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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8269487">Rats. Lots and lots of rats. LolActually I live in a rat infested city and this might add to the horror (we tend to be dismissive of rats as scenery. But if you've ever had a rat in your house, and you've also had mice, you realize these are two very different creatures in terms of the threats they can pose to a person. It might also be good for emphasizing the misery of such a giant city in Ravenloft. For example maybe there is limited supply of more delicious and traditional sources of meat and grain, that the upper crust of society has access to, but the lower levels of society may get used to rat for dinner (think the rat burger from Demolition Man, versus Taco Bell for the above ground people). I think if it is important to you, you should run it as a thought exercise and try to think what potential sources of food there could be for a such a place. I think the challenge is making it not come off as 'video-gamey', by which I mean some artificial conceit that is obviously there by the hand of the designer. Personally I like rats. Especially because that leads naturally into lots of adventure ideas: if people live on rats, they probably don't wait for random rats to get caught in traps, there are likely people who gain wealth by assembling crews to go into the sewers and farm rats (and there is the mystery of course of why rats are so numerous that this doesn't deplete the supply). And on tops of regular rats for feasting, there may be vengeful rat-were or were-rats who pose a threat to such expeditions. You might also try to search historical examples of large cities in places where food supply was an issue. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but they must have existed. I was a history major and I can't tell you the number of times I have been told in a forum: a place like you are describing can't exist because they need resource X, and it would be too limited here, only to find numerous exceptions when I researched it because humans have a way of making things work and getting ingenious when there are pressures like that on them (think for example of cities existing in places where water is not as plentiful).</blockquote>

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