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santagoblin
Acolyte
USA
6 Posts |
 Posted - 22 Jun 2013 : 21:51:05
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In a high powered campaign, the project has been started by the Dm with unlimited resources to create 5 new cities useing high magic techniques and then eventually incorporating a mythal or mythal like substance to give each of them a kick and make them unique, as an example I allready have created one city on the bank of a river useing totally force technology, force walls, bridges, filled with water as a conveyance useing laereals aqueus columns and magical bubble pod,s to travel about in up down and side ways but im looking for ideas on other cities
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All goblins are innocent!!! |
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Ze
Learned Scribe
Italy
147 Posts |
Posted - 22 Jun 2013 : 22:13:54
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Would that be in the Forgotten Realms (and if so, where and in what year) or in a homebrew setting?
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santagoblin
Acolyte
USA
6 Posts |
Posted - 22 Jun 2013 : 22:32:38
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| homebrew we use greyhawk setting, where we have founded a unique nation ruled by humans |
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xaeyruudh
Master of Realmslore
USA
1853 Posts |
Posted - 22 Jun 2013 : 23:40:37
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Sounds fun!
Greyhawk was the setting for the 1e adventure Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, right? Using a combination of mechanical innovation (steam engines, advanced forging and finesmithing techniques), bits of alien technology (nuclear reactors, computers, vast bodies of knowledge stored on various types of media, holograms, etc), and a healthy dose of magic, you could create a really cool city (or even a little-known subculture inhabiting the sewers) with mechs, phasers, and light sabers.
Too much? Fine. Take out the alien technology, ignoring the precedent set by that published adventure, and you can still do a steampunk city making use of elementals and having an interesting assortment of citizens. For example, mephits could be commonplace, making up maybe 20% of the city's population. Or... kobolds. I'm seeing kobolds dressed in late 19th century suits, and they look awesome.
I like the ideas you've come up with. Mythals alone present a whole lot of opportunities for awesomeness. Walls of force aren't typically opaque, are they? So everybody kinda lives in glass houses? Not that there's anything wrong with that. Would definitely discourage people from being prudes.
Definitely a lot of room for creativity with those cities... and societies shaped in completely different ways than what we're used to.
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santagoblin
Acolyte
USA
6 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jun 2013 : 00:46:06
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well the wall of force aspect was nescesary for several reasons and yes they are initially see thru but we used a low level spell research to color them and stylize them for individual uses along with several unique variations to make it a special place for the very rich. the walls of force are also used for force ships powered by multiple gust of wind jet engines. in the high powered campaign it is and location the wall of forces protect the city from being bombed by a variant of wall of stone the enemy likes to drop of cities to devastateing effect.
But no grey hawk is the original game setting and were not useing mechanical devices its a feudal technology world supplemented by high magic. looking for new ideas to us a city such as waterdeeps layout of row after row of houses is suicidal when hordes of fantastic creatures aka (world war z) ju ju zombies come over the wall and eat youre population. I cant give out to much information about the world im really looking for new ideas |
All goblins are innocent!!! |
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xaeyruudh
Master of Realmslore
USA
1853 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jun 2013 : 01:08:02
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What about extradimensional spaces?
Doors can be warded with spells and also trapped (the Ruins of Undermountain boxes had some neat magical door types), but few buildings need to be visible in the city since the interiors of each building are located elsewhere. Also, the doors can be invisible and levitated any distance off the ground; ethereal staircases connect them to the street only when specific conditions are met. The stairs appear automatically when the door is opened from the inside, but getting access to any building from the outside requires speaking a command word to activate an intercom and then convincing the occupant to activate the stairs so that you can come up.
So the city appears empty, except for whatever facilities are provided to visitors. The market/bazaar probably has its own walled district, with gates that can bar hostile forces from the rest of the city. Within this area, merchant stalls and wagons etc are mostly visible and accessible.
In the main parts of the city, the structures are all ethereal so the only thing you'd see are people walking from one building to another or socializing. Maybe some domesticated animals.
Weird place. I dig it. |
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xaeyruudh
Master of Realmslore
USA
1853 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jun 2013 : 01:15:07
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Another idea is a city with no doors... the buildings might be there and visible, but all the doors are portals and all the portals are keyed. So with the right key you can go anywhere, but without a key you get nothin.
Since the residents all have the keys they're authorized to use, they never walk the streets... they just portal from one place to another as necessary.
The mythal in a city like this might prohibit all magic except the use of keys to activate portals. So magical assault against the buildings (attempts to burrow or shatter, etc) would be ineffective, and the walls might be made of metal or stone thick enough to make destruction by nonmagical forces ludicrous.
Especially if the city is self-sufficient (hydroponic farms, murlynd's spoons, decanters of endless water, magical "vending machines" which dispense whole meals), it would look like a ghost town to invaders.
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santagoblin
Acolyte
USA
6 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jun 2013 : 01:41:20
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| i like the idea its out of the box but wanting something more fatastic and majestic that shows off the power of the mythal and is diffrent then any other city designed is... i think ur headed in the right direction more ideas please, allready decided one of the cities is going to be a 5 mile across cloud castle and another will be directly below it several miles into the underdark which we will use earth ships to travel to and fro between it and the surface |
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Ze
Learned Scribe
Italy
147 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jun 2013 : 10:07:45
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Well, see what you can make of this. There might be some ideas you want to steal.
Mind you, it's just a drafted idea and it's thought in 3.x terms.
Sorry about the broken language, any correction is always welcome!
Oh and since it's open ended, if anybody wants to add something, developing it, that could be of help both to the OP and to me... 
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Lughrdun the Grim had a dream.
His long years as a young half-orc spent in the dark caves of Glanykra, his hands scorched by the rough haft of the rusty pick, his lungs fatigued and his eyes stinging by the noxious dust he's exposed to most of the time - that was when the dream appeared.
Later, when he apprenticed as a Mage, the dream was nurtured and developed, and while he hand-copied tomes above tomes, hardly sleeping at all, bent over a flickering candle, sweating to the moist heat of the Chultan Jungle, the dream became a project, and when Lughrdun began manipulating the raw forces of magic, the project became his main goal.
Some day he would get rid of the need to work. Not only for himself but for everyone. His goal was to use magic to allow people to live without the constant struggle for life everybody go through.
The goal could only be reached step by step, the first of which would be the identification and solution of the root cause of the problem.
Why do people work, ultimately? Lughrdun's answer was - to obtain relief goods - which he determined to be mainly food, drink, and shelter (both from weather and from enemies).
So there it was, his first step - he would remove the need for relief goods from the population of a city.
That is how Lughrdun's Ward was created. For seventeen years, the Grim deeply researched the magic of ancient Mythals and Netherese Mantles, extensively analyzed the enchantments of the Rings of Sustainance, and carefully selected a small city, suitable both for its location and for the accord of its people.
At the end, he raised the Ward. It acts upon any living creature (including animals, but not vermin) that has been in the city for one year more, and its effects fade if the creature stays out of the Ward area for more three decades. Each affected creature enjoys the combined effects of a Ring of Sustainance and a constant Resist Elements spell (both cold and heat). Furthermore, any external creature can enter the Ward area only if allowed by the wielder of Lughrdun's Pick (acting as the Ward's key) or his deputees. This limitation is not applied to creatures who were affected by the Ward, exited its area, and are re-entering while still under the Ward's influence (that is, within 3 decades, as stated above).
One year has passed since Lughrdun's Ward was raised, and the first implications (some whisper "issues") are appearing.
As the news of the Ward spreads, it attracts people. This was foreseen by Lughrdun and the City Council, and it was decided that new citizens would not be allowed easily - the population should remain constant, and a waiting list for would-be citizens is created: new citizens are allowed only upon emigration or death of a current citizen.
This gives way to a negative attitude by the population of the nearby towns, as well as to plans of invasion by the most envious neighbours.
The city does not buy any more clothes, food, or weapons. Nor does it produce any more of the products it used to sell. Merchants see no point in coming to the city, so the trade ways start bypassing it.
Less and less visitors, so news do not spread easily - the city is more and more isolated.
People is not striving for a living any more, which leads to an increase in leisure. The request in leisure items raises (books, wine, arts), fishing and hunting are passtimes.
However, leisure items are expensive if bought from "outer" traders, so an in-city market develops, composed mainly of citizens bartering leisure goods.
The Ward does not prevent greed or ambition, so there are some who see this as a possibility to enrich themselves within the city.
The lack of occupation also leads to boredom, and for some people, eventually, to violence.
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Edited by - Ze on 23 Jun 2013 10:09:02 |
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santagoblin
Acolyte
USA
6 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jun 2013 : 19:48:20
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| sounds like the most boring city ever |
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Ze
Learned Scribe
Italy
147 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jun 2013 : 21:07:18
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LOL
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xaeyruudh
Master of Realmslore
USA
1853 Posts |
Posted - 24 Jun 2013 : 02:40:04
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I dunno about boring, but I think it would definitely have some problems.
You might be underestimating the tendency of bored people toward violence.
Also, simply not needing to eat or drink doesn't really mean nobody will need to work... people will still have hobbies and goals they want to pursue which will require money.
Also, some people will eat anyway, because they simply enjoy eating. Since their need for sustenance is taken care of, every calorie they consume will become excess if it isn't worked off... so there will be a larger than usual problem with obesity and lack of physical health.
Combined with the violence, I think the citizens will generally die young, and the waiting list will dry up because as you mentioned the city isn't getting much publicity if the merchants stop showing up. The first generation or two, it will seem like paradise, the next several generations it will become increasingly crime-ridden, and after that it will gradually become a ghost town. At some point in the future, after the roads to it are overgrown and its been forgotten, it could be rediscovered, and hypothesized to be paradise, and the whole process would begin anew.
It probably wouldn't be as great as it was first imagined to be. But boring wouldn't my first choice of ways to describe it. |
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Ze
Learned Scribe
Italy
147 Posts |
Posted - 24 Jun 2013 : 11:30:28
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xaeyruudh, I agree about the health issues and the violence, and I think the spiral downwards could actually occur very much sooner than a whole generation - it's a question of a few years tops in my head.
The "food for the joy of it" was included among the leisure items for me.
Furthermore it might be used as one of the examples why things would not work the way Lughrdun imagined (he's a half-orc after all) - let's imagine that a citizen wants to have highly-processed foods (for instance, paté de foie gras). It is composed of simple ingredients (butter, liver, ham, and spices), but its preparation (and the preparation of some of its ingredients) require an adequate set of skills. He is used to have his foie gras prepared by his own cook, but his cook quit his job when the Ward was raised. The same goes for the innmaster in his favourite inn, who was a good cook, but now he spends most of his time bathing down at the pond.
Our paté-lover can learn to make his own butter and ham, and learn to prepare his paté, if he can still find someone who keeps ducks to fatten their liver - nobody in the city does that anymore, so our poor guy can only find something to give to the spare merchants still coming to town (bartering is easier than paying, as money runs short without the usual flow provided by trade), and he will eventually have his foie gras the next time that merchants will come to town.
Or, he can choose to do without his favorite dish.
Or, again, he can choose to emigrate.
And this is just a silly example, but it helps to show how many problems there might be in this scenario. Mostly in the socio-economic structure, which would lead to violence as much as boredom, if not even more.
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hashimashadoo
Master of Realmslore
United Kingdom
1155 Posts |
Posted - 24 Jun 2013 : 13:46:54
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How about a city in which everything runs on rune magic?
You place a coin within a slot, press a rune and a Heroes's Feast is conjured in the room. Every mundane task can be achieved with the push of a 'button' that activates a spell trigger rune.
Just a brief idea. No forethought. |
When life turns it's back on you...sneak attack for extra damage.
Head admin of the FR wiki:
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Creating 5 new cities for a high magic realm
