Concillium III PBEM game world discussion

[Leewei]

I have a home brew I've run by email for a while now. After taking a long break, I'm planning to start up a new run.

Here are the details:

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Gameplay takes place in a post-apocalypse fantasy world. Background is spoilered for anyone interested:

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Once, in the distant past, the world was unified, with a great wizards guild ruling over an age of wonders. In their experiments, however, they unwittingly unleashed a horrific demon into the world, that raised mountains, devastated cities, and made rivers run backwards in their beds. Many generations later, those surviving have walled themselves off into small city-states. Only small shreds of the lore of the past age are known.

Character generation is straightforward. Players pick three Talents for their characters (list spoilered):

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Might
Grace
Resilience
Intellect
Wit
Discipline
Power
Guile
Courage

Players also decide on or are assigned an order (list spoilered):

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Seekers of Divinity (Illuminati who are after the secret of eternal life)
The Great House (The Medici with magical powers thrown into the mix)
Cairnspeakers (Benevolent necromancers and shamans)

There are other details as well - professions and familiarities, minions, influence and city-building. The rules for most of these are fleshed out, but not very relevant to what I'm looking to add to the game this time around.

New game world
Okay, this is why I'm posting.

The game will include a trade mechanism involving small, but valuable items that characters carry from one city to another. I'm looking to some of the creative minds here to toss out ideas for cities and trade items. The world is populated by humans, so Dwarven Ale and the like are sadly out of the question.