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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 436628" data-attributes="member: 7177">Re: Choice and Human LivingWhich is why the "drain to death" setting of Nexus Towers is used rarely - a "typical" setting for the slum areas is "Moderate Drain", in which long-term inhabitants will experience a Charisma penalty of -2 and feel somewhat apathetic (this has the additional effect of making them easier to control). That said, there is at least one city that uses the "drain to death" setting. An excerpt:    "Ahort (Small Metropolis, 734,130): Also called "The City of Last Rest", this city-state ruled by vampires, liches, and other undead is infamous for its hunger for life energy. Its agents constantly roam the world and purchase living, thinking beings. Usually, this means buying slaves, but these agents are all too willing to accept deals from the desperate who sell themselves to get their family out of debt, or worse. Sometimes these "body hunters" kidnap people themselves, but the rulers prefer that new victims are bought. Either they harbor a perverse joy from buying humans like chattle, or there is a mystically important symbiology involved in these deals that outsiders haven't been able to fathom.    Whatever the way these unfortunate souls arrive in Ahort, they are herded into special districts of the city where they live in spartan barracks and are forced to work hard under they die either from exhaustion, abuse by their guards, or the life energy drain from the nexus towers. Few prisoners last for more than a few months."In other words, you get the fantasy equivalent of concentration camps...Query: "Anti-hydraulic"?   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Well, some of the spells that can be cast with Nexus Towers are pretty much equivalent to tac-nukes...   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Which, of course, provides plenty of opportunities for adventures.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />The way I see it, the basic political unit in Urbis is the city-state - while larger political entities exit, controlling them can become quite hard. Each city-state also controls a "protectorate" of rural regions that provide it with food and other "strategic resources". As much of these regions are some distance away from the closest Nexus Tower, there are a lot of skirmishes and stand-offs between neighboring cities to determine who ultimately gets to use them.And again, plenty of opportunities for adventures here...Most good-aligned states that care about their cities usually set the drain to "slight" everywhere - this drain is barely noticeable, and most people can live with it. That being said, there is a vaguely democratic state in Urbis - the Siebenbund - that doesn't have any Nexus Towers at all.They do well enough for much the same reasons why Switzerland does well, and I've introduced more than one parallel. Plus, the image of Swiss halflings is just too cool to resist...   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Cool idea. Mind if I steal it for Urbis?   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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