Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Max_Killjoy]

Maybe Ranalon had help from other deities, but doesn't like giving them any credit nowadays.

Maybe Ranalon actually just severed one of the Great Beast's countless limbs and forged the world from bits of it, leaving the possibility of the Great Beast returning and threatening the world.

Maybe Ranalon forged one continent from the remains of the Great Beast, but other deities created other parts of the world by other means.

You could call the Tale of Ranalon the Mighty and the Great Beast "untrue" in any of those cases in the sense that it isn't 100% accurate. But with many aspects of the tale still accurate, it can't be dismissed as a total fabrication, either. Given that real-world humans like to spin history into neat narratives that omit some details and may fabricate others, why wouldn't gods do the same?

If Ranalon The Mighty, high god of the Forest Clan, says that he built the world from the corpse of the Great Beast...

and Fergus the Forgemaster, chief god of the Mountain Clan, is said to have molded the world from molten iron...

and the people of the far southern city states claim that the world was sung into existed by all 12 gods of the Eternal Choir...

and so on...

is there a true story in there anywhere?

At some point, you start running into stories that can't all be simultaneously true, and some of the gods or pantheons have to be just plain lying. At least to me, the more "objectively real" the deities become in a setting, the more they can't be chalked up to mortal belief and tradition and dogma, the less it works to actually have multiple pantheons and multiple valid faiths.

[VoxRationis]

If Ranalon The Mighty, high god of the Forest Clan, says that he built the world from the corpse of the Great Beast...

and Fergus the Forgemaster, chief god of the Mountain Clan, is said to have molded the world from molten iron...

and the people of the far southern city states claim that the world was sung into existed by all 12 gods of the Eternal Choir...

and so on...

is there a true story in there anywhere?

At some point, you start running into stories that can't all be simultaneously true, and some of the gods or pantheons have to be just plain lying. At least to me, the more "objectively real" the deities become in a setting, the more they can't be chalked up to mortal belief and tradition and dogma, the less it works to actually have multiple pantheons and multiple valid faiths.

Where "works" means "you can take Codex entries at face value," this is true. However, there are lots of ways that divinities can exist and have power without myths associated with them be all true, and lots of settings where the gods are either lying or not correcting people's misconceptions when it comes to the nature of reality and the cosmos. Furthermore, a faith may be "valid" in the sense that the being(s) it worships is/are real, but not be "valid" in the sense that all of its tenets are correct. So long as a cleric, for instance, keeps getting spells, people (including his god) may not care whether his understanding of the reason rainbows exist is correct. And so inaccuracies persist in lore and myth.

[ThePurple]

is there a true story in there anywhere?

This assumes that you believe that the prehistory of a magical universe has to adhere to logical causality. Mayhaps all of them are true because, at some point after each deity with a legitimate creation myth created the entire universe (including the other deities), all of those realities fused (by each deity's story, the fusing was either a natural outgrowth of their own creation or due to their own influence, not an outside one). In such a history, these creation myths are all explicitly true while being simultaneously contradictory. It's entirely feasible that the trait by which deities define themselves isn't the ability to grant divine magic but, instead, the ability to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they created the universe, as each of them has already done.

We're talking about the fantastical stories of fantastical worlds here; you don't really have to play by the rules of reality any more.

[Max_Killjoy]

This assumes that you believe that the prehistory of a magical universe has to adhere to logical causality. Mayhaps all of them are true because, at some point after each deity with a legitimate creation myth created the entire universe (including the other deities), all of those realities fused (by each deity's story, the fusing was either a natural outgrowth of their own creation or due to their own influence, not an outside one). In such a history, these creation myths are all explicitly true while being simultaneously contradictory. It's entirely feasible that the trait by which deities define themselves isn't the ability to grant divine magic but, instead, the ability to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they created the universe, as each of them has already done.

We're talking about the fantastical stories of fantastical worlds here; you don't really have to play by the rules of reality any more.

I still have trouble with the idea that two mutually incompatible claims can both be true.

And if I as the GM (or writer) know how the world of the setting was actually created, aren't all the other stories / claims actually not "internally true" within that setting?

And don't I need to know that history in order to build forward to an internally coherent and consistent setting that actually makes sense even if players (or readers) start to look under rocks, peek behind the curtains, etc?

---

On the subject of multiple pantheons -- if there are multiple pantheons, haven't I just multiplied the work I need to put into the deities and belief systems however many times?

[ThePurple]

I still have trouble with the idea that two mutually incompatible claims can both be true.

Which is just one of the wonderful mind-screwy things that can occur when trying to comprehend the divine as a mortal. It just ends up making deities that much greater than mortals.

Personally, I tend to adhere to the "one true history" approach to things, but that doesn't mean that it's absolutely necessary.

And if I as the GM (or writer) know how the world of the setting was actually created, aren't all the other stories / claims actually not "internally true" within that setting?

Well, if you're the GM and the setting has a "one true history", then you don't really have to deal with the idea of multiple mutually exclusive "true histories" since that's what's true in your campaign world. The point I was making was that, in a fantasy setting, you don't have to have a *single* absolutely true history; it's possible to have multiples that are all absolutely, and equally, true even though they outright contradict one another.

One of the best ways to exemplify this is a line from the Joker, of DC fame:

"If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice."

[BootStrapTommy]

I was watching my friend beat his head against a brick wall until his brains were squishy and leaked from his ears play Dark Souls 3, and this post came to mind and my brain got creating:

Orcs are not a race. They are a post-traumatic syndrome. Orc culture is one of initiation into a cycle of violence and brutality, with low status won by the successful endurance of cruelty by higher status members of the group, and status from their gained by the infliction of cruelty. "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return." Most orcs were not born orcs, they were taken by an orc band. About half survive the initiation process, half do not. Those who survive are scarred, both in body and mind. Some of those who do not survive birth young ones, raised in a culture of extreme brutality.

Take that bit of psychology and put it in a magical universe, where an inverse "Portrait of Dorian Gray" effect is very plausible. So bonuses to physical stats, penalties to mental stats. Sometimes, full orcs do breed in the natural way, rather than with captives kept alive for the purpose. Children of those unions are where ogres come from.

You also get your zombie-fiction tropes here. "That's not Ygrrith anymore. It looks like Ygrrith, but your brother is gone!" plus the dilemna of captives who ask to be mercy-killed.

The idea is post-apocalyptic fantasy. Not in the Shannara sense, but in the sense of a fantasy world recently rocked by a magical apocalypse of the magnitude of, say, a nuclear war.

Thus it would be a world with diseased, decayed landscapes populated by tribal bands of survivors scratching a bleak existence from a poisoned world. Cold and twisted, a dying Sun and Moon reigning over a frigid, dying country. Like Dark Sun, but cold and on crack.

The above type orcs could be Firefly Reaver-like creatures driven mad by the residual magic. Others could be twisted, shriveled Fallout Ghoul-like Hollows, half dead, half alive and driven crazy by magic. Magical aberrations and abominations would abound.

Thinking a Brotherhood of Steel-like order of knightly scholars, who seek to find and control magical items and artifacts. Bandits, raiders, and other evil types, balanced by emerging strongholds and fiefdoms. Minimal resources. Casters are anathema, for fear of the havoc they bring.

Where only the strong, smart, or lucky survive. Like Dark Souls meets Fallout meets Dark Sun meets Lovecraftian horror.

[Yora]

Midnight can get a bit like that, but it's more about the land being conquered by the Dark Lord than outright depopulated.

There's also a vidogame Bound by Flame, which I think has a really cool setting. A gang of ice necromancer liches has come from the north and as far as all the characters know they might very well be the last place in the world not yet burried by ice and snow and populated only by the undead. And they keep losing pretty hard. Their plan of making a heroic stand at the last remaining elven city and summoning a fire spirit to defeat the undead army seems completely delusional from the start. Even if they win against all odds, there isn't really anything left to save.

My setting is quite similar, but it's pre-civilization instead of post, and a bit like Dark Sun in the Green Hell, or Heart of Darkness.

[LordotTrinkets]

I have a question about maps. Recently, I got to thinking about building the realms of the dwarves and now that I've considered the broad strokes, I've run into a problem. How exactly does one map out the underdark (not it's actual name in-campaign, but still)?

At least the way that I'm working with it, it will be kind of 3 dimensional, having unique locations if you move horizontally or vertically. Would the best solution be to just map it out in levels or is there some other idea that could work?

[Yora]

In most cases huge global cave systems will be much more wide than they are deep. This makes it relatively practical to treat it as having several levels. Don't wory about slight slopes and minor drops and just do everything on three or four levels stacked atop of another.

[VoxRationis]

Which is just one of the wonderful mind-screwy things that can occur when trying to comprehend the divine as a mortal. It just ends up making deities that much greater than mortals.

Personally, I tend to adhere to the "one true history" approach to things, but that doesn't mean that it's absolutely necessary.



Well, if you're the GM and the setting has a "one true history", then you don't really have to deal with the idea of multiple mutually exclusive "true histories" since that's what's true in your campaign world. The point I was making was that, in a fantasy setting, you don't have to have a *single* absolutely true history; it's possible to have multiples that are all absolutely, and equally, true even though they outright contradict one another.

One of the best ways to exemplify this is a line from the Joker, of DC fame:

"If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice."

That's really a cop-out so writers can avoid worrying about contradicting themselves or upsetting their fans.

[BootStrapTommy]

Midnight can get a bit like that, but it's more about the land being conquered by the Dark Lord than outright depopulated.

There's also a vidogame Bound by Flame, which I think has a really cool setting. A gang of ice necromancer liches has come from the north and as far as all the characters know they might very well be the last place in the world not yet burried by ice and snow and populated only by the undead. And they keep losing pretty hard. Their plan of making a heroic stand at the last remaining elven city and summoning a fire spirit to defeat the undead army seems completely delusional from the start. Even if they win against all odds, there isn't really anything left to save.

My setting is quite similar, but it's pre-civilization instead of post, and a bit like Dark Sun in the Green Hell, or Heart of Darkness.

I'll have to give some of that a look.

I'm a big fan of Dark Soul's aesthetics, just not a big fan of it's actual gameplay (I usually need a plot to motivate face-brick wall interfacing), so I want to capture some of that ambience. I've always been a fan of the frontier aesthetic, and apocalyptic feeds well from frontier's survival aspect.

Was thinking Bloodbourne's magical steampunk decay aesthetic might work, but it lacks the wilderness and "man-vs-nature" element I want.

I feel like the Magical Fallout scenario is oft referenced, but few settings seem to take place in those periods. Which is strange, given how much conflict that era would provide to good storytelling. Probably not many stories with good endings, but stories nonetheless.

[Yora]

Oh, and speaking of all this: You should check out either the comic or the anime of Berzerk. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls is pretty much Berzerk: The Game.

[quinron]

Springboarding off the "untrustworthy gods" discussion: My setting has two sets of gods, the Seraphim (the great gods) and the Cherubim (the lesser gods).

The Seraphim were forced to seal themselves into a "pocket plane" that is, to everyone's knowledge, completely inaccessible from any other point in the multiverse. They have to influence their followers by sending them prophetic visions and the like, so their followers tend to be more focused on living up to a particular ideal than on any particular action.

The Cherubim are in charge of keeping the mortal world in balance and preventing anyone from reaching the Seraphim's pocket plane. They can and will directly manifest in the world, and they tend to give their followers specific quests to carry out. They don't really represent any particular ideal - there's one Cherub for each of the 8 non-Neutral alignments, but they're all Neutral themselves, serving more as arbiters of their respective alignments than patrons.

What I'm wondering is, how would this world develop in the face of these two different groups of gods? I've already determined that there's some skepticism growing among academics, who think the Seraphim might be a myth that the Cherubim have created to make themselves seem more powerful; I'm just not sure what other ramifications this cosmology might have. I anticipate that most adventurers would be worshippers of Cherubim, because they're more prone to sending followers on adventures, but I feel like a lot of players would prefer to worship Seraphim because they won't pop up one day and start "pushing them around."

Any thoughts?

[akma]

The Cherubim are in charge of keeping the mortal world in balance and preventing anyone from reaching the Seraphim's pocket plane. They can and will directly manifest in the world, and they tend to give their followers specific quests to carry out. They don't really represent any particular ideal - there's one Cherub for each of the 8 non-Neutral alignments, but they're all Neutral themselves, serving more as arbiters of their respective alignments than patrons.

What I'm wondering is, how would this world develop in the face of these two different groups of gods? I've already determined that there's some skepticism growing among academics, who think the Seraphim might be a myth that the Cherubim have created to make themselves seem more powerful; I'm just not sure what other ramifications this cosmology might have. I anticipate that most adventurers would be worshippers of Cherubim, because they're more prone to sending followers on adventures, but I feel like a lot of players would prefer to worship Seraphim because they won't pop up one day and start "pushing them around."

Any thoughts?

Sounds like there is not much conflict in that world. The Seraphim are not really present, all the Cherubim basically work for the same goal, and those who question the Seraphim existence don't really seem powerful enough to effect anything.

[quinron]

Sounds like there is not much conflict in that world. The Seraphim are not really present, all the Cherubim basically work for the same goal, and those who question the Seraphim existence don't really seem powerful enough to effect anything.

It's not so much conflict I'm concerned about as it is societal development - this world is quite new, so my hope is that my current game is quite a bit earlier in its history than future games would be. I'd like to know how things might change in the interim between campaigns; I'm not necessarily looking for concrete futures as I am for possibilities of what people might expect to happen in these circumstances.

For a bit more context, the main Seraphim-worshippers are the elven archmages, while the main Cherubim-worshippers are the dwarfen clerics. They're totally at peace right now; the skepticism is being disseminated by a group of humans from either side who have started questioning the way things work.

[akma]

It's not so much conflict I'm concerned about as it is societal development - this world is quite new, so my hope is that my current game is quite a bit earlier in its history than future games would be. I'd like to know how things might change in the interim between campaigns; I'm not necessarily looking for concrete futures as I am for possibilities of what people might expect to happen in these circumstances.

For a bit more context, the main Seraphim-worshippers are the elven archmages, while the main Cherubim-worshippers are the dwarfen clerics. They're totally at peace right now; the skepticism is being disseminated by a group of humans from either side who have started questioning the way things work.

I expect there to be some sort of rising religious conflict - between those that believe in the Seraphim, those who believe the Seraphim are a lie, etc. Not necessarily war, but it could lead to big divide in society, that might lead to a geographical division.

[quinron]

I expect there to be some sort of rising religious conflict - between those that believe in the Seraphim, those who believe the Seraphim are a lie, etc. Not necessarily war, but it could lead to big divide in society, that might lead to a geographical division.

Thanks, that's a help - there's already been some impact on philosophy from geography, it'll be interesting to make it work vice versa.

[Carl]

It's not so much conflict I'm concerned about as it is societal development - this world is quite new, so my hope is that my current game is quite a bit earlier in its history than future games would be. I'd like to know how things might change in the interim between campaigns; I'm not necessarily looking for concrete futures as I am for possibilities of what people might expect to happen in these circumstances.

For a bit more context, the main Seraphim-worshippers are the elven archmages, while the main Cherubim-worshippers are the dwarfen clerics. They're totally at peace right now; the skepticism is being disseminated by a group of humans from either side who have started questioning the way things work.

Answering this with any degree of accuracy is going to require a lot more world building really. You need to figure out why specific groups favour one or the other and what the existing sociology is. How societies are "now" will define to one degree or another how they grow into tomorrow. In the same vein what are the 2 groups of gods main goals, what are they trying to achieve in the world besides being worshiped. What ultimately are they hypothetically offering as incentives to their worships, what do they get out of it. e.t.c.

[Xuc Xac]

I don't really see how it matters. Recast the seraphim as the board of a company (all the Chief Whatever Officers) and the cherubim as Vice Presidents of different departments. All the mortals are low-level workers in the company. High level clerics can be middle management. What would happen if some of the dudes on the bottom said "You know what? I've never seen the CEO in person. How do we even know there is one? Maybe the VPs are really running everything and they just say policies are being handed down from the board when they want to deflect the blame for something that they think will be unpopular?" What is the actual difference as far as the workers are concerned? If you're a graphic design drone in the marketing department and the VP of marketing tells you to email your current project designs to the committee that approves them, are you going to refuse? "No, way! You're not the boss of me! I'm only going to email stuff if the Chief Information Officer tells me to use the internet."

If it's set up like a hierarchy and you're on the bottom, it doesn't matter if there's anyone at the top because you answer the ones above you anyway.

[341gerbig]

Is there a book or website that shows what technologies were avalible during different periods of time?

Like a timeline of inventions?

[Carl]

Not really. Oh such a thing probably exists for children but in reality different inventions turned up at different times in different parts of the world and where then somtimes lost and rediscovered only to be lost again and rediscovered yet again. It's only in the last few hundred years that globalisation has really put an end to this.

[Roxxy]

I feel clever. I have a problem in my fantasy setting. I have 20th century tech, particularly propeller driven planes, because they are cooler than jets. Prop fighters are state of the art military tech. I also want commercialized space travel. The two naturally conflict. If we can get into space that easily, we can build fighter jets. So I came up with this about 7 months ago:

The gods (now departed from the world) have messed with terrain features quite a bit. Thanks to divine shenanigans nobody really understands (I go by the Greek system of the gods being able to be spectacularly immature at times), there is a three mile column of zero gravity around the North and South poles, surrounded by a weird bubble that prevents the atmosphere from entering the vacuum but does not bar the movement of people and vehicles. This world has a late 1940s level of vehicular and architectural technology (though they haven't invented jet engines) and a modern level of communications technology, and integrates low level Eberronish magic into technology. These zero gravity wells at the poles are what allows space travel, given the lack of rocket engines powerful enough to exit the atmosphere with any significant payload. This is important, because the only way to get really useful stuff like adamantine, mithril, and some useful magical phlebotinums is to mine it from space. So, despite the pre-Apollo mission tech level, there is enough space traffic to make NASA go berserk with envy. Of course, one can only go into space via the North or South pole.

Well, I just thought of what the tube is and why it exists. Instead of being a zero gravity tube, it's some sort of invisible giant multidirectional tractor beam. It actually connects the planet to tubes criss-crossing through space to other planets and important moons and such, and is centered over each planet's axis. The function of the tube was to allow gods to travel the galaxy by using the tube to pull their chariots or whatever in whichever direction within the tube they want to go. Humans have figured out how to connect a ship to the tube and get the tube to propel the ship, thereby allowing space travel without jet engjne technology. This also creates a good reason for space based warfare. If your military controls part of the tube, you control trade and travel through that region. If you control a planet or moon with desireable resources, there might not be another on the tube anywhere nearby that's feasible to colonize.

Now, a single stage rocket is certainly not too complicated for the 40s, and spaceships do use them. Space stations and cargo depots are built just outside the tube to avoid taking up valuable tube space, making rockets necessary for maneuvering (ships lose all velocity upon exiting the tube).

[nrg89]

Now, a single stage rocket is certainly not too complicated for the 40s, and spaceships do use them. Space stations and cargo depots are built just outside the tube to avoid taking up valuable tube space, making rockets necessary for maneuvering (ships lose all velocity upon exiting the tube).

If this is actual, vacuum, interplanetary space we're talking about here you only need to eject something to maneuver. The massive force of a rocket is really only necessary for getting off the planet and it's orbit because once you're in space you can just point to where you want to go, apply a force suitable for the acceleration you want for a short time, and then you don't have to do anything while Newton's first law takes care of the rest. If you have to turn right to avoid something on the way, you can just spray something (maybe water) on the left side.

[Carl]

Just to really emphasise somthing as well, whilst there's a lot of similarities between the two tech and a fair amount of cross passage good rockets does not = jet engines. Some of the tech needed to make a usable rocket will be useful for building a working jet engine, but one doesn't automatically follow from the other though without primitive jet engines there's a limit, (most high end rockets use turbo pumps and any decent turbo pump is going to lead to a jet engine eventually). That said just throwing stuff overboard won't get you anywhere, LEO to Geo Sync is 450m/s of delta v, a moon shot would be even more and i think mars is around 4000m/s off the top of my head but don;t quote me on that without me checking it. You're going to need a minimum of a basic regenerative cooled rocket to do that, space does not passively cool well enough for anything else.

[nrg89]

That said just throwing stuff overboard won't get you anywhere, LEO to Geo Sync is 450m/s of delta v, a moon shot would be even more and i think mars is around 4000m/s off the top of my head but don;t quote me on that without me checking it. You're going to need a minimum of a basic regenerative cooled rocket to do that, space does not passively cool well enough for anything else.

I thought he was well outside of LEO once he started, which would mean a lot less delta v, but I still vastly underestimated it according to this chart in this Stackexchange question (it might be useful to Roxxy). You'll most definitely need a rocket. Or, there's another way, but it's very strange and might not be what you want for the setting.

You can blast your way around. This works a lot like a rocket because a rocket will not be thrusting all the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of the trip but just enough to achieve the delta v and a blast can do the same. However, it's a lot harder to travel this way because you have to drop the bomb at the right distance and with the right angle between you and the explosion for it to work. The most delta v is needed to escape the celestial body and it's low orbit, you would need a nuke to move a spacecraft off the Earth. The Americans almost made a prototype of such a space craft, which would've probably scared the world into World War 3 not to mention that if you thought the Challenger disaster was bad just imagine all the ways dropping nukes behind you to ride the shockwave could end in catastrophe. But, if you're already starting in space, you've got a lot less to worry about and you don't need as powerful blasts.

[Elodin]

Any ideas for a caste system utilized in a jungle?

[nrg89]

Any ideas for a caste system utilized in a jungle?

Are we talking hunter gatherers or city dwellers (like the Mayans)?

India's caste system was based on a hierarchy of body parts, the labor caste being represented by the feet. If it's a city dwelling culture maybe representing it with the food chain would make sense. The highest caste is the big cat in the region (maybe a jaguar or leopard), followed by a primate that's preyed on by the big cat (maybe a mandrill or baboon), followed by something the primate eats (a bug maybe or a rat), followed by some plant and finally the earth. The authorities could just invoke the law of the jungle when one from the higher castes exploit the lower caste.
The big cat would represent the military commanders, warriors and kings since big cats are strong predators, the primate could represent the poets, lawyers and engineers since the primates are the most like ourselves, the bugs could represent the merchants because while everyone hates them they're needed to move stuff around on the market, the plants could represent the farmers since they put food on the table and the earth could represent the slaves, something we all stand on top of.

If it's hunter gatherer I don't feel educated enough to give a good suggestion, but I'll try. My gut reaction is that it will be much simpler than the social structures of the city since sharing between strangers is much more common in hunter gatherer societies. Maybe three castes, the first is the normal hunters and gatherers who live of the jungle and need to respect it to make ends meet. The second is the shaman/priest/druid/spiritual guide who acts as an interpreter between the jungle spirits and the people. The third caste is the spirits of the jungle, once you've reached that caste through many pious lives you are very powerful and important to the people of the jungle, which is why you must have shown great wisdom and kindness because it's a scary thought to have lazy, evil and ignorant spirits influencing the fate of the entire population.

[Elodin]

Are we talking hunter gatherers or city dwellers (like the Mayans)?

India's caste system was based on a hierarchy of body parts, the labor caste being represented by the feet. If it's a city dwelling culture maybe representing it with the food chain would make sense. The highest caste is the big cat in the region (maybe a jaguar or leopard), followed by a primate that's preyed on by the big cat (maybe a mandrill or baboon), followed by something the primate eats (a bug maybe or a rat), followed by some plant and finally the earth. The authorities could just invoke the law of the jungle when one from the higher castes exploit the lower caste.
The big cat would represent the military commanders, warriors and kings since big cats are strong predators, the primate could represent the poets, lawyers and engineers since the primates are the most like ourselves, the bugs could represent the merchants because while everyone hates them they're needed to move stuff around on the market, the plants could represent the farmers since they put food on the table and the earth could represent the slaves, something we all stand on top of.

If it's hunter gatherer I don't feel educated enough to give a good suggestion, but I'll try. My gut reaction is that it will be much simpler than the social structures of the city since sharing between strangers is much more common in hunter gatherer societies. Maybe three castes, the first is the normal hunters and gatherers who live of the jungle and need to respect it to make ends meet. The second is the shaman/priest/druid/spiritual guide who acts as an interpreter between the jungle spirits and the people. The third caste is the spirits of the jungle, once you've reached that caste through many pious lives you are very powerful and important to the people of the jungle, which is why you must have shown great wisdom and kindness because it's a scary thought to have lazy, evil and ignorant spirits influencing the fate of the entire population.

More city dwellers, but there are some places where they travel around. I like elements of both of your ideas, as I kind of want the hierarchy to be based on physical, social and spiritual factors. Thanks for the ideas though!

[Max_Killjoy]

A question about ancient and classical city-states:

How far did their economic and political control actually extend beyond the "city walls", and how much "fuzzy" or buffer or unaligned territory would have existed between them?

[Xuc Xac]

A caste system doesn't necessarily have to be hierarchical. You could have hierarchies within castes, but you don't need them between castes. A good example is the Tau from Warhammer 40K. The Fire caste are warriors and they include everyone from basic infantry up to the generals and admirals at the top. The Earth caste are workers and include farmers and factory workers up to the engineers and scientists that research, develop, and design their technology. The Water caste are bureaucrats and administrators, including all the basic administrative types from secretaries and clerks up to government ministers. The Air caste are the movers, including postal workers and messengers up through the pilots and navigators for the largest vehicles. The castes are all equal in value because they are all vitally necessary for society, but they don't have overlapping functions. A person's caste limits their roles in society. If you're born into the Fire caste and you like math, you'll never be a mathematician or engineer because those are jobs for the Earth caste and you'll never be an accountant because that's a job for the Water caste; you'll probably just calculate firing solutions for the big guns on a tank or a battleship. The only caste that "outranks" the others is the Ethereal caste, who are the priests and leaders. They tell the Fire caste who to fight and the Earth caste what to build, etc. The other four castes have an equal part in making society run, but the Ethereals direct where and when their society is going. If you wanted to keep things totally equal, you could replace the Ethereals with a council of the highest ranking members of the other four castes.

The defining feature of a caste system is that your caste is determined at birth. If you can change from one to another, it's just a job or a class and not a caste. In a class system, it's theoretically possible for a farmer to take up arms and become a soldier and a warrior could leave the military to become a blacksmith or a farmer. In a caste system, they can't.