The Urban Journey: An “Ex Novo” City-building Quest

[hessan_yongdi]

Hello everyone and thank you for joining me in building a community! We are going to use the game/world-building tool Ex Novo created by Sharkbomb Studios to create an urban setting for future fiction & quests. I hope that this journey through the history of this settlement will prove to be just as interesting as future stories that may take place in it! Basic Information about how Ex Novo works can be found in the thread header.

Assumptions and Expectations:
I would like to create an ancient city roughly 1,000 years old, so the technology level will evolve over time. The technological level by the end will be roughly early 20th​ century, so we will be starting with early medieval tech with some low fantasy elements. Since I would like this to be an ancient city and let the size be decided by events, we will start the maximum number of potential citizens and the largest map size.

If you have any original recommendations for sentient non-human species to introduce into the game world as we start, please add them to your posts! However, racism or assuming that the various species are cultural monoliths in our city (or quest thread) will not be tolerated! The factions in the game will not be based on species differences.

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The Founding Step:
Now it is time for us to start building our map! The first part you get to help me with is deciding the basic geography of the region. Normally, this would be decided by a die roll. Instead, we will put this up to a vote. Please pick one of the following options and feel free to discuss the attached questions in your post!

[ ] Inland: The settlement is surrounded by plains and sky as far as the eye can see. How do we handle the vastness?

[ ] Valley: Hidden and nestled in the mountains. Who found this valley? What was hiding in this valley already when we arrived?

[ ] Peninsula: Surrounded by water on three sides. What do the citizens believe shaped this land?

[ ] Special: This was such a strange place that we managed to find and settle. What makes it unique and how did we get here? (Think of this option as being like a write-in for really weird recommendations, so mention it in your post.)


To keep us from getting bogged down and get into the city-building as quickly as possible, I also will need 4 people to roll 2d6 to pick terrain features that will decorate our map. I will let you know the results once we get our four rolls.

 

[hessan_yongdi]

Thank you everyone for your rolls, votes and feedback so far! Here are the results from the terrain feature rolls:

• 8: Lake - A larger lake or a series of smaller ones, maybe an oasis. What formed this lake? What creatures frequent it?
• 6: Woods - An area of forest, maybe rainforest or grasses that grow as tall as a human. What grows in the shadows of these trees?
• 5: Hills - One big hill or an area of rocky or rolling hills. What hides among the grasses and trees here?
• 5: Hills - One big hill or an area of rocky or rolling hills. What hides among the grasses and trees here?

I plan on incorporating several of these awesome ideas people suggested. Currently, the second hills feature will be a set of cliffs or ridgelines that mark the perimeter of an ancient crater depending upon which regional geography ultimately wins the voting. I also like the connection to a moon deity to help start building the city's culture.

I will keep voting open for the next 24 hours and I hope to have a map posted before midnight EST on Dec 4th.

 

[hessan_yongdi]

- When providing Non-human species concepts what type or level of details would you be interested in?

- Should we assume, if classical races such as Elves/Dwarves exist in this setting if none suggest them? If so can individuals suggest changes from the norm for them?​

Would it be reasonable to suggest ideas like, "Within the woods flowers grow white as fresh snow, about the roots of some trees, which have various medicinal uses."

Click to shrink...

Sorry, I should have been a bit more clear when I said, "original recommendations." I have no intention of including any of the typical TTRPG fantasy races (i.e. elves, dwarves, halflings) unless a suggestion makes them compelling and significantly different from their origins and the human baseline. As for smaller recommendations like your flower, that is good! Just keep in mind that I reserve the right to not incorporate or make minor modifications to any suggestions to ensure it fits the narrative and setting.

 

[hessan_yongdi]

Thank you all for your votes! Peninsula was a clear first place along with the myth about a goddess and her child who becomes a moon deity. However, I have also found a way to integrate the suggestion of a crater. Here, I present the Cradle of the Moon!

Spoiler: The Starting Map!

To the west (left) of the map, you can see the outline of a very large crater mostly under the surface of the water. According the religious legends, the Moon goddess Thekbol needed to hide her recently born child, Olpan, though the reason varies between versions. She hid him in this area with one of his parents while Thekbol and her other spouses pretended Olpan had been killed by the disastrous impact that created the crater. (see note #1) Later, Olpan returned to the heavens as our planet's second moon also called Olpan. The crater is also where the Bolthad come from, a silica-based sentient life-form named for their glossy bodies that are laced with bands and splotches of earthy and metallic colors. There were here before anyone else and there are always at least a couple dozen living on land at any one time. They don't talk about why they casually walk in and out of the sea, disappearing for months or even decades.

Because of the presence of Olpan in this area, the lake is called "Olpan's Bath" or just "The Bath." It was created by the crater wall damming up a river that used to flow to the sea. It is still fed by those original streams that come from a pair of springs in the mountains to the north. It drains through a channel worn in the canyon wall, forming a waterfall into the sea.

Much of the western portion of the peninsula has not recovered from the impact. It is quite rocky with little top soil. As such, much of it is only covered with moss, lichen, and small patches of grass. One exception is the roqumpan. Roqumpan are large mushroom-lichen similar to Prototaxies from Earth's past, reaching up to 6 meters (20ft) in height. At the moment, I intend on these giant mushroom "trees" to be a potential food source for the Bolthad. On the map they are represented by the green, lumpy things since I have not decided on what they should look like. Any artists among the questers?

The hills on the eastern side of the peninsula are lush and green in contrast to the rocky eastern half, but I have not decided anything about them beyond that. Maybe our next rolls will make them interesting!

Spoiler: Note #1

To clarify, I intend on the number 5 being sacred to the starting dominant culture, the Nerlekthad. This is reflected in the family structure with a traditional Nerlek family nucleus being two husbands, two wives, and a third-gender spouse. This models the divine marriage of Thekbol and her 4 spouses. All parents are just referred to as "mer" regardless of gender. The fifth spouse, following in the footsteps of Olpan's parent who raised him in the Cradle of the Moon, is traditionally in charge of raising the children of the household between their weaning and when they become old enough to become adults and choose who they will be in the community.

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Now, the next steps are to decide why this was a useful location for a settlement and why the initial settlers came here. For the former, please vote on one of the options below. This will help decide on our city's starting resource. For the reason why the initial settlers came here, I will need someone to roll 2d6 when they vote.

[ ] Ruins of a former settlement – An old fort or a temple? What do people think this place was? What legends tell of the former inhabitants

[ ] Valuable natural resources – Gold, Gems or pretty shells. Something of Value can be found here. What risks and opportunities does the extraction of this resource bring?

[ ] Useful natural resources – Metals for War or wood to build. What useful materials are present? What makes them so valuable? And has anyone claimed this place before?

[ ] Culturally important location – A holy place or the site of ancestors. What make it so important? What rites are practice here? What claim do the settlers have to this holy land?

 

[hessan_yongdi]

Based on the voting, the winner was "The ruins of a former settlement." I think we can easily blend the two suggestions for a ruined city with a large palace complex and avian iconography. The other suggestions were quite good though! I will keep them in mind when we create the major factions or discover resources that exist in the history of the city.

As a result, here is a zoomed in view of the map with the ruins and where our first settler will be located represented by the tent. You will notice two fist symbols next to the ruins. These are power tokens. They represent the limited resources and influence that the factions we will soon develop compete over. When we add the factions, I will put them in cards for each faction to symbolize how much influence and power they have in the city.

Spoiler: Map

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As for the roll for why we came to this city, the result is:

Refugees in Need – Something destroyed their last home. What disaster was it? And what important customs or memories did they preserve?

Click to shrink...

For this next round, we will do something a little different since so many of our questers are coming up with great ideas! I would like for people to make suggestions why our citizens had to leave their former homeland. Don't go into too much detail about journey looked like or who led us to our new home. That will be decided by the dice. Rather, focus on why it started and what happened before. While I will use the tally system to collect your suggestions, we aren't going to start voting right away. Once recommendations are in, I will pick a couple of them and put it up to a vote in the next major post tomorrow. For ease of reference, please use the following format.

[ ] (summary/title for your suggestion) - (your suggestion here)​

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I will also need a couple of rolls before we start looking at adding the factions to the map. I only need one of each of them below, so I will use the first three dice thrown in the thread.

• One 1d4 to decide by what means we came to the Cradle of the Moon.
• One 1d6 to decide what kind of power hierarchy our people will start with in the city.
• One 1d6 to decide the starting power dynamic of our city and the number of factions we will have.

We should have only one more round of setup and then it is time to grow this baby! 🏘

 

[hessan_yongdi]

Thank you all for your recommendations! Sadly, not all of the options were possible due to the low fantasy setting. Some were also very similar to each other or matched roll results that we did not get earlier like following a prophet. However, I have tried to create options that are in the spirit of what you provided.

No changes to the map this time, so I will start by going over the dice results.

• How we came here = 1 We came down one of the minor rivers to the lake. Our original homeland is overland off to the north and/or northeast.
• Power Hierarchy = 1. Looking at the table, this means our settlement is going start as an "Unstructured Collective." The prompt describes this as being "Basic village communism or rampant anarchy." The prompt asks, "How do people deal with outsiders or dissidents?"
• Power Dynamics = 6. Looking at the table, this means our settlement will have a "Complex Web" of power between 3 different factions. Some prompts to think about when we come to creating the factions include: "Which faction is oldest? How do they share power? And what ambition drives the others?"

Taking all of this together, it would seem to me that the refugee migration was disorganized or made up of multiple small migrations that ended up in the same place. They may have come here from multiple locations or over a range of time. This has resulted in multiple power players in this disorganized refugee camp, where no one group has gained an overwhelming level of influence at the start.

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Because of this, I think it would be interesting for our refugees to have come here different places and for different reasons, but at roughly the same time. As such, you can vote for two options. The top two vote-getters will be our official lore and will influence two of the three starting factions. The questions I have provided with each choice are not required for us to answer now. Rather, they might be explored in the development stage of the game, so vote for what you find interesting.


[] The Seed of Redemption – A revolution against a tyrant was successful but the effort broke the country. Our people have fled the chaos and civil strife that followed. What is our relationship with the rebels who have taken over? Will they be successful in the long run? Will they view us as long-lost companions or traitors for leaving?

[] The Earth Changed – Climactic shifts have made it impossible for our people to survive in our old home. Years of unusually cold, wet summers followed by even colder and dry winters have emptied the granaries, rotted the crops, and left the forests stripped bare of food and firewood. We have to try to find new lands to survive. What is our relationship with the people left behind? Will the effects follow us? Will it end and things recover eventually?

[] Left Behind – Our people lived in a community where a messianic figure led to a mass migration to a holy land. We are the ones who stayed behind. We tried to carry on, but too many had left. We could not survive the way we did before. Did we reject the prophet's call or were we not allowed to follow? Why? Where did the others go and what happened when they got there? If we meet again, what will happen?

[] The Walking Dead – While fighting a war with our neighbors, a plague struck our homeland. We don't know how it spread, but its reach was wide and quick due to the war. Many who got sick died. Others survived but were changed, marked. Out of fear of further spread, the survivors were declared dead and exiled from the cities and villages. We came here, refugees of death to the only place we knew would be safe. How are the survivors marked? What caused this illness? Could it happen again? What will happen when the people of our homeland find out where we went? (No literal zombies, but close enough?)


I will give this vote a 48-hour window (late Tuesday night in the USA). It will shape a lot about our factions and the initial city lore, so feel free to debate and discuss amongst yourselves, change your vote, or discuss some of the question I added. Debate makes QMs happy!

 

[hessan_yongdi]

Special reminder for everyone to make sure to vote for your top two reasons when you are ready.

@hessan_yongdi could we get a break down of what Factions mean in this game, and what they can represent?

Click to shrink...

Sure! Sorry if this is long winded, but I want to make sure I cover everything.

Like most things in the game, factions serve a way of tracking the changes and history of the city as it develops. They are important to the story we want to create, but don't get to make their own decisions in the game. Our view of the city is so broad in both space and time that those kinds of actions are normally lost in the noise. Instead, they are at the mercy of the dice and our story decisionsto explain the how and why.

Honestly, anything or anyone that can use resources and influence behavior can be a faction. It could be a noble house, a police force, mercenaries, an official position like a mayor or a reeve, a union or guild of important workers, a company, the military, a religious or charitable organization, a secret society, a group of commoners with a common cause, or a council. Just remember, these factions could potentially exist for centuries. Unless an individual is super long-lived or immortal, the faction should be their title instead of themselves. So the faction can't be "King Rordric VII," but it could be "The King's House."

Factions are normally represented by a card (or a post-it) where their name, a symbol, and power tokens are kept. They will gain or lose power as events in the story occur, represented by shifting the power tokens. These are taken from resources if any still have power tokens on the map or are taken from other factions. If a faction losses power due to a development phase event when it does not have any tokens left is destroyed. Except for special events that explicitly effect the leading faction or boost a weaker one, the players decide which factions gain or lose and where their power goes. When this happens for us, I will either put it to a vote or make an executive decision if the story is making a clear call.

Other development phase events may create a new faction or introduce an outside faction. An outside faction is a faction that may or may not have a physical presence on the map, but still holds power and influence in the city like a band of bandits, a merchant's guild, a spy ring, or a foreign government. When founded, a faction normally creates a landmark on the map that represents their headquarters or could take over the former headquarters of an extinct faction. When a faction is destroyed, their headquarters may fall into disuse and ruin or be repurposed if we and the story so decide. For example, ALanos mentioned in a previous post a group of priests dedicated to Olpan that I was intending on introducing them as the third faction. They will have a temple on the map as their headquarters/landmark. A group of merchants might have a guild hall or a police/military faction might have a barracks.

 

[hessan_yongdi]

Thank you everyone for your votes! The clear winners were "The Seed of Redemption" and "Left Behind." Based on these results and recommendations from you all, I think we should start with the following three factions:

• The Council of Exiles - The rebels against the tyrant that retreated into the Cradle of the Moon came to be led by a council of important leaders in their militias. The current council members were key as they made the fighting retreat into the mountains in between their homelands and the Cradle of the Moon. In addition to being the most militant of the factions, they are also the most socially radical.
  
  
• The Etchers - The Etchers were originally a professional guild for traditional body modification artists, but also expanded to other artistic professions like scribes and stone-carvers. It is traditional for adults among the Nerlekthad to use facial and body markings to indicate social standing, profession, or other indicators. While most today use makeup, face paints, and stains, the Etchers' subgroup of the culture that prefer tattoos and scaring. They have a more rigid social structure than most Nerelekthadi. With the rise of the Prophet among their people, the Etchers became a rally point for traditionalists wanted to preserve their culture from the drastic social changes the Prophet was encouraging among his followers. As such, the Etchers are socially rather conservative to the point of some of them being reactionary.
  
  
• The Cult of Olpan - This small faction is lead by the priestly members of the cult to Olpan. There has been a shrine here near the ruins for as long as anyone can remember that is frequented by the downtrodden or those in great need and had developed a very small village around the edge of the ruins. They were in no way prepared for the refugee flow when the Etchers and Council of Exiles came, so the two groups have maintained a great deal of independence under the leadership that brought them here. They are the most culturally diverse faction with people from all over the region coming to this place before the recent refugee migrations.

Something to keep in mind is that the events in the story may cause some of these factions to change their name or structure, become ascendant, or collapse. Everything is subject to change.

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While our rolls decided that the three factions would be in a tentative and relatively informal cooperative with one another, we need to hand out a starting power token to one of our three factions. This faction will start out with a bit more power and influence than the others. So, our vote for today will be to decide which one will get it. Since I am making this post at an abnormal time, I will give this vote ~36 hours.

[ ] The Council of Exiles
[ ] The Etchers
[ ] The Cradle of Olpan

We also need to create HQ landmarks for the factions, so feel free to make any suggestions.

 

[hessan_yongdi]

Adhoc vote count started by hessan_yongdi on Dec 10, 2020 at 4:37 PM, finished with 9 posts and 9 votes.

• ---

  5 people have voted

  [X] The Cradle of Olpan

  • Happerry
  • ComiTurtle
  • GildedSergeant
  • ALanos
  • Solarstream

  3 people have voted

  [X] The Council of Exiles

  • Easter
  • mcclay
  • MurderChicken

  1 people have voted

  [X] The Etchers

  • Twiggierjet

Thank you all! The winner for our vote was the The Cult of Olpan. You might have noticed, I accidentally put the wrong name in the poll of the "Cradle of Olpan." I will refer to it as the Cult of Olpan from here on as originally intended.

I agree that it certainly makes sense for the Cult to have the starting faction point and think that having the shrine's design based on a megalith is very cool. I am going to make a slight modification to reflect their growing power and say that they have hired artists from the Etchers to add carved and painted frescoes to the stones depicting events from of Olpan's life, complete with his flaming blue crown. (Olpan has vivid auroras that occasionally become visible from our planet during eclipses or when the moon is close to the new phase)

As for the other two, I think that a longhouse is a good idea for the Council of Exiles. This might expand to a full fortification should their power increase significantly. Likewise, the Etchers landmark will be a simple dry-stone building made from ruin salvage that may become more complex going into the future. For an example, I would recommend looking at the Gallarus Oratory in Ireland but make it about 1.5 to 2 times bigger.

An updated map can be found here! You will also notice in the lower left the three cards for our current factions. The faction icons are temporary, as I intend to create custom symbols for them in the coming days. The power token that the Cult of Olpan received due to the vote is not supposed to come from the starting resource spot, so we still have two unused power tokens on the board for use as the Development stage begins.

Spoiler: Founding Map

This leaves us with one last task to accomplish in the Foundation stage before we move on to the first round of the Development stage. What are we going to name our fledgling city? It can either be an "English" city name or you can provide a concept and I can translate it into Nerlekmar. The Nerlakthad conlang is a bit farther along than you have seen here, but this would be a good excuse for me to branch it into new directions. Like last time, I will give us about 24 hours to make suggestions and then start a vote where you can pick your favorite.

Please don't feel like the name needs to be super epic right now. Remember our city is essentially a medium-sized refugee camp at the moment. In fact, it might even have multiple names since the groups founding it are so fractured. If events take us in a new and very interesting direction in the future, I will ask for a name change when it seems appropriate.

[ ] Your suggested city name.

 

[hessan_yongdi]

Hello all! Sorry about the delay. I am afraid life got a bit busy for a couple of days. The voting put Cradle's Rest in the lead, so I have updated the opening post with the new name! I will be sure to save Lakeside and South Point as neighborhood names for future.

Now we have officially moved on to the Development phase of the game! If we were playing the game in person, we would roll 3d6 and check the chart to see the result. Rather than adding the numbers together, each die represents a number in a three-digit number.

As an example, I will do our first roll at the bottom of this post. Whatever the die result, I will consider the results on the chart and then make a second post by the end of the day. My current plan is that I will give you all a couple of possible story paths to vote on based on the current flow of the story and the situation the dice give us.


See you again soon!

hessan_yongdi threw 3 6-faced dice. Reason: First Development Roll Total: 9