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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ydars" data-source="post: 4142587" data-attributes="member: 62992">DarkAngel; A mercantile Capitol would be bloated with people because the previous trade would mean that food would be shipped in from all over the Empire. Once this stops, you would very quickly have anarchy because you can't reason with starving people. Look at Roman History. The few times that pirates or enemies managed to cut grain supplies from Sicily, it caused bread-riots and serious trouble within weeks sometimes days if food prices increased as rumours got out. This was even the case when Rome could call on supplies from the extensive hinterland surrounding the city because this simply couldn't meet the demand.You could get around this by having it so that your Capitol is used to being cut off for a while because it is in a mountainous region and gets snowed in every winter (I'll leave you to decide how to cut the tunnel supply route). This would fit in with your premise of a Dwarven influenced settlement being in the mountains. It would also mean that the city would have very extensive food reserves in granaries. If you then say that the Capitol is set on a mountain meadow, surrounded by high mountains with only a narrow pass leading to the city, then perhaps the city could feed perhaps 1/20th of its original population using the protected meadow.This would mean that life could continue as normal for months. But once this food ran out, the city would become a very lawless and dangerous place. Of course, having monsters outside would make people stand together, but once you get hungry then all reason dissolves; remember the Roman siege of Masada.You could use this as the theme of your campaign as things would get pretty ugly very quickly. Overall, I would say that there is NO chance of a Capitol city surviving this kind of catastrophy intact for more than a year. After that, serious problems would lead to huge restructuring of society and the loss of most of the population to disease, famine, a mass exodus and murder. My thesis is borne out by looking at what happened to Roman Londinum after the legions left; within twenty years the city was a fraction of the size and almost all the stone buildings were replaced by wooden ones. And this is without an impending disaster; the legions just pulled out to protct Rome and although pirates started attacking immediately, this did not become a serious problem for decades.Yet this could all be very interesting from a game point of view.</blockquote>

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