I'm thinking through setting, which includes an enormous, sprawling city of sun bleached stone, in the middle of a red and gold desert. Inside space may be distorted, the city is larger on the inside than it appears, and it is possible to get lost walking in a straight line. There are entire districts that have been empty for years, or may never have been populated at all. Within, factions struggle for control of the city, and new streets are discovered, or appear from no-where. I'm trying to give the setting an unsettling vibe. Things don't work here the way you'd first expect.
However, this brings me to the ever important question, "what do they eat"?
I realised that the most comparable city in fiction is Sigil, the City of Doors from Planescape. So /tg/ I need your help, how does Sigil feed its people?
>>46297855
Ah, the old first time gm meme "massive city instead of a world map"
>>46297855
>how does Sigil feed its people?
It imports food from all over the planes. Sigil isn't necessarily a place people live willingly. In fact, the only people who do are the exorbitantly rich and the cripplingly poor.
Everyone else commutes and trades. It's a crossroads in the multiverse, so it's easy to see how.
>>46297874
Is there actually anything wrong with that or are you just being glib? The city isn't the entire setting, just a prominent feature.
>>46297954
Ah, damn. I've admittedly only played Planescape:Torment and that gave the impression that Sigil was more or less a locked box. I was looking for a solution that wouldn't have the city surrounded by farmland, or require the city to be fed by trade.
Maybe the earth beneath the city itself is organic and edible, grows and breathes. Don't want to make the setting too much about that though.
>>46297855
Beneath the city is a huge network of caverns formed by undersea rivers, where edible mushrooms are grown and cattle graze on mats of fungus.
>>46298502
I like that, maybe without the cattle. Perhaps an underclass of farmers who never see daylight, kind of like the Time Machine. Deaths from Vitamin D deficiency are common, so the farmers trade vigorously for spices or outside food that seem to be only cure.
You want an unsettling vibe. Have the food come from large warehouses. Warehouses that are large enough that, if full, could feed the city for millennia.
Nobody knows where the food comes from. All they know is that when they take food from the front, the things in the warehouse put more boxes of food at the front and the warehouses look full.The warehouse things don't want anyone to know that the food will eventually run out.
>>46301954
That's pretty damn excellent, thank you!
>>46302180
Just don't think about what the food is. Because it has been there for a while.
>>46302369
>Onlythedeadmayknowpeacefromthisevil.jpg
>>46302568
But remember that, since all the food the PCs have seen has come from the warehouse, whatever came from it is what they would think of as normal food.
>>46297855
Another place that's simil to what you're describing is the Spelljammer. Like the actual ship itself. I go into a bit more detail about it but I'm on my phone and. Suffice to say it's almost exactly what you're describing and food production/procurement is a big deal on the ship.
>>46302613
The PCs are actually likely from outside the city, I want to alienate them a bit more. They'll probably be chasing down the BBEG, trying to get to him while he's freshly awakened and still weak.
>>46302785
Thanks, I'll definitely look into it.
>>46298105
>Is there actually anything wrong with that or are you just being glib?
Do you really need an enormous city ?
Or would a large one be sufficient ?
>>46303775
I'm a fan of Borges, the entire setting is designed around that sort of ontological weirdness.
Chlorella. Everything runs on it. Massive glass tubes under the the sun that produce enough "greenbread" to feed everyone. Other plants are grown domestically, as spices and vitamin supplements.
Organic matter (incuding corpses) is gathered in underground terraces for growing delicious (not) "whitebread".
Meat is very rare delicacy for the rich. However, it is often cheaper to butcher some poor sod than to raise a cow,
I misread that as "Cholera" at first.
If things change and morph randomly and lead to nonsensical nonsense, shouldn't food just appear and disappear from nowhere?
>>46301954
Pretty much what he said. Food even can disappear from stomachs because fuck you kuhrazy city
>>46303960
>Meat is very rare delicacy for the rich. However, it is often cheaper to butcher some poor sod than to raise a cow,
And even cheaper to buy the corpse of someone who died from unrelated causes. The family selling the corpse to be eaten might even be part of funeral traditions in the city.
Which also means that poisons are strictly forbidden in the city.
>>46304073
I don't get where you're getting this from. Deviations in the way things work does not automatically mean "LOL everything is random!!11!".
