    Core as core can be, use-activated magic item. SL * CL * 2000 gp.
    For Teleportation Circle, 9 * 17 * 2000 = 306,000 gp.
    For Create Food and Water 3 * 5 * 2000 = 30,000 gp.

    https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItem...MagicItems.htm
    I am not sure that is it. Those use-activated items do come with a multiplier for duration or are single use per day. (And thus are more expensive than eternal wands or pearls of power as non casters can use them.) The once per round resetting traps must be from something more obscure and specific. There is a reason it is called traps. It is from some utterly unbalanced trapbuilding stuff that never considered beneficial apprications.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-06-30 at 02:03 AM.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    What was the source for resetting traps? It's a cornerstone to the entire concept, but I've never been clear if it was core or splat.
    I want to say it was from a web article-- a Dungeonscape web enhancement, maybe?
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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    What was the source for resetting traps? It's a cornerstone to the entire concept, but I've never been clear if it was core or splat.
    It's in the rules for traps in the DMG, on page 68.
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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    I am not sure that is it. Those use-activated items do come with a multiplier for duration or are single use per day. (And thus are more expensive than eternal wands or pearls of power as non casters can use them.) The once per round resetting traps must be from something more obscure and specific. There is a reason it is called traps. It is from some utterly unbalanced trapbuilding stuff that never considered beneficial apprications.
    You may have a point, I may be using the wrong math.
    Ring of invisibility, SL 2 * CL 3 * 2000 gp would give you 12,000, not the list price of 20,000.
    EDIT: Footnote 3 doubles the cost of a continuous or use-activated item that uses a spell with a duration of 1 minute /level, such as invisibility. That gives an SRD price of 24,000, higher than the list price of 20,000. If the ring is command-word activated, that's *1800 instead of *2000, for a cost of 21,600

    I don't have a RAW explanation for why ring of invisibility doesn't follow the rules. I can conjecture that it's because the duration of invisibility is usually shorter in practice than the listed 1 min/level, but that's me speculating, not RAW.

    And for the teleportation circles, it's probably more economical to just permanency the darn thing for 4500 xp.

    From the SRD, Lantern of Revealing is the example listed for "use-activated or continuous", the sort of always-on effect that a Tippyverse teleportation circle would be producing. CL 3 invisibility purge * SL 5 * 2000 = 30,000 gp which is the listed price. If you want to argue that a non-movable magic item should be priced differently than a movable one, I'd listen, but I don't think you have a RAW citation for that.

    The numbers all match exactly with what you'd want from a Create Food and Water trap. 3rd level cleric spell.

    If you want to argue it's unbalanced, that's fine. Nobody really said it was balanced. Just said it was RAW. And the game was balanced (to the extent that it was) for what PCs could do, not what millenia-old monarchs with arbitrary wealth could do.

    EDIT:
    If a continuous item has an effect based on a spell with a duration measured in rounds, multiply the cost by 4. If the duration of the spell is 1 minute/level, multiply the cost by 2, and if the duration is 10 minutes/level, multiply the cost by 1.5. If the spell has a 24-hour duration or greater, divide the cost in half.
    So you would multiply the costs of the Teleportation Circles and the Create Food and Water stations by 4, since they have instantaneous durations. But it's still just money, which the Witch-Queen of the Shining City is assumed to have arbitrary quantities of. And once it's built, it's built forever by RAW with no maintenance costs and no time limits.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    "Instantanous" is not "measured in rounds". You can do the teleportation circle as a use-activated item, but you can't do it with instantanous spells.

    You could have a "once per day" instantanous spell item for the command word formula which provides conveniently the very similar Cape of the Mountebank example. But you won't get once per round effects for a similar price.


    Luckily "Create Food and Water" is not actually an instantanous spell, it has 24h duration. You could make a use activated item for it for only 15k. But that would not produce food every round. It would continuously produce exactly as much food as 15 humans or 5 horses need in the same timeframe.

    That makes roughly 1k per person for (bland) food for all eternity.

    That is cheaper than Ring of Sustenance, but not that much cheaper that it changes the setting and the ring would also reduce sleep time.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-06-30 at 11:05 AM.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    "Instantanous" is not "measured in rounds". You can do the teleportation circle as a use-activated item, but you can't do it with instantanous spells.

    You could have a "once per day" instantanous spell item for the command word formula which provides conveniently the very similar Cape of the Mountebank example. But you won't get once per round effects for a similar price.


    Luckily "Create Food and Water" is not actually an instantanous spell, it has 24h duration.
    You're right, I was probably looking at the 5E version (same graphic layout, fonts, colors on the SRD website, My fault.).

    Create Water *is* instantaneous, FWIW. Then bring it to the Prestigiditation Station to get it flavored for 1 hour.

    You could make a use activated item for it for only 15k. But that would not produce food every round. It would continuously produce exactly as much food as 15 humans or 5 horses need in the same timeframe.
    I don't think there's anything in RAW that limits a magic item based on the duration of the spell. IT factors into the cost, and if you want to escalate the cost I think there's an argument-by-analogy, but RAW doesn't give you a real formula to do that past x4--at least I don't see a formula that scales up or down.

    The balance limitation is supposed to be that you need to pretty much spend an entire dragon hoard to do it, so it's out of hte PC's reach except as a campaign capstone.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    its not based on magic item creation but on traps

    traps can be made to cast a spell every time they are activated at a cost exponential cheaper than a magic item granting the same effect.

    I dont have the formula but as a simple example a inflict light wounds trap is 500 gp. Switch it to cure light wounds and you have a 500gp (maybe 1000 if it isn't market price) room of infinite healing.

    https://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#magicTraps
    Last edited by awa; 2022-06-30 at 12:03 PM.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Really the most unrealistic part of the Tippyverse were the soldiers trained to run through a Teleportation Circle, on the turn it's created, all in perfect sync.
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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    so a good berry trap capable of creating infinite food would only cost 500gp to build. As a resetting trap it would cast the spell again and again so long as you had people sprint through the room over and over
    Last edited by awa; 2022-06-30 at 12:09 PM.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by awa View Post
    so a good berry trap capable of creating infinite food would only cost 500gp to build. As a resetting trap it would cast the spell again and again so long as you had people sprint through the room over and over
    Infinite healing, too. 1 hp a round anyway.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    Really the most unrealistic part of the Tippyverse were the soldiers trained to run through a Teleportation Circle, on the turn it's created, all in perfect sync.
    It's a 9th level spell, casting time 10 minutes, duration 10 minutes/level. So 170 minutes minimum, times 60 rounds is plenty of dudes. 5' radius, so marching in 2x2, 20 Medium sized dudes per minute. That's 1200 dudes an hour at a strolling pace.

    Teaching soldiers to march in a line in unison to a set tempo is a thing that happens in the real world all the time. If there were some strong reason to teach soldiers to run in formation, we'd figure out how to do that.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by johnbragg View Post
    It's a 9th level spell, casting time 10 minutes, duration 10 minutes/level. So 170 minutes minimum, times 60 rounds is plenty of dudes. 5' radius, so marching in 2x2, 20 Medium sized dudes per minute. That's 1200 dudes an hour at a strolling pace.

    Teaching soldiers to march in a line in unison to a set tempo is a thing that happens in the real world all the time. If there were some strong reason to teach soldiers to run in formation, we'd figure out how to do that.
    I'm not denying that it's fast, but the Tippyverse assumes speeds orders of magnitude faster. As in 1000 soldiers per round. 1200 in an hour is not as devestating as the setting advertises, and soldiers running full pelt at the circle from all directions (as Tippy indicates in the thread) strains my personal WSoD.

    There's probably a mid point of reasonable but not breaking the setting though like a few hundred jogging through each round.

    EDIT: I am, if course, we don't want any of our soldiers trampled to death. Although I struggle to get Tippy's numbers, I get 4*6*4=96/round. That means a line on each side, running at x4, each with standard human speed. Tippy seems to think that ten humans can fit in a five foot square.
    Last edited by Anonymouswizard; 2022-06-30 at 01:27 PM.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    I'm not denying that it's fast, but the Tippyverse assumes speeds orders of magnitude faster. As in 1000 soldiers per round. 1200 in an hour is not as devestating as the setting advertises, and soldiers running full pelt at the circle from all directions (as Tippy indicates in the thread) strains my personal WSoD.

    There's probably a mid point of reasonable but not breaking the setting though like a few hundred jogging through each round.

    EDIT: I am, if course, we don't want any of our soldiers trampled to death. Although I struggle to get Tippy's numbers, I get 4*6*4=96/round. That means a line on each side, running at x4, each with standard human speed. Tippy seems to think that ten humans can fit in a five foot square.
    Let's push my numbers up a bit. 5' circle, so 10' wide, 2 medium creatures side-by-side. If we use the Run x3 speed from the SRD, that's 90' of movement, that's 18 pairs a round. 36 per round, 360 per minute, that's 21,600 in an hour.

    I don't know that you actually get to that number, because in D&D a bunch of mooks are a whole lot less effective than a handful of highly capables. Your first 100 highly-levelled and magicked-up-the-wazoo dudes through the portal are going to win or lose the day, the rest are just mopping up and occupation troops, or getting slaughtered if the vanguard fails.

    EDIT: I didn't check Tippy's math on World War I style human waves coming through the Teleportation Circles. But just having Avengers: Endgame happen to your city is plenty bad enough.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Of course, they don't use human soldiers in the Tippyverse. They use advanced shadesteel golems with superhuman intelligence and epic feats. Because when you have infinite resources, why NOT use invisible perma-hasted flying robots?

    Base speed of 30ft, +30ft from Epic Speed,+30ft from Haste, and x4 with Run gives you a move speed of 360ft... which in turn gives you 288 golems per round (or 2880 per minute, or 180,000 an hour). That only gets worse when you start adding extra buffs and equipment--I'm pretty sure there are a couple ways to get a fly speed of double your movement, for example.


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    1) They make about the best bodies to True Mind Switch with as you pick up perfect flight, immunity to magic, a Dex and Strength bump, all of the Construct Immunities, are still Medium size, and get to basically be a transhuman android which is just cool.

    2) They are the best minions you can get. Perfect flight, immunity to magic, total loyalty, and relatively cheap to pump up to 20+ HD. Spend the 8,000 GP when you craft it and it gets an Int score equal to half your CL; an ECL 17 character can potentially have an effective CL of 40 to 60 or so which means a base Int score of somewhere between 20 and 30. This gets the Golem skill points and feats, and with over 20 HD it can qualify for Epic Feats. Exceptional + Infinite Deflection is quite tasty. Throw on a permanent telepathic bond and a Heightened to 9th Shadow Evocation Invisible Continual Flame and it gets to always act as Hasted and heal 9 points per round. Throw on Hide Life and it becomes immune to death/destruction from HP damage.

    All told, for about 250K you can make a creature that will tear through pretty much any standard CR 20 challenge like a hot chainsaw through butter.

    And once you have the template created you can go and use Ice Assassin to make yourself as many copies as you desire for (even if you actually pay for the IA's) about ten percent of the cost.

    3) As a DM they make great opponents to throw at your players. Especially if you throw on non associated class levels. Extra fun is had by pairing the Shadesteel or two up with a few Umbral Spies.

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    Last edited by Grod_The_Giant; 2022-06-30 at 03:20 PM.
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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Originally Posted by johnbragg
    Infinite healing, too. 1 hp a round anyway.
    Goodberry is capped at 8 hp of healing over 24 hours, so not exactly infinite.

    Originally Posted by johnbragg
    But just having Avengers: Endgame happen to your city is plenty bad enough.
    If I’m recalling correctly, Tippy was assuming that the teleportation circles would initially be set up for trade, and then would be coopted as conduits for invasion. He further claimed that “the attacker will always have a nigh insurmountable initiative advantage.”

    There seem to be two common-sense responses to this. First, if teleportation circles are a gateway for your enemies, it would make sense to go to some lengths to avoid using them in your city.

    If you can’t possibly avoid reliance on teleportation circles (a major assumption in itself) then it seems most likely that these would be located well outside the city and fortified into kill boxes against any incoming hostiles. I’m not sure if Tippy ever really accounted for that.

    But then, his setting seems to rely on oversimplification of economic interactions, as well as a general sense of inevitability about the scenario. If you read some of his early posts, he just handwaved away a lot of issues which would most likely arise very quickly.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    There seem to be two common-sense responses to this. First, if teleportation circles are a gateway for your enemies, it would make sense to go to some lengths to avoid using them in your city.

    If you can’t possibly avoid reliance on teleportation circles (a major assumption in itself) then it seems most likely that these would be located well outside the city and fortified into kill boxes against any incoming hostiles. I’m not sure if Tippy ever really accounted for that.
    Yeah. I'm no tactician, but knowing exactly where your enemy is likely to show up seems like it'd be a pretty hefty advantage, even if you can't just set up something to block their arrival.

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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    The Tippyverse is based on RAW being paramount. To quote the Emperor themself 'No rules means it doesn't matter'. Past a certain point the TCs serve as nothing but a potential invasion method because he's eliminated the need to trade, but as there's no rules for not trading that's ignored

    Really the closest published I can come up with for the Tippyverse is the Extropian habs in Eclipse Phase. Relatively small areas holding the actual population, separated by vast stretches of spacewilderness, with incredible technologymagic being created there, trade and travel are mostly accomplished via data transmissionteleportation circle, and the inhabitants live in an effectively post-scarcity society. The difference is that in EP a lot of that is by the choice of those living there.

    I'm honestly uncertain why Tippyverse cities ever invade each other
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    Default Re: Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

    Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard
    I'm honestly uncertain why Tippyverse cities ever invade each other....
    In the first page of that thread, Jack_Simth pointed out that the only reason would be ego, which Tippy doesn't seem to have responded to, although he does causally mention dead cities as the result of one or another issue.

    But I would think that if all cities were under equal threat of being attacked from all other cities, either one city would strike first or they would all strike simultaneously, and either way you would end up with, at best, one city left. Very much like putting a lot of spiders into a single large container; after a day or two, you just have one spider left.

    It takes a lot of unsustainable assumptions to keep multiple cities alive in the Tippyverse, and I think most pathways would quickly lead to the complete mutual destruction of the cities, or at best one city ruling the devastated remnants of the others. And of course that doesn't do much for trade, so whatever city survives will most likely retreat into itself and ignore the outside world.

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