I'm trying to think up a group name for orphaned mortal/yet-to-Exalt children in Heaven who struggle to find the necessities for human life in a city that has no real need for them. They're barely managing to survive on unimaginably wonderful foods by doing odd jobs for desperate gods. Some of them have hired themselves out as little prayer engines who try to squeeze as many rituals and prayers as they possibly can into their lives to get scraps of pay from desperate gods looking for even a tiny personal cult. Others are the servants of minor gods to poor to afford anything but the cheapest labor heaven has to offer.
On their salaries they could easily earn a bag full of jewels and gold or a set of paintings which would make a mortal master break their brushes in shame but its hard to scrounge up enough money for food because gods don't normally eat and don't grow food. They have to earn quintessence and get it crafted into food and water which is an unusual specialty in Heaven and the gods doing it are fleecing them for every penny. They're starving on the finest foods and wines that would make a king weep.
I'm thinking of going with the Empty Bellied but I'm open to other possible terms.
Hrm, like YCMV and stuff so this isn't intended as gospel or anything so much as just My Thoughts Me Personally on the subject. And as a kinda clarification/context I really do love the idea of Yu-Shan having, like, slums and shit built onto its slopes where the whole foundation of the celestial city is just riddled with displaced gods and a sort of shadow economy and while access to Heaven
directly is strictly controlled access to the surrounding boroughs is less so and from there there's ways in around the Celestial Lions. 'Cause it's a fun juxtaposition y'know? This glittering metropolis where, theoretically, nobody wants for anything surrounded by divine squalor and misery except the boundaries between the two are so much thinner than the walls or the Lion-guarded gates. So that's where some of this is coming from.
I think if you're going to do humans-in-Yu Shan you could definitely take a page from Compass Malfeas and it's notes on prayer-slaves. Getting even the narrative equivalent of a dot of Cult is no small thing, especially for a relatively weaker God and in terms of labor the "market" of Heaven is glutted by gods whose domains were destroyed by the Twin Troubles or who fled Creation in the face of the Rakshasa advance, the Contagion, and the rising Dead. It's social support system, such as it is, is strained beyond all real workability and
@EarthScorpion mined some pretty great stuff out of that with the God of Heavenly Franchising employing displaced deities to run his !McDonald's and hot chocolate food carts.
So it's a situation where divine labor is dirt cheap and importing humans is probably strictly controlled due to a mix of writ ("Yu-Shan is for the gods") and politics ("Fuck if I want my enemies to be able to just move a whole religion up here"). But it's super personally profitable so it's going to be happening
anyway so like...humans in Yu-Shan occupy this weird vulnerable/valuable position I would think. Their presence is, strictly speaking, illegal unless you can prove they're, like, your quarter-goodblooded nephew three times removed (and there's probably a roaring trade in giving mortals cover documents too) and they can be deported/executed/eaten on basically a whim without anyone coming down on you since they technically weren't here anyway. But on the flip side they also provide a deeply useful service that can't be performed by wage-slave gods and if you keep them healthy and relatively happy they'll do it
better so...
You probably have prayer-dens of varying qualities on the slopes of the mountain with really posh, swanky places inside the city itself, with commensurate levels of attention and service. And if you fuck with the workers the bouncers will break your arms but also the workers have fairly little say in their futures and also have to be pretty adept in a variety of rites and rituals. And it's more the really wealthy/lucky gods who have a handful of human attendants who give them personal, undiluted worship. And humans who end up in Yu-Shan without the benefit of a personal patron have to dodge both the Lions and gods who would love to press them into service.
(The metaphor here being more, like, indentured workers/hosts and hostesses rather than chattel slavery or skeevy sex shit I mean.)
