Challenging my high-lvl group (NPCs and monsters; my players shouldn't read this!)
- Thread starter Piratecat
- Start date
Spatzimaus
First Post
Piratecat said:
It REALLY depends on one thing: did the refugees manage to bring along even part of their wealth? I mean, this IS D&D. In a city of 200,000, there'd have to be at least a few people with portable holes, bags of holding, etc. Even if they couldn't bring a lot with them, as long as their original home still existed, "salvage parties" could teleport there and back to recover things.
Two possibilities:
1> They have nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Personally, I don't even think this'd be feasible then, with the numbers you're mentioning. They'd have no way to pay for the extra food, water, essential items (clothing, etc). The city would have massive shortages of food and water, with no way to make up the difference. The refugees would have to live in a shantytown, most likely, except for the few with enough skill to build something out in the wilderness (log cabin, cottage, whatever). The decrease in hygeine would almost definitely cause a plague.
There'd be a glut on low-level labor at first, as poor ex-farmers and such needed money just to feed themselves. Some professions can bring all their essentials along, but the ones that can't will be at the bottom of the pile. The skilled craftsmen would find work in their local craft guilds, especially the ones that could bring even a few of their tools along; they might have to act like apprentices or journeymen for a while, but it's better than nothing. But, without extra money coming into the system, this'd take a LONG time to sort out; the local blacksmith, for instance, would now have far more people wanting things made, and could use the extra labor, but most of that extra demand would come from people unable to pay until their own jobs paid them, and so on. This'd cause a rapid shift back to a barter economy for most services, and there'd be huge resentment within many of the crafts (let's say I'm apprentice to the only smith in town... and suddenly, two more master smiths show up looking for work, each with their own apprentices. Now, the chances of me taking over the business are slim to none.)
2> They managed to bring a sizeable amount of wealth with them.
If you do this, then they can pay to have actual houses built, open their own shops (instead of having to apprentice to others), and so on. While their average wealth might not be up to the standards of the original town, it'd be more like a rapid growth of the city instead of a disaster. If the original city is fairly spread out, it wouldn't even cause a huge problem, but if the old town was compact (say, with a wall around it) you'd eventually have effecitvely two separate cities, side-by-side.
The actual situation would probably be somewhere between 1 and 2. The wealthier people would probably find ways to keep some of their wealth, and some craftsmen would find ways to bring along the essential tools of their trade and a few valuable items. But the simple peasants would have nothing. Either way, you'll have huge religious/cultural disputes, as the culture of the newcomers would eventually dominate the existing one due simply to numbers. You'd get conversions in both directions. Crime would skyrocket; the old city wouldn't want to depend on any law enforcement from the newcomers, and the newcomers would be easy to steal from. Gangs would usually be the result of this.
The worst shortages wouldn't appear for a while. Building all those new houses takes wood, and while there may be plenty of trees in the area now, the logging would probably go from being balanced with the local planting rate to being completely unbalanced. This, in turn, would upset the Druids. Likewise, animals would be over-hunted, as the easiest way for the newcomers to get food without paying money. Iron ore would run out after a little bit, as the local smiths use the local supply up on utility items like horseshoes, tools, nails, etc.; unless the town's in an area where ore can be mined, that is. You'd probably see many of these crafts switch to whatever materials were available; bronze, wood, and bone would be used wherever possible. So in addition to the strangeness of seeing horses with wooden shoes, or bronze tools everywhere, there'd be a lot more trade routes opening up to supply these materials.
The people hit hardest would be those with "non-productive" professions. Peasants and craftsmen can obviously find jobs in their own specialties, given time, but what does a mid-level politician do? Sure, eventually they'll need some sort of bureaucracy to manage the expanded town, but there's no guarantee that he will be part of that. This is especially true if he didn't deserve the job in the first place; if he was corrupt, and people knew it, they're not going to want him back again, and unless the people who got him the job in the first place have influence in this new town (probably not), he's hosed. If this is in a feudal society, than the "mayor" of the old city was probably some sort of minor nobility; if the new town isn't part of the same chain of obligations, then he'd be completely out of a job. Aside from politicians, there are always some professions that wouldn't transfer well. In a wealthy city you can afford to have a certain number of artists, philosophers, professional athletes, entertainers, and such; if those people were suddenly refugees in a much poorer group of people, who can't possibly support their old professions, what do they do?
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Excellent. I also need to consider sewage, and water, and food. The town in question is Corsai, and an influx like that is going to drain the resources of a desert city in no time flat. Keep the ideas coming.
When I post about this in a month or so (it won't occur for one or two games), I'll accompany it with my game design thoughts on why I'm doing it. The short answer is that I'm dramatically shaking up the military and political climate in and around Corsai; how the PCs handle it will have a direct impact on how much influence they have when negotiating with Ioun.
When I post about this in a month or so (it won't occur for one or two games), I'll accompany it with my game design thoughts on why I'm doing it. The short answer is that I'm dramatically shaking up the military and political climate in and around Corsai; how the PCs handle it will have a direct impact on how much influence they have when negotiating with Ioun.
Greybar
No Trouble at All
If you've read the Song of Ice and Fire books, this sounds a lot like what happens there when the war comes calling ... though not nearly as bad as the 80K vs. 200K I'm sure.
Just knowing where to put all of those people is huge. I like Spaz's distinction between potential wealthy (perhaps exiled nobility) and the common folk.
For the wealthy, they might be able to wiggle their connections to be taken in as guests by Corsai nobility (and churches, etc.) But the longer they are there, two things will probably happen side by side:
1) their hosts will chafe at the cost of their generosity. This will also be modified by whether the cause of the diaspora looks to be solvable in the near future, or if it is only getting worse.
2) the refugees who were nobles or other powerful types are used to being in charge of their own city. By their own natures, they're going to try to have a say about the conduct of their host city - particular as it relates to themselves, their people, and long term solutions to the problem.
For the working folk, I think alot good has been said before. Huge amounts of desperate violence, backlash from the local population, long buried racial and nationalistic hatreds rising again. The rise of groups like the mafia, which was originally a group to defend locals against the occupation and then became steadily more corrupt.
Lots of potential for well-meaning people to want to kill other well-meaning people! The Good vs. Good battles are the best, aren't they?
Just knowing where to put all of those people is huge. I like Spaz's distinction between potential wealthy (perhaps exiled nobility) and the common folk.
For the wealthy, they might be able to wiggle their connections to be taken in as guests by Corsai nobility (and churches, etc.) But the longer they are there, two things will probably happen side by side:
1) their hosts will chafe at the cost of their generosity. This will also be modified by whether the cause of the diaspora looks to be solvable in the near future, or if it is only getting worse.
2) the refugees who were nobles or other powerful types are used to being in charge of their own city. By their own natures, they're going to try to have a say about the conduct of their host city - particular as it relates to themselves, their people, and long term solutions to the problem.
For the working folk, I think alot good has been said before. Huge amounts of desperate violence, backlash from the local population, long buried racial and nationalistic hatreds rising again. The rise of groups like the mafia, which was originally a group to defend locals against the occupation and then became steadily more corrupt.
Lots of potential for well-meaning people to want to kill other well-meaning people! The Good vs. Good battles are the best, aren't they?
Spatzimaus
First Post
Okay, from your phrasing I'm assuming the people are coming TO Corsai, not FROM. So, are the refugees all coming from one city or area, or is this more of a general influx to the one safe place in the world? If it was a single city that fell, and its entire population is moving, then the newcomers will be more likely to try reasserting their old structure.
One thing that helps here is that thanks to the church of Aeos, Corsai will have more priests per capita than most other cities. That means that failing all else, create food and water can sustain the refugees for a while, and the various healing magics can help prevent massive plagues and water contamination. Mystical "soup kitchens" will go a long way, here.
Sewage will be difficult no matter how you look at it; it's not so much the disposal of actual sewage that'll be the problem, it's the fact that poor refugees probably aren't in a position to be as careful about waste and disease as they would be normally. Again, magic helps, but the only long-term solution is to get them into livable conditions again.
When you say Corsai is in the desert, do you mean that it's a spring/oasis style of mid-desert town (like many in Saudi Arabia), or do you mean a town along a freshwater river that runs through a desert (like those near the Nile in Egypt)? River-based ones wouldn't be too bad; you'd still have some good farmland, water consumption could increase to match the new population, and the sewage increase would really only be a problem for whoever's downstream of you.
But, if it's an oasis-centered city, you'd have huge problems. The amount of semi-arable land would be limited; without the ability to expand the local farmland, you're not going to solve the food issue easily, and the people won't be able to simply spread out into the wilderness. In fact, for the city to grow to enclose new houses, you'd actually have to reduce the farmland a bit. If the primary source of food for the city is animal-based (livestock, fish, etc.) then the food supply can't be expanded quickly at all even if there was enough land. These sorts of desert cities tend to reach the maximum size their environment can supply, and then hold there, because the methods required to expand beyond that point are prohibitive, and tend to be detrimental to the area (see also: Los Angeles' water supply).
In fact, I'd say then that the long-term problem is that the majority of the refugees simply CAN'T stay in Corsai. It just can't hold them; no city can easily handle a tripling of population in a short time, even if there were no food/water issues. A few could stay, since it's practically guaranteed that Corsai could absorb a small number of skilled immigrants, but most would have to go elsewhere.
Solution: If there are any other oases or rivers nearby, you might actually see a number of new, smaller "protectorate" towns springing up instead, populated almost entirely by refugees, each limited by the size of its own water supply. While there might already be small towns near Corsai, a few things limit that; this area has been cleaned out in the past by both the Mang and later the Necromancer Kings, right? Plus, they've probably had the usual problems with raiders. I'd think that only large, fortified cities would have survived those times, so there are probably a good number of abandoned/razed small towns near other sources of water. Maybe they're only mostly abandoned.
So, let's say Corsai encourages (and helps fund and construct, with serious magic) a number of new towns located in these spots, with the understanding that their military will defend the towns against external threats. Corsai might end up with 120k people (adding more military and bureaucracy, plus some people who just like big cities), and there would now be a dozen new small towns within 100 miles, ranging from a few small towns of 5k people to one or two big 50k cities. They wouldn't be homogeneous; the Dwarves might end up running one town, while the Elves end up with another, and so on. Any group uncomfortable with the current setup in Corsai would prefer its own town, and if the immigrants came from a small number of cities, you'd see a lot of towns with "New" in the name where they attempt to re-establish the system they lived under before. In fact, you'd probably see some current Corsai residents choosing to move out to the small towns; they'd probably be the wealthiest ones there, too, so Corsai might end up even MORE Aeos-dominated than before.
It's not even implausible to have towns develop this way. Under normal circumstances, a village can't grow from a small, agrarian village to a walled city overnight, so it's understandable that even with a number of good city locations, only the largest (like Corsai) would have survived the various armies that have gone through this region, while the inhabitants of the rest moved to the safer cities. But if you're supplying tens of thousands of new residents AND the resources for construction AND defenders while the construction is underway, it's actually feasible.
So, questions:
> What are the primary sources of food and water for Corsai, currently?
> Have you already established the geography of the area for the players, or are you free to play around with it a bit?
> What are you aiming for, in the long run? Do you WANT those 200k to be part of Corsai? Do you want them to remain in the area? Are they going to be able to return to their original homes? Or are they just a problem that's going to move through?
One thing that helps here is that thanks to the church of Aeos, Corsai will have more priests per capita than most other cities. That means that failing all else, create food and water can sustain the refugees for a while, and the various healing magics can help prevent massive plagues and water contamination. Mystical "soup kitchens" will go a long way, here.
Sewage will be difficult no matter how you look at it; it's not so much the disposal of actual sewage that'll be the problem, it's the fact that poor refugees probably aren't in a position to be as careful about waste and disease as they would be normally. Again, magic helps, but the only long-term solution is to get them into livable conditions again.
When you say Corsai is in the desert, do you mean that it's a spring/oasis style of mid-desert town (like many in Saudi Arabia), or do you mean a town along a freshwater river that runs through a desert (like those near the Nile in Egypt)? River-based ones wouldn't be too bad; you'd still have some good farmland, water consumption could increase to match the new population, and the sewage increase would really only be a problem for whoever's downstream of you.
But, if it's an oasis-centered city, you'd have huge problems. The amount of semi-arable land would be limited; without the ability to expand the local farmland, you're not going to solve the food issue easily, and the people won't be able to simply spread out into the wilderness. In fact, for the city to grow to enclose new houses, you'd actually have to reduce the farmland a bit. If the primary source of food for the city is animal-based (livestock, fish, etc.) then the food supply can't be expanded quickly at all even if there was enough land. These sorts of desert cities tend to reach the maximum size their environment can supply, and then hold there, because the methods required to expand beyond that point are prohibitive, and tend to be detrimental to the area (see also: Los Angeles' water supply).
In fact, I'd say then that the long-term problem is that the majority of the refugees simply CAN'T stay in Corsai. It just can't hold them; no city can easily handle a tripling of population in a short time, even if there were no food/water issues. A few could stay, since it's practically guaranteed that Corsai could absorb a small number of skilled immigrants, but most would have to go elsewhere.
Solution: If there are any other oases or rivers nearby, you might actually see a number of new, smaller "protectorate" towns springing up instead, populated almost entirely by refugees, each limited by the size of its own water supply. While there might already be small towns near Corsai, a few things limit that; this area has been cleaned out in the past by both the Mang and later the Necromancer Kings, right? Plus, they've probably had the usual problems with raiders. I'd think that only large, fortified cities would have survived those times, so there are probably a good number of abandoned/razed small towns near other sources of water. Maybe they're only mostly abandoned.
So, let's say Corsai encourages (and helps fund and construct, with serious magic) a number of new towns located in these spots, with the understanding that their military will defend the towns against external threats. Corsai might end up with 120k people (adding more military and bureaucracy, plus some people who just like big cities), and there would now be a dozen new small towns within 100 miles, ranging from a few small towns of 5k people to one or two big 50k cities. They wouldn't be homogeneous; the Dwarves might end up running one town, while the Elves end up with another, and so on. Any group uncomfortable with the current setup in Corsai would prefer its own town, and if the immigrants came from a small number of cities, you'd see a lot of towns with "New" in the name where they attempt to re-establish the system they lived under before. In fact, you'd probably see some current Corsai residents choosing to move out to the small towns; they'd probably be the wealthiest ones there, too, so Corsai might end up even MORE Aeos-dominated than before.
It's not even implausible to have towns develop this way. Under normal circumstances, a village can't grow from a small, agrarian village to a walled city overnight, so it's understandable that even with a number of good city locations, only the largest (like Corsai) would have survived the various armies that have gone through this region, while the inhabitants of the rest moved to the safer cities. But if you're supplying tens of thousands of new residents AND the resources for construction AND defenders while the construction is underway, it's actually feasible.
So, questions:
> What are the primary sources of food and water for Corsai, currently?
> Have you already established the geography of the area for the players, or are you free to play around with it a bit?
> What are you aiming for, in the long run? Do you WANT those 200k to be part of Corsai? Do you want them to remain in the area? Are they going to be able to return to their original homes? Or are they just a problem that's going to move through?
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Spatzimaus said:
I'll be AFK until Sunday, but before I go. . .
1. Corsai is on an arid grassland, with desert to the west, prairies to the east, mountains to the north (the southern end of a north/sound chain) and dry grasslands to the south. The city farms the eastern (and to an certain extent the southern) grasslands, and has huge herds of cattle and sheep. Think Texas, with a slightly more exotic feel. I never really thought of it before, but a river clearly comes south from the mountains and passes through Corsai.
2. I can play around with the area within reason.
3. No, the 200K refugees won't be staying in Corsai for the most part. I know where they'll end up, though. . . and the trek there is going to make for some entertaining political upheaval as what is effectively an army marches across numerous nations.
Some of you might remember the key/plane shift focus that Nolin found back in the vaults of Mrid; it was tied to a legend of a lost dwarven city. Well, they're coming back.
Graywolf-ELM
Explorer
At a certain point, the leaders of the city, have to say. Shut the gate, we can not sacrifice the survival of our people for the refugees. Then either the city is closed and a semi-siege takes place, where caravans bound for the city are waylaid and the city begins to lose food and resources from the outside, or some form of system of entry is granted, with the enty a pass is given, and the person must leave by a certain time, or risk not getting a pass again. The grounds around the city(if it is walled) become an open camp with the possibility of the spread of disease and more, unless some order is maintained for waste disposal and such.
A form of martial law gets instituted with a curfew to keep outsiders off of the streets and crime down. passes are checked, profiling happens, gods forbid you leave your house without your resident pass, you could be thrown out of the city.
A form of martial law gets instituted with a curfew to keep outsiders off of the streets and crime down. passes are checked, profiling happens, gods forbid you leave your house without your resident pass, you could be thrown out of the city.
Spatzimaus
First Post
Piratecat said:
Okay, good. With a river, the water supply isn't as critical of an issue, and with grassland and praries around (even dry ones), there's plenty of room for agriculture to expand if people decide to remain in the area. After all, Nebraska and Kansas were originally referred to as "desert" because of their lack of trees, even though they're great farmland. If you're going for a Texas-ish climate, that's still good enough for this.
Of course, if the horde of refugees aren't intending to stay in Corsai, the agricultural side doesn't really matter. All you care about is getting them enough food in the short term, and for that I'd say magic will have to suffice. But then again, the real question is, if they're not intending to stay in Corsai, where do THEY think they'll find food? Only the largest cities would store enough spare food to feed 200k people for even a day or two, let alone how long it'd take them to get to the next city by land. So unless you want them eating everything in sight as they cross the plains, there has to be some way of finding foot in transit. This isn't the sort of area that favors foraging as you go.
And if they're not intending to stay, why exactly are they in Corsai in the first place? Is it on the main trade route? Is the river large enough for boats? Was it just the nearest big city? Are they asking for magical assistance (Teleportation Circle, or a Gate to take them to some destination?)
If this is the Dwarves returning to the Black Gate, maybe that's the solution: they're just trying to get to a single destination, so they just want to all get to a place where someone can make a Teleportation Circle. For only 1000 gp, a level 20 Wizard could open a 5' gate for 200 minutes. In that much time, they could move a HUGE amount of people and cargo, more than they could ever move overland. (If you assume you could coordinate it to ~3 seconds per person, that's 4000 people per casting.) The other transit spells (Plane Shift, Gate, etc.) can't possibly move this number of people. But to do it, they need a level 20 Wizard who's familiar with their destination... and if their destination is the Black Gate, then Agar's the only one who meets that requirement (luckily he ditched Enchantment instead of Conjuration), although any high-level mage could Scry Splinder if need be. And this assumes he has that spell available (probably not), which means he'll need to find a scroll to learn it from. (Ioun probably has it in his spellbook, actually.)
So, what they're REALLY looking for is a place where 200,000 people and their stuff can meet up with Agar, and Corsai's the obvious choice. He'd either have to cast the spell ~50 times, at 1000gp per, or cast it once and Permanency it for 4500 XP. (If I were him, I'd cast it 50 times, and I'm sure the Dwarves wouldn't be happy with a 1-way teleporter that leads straight to their city.) This'd take some time, so while they'd eat up all the extra food in town, the problem would only last as long as how ever many days it takes to cast a 9th-level spell 50 times, and the drain would ease as more and more of them go through.
Agar can't do it all himself, though. You've mentioned that the DoD range from Velendo (21) to Eve (18), so I'm assuming Agar is 19 or 20. A 20th-level Wizard gets four 9th-level spells per day (plus one for his Divination specialty, which doesn't apply here, plus one Summoning, which doesn't apply), and Agar's INT was 24 at 17th level according to his character sheet. But his PrCs cost him a level of spellcasting, so he's only capable of 2-3 of these per day. So, maybe other high-level mages will have to be brought in to make it go faster. (Obvious method: Agar makes a circle, the other mages go through first, study the area, they teleport themselves back, and now they can make their own circles.) In the end, even with a dozen mages it'd probably take 2 or 3 days to move everyone, especially if they're bringing lots of cargo along.
Incidentally, how are 200,000 Dwarves getting TO this plane? They can't all Plane Shift. And if they're actually coming in a steady stream, instead of all at once, it makes the spellcasting side easier. If <10k arrive per day, Agar could handle the load all by himself.
Zaruthustran
The tingling means it’s working!
Can we have more info on the refugees?
With such a large group communication and control is a big issue. The leader would have to absolutely recognized and have magical means (or a printing press) in order to clearly and effectively communicate. If he wasn't followed absolutely, such an enormous mob would be extremely difficult to control. Some would want to stay, some would want to go elsewhere, some would prey upon others, some wouldn't know what to do/what was going on.
Food and water is the biggest practical issue, as others have mentioned. Without magical aid the town's entire food supply would be depleted in a week or two (depending on season). Consumables such as firewood, salt, candles, oil, and whatnot would likewise run out. The river would turn into an absolute cesspool, possibly killing fish and really ruining the day of whoever is downstream. The actual grounds of the refugee camp would be filthy and, when they leave, a ruinious waste (though able to be quickly repaired with spells).
If the refugees pay for their goods you'd get a boomtown effect on the economy. If the town doesn't sell then you'd get raiding, banditry, food riots and a siege. Again, magic would really help here.
-z
With such a large group communication and control is a big issue. The leader would have to absolutely recognized and have magical means (or a printing press) in order to clearly and effectively communicate. If he wasn't followed absolutely, such an enormous mob would be extremely difficult to control. Some would want to stay, some would want to go elsewhere, some would prey upon others, some wouldn't know what to do/what was going on.
Food and water is the biggest practical issue, as others have mentioned. Without magical aid the town's entire food supply would be depleted in a week or two (depending on season). Consumables such as firewood, salt, candles, oil, and whatnot would likewise run out. The river would turn into an absolute cesspool, possibly killing fish and really ruining the day of whoever is downstream. The actual grounds of the refugee camp would be filthy and, when they leave, a ruinious waste (though able to be quickly repaired with spells).
If the refugees pay for their goods you'd get a boomtown effect on the economy. If the town doesn't sell then you'd get raiding, banditry, food riots and a siege. Again, magic would really help here.
-z
thatdarncat
Overlord of Chat
I don't have my books with me, but are you sure? Is there anything that he can summon that can cast teleportation circle itself?Spatzimaus said:
For that matter, is there anything that Velendo can gate in?
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