Help Hydra design a world

[Hydra009]

Exactly as the title says - I'm looking to write a medieval fantasy book (gotta strike while that iron is hot /s) with a tone somewhere between Tolkien and GRRM - not too idealistic but also not too realistic.  I don't want you to vomit rainbows or vomit...vomit

Knights do exist, and they are valiant on occasion, but they usually fight other knights and dragons don't exist (afaik).  Magic is rumored to exist and some seemingly miraculous stuff sometimes does happen (like a certain fungus that can cure even grievous wounds which glows blue in the night - though the stories may have been slightly exaggerated).  Does magic exist?  Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.  It's all very subjective.

Here's where you come in, I need your help to design some city-states and/or empires.

I want to know their climate, culture, religion, technological level, political structure, dealings with other regions, critters, etc.  Hell, even throw in a national cuisine.  Gimme everything you got, but all the main points should be able to fit in a single page.

Bear in mind that I'm looking deeply into geography and how that affects society and I want geography to heavily influence everything else.

Here's an example: An arctic but mineral-rich mountainous area developing from a hardy band of colonists thousands of years ago to a series of mining towns hundreds of years ago to the current technologically advanced city-state with grand ambitions.  I ask myself what qualities they'd highly esteem (grit, ingenuity, teamwork) and which they'd despise (sloth, deceit, betrayal).  What resources they'd have in abundance (iron/steel, fish) and which they would lack (horses, spices, coal)  I even want to know what an average day would be like for the average person, which I think would be arduous but steadily less labor-intensive as technology advances.  I also imagine that they'd initially be distrustful of outsiders but steadily more welcoming, particularly if the outsider is very useful.  Also, they're unusually frank (they will not hesitate call a spade a spade and be confused/suspicious with people who use flattery or even "white lies") which I think I could leverage for some comedic moments.  They're also honorable to a fault, yet quick to anger if they even so much as sense insult or duplicity.  Finally, the national dish would be some sort of salty stew with fermented fish, some potato-like tuber, sliced velvet shank mushrooms, and some sort of grass-like green veggie.  (the distinct lack of non-fish meat and meager veggie offerings should be a big clue about their climate and frustrating lack of large agricultural yields)

Industrious, honorable, knowledge-seeking - that's their societal "hat" so to speak.  Every other society should be able to be summed up as succinctly.

[Mr.Obvious]

Will check in on this thread after my holiday.
Can't give you any for the novel i am trying to write myself, but would love to help.
Might help my noggin get going, too.

Edit: what the hell, the gf is asleep after the trip anyway.

I had this idea for a city in the campaign i was making for dnd. Wouldn't mind you using it instead.
Named it Bastion, for being the lone hold-out after a long siege by the evil or antagonistic forces in your world: the shield upon which they destroyed themselves.

Using a city named bastion in my novel too, but it is a different one.

The bastion i would 'share' is built into a the foot of a steep and practically vertical mountainside, giving it ample protection from the back and the sides.
High up in the mountains is a lake. It is saiw the founders od the city hewed a side of the mountain using great magic, so that now, rather than through the ancient river-bed, a waterfall flows from the mountainside: providing the city with fresh drinking water from high up above.
The waterfall pours into the sacred temple, which sits high above the rest of the city.
The city itself is is made of 4 layers.
Each roughly a rectangle. The highes is the smallest, that of the clergy and the ruler of the city. With lush gardens. Which some might find a waste of agricultural space.
Bone level below, is the home of the elite of the city. The magistrates and nobles. The rich and afluent. A high wall blocks them off from the highest rectangle, like an ovegrown step.
This proces repeats itself with the lower level of the merchants and scholars. And the rectangle below, that holds the common folk, and inns of ill repute.
 The level of the merchants has universities and markets and such.
The common folk hold plenty of farming land inside the walls of the lowest rectangle.

And outside the city walls, the poorest of farmers and wretches, living off land that can hardmy sustain them.


If i could figure out how to post a selfmade picture, i could try drawing it out for you.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Without reading the OP, so I won't get biased: Mountains caves were expanded centuries ago, producing underground cities that have banned together to a series of cooperative city-states, each with a special mineral or metal (or some combination thereof) that is found in their area. Humans have settled outside the entrances to these subterranean states, providing food (crops and animals) in exchange for the products of the mines.

Want more on this? 

[aitm]

A young child kidnapped and sold into slavery is forced to push this well wheel for years until he is very muscular, then gets freed, learns how to use a sword and kills everyone....and has a German accent.....

[Cassia]

Not exactly what you are asking, but I think a well written somewhat comedic "slice of life in The Shire" would be a smash hit. No epic struggles, just a back to the garden, feel good thing is what people are craving.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not exactly what you are asking, but I think a well written somewhat comedic "slice of life in The Shire" would be a smash hit. No epic struggles, just a back to the garden, feel good thing is what people are craving.

FRODO: Trust me, Sam. Rosie knows an idiot when she sees one.
SAM: (Looking panicky) She does?

[Unbeliever]

Not exactly what you are asking, but I think a well written somewhat comedic "slice of life in The Shire" would be a smash hit. No epic struggles, just a back to the garden, feel good thing is what people are craving.

So, a book about nothing?
😉

[Cassia]

So, a book about nothing?
😉

Show us the charming way of life that was so worth fighting for. Show us why it was only Hobbits could save the world. Show all the non-readers the glorious detail in the books that made me want to just lie down in a golden field by a bubbling stream and read all day, LOL.

[Unbeliever]

Sounds like Seinfeld in the Shire...
🤣

[Hydra009]

Well, we certainly have mountains covered and a city built into the mountains.  I'm sensing a theme...

But I need a bit more variety.  Grasslands, forest/rainforest, desert (I'm sorely tempted to build a mystical, anti-technologist society living in the desert but I think that's been done before once or twice)

I would also like to create a stark contrast between societies.  So, if one is peaceful, another is warmongering.  If one is isolationist, another is nomadic and with strong trading ties.  If one is frank and honest, another has an emperor with no clothes and society full of unstated social rules and "polite" flattery ("Those trousers are delightfully rustic" to an outsider's worn-out and cheaply-made pants, which stand in stark contrast to natives' attire and are truthfully anything but delightful)

[aitm]

Well, since you're all over the map and it IS fiction, you could incorporate the aborigines, they got no good fan fiction and...according to The Fatal Shore...forgot who wrote it...they had a custom of sending the women into camp of the enemy. and if the men had sex with them war was averted, if not...well....now that sounds worthy of some fun.

[Mr.Obvious]

Well, we certainly have mountains covered and a city built into the mountains.  I'm sensing a theme...

But I need a bit more variety.  Grasslands, forest/rainforest, desert (I'm sorely tempted to build a mystical, anti-technologist society but I think that's been done before once or twice)

I would also like to create a stark contrast between societies.  So, if one is peaceful, another is warmongering.  If one is isolationist, another is nomadic and with strong trading ties.  If one is frank and honest, another has an emperor with no clothes and society full of unstated social rules and "polite" flattery ("Those trousers are delightfully rustic" to an outsider's worn-out and cheaply-made pants, which stand in stark contrast to natives' atture and are truthfully anything but delightful)

Introducing:
Al-fara, the land of the lost.
A vast plane of waist high grass upon mounds and craters. All as red as the blood it has grown from.
Once the home to an enormous battle between two forces. One adherents of magic, an alliance between alchemists and sorcerers. The kathel. The other side, the macha, fought with forbidden machinery and explosing weapons.

The abandoned fields now lay strewn with bones picked clean by the crows ages ago, heaps of metal a reader might recognize as tanks or aircraft and ancient stone golems.

Both sides lost.

Now lawless tradesmen roam the lands between both forces, esdentially a black market. And highwaymen and bandits thrive there too, without any kings to lay claim to the fields.

[Hydra009]

Thanks for the good ideas, everyone.  I'm incorporating parts of them into what I'm cooking up.

[Hydra009]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Read the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories for inspiration.