Divine Statue-Arcologies

[GreatWyrmGold]

The other day, I read about a typo in some old D&D book which said that a god could only be killed by another god of higher statue. Presumably, it was supposed to say "of higher status,” but by rules-as-written, if Jubilex's statue was taller than Io's, Jubilex would be able to kill Io. This lead to me imagining a world where this typo was truth, where the gods with the biggest statues had the most power, which lead me to this.

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Once upon a time, there were only individual tribes of mortals scattered across the worlds. Each had their own god, who they honored and empowered, and who granted them boons in return. A tribe who prospered honored its god more lavishly, letting its power grow. Eventually, however, some gods realized where the bulk of this power came from. Household gods represented only by statuettes inches tall were powerless compared to gods whose worshipers created man-sized effigies, whose power in turn paled in comparison to those who erected great statues taller than a man. Gods soon had worshipers directing their holy efforts only to making more and bigger representations of themselves. Their divine power grew, and it enabled the gods' worshipers to spread out and conquer lesser peoples, which allowed their god to grow in power. And so the cycle continued.

But eventually, trouble began. Fewer and fewer people worshiped the small gods, slowing that engine of progress. Worse, the divine statues were growing monstrously large, hundreds of feet, taller than any other building ever envisioned. It took great magic to hold those statues together; only a small fraction of the magic each god and their followers held, but it was a forerunner of issues to come. But all was well for now. Each god had a great statue, a great city built around it, and smaller towns with smaller statues to spread their influence, and smaller villages with shrines and personal effigies. Surrounding these "civilized" lands were the so-called pagans, worshipers of lesser gods who never had enough followers to erect statues on such a scale.
Then, after generations of stagnation, Erythnul made a move which would change the dynamics forever. He ordered his warriors to attack the cities and towns of Afnar, the troll god. Afnar was no pagan god, but he was hardly powerful; soon, his riches and many of his followers belonged to Erythnul. This ushered in a new era of rapid expansion as the largest cities conquered or annexed the lesser, growing their statues even larger. Once all the gods weak enough to be easy targets but large enough to be easily seen were gone, the process slowed, but it still has not completely stopped. Still, it lead to a new era of peace, albeit an uneasy peace where any sign of weakness could lead to one's neighbors eating away at you.

This era of peace was not completely without expansion, but it was a new kind. Forcefully annexing other gods' cities, or even too many pagan settlements, could strain your resources to a point where others could take advantage of you. So, instead, gods grew by way of consolidating their resources, by using how to use them better. And this let them grow far greater than before. As the era of assimilating lesser gods slowed, many gods' great statues were over a mile tall, and hollowed out for use as great temples and bureaucratic offices. As the era of uneasy peace went on, gods planned new statues, each larger and grander than the one before, and built to be filled and covered with more and more buildings, making them like cities in and of themselves. They climbed up to be several miles high. But then, a new limit was putting strain on every god which had kept up, which had survived.
As the statues grew in size, so to did the powers of their gods. But no material—not stone, not bronze, not even steel—can be built to such heights and maintain enough detail to still be enough of a statue to maintain divine power. Not alone, at least. More and more of each god's energy had to be channeled into keeping their statues stable, and more and more of their followers' magic had to be channeled into keeping the great statues in good condition. Eventually, the gods realized they were spending so much of their effort on maintaining their one great statue that they could not build a second. Further expansion was managed for a time by raising great pedestals under the statues, but even this slowed as the gods and their followers strained to keep it all together.

The world is now in a precarious position. Dozens of statue-cities, each proud and beautiful representations of their patron god, dot the wilderness, filled with powerful clerics and wizards who keep it standing, as well as priests and administrators and soldiers and all others who help make the god's empire run, and thousands of others who maintain the infrastructure which lets miles-high cities function, and tens of thousands more who provide for the needs of all these thousands. All of these people are held together by fear; if their god falls, if their priesthood falls, then so does the statue where they live, and so do they. Surrounding these cities are towns, starved of resources by a statue-city which demands all they can get just to stay standing against its own weight and outside threats, fearful of both the wrath of their own god or their mortal agents and the hunger of neighboring gods. Beyond these towns are farmers who make the food to keep everyone alive, and beyond them are wilderness and pagan villages, treated as pests or potential resources by the great theocracies.
But within these monolithic institutions, civilizations teetering on a knife's edge of disaster, are people. Some are trying to preserve the institutions so they and their people can survive another generation. Some are trying to change them so they can live more securely and prosperously. Some see the institutions as harming the world, and seek to destroy them. Some feel powerless or simply don't care, and just want to live (or at least to survive). But all of these people are doing what they think is right.
When these people's ideas of right conflict, someone needs to resolve it. But that is a discussion for another time.

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First off, I was inspired to whip up a little "alignment grid" of those mindsets I mentioned at the end. This whole thing has been one series of ideas inspiring another.

Spoiler

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Dammit, I should've made the background transparent.

I'm not necessarily saying that Lawful == Preservation or that Evil ==Acceptance, but the way they align with alignments works much better than I expected considering that I didn't intend this sort of thing at all. I mostly tried to create a bunch of competing ways of looking at the world, which rely on reasonably-accurate and not-strictly-mutually-exclusive statements about the world and come to vastly different conclusions. I'm curious about if you guys think any of this is significant (say, if turning this into a D&D setting could use this to recontextualize alignments).

Now that I've thrown that in, let's get to more specific ideas I've had.

Spoiler: The Statue-Cities

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I've alluded to the structure of the Statue-Cities, but I've had some more-specific ideas, too.

First, the scale. I'm imagining cities something like 6-7 miles tall, not counting the pedestals (which probably add a few more miles). That's ridiculously tall, taller than the tallest mountains on Earth. That's something like 6-7,000 times the size of an actual human, which conveniently means that any features the a millimeter across would be several meters across on the statue. (Metric FTW!) At that scale, you could fit sports fields into the god's eyes (though you probably wouldn't). Of course, being three-dimensional (with thousands of layers), these statues can hold ridiculously dense populations for their ground coverage. Think a fantasy Kowloon Walled City, except with utilities (e.g, fresh water pumped up and sewage flowing down through "veins" and "arteries") and, for the wealthy, public transportation.

Of course, the Kowloon Walled City had some solid structural advantages over these statue-cities, due to things like sensible scale and practical form. Even with divine support directed by individual clerics, and even with arcane enchantments helping where the god isn’t enough, things still fall apart. People need to get from place to place to make repairs, to touch up the paint or replace crumbling eyelashes or adjust failing enchantments or whatever, and they can’t always just use the internal pathways. (After all, those are typically full of internal traffic.)
Thus, scaffolding hangs around much of the outside of the statue-cities, for those bursts of traffic which accompany repairwork. There are massive areas of scaffolding which frequently take the maintenance staff and any required supplies through, or which serve as detours for when internal structures need to be repaired. These often resemble great city streets in scale, and in many cases what was once just scaffolding became a part of the city (though, officially, not part of the statue-city, due to the relevant structural theology). Elsewhere, scaffolding paths narrow to roads or even back alleys, crisscrossed with ladders and attachment points for pulleys. And in some cases, while few want to admit it, the scaffolding serves some important structural purpose, supporting a finger or an ornament externally.
The city expands across this scaffolding, freed from the constraints within. Some of it is just shops, apartments, taverns, and so on taking advantage of the space or the view. However, others take advantage of the questionable status of legal authority and the ease of finding places where nobody goes to set up businesses of questionable repute. Still others just can’t afford to live or work inside, and find some corner out of the way to exist. The Scaffold Slums are a fact of life in every statue-city, with a reputation that much of the area has arguably earned.

But these aren’t the only places where the scum of the earth can find purchase. For instance, the great sewage veins are often wide enough for crude shelters to be assembled, and so they are. Communities of goblins, kobolds, and assorted gutter trash from all races spring up, either making structures that can survive the high-traffic hours (and finding somewhere else to spend them) or simply moving from vein to vein. There are also rumors of sewer-dwelling skum and aboleths, and of merfolk who live in the artery-springs, but these are rarely supported by any eyewitnesses (save those who have been killed, who moved into the aquatic paradise, or who are otherwise unavailable for comment).
And, of course, even in the heart of the statue-cities there are those who hardly have its best interests in mind. Some find secluded corners, places rarely seen save by sympathetic civil enchanters or somesuch. Some hide in plain sight, putting on an honest face by day and only revealing their true selves when nobody of importance is watching. There are even a few gangs and thieves’ guilds with bases inside the statue-cities, which typically last as long as they can afford to bribe all relevant officials. But worst and least-recognized of all are the officials themselves, who either let the system sag under the weight of such scum to line their own pockets or who create whole new problems for one reason or another.

But there are also people who solve problems. Indeed, there are two groups (which could be a way to divide low-tier and high-tier classes in a way that makes sense).
First are the Heralds. The statue-cities snap up anyone they can find with significant magical talent, from wizards and sorcerers to dread necromancers and artificers, and even many with stranger supernatural talents (like psions, initiators, and pagan druids). And, of course, there are those who the deity trusts to precisely direct its divine energies, from the mightiest favored soul to the least clerical acolyte. Some of these find their calling not in keeping the statue-cities in homeostasis, but as their greatest weapons. Some join the guards, handling problems which mere manpower cannot settle. Others venture out into the wider world, protecting the towns and farms which supply the statue-city with the physical resources it needs or quelling external threats like bandits, rebels, monsters, or even enemy Heralds.
But not all problems can be solved by the Heralds. Even if their leaders were aware of every problem in the city, and cared about them all (neither of which is true), they simply don’t have the resources to handle everything…and some problems can’t be solved without making other problems worse. But there is still a demand for such problems to be solved. Enter the Gutterbats, so called because they are most often associated with the images of sneaking through the “gutters” (e.g, utilities) or clinging to the scaffolding like bats. Gutterbats range from altruistic do-gooders to mercenaries little better than those they fight. Most are limited to mundane skills, but some have magic too restricted to be useful, or at least too restricted to be worth working with a pagan or crook or madman or what-have-you. And there are a few who have an unimportant job in the theocracy, but who have enough freedom and time to try and help the less-fortunate.
The Heralds and the Gutterbats often clash. Sometimes it’s a matter of information; the Gutterbats don’t understand that their solution will cause more problems, or the Heralds don’t understand that these criminals are doing good. Sometimes it’s a matter of priorities, the community versus a few individuals within. Sometimes it’s due to bad apples in one or both groups spoiling the mood, or simply due to interpersonal conflict between generally-righteous individuals.

And that’s my first spurt of only-vaguely-related ideas emptied. So let’s move on to more solidly-related ideas!

Spoiler: Miscellaneous Issues

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Okay, these are still kinda vaguely-related. But hey, baby steps.
First off, we have general infrastructure gripes. Pre- and early-industrial-era cities had sanitation ranging from mediocre to nonexistent, and stacking a city up 2,000 levels isn’t going to make that any better. As alluded to, there is a complex series of pipes pumping water up and bringing sewage down, designed and maintained by tinker’s guilds. These frequently clog, leak, or otherwise end up leaving entire sections of the city without service for days or weeks at a time; rich quarters in the upper levels often pay for private freshwater (brought in via endless decanter) and have septic systems which can store a remarkable amount of crap if the sewage pipes get clogged. Of course, poorer areas have to do without; luckily, there are “wells” scattered around the system where the lower class can fill buckets and empty chamber-pots. Unluckily, there are those who empty where they should be filling, which is another reason rich quarters often pay for private freshwater even when nothing is leaking into anything else.
Transportation is also an issue. It is accomplished by a mixture of methods, ranging from mundane (stairs, ladders, and ramps) to complex (pulleys, up to and including short elevators) to exotic (flying around the outside of the city, teleportation circles within, etc). Each is maintained by different contractors from different guilds, often with little to no communication between the contractors, even within the same guild. On the bright side, the sheer variety of transportation systems means that there’s always a perfect solution for any transportation problem. Of course, basically anything halfway-convenient is heavily moderated by church officials and overseen by overworked underpaid acolytes, so you’ll probably be stuck taking the stairs. There are inns scattered throughout the city-statues, many catering specifically to common people who need to take the winding roads up to the top.
Speaking of flying…sometimes, it’s just the easiest option. Scaffolding frequently includes landing zones for everything from pegasi and griffins to mages flying by spell or artifact to winged servants (natural or not). Oh, yeah, every statue-city has a sizeable number of poor people with wings, either courtesy of a Cross-Stitcher or captives taken from a harpy tribe or something.

Oh, Cross-Stitchers? I’ll get to them eventually, but they’re related to another big problem. See, most D&D worlds have a fair number of small, scattered churches available for things like healing or keeping the shadow population under control. While statue-cities are full of divine casters, most are busy with other tasks. So much divine energy is being spent just holding the damn things up that they can’t handle such mundane tasks. Oh, sure, a squad of Heralds gets sent in whenever a plague of cholera or wraiths or whatever gets sufficiently out of hand that it starts to disrupt civic functions, but they simply can’t meet demand. Society has come up with a number of ways to handle this.
Many problems which are usually solved with divine magic can be solved with arcane instead. For instance, undead issues can be handled by necromancers as easily as by clerics. Of course, while this can be effective, it isn’t always desirable. There is less prejudice against necromancy in this world than in many, because it’s seen as a necessary evil, but prejudice still exists. You’ll call one if there’s something strange in the neighborhood, and you’ll even tolerate living next to one, but that doesn’t mean you have to like them or want them practicing near you. Most arcanist’s guilds don’t accept necromancers, and the few necromancy guilds are trusted slightly more than thieves’ guilds, so most necromantic ghostbusters act solo or in small groups.
Of course, there’s still one common problem which arcane magic can’t easily solve. Gods can create positive or negative energy as easily as necromancers manipulate it, but arcane magic has many hurdles to overcome before it can mimic the effects of divine magic. Still, desperate times demand desperate measures, and some have found ways to create usable positive energy without any gods needed.
The earliest method used is by far the least precise—open a tiny portal to the Plane of Positive Energy and hope for the best. This can cure almost any wounds, but its lack of precision can cause unwanted side effects. There are reports of malignant, incurable growths appearing from overexposure to the pure energy of the plane, and even without such complications, exposure often causes minor side effects (restlessness, headaches, temporary sensory issues…). It also tends to be inefficient except at the largest scales, which also happen to be where side effects are most likely to pop up. Some arcanist’s guilds still run positive energy parlors where the poor can try their luck for a small fee, and Heralds specializing in arcane conjuring sometimes learn the smallest versions of such spells for emergencies, but most areas have moved on.
Another simple method came relatively recently. Arcanists hired by Boccob’s statue-city discovered a method which could split arcane energy into positive and negative. This was much more effective, allowing healing as painless as any cleric’s without needing divine exertion. However, there are (of course) issues. First is the energy expended for the positive energy gained. Some energy is spent to split the energy, some becomes negative energy, and some is simply lost to inefficiencies. Second, and perhaps more obvious, the negative energy must be dealt with somehow. Simply casting it away is harder than it sounds, and in the long term can lead to all sorts of issues. The caster absorbing the energy is a valid solution, but rarely helpful if the caster likes being alive. (Undead arcanists obviously have no issue with this, and have become a partly-accepted cog in poorer areas, not unlike their necromancer friends.) Of course, many find some unfortunate victim to channel the negative energy into, but such processes are never condoned by any authorities.
The most controversial way to heal wounds comes not from conjuring, nor from evocation and necromancy, but from transmutation. The Stitchers offer perhaps the safest and simplest method of healing wounds, but many use those same secrets in other ways. Some promise to make the world a far greater place, with a few enthusiasts claiming it could even solve fundamental issues with the statue-cities. However, like all great and powerful tools, it can be used for both good and ill, and the ill is at least as terrifying as the good is hopeful. Finally, there are those in nearly every church who wonder if the practice can be condoned, if it is just an attempt by mere mortals to usurp the role of the divine. I had a lot of ideas here, so they deserve their own folder.
Oh, and some pagans set up shop, healing those who need it…but that kind of thing can get you in big trouble if you’re not working for the church, so it’s not as big of a factor as it could be.

Spoiler: Bureaucracy

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In any society larger than a few hundred people in one village, bureaucracy is a fact of life, and understanding it (at least in general) is key to understanding how things work and who holds the power.
Central to everything is, unsurprisingly, the church. From the cathedrals in the center of major towns (and their own impressive-side-of-normal statues in their centers) to the fact that most Statue-Cities devote almost their entire head region to religious leaders, the states of note are clearly overt theocracies.
The laws are made by high priests. Taxes are collected by their tithe-collectors, and are used to pay for everything from sewage-veins to soldiers. A theocratic bureaucracy determines the best way to use the society’s resources to survive and (ideally) grow, and inquisitors hunt down any trace of heresy or treason. And so on. When the central pillar of the society is literally supported by god, that sort of thing naturally follows.
But churches aren’t the only institutions of note. The church may control the pursestrings, but they pay guilds to handle much of the actual work. Tinker and arcanist guilds are the most prominent within the statue-cities themselves, though arcanist guilds also compete with trade guilds in the countryside (which have a limited presence in the cities, mostly limited to imports and lobbying). The primary business of the arcanist and tinker guilds is, of course, ecclesiastical contracts—here’s some gold, now go fix the broken stuff. However, they also have much side businesses in basically everything else that one might want in a city, from toys for rich children to magic weapons for Heralds (and richer gutterbats). It’s rare for ecclesiastical
The influence of guilds varies. Of course, each church is more powerful than any guild—they control the laws, the armies, and so forth. Moreover, competition between guilds is stiff enough that none can try to influence any group by threatening to withhold services. That said, the guilds aren’t without power; they provide an essential service, and this alone provides room for politics to sneak its way into the mix. Sometimes, they give the church a discount in exchange for receiving some favor; sometimes, they raise their prices in exchange for giving some favor. Arcanist’s guilds in particular also have a habit of trying to recruit Heralds, both current and retired, or of getting their members inducted into the Heralds, giving them more potential leverage. Of course, any lever can turn two ways. Anything which the guilds can use to influence the church, the church can use right back.
The city-statues have no nobility, and look down on any culture or time when hereditary status was not only accepted but required. Yet there is still a strange tendency for the families of the rich and powerful to shepherd their children into positions of wealth and power, and to band together to protect their interests. Almost like a noble class… Anyways, these families form organizations of their own. Some are just a single family plus employees and close allies, but others are groups of the de facto aristocracy who either have shared interests or live in the same area. The more powerful families involved in a single group, the more that the group arranges for shared expenses (e.g, utilities), http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigScrewedUpFamily]or the more screwed-up the largest families in the group are[/url], the more likely there is some official structure to the group. It might just be a bunch of rules, a couple respected elders with too much time in charge, and a bunch of problematic relatives kept busy out of the public spotlight, but it may well exist. Such organizations naturally cause their own potential for problems and solutions; they allow solutions to be reached involving many of the great and powerful at once instead of individually, but at the same time there is plenty of room for politicking, selfishness, and corruption to bog down anything they do—and all the worse, for the lack of oversight given to them.
Of course, the rich and powerful aren’t the only ones to organize themselves. The rabble of the city-statues has groups, ranging from laborers banding together in quasi-guilds to gangs of criminals to neighborhoods pooling funds for community needs. These groups are as varied in function and organization as they are in composition, but most tend to be looked down upon by anyone not dependent on them.

Now some details about the bureaucracy. Yay! Wait, where are you going? …Fine, I don’t need you. I can write this on my own.
The big divisions are, of course, the various administrative boundaries used by the church. The most significant division is between the Statue and the Parishes, and not just because keeping this division firm helps mitigate the negative effect which scaffolding and whatnot has on divine power. (The metaphysics involved are unimportant.) There are, of course, sub-divisions in each of these sectors.
The Parishes are simple to understand; it’s basic geography. Towns are their own parishes, the countryside is divided into parishes, the scaffolding is one big parish separate from but working with the Statue authorities, and areas around the borders are often claimed by multiple parties—either as part of different parishes from two gods, a parish and a pagan group, or both. Fun stuff. There’s probably some standard D&D adventuring to do here.
The Statue, on the other hand, is not divided by geography (e.g, head, hand, sash), but functionally. The pipes for moving water and waste around are managed by one group (which subdivides into regions), transportation infrastructure by another, law enforcement by a third, and so forth. This helps keep various regions’ functions integrated smoothly…well, more smoothy than they would have been otherwise.
As mentioned, many functions are carried out by third parties (e.g, guilds) who are contracted to handle some specific task. There are still church officials involved at every step, from identifying the problem to finding the right people to solve it to oversight on the project to getting the people paid. And, of course, some departments just can’t be trusted to (literal) laymen—sometimes, the church has to do a job itself. This is most prominent with anything involving enforcement; the church feels that it must maintain a monopoly on legitimate use of force to keep the peace, and so it does.
Priests who wish to rise in civil services first need to undergo basic acolyte training, as essentially all church officials do. They then end up as bureaucrats somewhere or another, doing some dull, repetitive task that someone needs to do. They build up skills required for bureaucracy, both in the sense of doing bureaucratic work and in the sense of kissing up to higher-ranking bureaucrats. If they do well, they will rise; if they do very well, they may rise far. Perhaps they will even become the minister of their department, the person with all the responsibility and far less power than anyone thinks they have. Civil ministers do not have as much status as high-ranking priests, but they’re still big names in the city.

Spoiler: Stitchers

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The Stitcher’s Guild is one of the most recently-founded major guilds, and by far the best-known. Its founders were a group of transmuters who were frustrated by the limited options available for those who needed healing. They realized that their chosen field was better-suited for the job than, say, divination or illusion, and so began their work. After much study of not only transmutation but also surgical practice, natural philosophy, and artificing, they created a new field of transmutation.
Their first spells simply shifted flesh into a more malleable form for a moment, long enough for other transmutative energies to repair the damage. This would often leave distinct scars, which some compared to drunkards stitching flesh back together. (The fact that these spells rely on implements vaguely resembling oversized needles didn’t help.) When the Stitchers founded their own guild, they took this epithet as their own, turning it from mockery to identity.
They couldn’t keep their magic exclusive to their guild, however. Its secrets began to leak, through everything from tidbits that slipped while talking shop with mages from outside the guild to guild members who didn’t think such potent magic should be controlled by one group. The Stitchers’ Guild still almost exclusively deals in medicine (and leads in the field), but even they have branched out into other applications of the techniques to stay relevant.
There are two overlapping fields where advancement of note has been made. The first is called Transfigurative Stitching, and involves making intentional, permanent changes to one’s patients. This can be cosmetic, functional, or even punitive, depending on who the Stitcher and the patient are. Most serious changes require either removing flesh from the patient or adding to it, which is obviously beyond the ability of the first Stitching techniques. Yet techniques for such were discovered, and taken to their greatest extreme in the second field—Cross-Stitching, combining different living creatures into one. The lines between Transfigurative Stitching and Cross-Stitching are not well-defined; when does one stop adding oxen muscle to a man and start creating a man-ox?
Stitching has its downsides. First, as far as healing goes, it requires significantly more raw energy than clerical healing spells do (though it is roughly competitive with other arcane healing techniques). Second, any Stitching requires the use of enchanted implements called Stitcher needles. Attempts have been made to rework Stitcher magic to not require the assistance of those needles, but they have only had any success for the weakest and simplest Stitcher spells. All but the simplest Stitcher needles are expensive, meaning that back-alley Stitchers rarely have any legitimate means to cast any but the simplest Stitcher spells, and the greatest are only accessible to guilds. Almost as great of a hurdle as the Stitcher needles is the training which Stitchers need to go through if they wish to cast even the simplest spells effectively (represented mechanically by some feats).
The biggest problems Stitchery faces are not practical ones. They are rooted instead in fear—fear of the possibilities brought by Stitchers. On one hand you have the well-meaning Stitchers who want to the best for mortalkind, but in the process destroy mortals as we know them, replacing them with monstrosities. On the other hand, you have the Stitchers who don’t care about this world’s version of the Hippocratic Oath, who know that shaping flesh can harm as easily as heal, and want to use that power for their own ends. On the third hand (blame the mad Stitchers), you have priests and elders concerned about how far this could go, if it represents man meddling in the craft of gods.

Ugh, I have so many other ideas. But I don’t want this to be a biopunk setting which happens to involve some neat statues, so I’ll stop there until I can mix in enough other ideas.

I’m interested to hear what ideas others might have for this world. And also weirdly specific religious terminology which fits well into a world where the church is everything—there’s probably some religion with a term for “religious tax collector” or “religious toll bridge” or something, but I don’t know enough to know it. (If nothing else, it would be nice to dilute the real-world religious terminology from the one religion I’m familiar with.)

[RazDelacroix]

My heavens... I just thought up an adventure idea!

"Comrades, we look upon these statues and think them great, but they shall be as insects in the eyes of our Lord! FOR WE SHALL CARVE HIS VISAGE INTO THE MOON!!!"

[noob]

I think that the best way to make a high statue is to use a dwarf depth sense(since it never says that it does not works in negative depths(above ground)) to find the highest place(probably somewhere in space) and then place a small statue here(since what is needed is to have a higher statue not to have a statue that is taller) and use suspension or one of those other spells that keeps the target at a constant height.
So you could add dwarf lich wizards doing space exploration for finding the highest place in the universe.(alternatively you could have hippies that animate a statue and then use greater humanoid essence and make the statue high on drugs)

[GreatWyrmGold]

Despite the name (and the inspiring quote), the power is gained from gods having big statues. They don't get to count the mountain the statue is on unless it's been reshaped into their god's feet.

[noob]

Which kind of big matters?
Is it the volume?
Is it the height of the statue(as meaning the distance between the top and the bottom of the statue)?
For example if a god have the shape of a very flat disk would he be as much powerful as a human shaped god if they got both 300 hundred tons statues?
I am quite sure that this kind of question matters enough for gods to try to find out.

[GreatWyrmGold]

There aren't any disk-shaped gods around [citation], so I'm not sure the question is actually relevant.

[noob]

There aren't any disk-shaped gods around [citation], so I'm not sure the question is actually relevant.

Well if by being disk shaped you can have more power while having a statue that have a lower height you have less problems keeping it static.
If you are a god you should probably use mind switch into an animated object which have whichever shape is the most convenient for making a statue of the maximum power.
So my question is 100% valid if the gods actually care about getting power more than they care about silly things like looking like an ugly half hyena half humanoid(like ethrynul) or looking like a cube(There is a god of oozes).
If on the other hand what matters is not having the highest volume or mass but being the tallest then gods have interest in looking like a very thin bar(for example the god of snakes have a shape very convenient for making tall statues(since you need way less castings of suspension for making the statue not crumble while having a given vertical length))
There is some people who before becoming gods were mortals who always did seek more power at any cost.
Once those kind of mortals becomes gods of course they will be ready to pick up whichever shape is optimal for maximum statue size even if they have to pick up the size of a miniature solar system or another silly thing.
Tl dr: if gods were thinking like real life humans the gods which would be major gods would be gods that researched and picked up the optimal shapes.(especially since you mentioned some kind of survival of the fittest god period of the history)

[GreatWyrmGold]

Unspoken assumption: Gods can change their true form.

I really wish you wouldn't try to tear down the core concept of my setting for no apparent reason. If every god could transfigured itself into a disk, everything unique about this setting would be lost. There's nothing wrong with the idea of a world with disk-shaped gods and enormous divine plazas, but it's not a world I'm interested in designing.

[noob]

Unspoken assumption: Gods can change their true form.

I really wish you wouldn't try to tear down the core concept of my setting for no apparent reason. If every god could transfigured itself into a disk, everything unique about this setting would be lost. There's nothing wrong with the idea of a world with disk-shaped gods and enormous divine plazas, but it's not a world I'm interested in designing.

if gods can not change their true form then there would still be gods advantaged by their initial shape like dwarf gods which would be advantaged over human gods if what matters is volume(since a dwarf takes more volume for a given height) or elf gods which would be advantaged over human gods if what matters is to be tall(elves are less wide compared to their height) then the gods having the best shapes would have an advantage over the others.(like the gods of oozes would be quite advantaged if what matters is to have the highest volume due to his cubic shape which is better than an human shape)
(And the assumption that gods can change their true shape comes from the rules of dnd 3.5 and it is written in my previous post)
(And also the fact is that if gods true shapes looks like their initial worshipers then there will be gods of very varied shapes due to monsters)
If gods shapes does not depends on its worshipers then there would not even be reasons for your example gods to have human shapes and if a god shape depends on its worshipers and that a god true shape can not change necessarily the most advantaged gods would be gods of monsters who have good shapes for gods which would then convert humanoids to its religion(and keep their advantageous true shape since you told that a god could not change its true shape which would definitively be false if their true shape evolved over time depending on the shape of the majority of their worshipers).

So if you want giant human statues instead of having only giant elf statues or only giant dwarf statues(or only giant statues of a given shape that some gods had at birth which is better than others) you need either to get rid of all the elves and dwarves or to decide that having the biggest statue or the tallest statue have less importance than having a statue looking similar to the majority of your followers.(else there would be elves gods beating the human gods and then grabbing all the human worshipers or other events like that)

[Morphic tide]

Hmm... One of the things I could see would be that a setting-shaking event, once the setting is established, would be to have a great upheaval where one of the "pagan peoples" finds out about, and understands, the nature of divinities, and so they seek out a great mountain or vast canyon, preferably a place where the two are part of the same cliff face, and carve their temple-city into the miles-tall cliff face to save much of the magical reinforcement, spending much time learning architecture to understand the limits of what they can accomplish so that they have forward planning for the first of their great temple-cities.

Then, once they finish said temple-city, a two-mile-tall statue of their god, posed and garbed so as to minimize the strain on the materials by working reinforcements into the effigy itself, they begin work on identifying the limits of their god's power at the moment to begin their next temple-city, in a taller section of the cliff face reserved for exactly this, erecting a statue larger than any before with enough power left over to easily construct as many of these cities as they can carve from the canyons and mountains of the world, building wide rather than tall. For a start, at least, they have plans to carve a vast chasm from the earth within an immense range of mountains, so as to create a place where their temple-city is carved with a seven-mile tall base before they start building upwards.

Of course, once the existing major cities learn of this, they begin similar projects, establishing a grander, less desperate, age of coherent expansion, with temple-cities having their size moderated so as to preserve much power for their Gods. Built wide, instead of tall, like previous ages, making warfare a costlier prospect. And, of course, once the mountain-dwellers who carve their God's image into the grand mountains finish the second of their temple-cities, they tear down the first to begin reshaping the range at large for ever-larger mountain-temples, never using the excesses of the lower-lands to keep as much structural support as possible.

And the ultimate goal of the mountain-dwellers? Carving as much of the world as possible into a sculpture of their God embracing the world itself, making it so that entire nations war over building upon its back for their own Gods, with the people of the continent-spanning statue having the power to easily keep all the common folk of the world safe from oppression.

The greatest possible goal, of course, is carving the entire moon into a statue of your God so that your God's glare is the equivalent of the Death Star firing, allowing you to create a world-eating mecha-statue that devours the world to make itself even larger. Basically, the end state of the setting is to make Unicron.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The pagans understand how divinity works, they just don't have the manpower, resources, or location to make city-statues. (They do have smaller images, ranging from normal-sized statues for prominent figures to figurines for personal use.) The Egyptian Pyramids required thousands of workers, which they could only afford to spare because they had hundreds of thousands of citizens in the breadbasket of the ancient world. No unified pagan groups are anywhere near that size, and you'd better believe the big statue-cities would have claimed the best land for themselves. (Especially since their civilizations probably grew up there.)
Though if a group of pagans got together, unified their little gods under one, and started trying to build their own city-statue...well, sounds like quite a target for the Heralds. Those filthy pagans are trying to become a threat, so go out and stop them, and while you're there could you pick up the resources they're gathering and maybe take some captives? Solid adventure idea. But nothing that would last long enough to finish construction; the established cities don't want competition.
Which leads to more stagnation. Which is one of the setting's current issues.


(And why are people so interested in the idea of carving the moon into a statue? Rocket science is quite a way off.)

-----

Anyways, might as well start bringing up some of my other ideas, even if most of them are centered on the concept that I don't want to take over the setting.

Spoiler: Stitchers

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But if this turns into a biopunk fantasy setting with statue-arcologies, so be it.

Stitchery is the hot new art, magically speaking. Some say it can solve all of society's ills, others say it will destroy them all. But then, people have been saying that paradise or armageddon are around the corner as long as anyone can remember. Still, it's undeniable that Stitchery is already starting to have some serious impact on the world, and the field has far to go.

Spoiler: Mechanics

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Spoiler: Feats

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Stitchers Wizards may select a Stitchery feat as one of the bonus feats offered by their class. The same option is available to archivists who already possess the Stitcher Training feat; while no church's library contains tomes on the principles of Stitchery, they contain enough volumes thaumatology and anatomy for a trained Stitcher to make do.

Create Stitcher Needle [item creation, stitchery]
Stitcher needles are
Prerequisites: Stitcher Training; Able to cast 2nd-level transmutation spells and 2 ranks in Craft (alchemy), or any other item creation feat
Benefit: You can create Stitcher needles, as described elsewhere.

Needleless Stitchery [metamagic, stitchery]
Prerequisites: Spellcraft 6 ranks, Stitcher Training, Eschew Materials
Benefit: A needless spell, unsurprisingly, does not require a Stitcher needle as a focus. A needleless spell takes a higher-level slot
Only Stitchery spells can be made needleless.

Needle Shiv
While the original Stitchers abhorred violence as a rule, not all who have learned their arts are so kind. Many, particularly in the slums and gutters, some have learned to use their needle-like foci as effective weapons, striking where they can do the most damage.
Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +1, Heal 2 ranks...maybe something else?
Benefit: You gain weapon proficiency with Stitcher needles. In addition, as part of casting a transmutation spell, you may make an attack with a Stitcher needle. If the attack hits, the spell takes effect on the target of the attack (though they still may make saving throws or otherwise be protected, as usual). Doing so gives a +2 bonus to Concentration checks for defensive casting, as the pointy weapon helps ward off potential attackers. This attack must be made during the final round of the spell's casting, if applicable.
Normal: Stitcher needles are improvised weapons.

Stitcher Training [stitchery]
You have been given training in anatomy and physiology beyond what most healers require. Moreover, you have learned how to apply this knowledge to precisely transmute living tissues.
Prerequisites: Heal 4 ranks, Able to cast 1st-level transmutation spells
Benefit: You gain the ability to properly cast Stitchery spells.
Normal: Any Stitchery spell cast by a spellcaster without proper training, whether cast themselves or with some kind of magic item, will have the malcasting effect.

Superior Needlework [stitchery]
Stitching is as of yet an underdeveloped art, with many inefficiencies yet to be worked out. One of the best-known limitations is its reliance on Stitcher needles. This is, however, not an absolute limitation, but merely a simplification made to
Prerequisites: Heal 6 ranks, Spellcraft 8 ranks, Stitcher Training, Able to cast 3rd-level Stitcher spells
Benefit: When casting a Stitcher spell which requires the use of a Stitcher needle, you may substitute a needle one level less powerful than specified. For instance, if you cast a spell which normally requires a Masterwork Stitcher needle, you could instead use a Resilient needle.

Spoiler: Stitchery Rules

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Malcasting
Typical spells have their effects largely predetermined during preparation, with some final adjustments made on the fly to tweak the effect. It requires knowing nothing more than the basics of one's own spells and what one wishes to accomplish with them. Stitchery spells are different. They provide tools for manipulating flesh, but require additional training to use those tools properly.
Those without said training can still cast the spells, however; they just won't get desirable results. Or, perhaps, one has more sinister intentions; the power to sculpt flesh can open wounds as easily as close them. Then again, even experts may make mistakes. In any of these cases, a malcast occurs. Malcasts have different effects than normal. Generally speaking, the result of a malcast will be harmful. After all, malcasts
Anyone without the Stitchery Training feat can only malcast Stitchery spells, whether they were prepared, spontaneously cast, used by magic item, or what-have-you. Even those with training may make mistakes. In any situation which requires a Concentration check to avoid miscasting, the caster must make a second Concentration or Heal check against the same DC to avoid malcasting. Finally, under certain circumstances, a Stitcher may decide that malcasting would suit the current situation better than casting properly; they may do so freely if desired.
Many spells will have different effects for accidental and intentional malcasts. Use the accidental malcast effect for any malcast caused by failing a Concentration check, or when an untrained individual attempts to cast a Stitchery spell in good faith. Anyone who intends to malcast a Stitchery spell naturally uses the intentional malcast effect.

Needle
A Stitcher needle is required as a focus for all Stitchery spells. It contains arcane patterns which help direct the spell's magical energies. While attempts have been made to incorporate such patterns into the spell formulae themselves, none have been simple enough to make it into common use.

Damage
Many spells cause damage on a miscast, to both hit points and abilities. A few dark spells intentionally twist the flesh to harm. Such effects are difficult to reverse without Stitchery; Stitchery is, after all, a transformation of the flesh into a new normal. The body can react and adapt to the changes, but they won't simply go away.
I am conflicted on how to handle this. On one hand, I could have it represented mechanically, say that half of it is "warp damage" or something which cannot be healed except by Stitchery or some powerful spells. On the other hand, this seems a bit dangerous; I'm not sure what the ramifications of this kind of thing would be. If nothing else, a player who takes warp damage would be seriously impaired. I'm torn.

Spoiler: Spells

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Unless otherwise noted, Stitchery spells can affect any organic creature except slimes. This includes not only humanoids, animals, and so on, but most corporeal undead, fleshy constructs, and so on. Stitchery usually has a reduced effect on creatures not made out of typical flesh, including plants, skeletons, and some outsiders; the effect of these spells is generally halved when applicable.

Clawed Fingers
Transmutation (Stitchery)
Level: Arch 2, Dusk 2?, Drd 1??, Hex 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S, M, Needle (Professional)
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fort negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
The target's fingers (or other appropriate appendages) are modified to hold sharp claws, which are implanted. The claws allow the target to make claw attacks, which deal damage equal to a dagger of their size.
These claws are inconvenient for many tasks, particularly ones requiring a strong grip or fine manual dexterity. The target takes a –2 penalty to all such checks, including checks to avoid being disarmed, many Dexterity-based skills, some Perform skills, Forgery, and most Climb rolls. (The DM should waive this last penalty if the claws could "bite" into the surface being climbed, reducing the need for good handholds.)
The caster may choose to only put claws on one hand, limiting offensive abilities somewhat but also alleviating drawbacks. No penalty is taken on tasks requiring one hand, and only a –1 penalty is taken on tasks requiring both hands.
Malcast: The claws are not as sturdy. The target can deal lethal slashing damage with unarmed strikes, but gets none of the benefits of natural weapons; e.g, they still provoke attacks of opportunity. They are still inconvenient enough to cause penalties to many rolls. An intentional malcast can waive the material component and simply cause the penalties, or to double the penalties.
Material Component: Several talons, claws, fangs, or similar body parts, or a significant amount of hard organic material like bones.

Remove Augment
Transmutation (Stitchery)
Level: Arch 1, Brd 1, Drd 1, Sor/Wiz 1
Components: V, S, Needle (Professional)
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fort negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
This spell can reverse the effects of Stitchery magic. Any effects which normally require no more than a Lesser Stitcher Needle may be reversed entirely; other effects may be reduced, but usually involve more intimate connections within the subject than this spell can safely undo.
The site of the former augment will be covered in obvious scars, not entirely unlike those caused by stitch wounds and similar spells. A Stitcher or someone familiar with their work can tell the difference, and may even be able to tell what augments were removed.
Malcast: The augment is removed, but the target takes 1d2 points of Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution damage.

Remove Scar
Transmutation (Stitchery)
Level: Arch 0, Brd 0, Sor/Wiz 0
Components: V, S, Needle (Cheap)
Casting time: 1 full round
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fort negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
Skin and subcutaneous tissue are adjusted. As indicated, the primary use of this spell is to remove scars or other blemishes. It can also remove tattoos, brands, and similar marks, including magical ones. (However, if the spell cannot normally be dispelled by damaging the mark, the magic remains active; it is merely harder to notice.) The area affected by this spell is roughly the size of a human palm; larger scars require multiple castings.
The process is not perfect; a minute or so of examination with a successful Search or Heal check (DC 10 + ½ of either the caster's caster level or their ranks in Heal, whichever is lower) will reveal that Stitchery has been used to cover something up. Beating the DC by at least 10 will give some indication of
Remove scar may also be used to quickly and painlessly tattoo the target, if ink is available. The spellcasting time must be extended to 1 minute to do so properly. The process is fiddly; the DC for any relevant skill checks is increased by 5, and any magical effects provided by the design do not take effect. (Magic provided by enchanted ink still functions.)
Perhaps the most common use of remove scar among ethical Stitchers is to "clean up" the result of other Stitchery spells. This ranges from removing the distinctive scars left by Stitchery healing to smoothing the transition between different parts of a Cross-Stitched experiment. Such duties are often relegated to apprentices still honing their craft, when such are available.
Malcast: Rather than removing the blemish, it is merely altered. If malcast accidentally, the blemish is usually less noticeable, though clearly unnatural. Remove scar may also be malcast to create blemishes, with trained Stitchers being capable of precise blemishes. This allows, for instance, "brands" that cannot be removed by healing magic.

Stitch Wounds
Transmutation (Stitchery)
Level: Arch 3, Brd 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, Needle (Professional)
Casting time: 1 full round
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fort negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
Make a Heal check. The target heals damage equal to the result of that check. This healing causes distinctive scars over the site of healed wounds, which neither natural healing nor most healing spells can remove.
Malcast: On an accidental malcast, the target takes 3d8 damage. On an intentional malcast, the target takes damage equal to what would have been healed.

Stitch Wounds, Greater
Transmutation (Stitchery)
Level: Arch 5, Brd 5, Sor/Wiz 5
Components: V, S, Needle (Fine)
This spell functions like stitch wounds, except that it cures damage equal to twice the value of the Heal check. On an accidental malcast, it instead deals 5d8+5 damage.

Stitch Wounds, Lesser
Transmutation (Stitchery)
Level: Arch 2, Brd 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S, Needle (Basic)
This spell functions like stitch wounds, except that it cures damage equal to half the value of the Heal check. On an accidental malcast, it instead deals 2d8-1 damage.

Spoiler: Note To Self On Classes

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Sorcerers and Wizards are the primary Stitcher classes. Archivists fit beautifully for those wanting a divine Stitcher. Maybe wu jen would work, too? I'd have to check the fluff some time. Duskblades and Hexblades might have a use for some Stitchery; I'd have to look at their spell lists to be sure.
Dread Necromancers aren't much for transmutation, but there could be a prestige class in there for combining necromancy and Stitchery in an ultimately creepy transhumanist thing. Warmages have the problems of narrow focus in both ends and means; I doubt they'd have much use for Stitchery. Divine casters (archivist aside) face a similar issue. Bards...maybe?
Alternate casting methods are another thing entirely. I'm sure warlocks would love some Stitchery goodness, psionists might try to copy some Stitcher notes, and there might even be appropriate vestiges...but it's not something to worry about for the present. They don't use spells, after all.

Spoiler: Cross-Stitching

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It's essentially combining multiple creatures into one. I'm not sure exactly how the rules will work out, but it'll probably be somewhere between magic item creation and the rules in Crossbreeding: Flesh and Blood (from the third-party, 3.0 Encyclopedia Arcane).

[Mechalich]

(And why are people so interested in the idea of carving the moon into a statue? Rocket science is quite a way off.)

While that particular idea is ridiculous, you are going to have to ban planar travel for this idea to work, otherwise the followers of a god can simply build an infinitely high statue in a plane without gravity (the elemental plane of water would be ideal, since your giant statue could be nothing more than a hollow shell.

I'd also note that, in the early history of this world any god whose form could reasonably be conceptualized by a pyramidal structure - for instance a serpent god would could be represented by titanic coils wrapping around to form a pyramid with the head at the top - would have a huge leg up on the statue building race and might actually accumulate enough power in antiquity to simply take control of the world outright. The Great Pyramid held the height record for an absurd 3700 years after all.

[MrZJunior]

I think you would have entire generations of people who have been born, lived out their lives, and died up in the statue cities. Which brings up a question, what happens to dead bodies?

Arcane casters could form symbiotic relationships with necromancers to absorb all the negative energy put off by breaking arcane magic into positive and negative energy.

[Bobbyjackcorn]

I think you would have entire generations of people who have been born, lived out their lives, and died up in the statue cities. Which brings up a question, what happens to dead bodies?

Arcane casters could form symbiotic relationships with necromancers to absorb all the negative energy put off by breaking arcane magic into positive and negative energy.

Zombie Laborers.


Btw, where is the their food coming from?

[GreatWyrmGold]

I think you would have entire generations of people who have been born, lived out their lives, and died up in the statue cities. Which brings up a question, what happens to dead bodies?

Btw, where is the their food coming from?

Despite the (current) name of the thread, the statue-cities aren't completely self-contained. Each controls a section of the surrounding countryside, which is closer to a standard fantasy setting (aside from the colossal statues in the distance), which is why I didn't focus much on them so far.

While that particular idea is ridiculous, you are going to have to ban planar travel for this idea to work, otherwise the followers of a god can simply build an infinitely high statue in a plane without gravity (the elemental plane of water would be ideal, since your giant statue could be nothing more than a hollow shell.

...Since when has the Elemental Plane of Water had a moon?

I'd also note that, in the early history of this world any god whose form could reasonably be conceptualized by a pyramidal structure - for instance a serpent god would could be represented by titanic coils wrapping around to form a pyramid with the head at the top - would have a huge leg up on the statue building race and might actually accumulate enough power in antiquity to simply take control of the world outright. The Great Pyramid held the height record for an absurd 3700 years after all.

My point was more that megastructures require a significant population, which the pagan peoples...you know, I might as well spill out my thoughts on them more clearly.

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Spoiler: Outside the Statue-Cities

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City-Statues? I can never decide which one is right. I guess it depends on if I'm focusing on the statue or the city.

Anyways.

Spoiler: Within a God's Domain

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The greatest lands made the greatest tribes, who made the greatest gods, who made the greatest civilizations, who made the great statue-cities. And so it is today, with the nations* of the world built around statues honoring a god who is no longer doing as much as they once did.

The Parishes around each domain are a mixture of farmland with scattered villages, larger towns, and occasional specialty parishes built around silviculture, mining, or something similar...or sometimes defense.
Agrarian Parishes are the most common, and arguably the most dull. Farmers farm farmland; near the middle is a large village with large roads connecting to nearby villages, towns, and so forth; smaller settlements are scattered throughout. Anyone who wants a simple, quiet life moves out here. Agrarian Parishes which aren't particularly near a border or Statue-City generally aren't bothered much by foes or Heralds, and if they aren't adjacent to a town the Guilds likely won't bother you if you don't bother them. Of course, by the same token, if something does happen, you will have only the local Parson and Sheriff to rely on. Unless, of course, your problem is big enough to disrupt local transit or agricultural production or something, in which case you can expect some low-ranking Heralds to check in in perhaps a week.
Urban Parishes, more commonly called "towns," cover a much smaller area than most Parishes, generally not extending past the town walls. However, they are centers of economy unrivaled save by the Statue-Cities themselves. The Guilds maintain a strong presence in towns, sometimes stronger than the local ministry (in part because the Church's efforts tend to be focused on borders and the City-Statue). The Heralds generally have a headquarters in each town, but their only permanent staff are low-status Heralds who either don't want to be first in line for any immediate conflicts or who the Church doesn't want to be have around. They mainly serve as a place for locals to report problems to, but sometimes go out to solve them if they're small enough to not bother the main Heraldic forces with. Towns are lead by a secular Mayor and a sacred Bishop, the latter of whom generally has more power than the former while forcing the former to accept blame for anything that they both deserve some for.
Domains located near other Domains, dangerous pagans, or wilds with fierce monsters have border-parishes called Marquisates, which are generally fortified and focused on maintaining defenses. Some churches designate border Parishes as Marquisates and have them build defenses and provide some other useful product; others break off the immediate borderlands into separate Marquisates and have nearby Agrarian Parishes support them. Either way, they have a Marquis and a Templar leading, and always have a strong Heraldic presence.
Other Parishes are centered around forestry, fishery, mining, or other industries. They tend to have all the land required to do their job well (unless there's enough for two or more Parishes), a large village or small town for workers to live in and for those providing services, and any nearby land that other Parishes don't need or want. These Parishes typically have a strong Guild presence from one or a few Guilds with a strong interest in whatever they produce, but most other Guilds don't have significant presence (just a couple of members to provide services to locals). The Church is, of course, always present, but their presence varies greatly depending on how important the resource is and how close it is to sources of danger. A fishing Parish on a coast controlled by its god's Domain, in a Domain which gets more than enough food from farms, would probably have no more presence than an Agrarian Parish (or perhaps slightly less), but an iron mine near the border will be comparable to a Marquisate.

Nobles and aristocrats have been a part of many of these civilizations for centuries, but in a world where the heart of each nation is literally held up by the might of the local god, they are forced more than ever to bow to the will of the church. Still, they retain their status and much of their power. Counts, Dukes, and Barons retain their titles and much of their land (though rule of law is enforced by the church), and often lead the secular government of their local parish. Even when, say, the local baron doesn't want to take on the responsibilities of sheriff, the position often goes to one of said baron's relatives. And, of course, clergy from noble families rises through the ranks more easily than most.
Lieges and vassals still hold their duties to one another, though both duties are legally considered inferior to the needs of the church. Still, the presence of feudal politics complicates things, especially when some of a Duke-Marquis's vassals are technically in another god's Domain, or when nobles marry across Domain boundaries. Now, neighboring Domains aren't constantly at war or anything (they couldn't afford it), and trade between them is common, but relations are...strained, and throwing family relations and another set of politics into the mix just for some personal power (or, worse, something trivial like love or a sense of obligation) is frowned upon by the politically-savvy. The less-politically-savvy, on the other hand, see such cross-Domain dealings as a step short of heresy. All of this naturally causes problems for noble families whose reach extends across Domain borders, but being able to keep cross-Domain trade in the family has its benefits for that family (and, to an extent, to the Domains).

As mentioned, Guilds have varying presences in Parishes. In general, the larger local population centers are, the more Guilds will invest in an area. They will also have more presence in places where they have a special interest (carpenters in silviculture Parishes, smiths in Marquisates, etc). Guilds have less power in the Parishes than in the City-Statues, due both to the greater Guild presence (providing services to the massive population of a Statue-City takes a lot of workers, or at least a lot of shops) and to the ridiculously complicated bureaucracy of internal government leaving more space for Guilds to fill. Of course, in the City-Statues, they also need to compete with every ministry, every noble family with allies, agents, or even relatives in the capital (which will be most of them), every gang or syndicate or corrupt magistrate, and (of course) every single Guild operating in that Domain.
Speaking of which, most Guilds don't just operate in one Domain. Most churches prefer to delegate important tasks to Guilds with few foreign interests**, but for less-important tasks and almost anything commissioned by those outside the ministries, the Guild with the highest quality or lowest price will be chosen, whether it's the Guild sponsored by your church, a sprawling multi-Domain Guild, or even a branch of a neighboring Domain's sponsored Guild.

The Domain of a statue-city is somewhat limited. Generally, Heralds (especially the major ones) want to be kept within a couple days' travel of their families (who are essentially required to stay in the Statue-Cities). Theoretically, this would limit the reach of City-Statues to a circle perhaps a hundred miles of highway or a couple hundred of seaway; however, one must not underestimate the effects of magic. Permanent teleportation circles (which require 10 minutes of an archmage's time, 4,500 XP from some other caster, and 1,000 gold in amber...each way) can be set up, generally 75-100 miles apart and in safe, well-defended areas. The cost is affordable but not insignificant to a City-Statue's budget, forcing Domains to pick and choose what territory they're willing to expand into. (If this wasn't the case, the Heralds' reluctance would still prove burdensome; the church's teleportation circles are guarded by soldiers and bureaucracy alike, and are in high demand by both church officials and rich private customers, meaning that only two or three can be used each hour outside of emergencies.)
Or they could just send the Heralds who don't care as much about being in contact with their families to staff the border zones, but family is considered an important part of Heraldic behavior when off-duty, so such Heralds are usually not trusted enough to bear the brunt of important extended duties and this option is generally not chosen. Or one could use non-Heralds, but most of the greatest warriors in the land are brought to the Heralds. Still, sometimes the church does decide to make use of one of these options (typically supplemented by more typical Heralds cycling in for short periods) when they need to hold some land far from their teleportation networks.
(Note that "stay within a day or two of home" is not something Heralds hold religiously to; in times of crisis, they will travel as far as they need to to protect their home, church, and god. But they generally don't want to do it all the time.)


*What would these be called? I mean, they don't really have kings...
**Aside from arcanist's guilds, which tend to be rare and specialized enough that there generally isn't much competition if you want the support of a Guild and not a bunch of freelancers.

Spoiler: Pagan Places

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First, we need to define what a pagan is. In this world, "pagan" refers to anyone who venerates a lesser god, defined as one without a Statue-City. There are rumors that pagans worship demons and other malign spirits. (There are certainly some outsiders (and other beings) who have convinced pagans to worship them, combining divine power with what they had before, but most pagan gods are either ancestral spirits or just gods.) In principle, lesser gods vary in power from ancestral spirits whose only idols are small, hand-carved statues to the patron of kingdoms centered around their version of the Cristo Redentor; however, pagan groups/lesser gods on the larger end of the spectrum tend to be quashed by the greater gods and their armies, both to prevent them from becoming a threat and to take the resources they've conveniently assembled in their de facto capital. Pagan cults which want to survive usually need to be mobile, discrete, or not worth attacking; large ones usually fail all three.
However, that isn't to say that pagan communities are weak. Some are; insular pagan cults which refuse to accept the worship of any god but their own are as hateful to other pagans as to the greater gods and their flocks. However, most are more accepting, whether by philosophy or by pragmatism. Most pagan villages are cosmopolitan, with pagans of all faiths equally welcome. In fact, even the individual pagans are often open to worshiping multiple deities; the gods themselves often find it profitable to specialize and each respond to a fraction of prayers from many individuals. Larger pagan towns tend to have one patron deity, honored with a life-sized or larger statue in the center of town, but still welcome those who worship other deities.
Pagan nations larger than city-states (well, town-states) are rare, and usually consist of several towns whose patron deities work together as a pantheon. These nations may or may not have a central holy site where their priests can meet on neutral ground; on one hand, such a site is incredibly convenient and establishes their legitimacy, but on the other hand it serves as a red flag and a big target to any nearby greater deity. Pagan nations rarely exist within smiting range of a Statue-City, due to the aforementioned smiting, but are more common elsewhere. Many (though far from all) priests and ministers are concerned by the possibility of some such nation becoming a threat; when these ministers are in power, expect Heralds to be sent on long-term missions to investigate and destroy them.

The most solid and heavily-defended Domain borders are those with other Domains, due to the great threat posed by rival gods; however, the borders with pagans are often treated as being far less safe. This isn't entirely unfounded; land within the Domains is fairly well-patrolled and has few places for bandits to hide, while pagans lack the resources to do so. Hence, bandits and other criminals (including thieves' guilds and the like) often base themselves in pagan lands, raiding into the hinterlands before retreating. Some pagans are perfectly fine with this, as long as the bandits are friendly back. Others, especially ones in more-established towns or nations, are not. This is in part because the banditry gives pagans in general a bad rep as being thieves and killers and the worst kind of criminal. (Well, they already are, in a way, since they don't do everything in their power to keep the City-Statues standing, but most people don't see it that way.)

Pagans are a varied bunch, and hard to pin down. Some are "civilized," by the measure of Statue-Cities; they clear forests, pay soldiers, have clerics praying to one god, and so forth. Others are not; they live in forests, leave defense to barbaric warriors, have druids praying to dozens of gods, and so forth. Most are somewhere in between.
Some pagans can be useful to the Statue-Cities; if they have powers useful to the city (as the druids often do) and agree to work in its interests, most clergymen are willing to overlook the fact that they only pay lip service to their god. Most.

Spoiler: Beyond

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Some characterize all lands beyond the boundaries of a Domain as being pagan lands, and that's not completely wrong. But it isn't completely right, either. Even pagans don't control the entire wilderness.

Some places are controlled by dark organizations that, while technically pagan, are hated as much by most pagans as by the greater gods. Some places are controlled by monsters who answer to no god at all. Some places are so hostile to life that they cannot be controlled at all. These deep wilds are feared by the pagans at least as much as pagan hordes are feared by the City-Statues.

[Morphic tide]

...Huh. So my idea of a mountain group applying science to the power to size ratios can happen, but would have to be extremely far away and able to keep squad after squad of Heralds away from anything sensitive. For the multiple centuries of the project.

And I'm really considering how absurdly easy it would be to break the statue-arcology system with oddly-shaped gods. Because a serpent God, for example, can have a statue-arcology built fairly covertly, as you can make a lot of progress on it as nothing but odd urban planning, with the major powers only realizing what's going on after the absurdly-redundant fortress-city is already an absurdly-redundant fortress-city able to bleed enough resources for taking it down to be a serious risk for stability at home.

In general, a serpent God catching on in Pagan lands makes walled cities much, much harder to deal with because the walls are protected by divine power. Of a statue the size of the city walls, because the city walls are the statue. Pretty hard to deal with, however you look at it...

I dunno, seems like a way for a more shamanistic "Pagan" society to suddenly be more trouble to actually get rid of than it's worth. Particularly clever serpent-worshippers would construct vast statue-walls to enclose needed farmland, rendering siege impossible on an absurd number of levels. Think Attack on Titan's walled kingdom. Only the wall is a snake.

...You could actually have the serpent-god be a thing without breaking the setting entirely, as it can be done for regular sized walled cities with fairly little ability to prevent it happening long term, but stuff like the Great Wall of China or AoT's Walled Kingdom involve enough resources and manpower that they can be reliably stopped. It makes the Pagan lands able to have a protection that makes the key cities to their continued relevance unable to be destroyed by the major powers, no matter how hard they try, but with conditions severe enough that it's absurdly impractical to try using this advantage for conquest of a power with a statue-arcology.

Raids of the kingdoms and sabatoge of statue projects(and arcology statue-wall expansion in particular) can still happen, but the major Pagan powers have arcologies that make up for lower Divine backup with practically nonexistent maintenance and much larger internal populations, alongside full or nearly full agricultural self sufficiency. The setting could have a particularly large example of such a city that set the trend for the statue-arcologies way back as a dense Pagan enclave within the major powers treated as neutral ground for the major powers, kept there for diplomatic functions and because nobody can spare the resources to actually take it over.

Of course, statue-walls are wastefully wide from a normal practical perspectives, and the monotheistic powers refuse to have walled towns worship a Pagan deity to the point of tripling the stone content of their walls to be a statue for said deity.

[GreatWyrmGold]

...Huh. So my idea of a mountain group applying science to the power to size ratios can happen, but would have to be extremely far away and able to keep squad after squad of Heralds away from anything sensitive. For the multiple centuries of the project.

Yup. They'd need some substantial protection to pull it off, which generally means they'd need a lot of power, which is kinda what they'd use the statue for.

And I'm really considering how absurdly easy it would be to break the statue-arcology system with oddly-shaped gods.

I know, there's a lot of stuff there. I've been thinking a bit about the metaphysics required to make it make sense for the statues to look like statues and not just pillars carved to look vaguely like people (maybe something about how the statue needs to reflect the nature of the god to efficiently enhance the god's power?), but at some point I just have to shrug and say "It hasn't happened because the setting would break if it did." Possibly with the addendum of "But it would make a heck of a campaign hook."

In general, a serpent God catching on in Pagan lands makes walled cities much, much harder to deal with because the walls are protected by divine power. Of a statue the size of the city walls, because the city walls are the statue. Pretty hard to deal with, however you look at it...
I dunno, seems like a way for a more shamanistic "Pagan" society to suddenly be more trouble to actually get rid of than it's worth. Particularly clever serpent-worshippers would construct vast statue-walls to enclose needed farmland, rendering siege impossible on an absurd number of levels. Think Attack on Titan's walled kingdom. Only the wall is a snake.
...You could actually have the serpent-god be a thing without breaking the setting entirely, as it can be done for regular sized walled cities with fairly little ability to prevent it happening long term, but stuff like the Great Wall of China or AoT's Walled Kingdom involve enough resources and manpower that they can be reliably stopped. It makes the Pagan lands able to have a protection that makes the key cities to their continued relevance unable to be destroyed by the major powers, no matter how hard they try, but with conditions severe enough that it's absurdly impractical to try using this advantage for conquest of a power with a statue-arcology.
Raids of the kingdoms and sabatoge of statue projects(and arcology statue-wall expansion in particular) can still happen, but the major Pagan powers have arcologies that make up for lower Divine backup with practically nonexistent maintenance and much larger internal populations, alongside full or nearly full agricultural self sufficiency. The setting could have a particularly large example of such a city that set the trend for the statue-arcologies way back as a dense Pagan enclave within the major powers treated as neutral ground for the major powers, kept there for diplomatic functions and because nobody can spare the resources to actually take it over.
Of course, statue-walls are wastefully wide from a normal practical perspectives, and the monotheistic powers refuse to have walled towns worship a Pagan deity to the point of tripling the stone content of their walls to be a statue for said deity.

That's an interesting idea, and one I might have to steal use once I start mapping out the specific cultures of the setting.
(And I don't see the greater gods particularly wanting to support a lesser one if the lesser god wasn't willing to make itself essentially a glorified divine servant. Which would, again, potentially make for a fascinating campaign hook. Some greater god makes a deal with a pagan serpent-god or something, and the good-sized statues the greater god can make relatively easily let the serpent-god become a very powerful servant indeed...)

[MrZJunior]

I would expect that the established gods would team up against any upstart godling who's getting too big for his britches. Especially if he's an unusual shape.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Alright, now that I've found the time and ability to return to the forums, it's high time I throw something else at this wall. The first thing that came to mind was an overview of how various races fit into the world--or at least a little brainstorming about how they might. I decided to cover all the ones in this list, and other major ones which came to mind. I even did research and stuff on what their canonical societal structure and stuff are like.
...That might have been overambitious. Still, I stuck with it.

Spoiler: (Most) Races and their Roles

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Spoiler: Primary Races

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Humans
The plain vanilla race of every setting. I see no reason this one should be different.

Elves
In most settings, the elves are an old race with a respectable history, full of powerful ancient empires and crap, but which have fallen to "younger" races in later eons. This setting naturally provides what I think is a pretty good reason for that trope
The elves' deities are gods of the forest. (You know, generally.) They were inclined to make divine idols by reshaping trees rather than carving or forging them from inorganic matter, which gave them a leg up on early statue production. However, trees naturally don't reach the 400-foot mark, in part because of the difficulties of water transport. Even with hydromancy helping things along, reshaped trees would begin to lag behind other statue-making methods, particularly once the benefits of using the inside of statues were realized; the elves would have lost ground while transitioning from treeshaping to more efficient methodology.
The elves would likely be associated with pagans in the minds of most people, possibly leading to distrust among non-pagans.

Dwarves
Dwarves are known as masters of mining and stonecraft, both of which would be useful in a world where giant stone statues are the centerpiece of all major societies. (While most additions would use magical stone, mining would still be useful for shaping that stone on a rough level.) Dwarven neighborhoods would likely be present in all Statue-Cities.
I see dwarves being a bit like medieval Jews. Not in the sense of being a fantastic counterpart culture like in many fantasy worlds, but in the sense of being more or less forced into a specific useful profession by various laws and edicts. This would likely cause tensions between dwarves and other races, which would contribute to a negative reputation. (But hey, better to have a negative reputation as being grumpy and rude than as being money-grubbing a-holes.)
Of course, since dwarves would be an integral part of essentially every Statue-City's function, pagans would distrust or hate them. This would serve as further pressure keeping dwarves from leaving the system that shoehorns them into one or a few lines of work. I am not writing this setting to be kind to dwarves, am I?

Halflings
Halflings are all the annoying aspects of kender, dialed back to a respectable level. They generally don't keep much of their own; not land, not cities, not grudges. Halflings are practically designed to be footnotes in everyone's histories rather than making histories of their own. Of course, this isn't all bad. Yondalla might end up as the de facto divine mediator if she shares the same temperament as her creations, and that gives her a good bit of power.
As for the halflings themselves, I'd expect that most would shun the Statue-Cities. Oh, they might visit, but I can't imagine they'd want to stay. They'd likely wander through the parishes, settling down temporarily every so often before picking up and moving again, perhaps even moving between Domains. I could see them picking up a gypsy-like reputation; part of this is because of their perceived lack of loyalty to any specific god, and part is because if you're going to call different groups of people "races," you should be able to use them to support the sorts of themes associated with real-world races, and they don't exactly get along well. (Until they convince themselves that they're all the same race, and that they should not get along with some new outgroup.)

Gnomes
The first thing I think of when I think "D&D gnome" is their innovation. Some view this as an excuse to turn them into comedic relief; I view it as them being the only major(ish) race in the setting who wants to get them out of medieval stasis. That's obviously going to be viewed a bit more positively when many people believe that keeping things the way they are will lead to ruin, though given that other people fear that changing things will lead to ruin this won't be universal.
In "canon," gnomes tend to live in either small mostly-gnome societies or in gnomish neighborhoods. Either way, gnomish communities tend to be lead by a council of prominent, respected gnomes. Urban gnomes tend to have prominent merchants or other wealthy people as prominent members of society, but they have no formal power; however, since their patronage pays for the dreams of other gnomes to become reality, they still presumably have significant sway. There are also artisans and rebels" who choose to reject the traditional structure of gnomish society. In other words, a gnomish community has a formal power structure steeped in tradition, with numerous rich tradesmen holding influence due to controlling vital parts of their society functioning, and a group of people who hold themselves outside the traditions which hold the rest of the society together. It's a surprisingly decent mirror to the City-Statues (complete with their own pagan stand-ins); this is worth bringing up for pagan gnome communities.
But back to how gnomes integrate into the rest of society. Most guilds would want to maintain some gnomes to try and discover the Next Big Thing, likely at their headquarters in whatever Statue-City they're headquartered in, likely with other gnomes (from other guilds or who moved there themselves) living in the same neighborhood. The most successful of these gnomes, and other respected elders and experts, would be on that council, and some gnomish merchants keeping the gnomish quarter's economy running would also have informal authority, and there would be some gnomes who didn't want to be part of your system.

P.S. Why are only chaos gnomes mentioned in Wikipedia's list? Aside from human variants and the big Evil Counterparts, no subraces are in the list except chaos gnomes.

Spoiler: Primary Savages

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I am here using "savage races" or "savages" to refer to races which are stereotypically evil, unorganized, and otherwise savage--in other words, antagonistic races.

Orcs
All D&D interpretations of orcs make them warlike and violent. Whether they're violent savages who somehow survived despite having no means of supporting themselves except raiding others or proud warrior race guys, they're violent. Most tend closer to the former extreme than the latter, but since Grummsh is one of the big D&D deities, these will probably be more organized and efficient than most. In Forgotten Realms, they tend to live in ruined cities built by others and occupied by them; that obviously wouldn't work in this setting, but they would likely maintain large numbers of slaves. Some would be weak orcs or those who betrayed their leaders, while many would be goblins and other weak races.
Orcs, being one of the best-organized

Spoiler: Goblinoids

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It's always seemed kinda odd to me that there were goblinoids but not orcoids or what-have-you. This doesn't bother me quite as much as how goblinoids are generally described. To quote the Forgotten Realms wiki (incidentally the single most useful source of lore I found in this endeavor): "The typical goblinoid is lewd, cruel, sadistic, power-hungry (or in the case of goblins, just plain hungry), extremely lacking in any intelligence or sophistication, and proud of it." Their societies would realistically disintegrate under backstabbing faster than drow society, because at least drow care about subtlety and keeping up appearances. No wonder these guys are just low-level cannon fodder!

Vanilla Goblins (and goblinoids in general)
The normal goblin is smaller than most goblinoids, and all that makes them one-dimensional ineffectual villains has been concentrated in their little forms. When not being kept in line by some stronger and more sensible being (other goblinoids, orcs, human badguys, their god...), they re lead by whoever stabbed or hacked their way into power most recently. They are greedy, short-tempered, short-sighted, and vengeful, which can sometimes be good traits for getting into power but never good for ruling.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, goblins don't build much on their own. They group together in tribes for safety, even though they often find that they can't stand each other. (I guess that's another advantage of living in big groups without permanent houses; if you hate your neighbors, start sleeping on the other side of the campfire.) The typical goblin is fiercely individualistic, caring only about themselves, usually some of their family, and maybe their buddies.
In most settings, goblins have been driven into those areas which even other savage races driven to the fringes of the world consider not worth driving the goblins out of. That would be true in this world, too, but not just in the sense of "goblins live in the wasteland". They would also group in smaller, more tight-knit (or less-stable) packs in the corners of slums and sewers which other races don't want, considered pests even by other scum. Some City-Statues would enslave goblins, likely working them as hard as possible in part to get rid of them, but many wouldn't think them worth the effort (and risk of escaped slaves worming their way into somewhere inconvenient).

Hobgoblins
To contrast with goblins, hobgoblins are quite competent. Hobgoblins are credited with breeding warbeasts like worgs and drakes, indicating both skill in long-term planning and an interest in manipulating other creatures to fit their needs. (It's also been suggested that they bred goblins and bugbears this way, meaning I might be ble to blame them for goblins' flaws.)
However, they're no Admiral Yi, and they're not even a Scipio Africanus. They are n antagonistic race, after all, which means they can't have redeeming characteristics. Hobgoblins are proud and egotistical, which can lead to conflict between groups if one accidentally insults another. Still, hobgoblins are more organized and better at cooperation than most other goblins--indeed, than most other savage races. Surviving goblinoid-lead groups would likely be lead by hobgoblins.
Hobgoblins would likely not integrate well into others' groups. If given some autonomy, a company of goblinoids could be an asset to an army, but one wonders if they'd be used for more than cannon fodder. Desperate times would call for desperate measures, but they only last so long.

Bugbears
Big, furry, nasty goblins. Short-tempered and perfectly fine with it. Bugbears prefer violent solutions if not vastly outnumbered, unless someone else is holding their reins. Hence, most live either in small groups in the wilderness (or slums) or else end up in large groups where someone else holds the reins.
Bugbears sometimes take control of groups of other goblinoids. They are very different from hobgoblins in temperament and goals, meaning that any such group is going to see a lot of turmoil. Especially since the policy changes are going to be very pro-violence.

Blues
Psychic goblins. Not very common, but disruptive when they show up. See, blues get along with typical goblinoids even worse than other goblinoids do. They are known to try and infiltrate and take over goblin tribes by...outbreeding them and using superior organizational skills? Huh. The fact that blues try this causes normal goblins to try and kill them, which causes blues to be paranoid.
I can see blues and hobgoblins getting along.

Bhukas
Desert goblins. However, instead of being raiding jerks, they're natural desert survivors. Their culture celebrates their ancestors and their lifestyles, meaning that they are even less likely to create large statues than most desert races. Most likely, bhukas would remain in isolationist tribes, perhaps rescuing the occasional dying desert traveler who they came across. Heralds who had to enter deserts for some business could possibly hire or enslave bhukas to help guide them, but if such duty occurred regularly there would likely be other facilities to assist.

Drow
The defining traits of drow are arrogance, selfishness, and and sadism. Have I complained about D&D's one-dimensional evil races too much yet? Because I really wish they were more interesting. For instance, the evil versions of races could have their evil-ness come from taking their good counterpart's virtues too far and neglecting other stuff.
Anyways, while the drow care only about their own pleasures and (understandably) don't trust anyone, it's somewhat enlightened self-interest that realizes other drow and drow society in general are useful. This lets drow society more or less function, albeit with ludicrous attrition and inefficiency from everyone's treachery and treachery defenses.
On the bright side, canon drow are already theocratic, and Lolth is clearly interventionist enough to punish at least some wrongdoers personally. In this world, with Lolth's well-being being absolutely vital to the survival of everyone in the Statue-City, it at lest should run smoothly(ish). Lolth's Parishes, not so much. The Drow likely wouldn't be much of a force on the world stage.
Outside of their own Domain, drow would be pariahs. Everybody knows they're untrustworthy, and they consistently act it. Even in the slums of other Statue-Cities, they'd face issues. No amount of paranoia is worth being unable to forge lasting bonds, especially not in the dire straits found in those slums.

Duergar
Duergar are essentially nihilists mixed with standard evil. They are pessimistic, apathetic, and suspicious of everyone (including their own families). They enjoy inflicting pain on others, perhaps so when they kill them the victims agree that it was a mercy.
Duergar share an affinity and love for fine craftsmanship with their dwarven kin, though they prefer more practical creations and don't have the same single-minded mineral focus as most dwarves. They are also more accepting of magic. Outside their own settlements, duergar could be skilled craftsmen, though they might end up forced into masonry by those same laws dwarves in City-Statues must abide by.

Svirfneblin
It's weird how most of the main D&D player races have evil counterparts--even gnomes--but neither humans nor halflings do? Unless orcs and goblins are the evil humans and halflings? Hm...
Anyways, svirfneblin are cynical, suspicious, and tend to suspect things won't or can't get any better. This attitude meshes well with some attitudes towards this world's great City-Statues. That said, they're hard workers and surprisingly not-terrible people for an evil counterpart race, so they'd likely be able to function in normal society. They might not be cheerful, but their skill at metalwork and mining rivals the dwarves'. They can sometimes be prodded into the same curiosity and innovation which defines their surface kin, meaning that their highs could be even higher than dwarven crafters.

Spoiler: Iconic Monstrous Races

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Dragons
Dragons are wellsprings of power, which some trace their own magic to. Dragons are embodiments of certain aspects of the natural world, with their power being yet greater over those aspects. They are nigh-eternal, which (combined with their immense power) makes them aloof to lesser beings. Dragons are, in a way, like lesser gods which need no worshipers or idols. Dragons also seek challenge, and like treasure, and stuff, but dragons as symbols of power, some rivaling the gods themselves, would fit best in this world. I imagine there could be some kind of region with fewer gods and more dragons, with dragons filling in the void. Perhaps some ancient dragons extend their lives and power even further by having lesser creatures worship them and build great statues? It's worth thinking about.

Mind Flayers
Perhaps the most iconic monster in all of D&D, the mind flayer's most distinctive habit is turning others into more of themselves by converting other races, sort of like brainwashing (except swap "washing" for "replacement"). Lords of Madness says that they also repress all of their emotion, to the point of not feeling (or not admitting, even to themselves, that they feel?) joy or other positive emotions. All of this makes them a decent stand-in for cults and other highly-insular religions.
There's also something in there about them being aliens from the future or something? That's weird.

Aboleths
Aboleths are defined by their truly ancient nature. Even in "canon" settings, they are older than the gods and most of the world, born from the primal khaos. (It's not a typo, it's a reference to classical mythology.) They have all the memories of their ancestors, and can sometimes hold onto the memories of those they devour, making them an unimaginable source of dark wisdom. In short, they are gods without the power (though their psionics are pretty powerful compared to mortals).
Of course, aboleths could certainly make themselves a sort of congregation. Between their psionic enslavement and their slime's transformative properties, aboleths can build quite a following of mortal servants. If aboleths are reduced in number and increased in power (by making weaker ones rarer and stronger ones more common), aboleths could be a dark foil to the gods and their City-Statues.

Beholders
Beholders take "self-projection as god" a bit too literally. This is in part because of their paranoia, which Lords of Madness suggests is due to keeping their right and left brains a bit too far apart. Their racial memory from a line of xenophobic ancestors, while not as powerful as the aboleths', is also a factor.
Sometimes, a powerful beholder can get a bunch of other beholders to stop hating each other long enough to get something done. This is not common.

Spoiler: Uncommon Races

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Ogres
Ogres are lazy, brutish, and stupid, not to mention violent. that said, they're willing to put their strength to use for others if they're compensated enough for it. They could possibly integrate into the parts of society with enough headroom for them. That said, their lay, brutish, and stupid tendencies would cause problems for all ogres, even the hardworking, careful, and intelligent ones.

Changelings & Doppelgangers
These are solitary races, noted for blending in among other races. There is no reason they would be different in this setting. Indeed, they would flourish in the great Statue-Cities.

Trolls
Troll society exists in the same way that bear society exists, or maybe wolf society. Individual trolls would generally be treated as roving beasts. However, anyone open to slavery (or redemption, with a heavy element of patience) might try to capture them and teach the trolls to use their strength for good.
Of course, aside from regeneration, trolls don't have much special about them. Perhaps they could be put to work in dangerous environments without much fear. Of course, if they went down the wrong alleyway, you might put a cheap Goblin Dan's knock-off into business.

Goliaths
Goliaths are big and powerful. They view life as a challenge, honor daring foolhardiness, and care not for those who can't help the group, which makes me wonder what happens if they cripple themselves doing something stupid. A pat on the back followed by a boot? Either way, this ties in directly with their social structure--nomadic tribes tied together closely by bonds of trust and familiarity, and kept alive in their barren mountain homes with heaping helpings of druidic magic.
Goliaths could live quite happily without any giant divine statues; however, two types might end up there anyways. Goliath exiles who are willing and able to wander to the nearest Domain may do so, and end up working somewhere or another. Perhaps more numerous would be goliath slaves captured by darker Domains. Either way, their strength, size, mountaineering ability, and challenge-seeking nature would make them excellent workers, perhaps used for heavy labor on the outside of the City-Statue.

Spoiler: Demi-Humanoids

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By which I mean, races which are only partly humanoid.

Dragonborn
By his honor is sworn, to keep evil forever at bay!
3.5's Dragonborn are a cross between a sacred order and one of those late-season shonen powerups that the protagonist emerges from just in time to save the love interest and/or best friend from the Big Bad. That's interesting in and of itself (perhaps as a thing which gods used to do in the Old Days, but don't have the spare power for anymore, letting them serve as a symbol of the good ol' days)...but not what we're going to discuss for the rest of the section.
Dragonborn are polite and honorable, considering such things more critical than life itself. They also strove for constant self-improvement, and push themselves as hard as possible (even when it's not healthy) rather than risk failure. Dragonborn are also quite open with their emotions, and despite their self-sacrificing honor and heroism, they tend to be very independent. Given their size, how fast they grow, and the kind of metabolism they'd need, they probably eat a lot. In other words, dragonborn are basically a race of shonen protagonists.
But seriously now. Dragonborn society is as rigidly-structured as dwarven society, and as pragmatic about the arts, and as martial-friendly, and as clan-focused. In other words, dragonborn are essentially dwarves that aren't being forced into fixing giant statues. Well, also they're big and intimidating instead of short and easy to mock. This let us not only explore other elements of theoretical dwarven societies in this world (with the rigid nature of their society definitely working in their favor), but also lets people easily explore ideas of how pre-existing assumptions cloud judgement.
The canon backstory of the dragonborn is that they are from a world with less divine involvement and more draconic conquerors. Having them literally be from another world is probably a bad idea, but from another continent or a large island could work. Also, the whole "less religion, more dragons" thing has plenty of interesting possibilities to mull over.

Gnolls
Being evil humanoids (who really should be monstrous humanoids), they are of course primitive and brutal. Their guiding philosophy is that the powerful deserve whatever they want, with the strong taking what they can from the weak. Basically, laissez faire economics with axes. Zing!
But seriously. Such a violent, chaotic system would not be able to effectively compete with other races' statue-building. Gnolls would be forced to the outskirts or else actively enslaved. They're stronger and hardier than average, which would make them decent laborers, but they don't have much special about them. Can you say "lower class citizens"?

Raptorans
The pact which Raptorans have with lords of air is almost religious. Combined with their decision to retreat from society in general, this likely puts them at odds with other races. I see raptorans as being a well-organized group of pagans who get along only a bit better with most pagans than with the servants of greater gods.

Centaurs
The centaurs have the nature-lovey aspects of basically every part-animal D&D race which doesn't look ugly or creepy, so I'll skip those for now. They also have a very freedom-based culture, "bound by an openness and camaraderie that more civilized cultures have long since lost." Basically noble savages as interpreted by anarchists.
That's kinda boring. They don't work well in the divine Domains, they play nicer with the unorganized pagans. More interesting, I feel, is taking this chance to point out that tauric creatures would have trouble in the City-Statues. After all, getting from point A to point B is vital to everything, and horses aren't good at that. They're not good at stairs or confined spaces, meaning that they need to mostly stick to carriage-accessible routes. That's assuming that there's even space for Large creatures, which there might not be in many areas.

Aarakocra
These weirdly-named bird-people are present in every edition except 1st and 4th. Which I find weird, since I hadn't heard of them until well after my local groups switched to 5e. Also because it's...you know...weirdly-named. But that does explain why they made that weird name--it's older than I am, so of course they'd keep it.
Anyways. So far as I can tell, the aarakocra were never detailed all that interestingly. They live in relatively small groups in the mountains. They worship a giant bird-goddess, though, so that might lend itself to some different visuals...if the aarakocra established themselves as a major force. More likely, they'd end up as messengers and couriers for the Statue-Cities. They'd be an underclass, but probably a respected underclass (maybe being seen as something like an urban variant of the Noble Savage).
I'm strongly considering leaving aarakocra out. There are plenty of other bird-people to lump their interesting traits into, and most don't have names as hard to spell as "aarakocra".

Thri-Kreen
Starting with basic physical stuff: Thri-Kreen have four arms, can jump really well, and don't need sleep. They would make good laborers, especially among scaffolding (where climbing while carrying stuff or jumping really well could come in handy).
Unfortunately, being bug-people, they don't have facial expressions or body language that make sense to humanoids, which (combined with their worldview being based on primal concepts like the relationship between predators and prey) makes it hard for them to get along with other races. I don't see them being treated well, and their apathy towards tradition kills their chances of being strong on their own in a world where religion is power. They'd be driven to semi-hospitable regions, subjugated, or exterminated.

Diopsids
Underground beetle-people who build Underdark hives...despite the lack of any colonial beetles.
Whatever. Their skill at carving tunnels and abodes into stone is rivaled only by the dwarves and their steel tools, which the diopsids covet but cannot produce. Hence, they work as mercenaries, laborers, and so on for more "advanced" races. They will greedily push aside old allies for a new paymaster, but try to protect their reputations.
Diopsids would likely be seen as "discount dwarves" by most Statue-Cities. They might be preferred for deep Underdark activities, but likely would get less respect than the beardy ones.

Minotaurs
If they're half as good at designing mazes for others to navigate as they are at navigating them themselves, minotaurs would have a natural place among the Statue-Cities' architectural teams. If not, still they'd make good guides, able to easily navigate tangled 3D sprawls that would make even the greatest inner-city cabdrivers hang up their...erm...uniforms?

Dragonkin
Somewhere between a Dragonborn and a dragon. More savage than dragonborn, but also larger, stronger, and capable of flight. They can also detect magic, and covet magic items.
Dragonkin would be drawn to the immense magical power of the City-Statues, which would presumably make most artifacts look like introductory alchemy. Dragonkin would be quite welcome, given their natural skill in combat and the usefulness of flight around the City-Statues themselves.

Dromites
Take a typical Small humanoid, add a cup of psionics and a sprinkle of elemental alignment, and coat lightly with insectoid. They tend towards being gregarious and tolerant, though other races don't feel the same about them. They live in hive-cities and, instead of having normal deities, revere their hive-city's queen and king.
Statue-Cities could make use of dromites, being tough and having keen senses (as well as psionic potential). They are also easy to get along with, and won't resent the occasional intolerant supervisor quite as much as most. Their pre-existing hive-cities would also serve as a useful template for the innards of early statue-cities. However, their lack of predilection towards worshiping the idolized deity and presence of unrelated revered figures in their society would lead to friction between dromites and the rest of the City-Statue. Some gods might bring notable Queens and Consorts on as divine servants to use that reverence, which may or may not help ease tensions.

Lupins
Descendants of gnoll/human hybrids, lupins are friendly, intelligent, productive craftsmen who look like dog-people. They would be an underclass, toiling away in the Statue-Cities and in the lowest levels of guilds without much hope of advancement.
They'd likely be relatively content, just enjoying a chance to do something they're really good at, and hence (comparatively) well-treated by their superiors, held up as examples of what hard work and dedication can get you. Other lower-class workers would probably not like them as much.

Chitines
Sickly spider-people accidentally created by the drow. While they serve Lolth (with a race of aberrations called choldriths as their priests), they hate their mortal creators. They would likely be enslaved by the drow, or perhaps be allowed to live in separate ghettos. These ghettos would likely be either separate settlements in caverns, supervised by Lolth's Heralds, or else stuffed into the unwanted corners of the Statue-City's slums and scaffolding. Scaffolding especially--the ability to climb like a spider would be quite useful on the outside of a City-Statue.
The drow experiments which resulted in chitines might be valuable to Cross-Stitchers.

Loxo
Big, savage elephant-men with two trunks. They tend to form tribes, and hence would probably count as "pagan" rather than "working with City-Statues". However, if they did work with City-Statues, their armlike trunks would be able to hold items while their armlike arms were occupied climbing, making them unexpectedly good choices for scaffolding work.

Yuan-Ti
The yuan-ti are a whole series of snake-people, with the Purebloods at the bottom and Abominations and Anathama at the top (making for yet another race whose names are clearly a result of human imperialism).
Their culture, like drow culture, is based on subtle manipulation and plotting. Unlike the drow, this is directed at others rather than themselves, which makes me wonder how they don't end up as a bigger antagonistic force in most worlds; I'm going to blame the difficulty of agriculture for carnivores, especially in jungles and rain forests.
Unfortunately, there's not much more to their culture. They're Evil, they're snakes, what more do you want? Okay, fine, they view breeding as holy and practice voluntary eugenics. There's one interesting element that jumps out at me, though: The conversion bit. It's usually not focused on, but the Tainted Ones and Broodguards are humans, captured and turned into slaves of the yuan-ti. I'm not bringing this up as a tangential thing to Stitchery, as I so often do when mentioning other magical means of transforming creatures; I'm bringing this up because it works as its own thing.
First off, there's the visceral horror of being transformed into a monster. There's plenty of fiction which plays on this trope, and even a few other D&D monsters (including many types of undead and the iconic illithids), but it's not so common that it can be ignored. Second, it works well with other features of this setting. The City-Statues are raiding others, bringing in new people to support their societies, and some are even transforming people into new forms; a race with a quirk that centers around exactly that deserves more promotion.
Third...remember the offhanded comment about human imperialism? Well, it was only mostly a joke. Fantasy stories are usually centered around humans (the one major exception I can think of, Lord of the Rings, has hobbits as stand-ins for the less heroic type of human). Some other races are evil (whether inherently, culturally, or coincidentally), and the rest are friendly to humans and willing to work with them and let the humans get the spotlight. Not to mention that humans are generally the only race which has multiple cultures recognized within the work. I'm exaggerating a little, and of course there's the argument that humans are more relatable...but those same arguments can be used for always focusing on the white guys in stories set in places that aren't Europe, and (as with many fantasy tropes) it all gets a lot more uncomfortable when you start considering the implications.
The yuan-ti are snake-humans, so perhaps their evil is just the evil of humanity, made more clear by some perspective (and a few creepy tweaks). By reframing and redesigning yuan-ti culture in this way, and by making the "human imperialism" stuff text rather than subtext, we can try to make more positive implications about race, things like "we're not so different" and "your ingroup does those same things you criticize outgroups about" and stuff. I like doing that sort of thing, so we're doing it.

Rakasta
Rakasta are a species of cat-people. Interestingly, they can adapt themselves over a few generations to exist better in other habitats. Whatever this is, I'm sure Rakasta Stitchers would be able to do something interesting...
They live in family units called prides, which share their territories with other prides in groups called colonies. The end result is a tribal society.

Catfolk (ROW), Tabaxi
More cat-people. Their societies are built around tribes and clans, are still nomadic, yadda yadda, why so many cat-people?

Dracotaurs
Dracotaurs are a monster stuffed into the third Monster Manual of 3.5, yet somehow they got on Wikipedia's list. But enough complaining about Wikipedia, let's complain about D&D's generic evil races!
Because, culturally, these guys are as painfully generic as you'd expect from that first half-sentence. They're merciless predators that are utterly devoid of kindness, despite the fact that even real predators show some kindness and mercy (though not to their prey). They respect power, though this counts both physical strength and arcane magic, which is neat. Dracotaurs gather themselves in tribes which often squabble with each other over territory, but work together against outside threats. Like orcs, they don't build their own cities and live in ruins.
These have many of the same physical problems as centaurs (which they hate), though they can probably handle stairs better. Still, I can't see them being very common in Statue-Cities, because they literally spit alchemist's fire. They'd likely be seen as dangerous barbarians who could destroy entire sections of a town if not restrained. They might have some use out in the Parishes, perhaps as plowhorses and firestarters, but I see them as more likely to be enemies than friends.
Their concept is kinda stupid, but in a cool way. Worth considering for that dragonborn continent or whatever.

Satyrs
Another fae-ey race...actually, this might be one of the first you read, but I'm going through in alphabetical order so I've gone through a bunch. The same points apply, enhanced by their hedonism; friends of pagans, pests to City-Statues.

Wemic
A wemic wept, a wemic wept, a wemic wept... My mind is going weird places. I probably should have taken more breaks.
Liontaurs with leonine upper bodies. Nomadic, savage, nature-oriented, tribal, you've seen plenty like 'em.

Nezumi
Ratpeople with keen senses and immunity to something that won't be present in most campaigns. The most common social structure in their culture is described as a "gang," and seems to act roughly the way you'd expect from that. It's specifically mentioned that nezumi often find themselves in gangs with non-nezumi, which is nice.
Not much adaptation needed.

Wilden
Generic of generics, there's nothing to them save the fact that they're Defenders of Nature so pure and valiant that they make elves blush.

Spoiler: Reptilian Humanoids

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I was torn on a couple of issues when it comes to putting these in folders. First, would I put these here or under "Primary Savages"? I mean, kobolds are at least as iconically D&D as svirfneblin. Second, would I include other draconic people who aren't Humanoid (reptilian)?
Take one guess as to how I compromised on these issues.

Kobolds
Kobolds are practically anti-goblins! Sure, they don't like outsiders, but they can actually work together (a rarity among evil D&D races). They live in crowded lairs, generally far from other civilizations, and often fight to resolve differences between tribesmen. However, their society still respects its leaders. Sure, they hate other races (especially gnomes, fey, and so on), but they can stand each other!
Kobolds are also excellent engineers. This manifests in their skill at mining (more focused on efficiency than the dwarves' quality) and trapmaking. They also have unusual sorcerous skill, which enhances both, and are good at making jewelry (essentially the only common items they make that aren't purely practical). Also, they hate short jokes. In other words, they're a little like evil dragon-dwarves.
But not entirely! While dwarves are all the same, kobolds have a great deal of variety. From winged and dragonwrought kobolds to natural lycanthropes (well, mustelthropes), kobolds have a great deal of natural variation. This could easily lead to them being more accepting of Stitchery than most races.
Even without that, kobolds would be a threat to City-Statues. They would be able to reshape back-alleys, sewers, and so on into new lairs, either secret or so well-protected that only the greatest guards and gutterbats would be willing to approach. Goblins are a minor pest, likely not worth worrying about except for those unimportant slum-dwellers who happen to get robbed and murdered by them; letting a kobold tribe fester could easily be dangerous to entire neighborhoods, or more if they compromised infrastructure or support with their mining. Or, heck, maybe they could even bend the enchantments of the City-Statues to their needs, empowering the kobolds and weakening the statues. And given how often kobolds lay eggs, a few refugees finding a safe lair or some other refugees could re-establish a new problem very quickly.
The lowly kobold could be a great threat to the existence of a City-Statue. Luckily, they'll be a problem for the slums before they're a problem for the City-Statue as a whole, and that's what gutterbats are for--solving problems that the upper crust doesn't care about before they get bad enough that they do.

Lizardfolk (including the variations most people rightfully forget exist)
Lizardfolk are hungry savages. You know those old movies with jungle cannibals and whatnot? Lizardmen are those, but with scales and they live in swamps. That's really it. They'd make good sewer workers, and not just because they look kind of like crocodiles. There are very few jobs less-respected than sewer worker, so (as with basically every savage race that might have a place in the City-Statues) they'd be lower-class.

Troglodytes
Lizardfolk might be built for heavy work in the sewers, but troglodytes smell like they actually do it. They tend to be very religious, though they focus on the "fear god" half of "love and fear god". Another underclass, but one oppressed by their on fear as much as their repulsive appearance (though the smell probably plays as much a role as anything).

Pterrans
The Dark Sun setting is drastically different from most, and it's hard to disentangle the pterrans from their setting. They mostly live in small tribes, but have a few larger settlements; either way, they're outsiders to other Athasian races. They also worship the Earth Mother, a personification of the planet. There's probably something interesting to do with these; I'll return to them when the rest of the setting is more fleshed out.
Oh, and their ancestors could fly. They still have "wing stumps," which implies that they have the base of the wing more or less well-formed but not the rest of the wing. The evolutionary biologist in me is sobbing.

Spoiler: Aquatic Races

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You might think that underwater races could build ridiculously large city-statues, with the water helping support them. This may or may not be true. If the materials are not much more dense than water, sure; otherwise, buoyancy wouldn't help much. (Though infrastructure should be simpler.) So, unless the city-statues contain pockets of wood kept magically dry to hold up the rest of the statue, you'd expect about the same size of city-statue as on land.
Though come to think of it, city-statues are already taller than all but the deepest trenches, so it probably wouldn't matter much anyways. If anything, the depth of water would impose a maximum height on any non-amphibious aquatic races. This might push said races from the continental shelves where life is easy to the oceanic basins, with all but the upper layers in eternal darkness where few dare tread.

Merfolk
The humans of the sea, plain vanilla.

Aquatic Elves
The elves of the sea. Perhaps they'd grow coral statues like the land elves grew tree ones, only it ended worse because they could only get the base of the statue so deep.

Sahuagin
Savage, violent, and elf-hating, sahuagin are the orcs of the ocean. (They also hate lizardfolk, though, which makes me wish elves hated lizardfolk.) So, um, combine what I said about orcs with what I said about kobolds having different varieties.

Tritons
Tritons...exist? They're from the Plane of Water. They need outsiders to prove themselves before being trusted, generally via trial-by-combat. I'd like to make an X-of-the-sea joke, but I can't figure out what they're like. Which is true about gnomes, and gnomes talk to earth animals, so...tritons are the gnomes of the sea?

Kuo-Toa
Kuo-toa are the fishy-froggy religious zealos who live in wetter parts of the Underdark. Needless to say, these would be pretty dangerous in a world where religion is power...certainly more so than anarchic goblins.

Bullywugs
Angry frogs. As amphibians, they can't abide saltwater (it dries them out), but given how most aquatic races are marine, bullywugs would dominate the big lakes of the world (and would do quite well in the swamps). By default, bullywugs are tribalistic in every sense of the word, from tending to form tribes with simple social structures to outgroup-hatred. The former would fade in a world where building giant statues translates into power, but the latter would not.

Darfellans
Once, the darfelan tribes lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the sahuagin nation attacked. Unfortunately, they didn't really have anyone who could help, so they kinda almost went extinct, because hunter-gatherers don't last long in contested territories. So now the darfellans are a race of brooding antiheroes with tragic backstories who want vengeance against the sahuagin.
But somehow, despite being hunter-gatherers in some part of the ocean too poor for the sahuagin to bother visiting until recently, they had a caste system? And clans and stuff? I guess this kind of organized society would be good at making City-Statues, but how do a bunch of hunter-gatherers do that? Do WotC not realize that people didn't just start farming for fun?

Aventi
The actual humans of the sea. (Essentially, think pop culture Atlantis, renamed to avoid litigation from the Plato estate.)
Aventus might be an old city-statue built on an island, perhaps covering it a la Tenochtitlan. But the size or geography of the island limited the statue's size, meaning that once its neighbors' statues grew in size beyond Aventernus's, they were relatively easy pickings despite the strategic advantages of a lake-sized or larger moat. Luckily for the Aventi, instead of the statue being completely destroyed, its island was shattered, causing the statue to topple and sink beneath the waves. Some of Aventernus's worshipers survived, and used magic to make the remains of the Aventernus Idol habitable. Over time, they became Aventi.
Likely, the Aventi would be isolationist, paranoid of their old foes coming to finish the job. They would be highly militant, and likely have a high proportion of magic-users and particularly water-magic-users (those being the likeliest to survive in a sinking city).

Sea Kin
The other actual humans of the sea. (How many "underwater humans" races could one game need?) These don't have an interesting backstory, nor can they actually breathe water. They're sort of a cross between flightless seabirds and pearl divers. They venerate nature, which puts them at odds with the City-Statues and aligns them with pagans. I would see these guys potentially getting along with hadozee.

Continued in next post...

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: Rarer Races

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Spoiler: Planar Races

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Tiefling
Tieflings are people with fiendish blood. This means that they're generally discriminated against. They aren't going to have the population to seriously affect the world, and about the only special thing this setting gives them is areas with enough population density to make small tiefling neighborhoods plausible.
Tanarukks and fey'ri are basically halfbreeds between tieflings and orcs/elves. The latter also have a few drops of "terrible name" blood in them.

Aasimar
Tieflings but reversed.
Elbisualp sdoohrobhgien gnilfeit llams ekam ot ytisned noitalupop hguone htiw saera si meht sevig gnittes siht gniht laiceps ylno eht tuoba dna, dlrow eht tceffa ylsuoires ot noitalupop eht evah ot gniog t'nera yeht. Tsniaga detanimircsid yllareneg er'yeht taht snaem siht. Doolb hsidneif htiw elpoep era sgnilfeit.

Genasi
Elemental planetouched. They aren't associated with the horror of fiends or the respect celestials receive, but they're still weird. It's a nice counterpoint to the other planetouched, usually so charged with assumptions by their very nature...not that they'd be treated as normal people, mind. Humanity loves an outgroup, and I don't see why dwarves or halflings or orcs would be any different. And they're really, really rare.

Githwhatever
Githyanki are more warlike and paranoid, githzeri more peaceful and enlightened, but they both have something in common which makes them interesting for this setting. Both were one slaves, and both were transformed from their original shapes into something else. While not all cultures abhor the types of injustices visited upon them (look at how Europeans, proud of their tradition of martyrdom and exaggerations of ancient Roman persecution, treated essentially everyone else for a few centuries after colonialism started), but it's not hard to see them pushing back against both City-Statue expansion and Stitchery. Shame that they're in other worlds.
Planar travel might be a bit of a problem after all...

Eladrin
I'm not hugely familiar with these guys. Mr. Welch called them the Elves 2.0, and from what fluff I can find, that's pretty accurate. A bit less nature and a bit more magic and general superiority, but...elfy.

Azer
Warlike, communalist, and chaotic; the azer don't get a very detailed description. If they were common on the material plane, I'd expect their society to be much like hobgoblin society, except much warmer. In Statue-Cities, they might end up being covered by laws restricting dwarves, but might be able to find work as smiths. Or at least space heaters.
Hm...an azer butler would be able to clean your house and keep it warm! He couldn't go anywhere with anything flammable, though...I'm sure you could design a mansion around it.

Jaebrin
Genie/fey hybrids several generations down. Have great proficiency with manipulation and enchantment magic; they're also cannibals and depraved hedonists. They make pretty good bogeymen, especially in the Statue-Cities, as their evil behaviors serve as symbols for the evils committed by the upper crust.

Rogue Modrons
Alright, these are amusing. The idea of a de facto robot drone who is treated as incurably corrupted by its peers while seeming basically identical to outsiders does resemble some unfortunate real-world stereotypes that you need to be careful with when dealing with fictional races, but the idea is funny enough that I'd be willing to put in the work to avoid raising such implications.
The problem is that I'm not sure how they'd fit in. Primus would need to be refluffed heavily, transitioned from a deus ex nihilo deal to the deus ex anthropotita which this setting works on. But, again, I'd be willing to put in the work.

Neraphim
Another one of those not-quite-planetouched races. Much the same stuff applies to them.
They have their own society as Limbo hunter-gatherers, which is pretty neat.

Mephlings
Yet more elementally-inclined peoples, this time with inbuilt wanderlust and four nations subtypes. No word on whether there are rare mephlings who can control all our elements.

Janni
The core semi-genie, these are rather less interesting than Jaebrin.

Bauriars
Planar satyrs.

Rakshasas
"Solitary, sorcerous shapeshifters." That's a phrase showing up on Wikipedia describing rakshasas, and that seems like an adequate summary. That first word is also important; rare, solitary forces of darkness have a limited impact on the world.

Dusklings
Nomadic Incarnum-infused fey who wander throughout the planes. I don't see any huge reason to focus on these.

Hellbred
Damned souls who realized their mistakes too late to truly change their ways, but early enough for the forces of good to give them a second chance. It's a fascinating concept, but between their rarity and the fact that none of this actually intersects with setting-specific issues, I again see no reason to focus on these.

Shadowswyft
The name's silly and the concept's dull. Shadow-planetouched, I guess.

Buomman
Humans who went to the Astral Plane and became moaning monks. Githzeri without the cool special abilities or level adjustment.

Spikers, Bladelings
Most of the time, when WotC remakes a concept, they don't admit it. They did here! These guys are covered in spikes and blades, and like to fight.

Spoiler: Odd Races

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Races who I didn't feel would be common or widespread enough to justify putting them in other categories. That, or I couldn't figure out where to put them.

Spellscales
The children of sorcerers, with their magical heritage written in draconic scales over their bodies and flowing through their veins. They also have a distinctive psychological element, which I normally dislike in races--especially races which live among others with different personalities--but here the personality jumps out at me. It strikes me as close to a stereotypical upper-class snob, caring more about their own well-being and their hobbies than anything else.
I could imagine an elite full of spellscales, the children of sorcerous Heralds and arcanist guildmasters and the like, playing games with each other and the rest of the upper crust. It's an interesting concept.

Hadozee
Monkey-men who are noted as skilled sailors. They're sort of aquatic races, but they don't live in aqua, so they don't count. Still, a race of sailors would be pretty useful. Even if most ships didn't have them, they'd still be reasonably well-regarded by those who respect or rely on sailors.
Hadozee would likely either be pressed into service for one god of another, or be pagans bringing personal gods from port to port. Hadozee-majority ships might be viewed as little better than smugglers, trading without regard for the rivalries of neighboring gods...and they might not be completely wrong, either.

Illumians
Illumians are, essentially, humans who brought some mystical language into themselves, and now have floaty runes around their heads and some neat magic powers and whatnot. Also, they're good at multiclassing. Illumians like to live in small enclaves, separated from civilization, where they can pursue their interests and studies in peace.
The power offered by the Illumian language would doubtless interest many people, and they might provide innovation comparable to gnomes (perhaps lower in quantity, but with higher chances of being useful). They aren't likely to want to work for guilds, preferring their enclave's government, but they would certainly accept jobs from them.

Mongrelfolk
Heinz hybrids of many races, including some monsters as distant ancestors. Mongrelfolk would likely arise in the hearts of Statue-City slums.

Shardminds
Crystal-people made from the remains of some kind of psionics-stopping gate or something. They want to restore the gate, whether by repairing the old one, replacing it, or just destroying each other and hoping the remains will fix it.
With some work, the race could be turned into the remains of an old god/City-Statue, presumably one whose god was killed after the Statues had grown far too large to support themselves without divine power. Of course, at the end of the process, they wouldn't much resemble Shardminds. Still, food for thought.

Warforged
Warforged, being artificial life, are an interesting counterpoint to the biopunk products of Stitchery. There are all sorts of ways they could fit in, from cheap labor which doesn't require nearly as much infrastructure or supplies to attempts at mass producing worshipers to help fuel the gods.

Maenads
A seafaring race wracked by emotional turmoil...and also psionic power. And dermal crystals, I think? They tend to prefer living among their own, perhaps because others don't understand or sympathize with irregular emotional outbursts. They would take to the sea, like hadozee, though more often in maenad crews than scattered among others. They would also be more likely to actually work for a specific god, or perhaps even to have raised one of their own.
Incidentally, while I was able to find fluff information for most races (including psionic ones) on D&D wikis, I couldn't find anything like that for maenads. I hope the Pathfinder stuff is accurate enough!

Tibbits
Imagine if kender had privacy issues instead of property issues, but knew how to stay out of sight and out of mind. Also imagine that they turned into housecats. That's something close to tibbits. I imagine that the secret-hungry little scamps would love the insides of Statue-Cities, and that the local powers that be would similarly love to turn them on their political enemies.

Vryloka
Remember what I said about spellscales? Make all of that less subtle and make them vampiric instead of draconic, and you're in the ballpark.

Frost and Hill Giants
...Why are those, specifically, listed?
Never mind. True giants (and likely other giants) have always suffered from having relatively small population numbers (despite each individual number being at least 15 feet tall) and generally living in isolated, unproductive regions. This would hinder their ability to compete in statue-building races, especially once the statues grew to the point that their greater size wasn't as helpful as things like material science or architectural experience (which they had no inherent advantage in). Some might be hired or enslaved by the City-Statues, but definitely not in the Statues themselves. Pagans would likely be friendlier.

Pixies
They have an anarchic worldview and powers which would serve to annoy a City-Statue more than aid them. This makes them unlikely to be accepted within their walls, but likely to be accepted by pagans near divine Domains.

Hamadryads
The 4e hamadryad is essentially a dryad lite, both in the sense of having fewer powers and in the sense of not being quite so tied to their tree. Somehow, I don't see them getting along with the hyperurbanized Statue-Cities and their churches; however, there could easily be some hamadryads scattered around pagan settlements in woody areas.

Killoren
While their fluff is different than hamadryads, the end result is similar; uncommon in pagan areas, unheard of elsewhere.

Spirit Folk
Different from the above yet again, but still with ties to the natural world. Same thing.

Uldra
Semi-generic fae-people: Now glacier-compatible!

Vanara
While not fae-ey like the previous batch, they fall into the same niche. They're monkey-people, so they technically probably shouldn't go here, but screw it.

Volodni
They seem like they fit in the same niche, but they don't!
The Volodni are tree-people, sworn to protect the forest, but there's a twist. They didn't originally want to! They were forced to accept this fate when their ancestors, demon-binding refugees from some Forgotton Realms thing, were given an ultimatum by the treant whose woods they came to. This coercion leads to some interesting possibilities.

Kender
Despised as much as in any setting. If kender exist in this world, they would likely end up congregating in kender communities within the Statue-Cities, possibly sharing space with other small people who can tolerate their childish behavior.

Elani
Humans who made themselves immortal psi-ubermenschen. Aside from people trying to reproduce the techniques used to make elan, I don't see these being much use. And if there was a chance that they'd be turned into Elan instead, they wouldn't even have that.

Kalashtar
Human monks who made them selves excellent psionicists by letting spirits possess them for generations, until the connection became obligately symbiotic. Again, not much more to bring up aside from people trying to reproduce that.

Skulk
The underclass of an old ancient empire, the proto-skulks solidified their untouchable status with a ritual that made them naturally stealthy and eeevil. I don't see anyone especially wanting to replicate this one, but the idea of an old empire's (read: deity's) underclass transforming themselves into something new is interesting.

Xeph
Psionic anti-nihilistic existentialists. (Any philosophy majors in the crowd? Feel free to look these guys up and tell me how badly I butchered those terms.) They prefer to live in small, tight-knit direct democracies, which could possibly exist buried in the bowels of the Statue-Cities but would likely be more common out in the Parishes. They tend to be far more religiously tolerant than most in a world like this would be.

Shifters
Humans who can kinda turn into animals. Not much to say. Constant minority and underclass. Any anti-lycanthrope prejudice would transfer to them. Perhaps they'd have a bit more tolerance in pagan areas?

Hengeyokai
Animals who can turn into humans. Kinda. Like hamadryads, probably not common, especially not in gods' Domains. Unlike hamadryads, they are specifically stated to generally stay away from humanoid settlements.

Skarn
Inarnum-infused humanoids who arrogantly think themselves perfect because they have a few spines on their arms. They worship their own Incarnum instead of any god, which makes "Incarnum" sound like some kind of euphemism. As another godless race, and one which looks down on basically everything, the Skarn have some potential. Some.

Feral Garguns
Savages among savages, feral garguns are descendants of goliaths and true giants who were forced into the far north.
Feral garguns would likely be seen as little more than monsters in the northern wastes, and not without fair reasoning.

Neanderthal
While not as savage as garguns, neanderthals are even less likely to show up because...well...the idea just kinda clashes with the fantasy aesthetic, you know?

Azurin
Being humans touched by Incarnum, Azurin would just be normal guys. However, their unusual talent with Incarnum means they would likely be strongly encouraged to train their abilities and join the Heralds (and those who don't often end up as Soulborn gutterbats or in the service of some corrupt official or gang lord).

Shadar-Kai
People constantly at risk of losing their souls if they don't feel extreme enough emotions make for interesting characters, but lousy societies, especially when they tend to live on a completely different dimension than most of the world. The risk of turning into a wraith means they'd likely be shunned, especially in the dense Statue-Cities, where they risk starting a plague.

Kir-lanan
Gargoyles crossed with dread necromancers, essentially. Born from dying gods. The idea of creatures born from dying gods is interesting, and probably worth exploring if we ever get to detailing the history of the world, but the specific race is sorta meh.

Synad
Psionic people with three minds. Tend to seem introverted, because they already have a crowd inside.

Korobokuru
While civilized (if rustic), the korobokuru manage to be nonentities on the world stage by being fiercely isolationist.

Shadarkim
Humans turned into quasi-orcs via original sin. Original sin is one of those ideas which really bothers me*, and it leads to several others, so I'm already a bit biased against these guys. Beyond that, they're basically humans who everyone treats like orcs, but who consider themselves to be something else. There are interesting story opportunities there, but few that intersect meaningfully with the unique parts of this setting.
*A big part of it being how people try to defend the goodness of a guy who condemned an entire species for the actions of just a couple.
Rilkans
Born adventurers who usually integrate into other societies.

Taer
Taers don exits.
The Taer are a bunch of big, ape-like things that make garguns look civilized. They, too, live in the frozen north.

Revenants
Hellbred with boring backstories.

Dvati
Twins with one mind. Circus sideshows or maybe quirky Heralds.

Stonechild
They're half-elementals. They tend to be utilitarian and live among other races. That's about it.

Unbodied
These are ghost-brains!

Spoiler: Subterranean Races

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Specifically, odd and/or rare ones.

Grimlock
Me Grimlock no can read, but can work well in total dark. Of course, me Grimlock not only one can do this in world where most creature types have 60-foot darkvision standard. Me Grimlock also tend not to be found in large, organized groups. Me Grimlock not want to be in Statue-City anyways.
...Also, no, me Grimlock badly referencing Transformers is not weird.

Gloamings
Rare shadowy people, nomads who are mostly found in the Underdark on the rare occasions when they are found. They tend to settle in areas with alignments opposed to their own, and shun organized religion. Basically, they're a race of bandits, or at least would act and/or be treated like it.

Deep Imaskari
"Heirs to the lost empire of Imaskar"? I'm seeing another Aventi-ish backstory. Replace water with earth, drop the bit about being on an island, and invent some explanation for how their statue and/or society survived that doesn't involve sinking underwater, and there you go.

Slyth
Products of experimentation on humans and/or oozes, or possibly of human/elemental lovin' (those are seriously the two possibilities given for their origin), slyth are essentially muddy shapeshifters. They get along with evil underground humanoids, but hate the Underdark's aberrations. They're kinda neat, and might be able to function interestingly in the slums of the Statue-Cities, but they're also weird and don't really mesh with what makes this setting unique.

Underfolk
Morlocks, but with a more generic name.

Gargoyles
Gargoyles are less actively savage than, say, garguns, but also less social and about as unlikely to find their way to areas populated by large civilizations. I'd call them even less notable. Why does Wikipedia bother to mention them?

Spoiler: Desert Races

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Deserts aren't the most common biome, and by definition are pretty much the least fertile. Any race native to such lands would have limited numbers and more limited power.

Armand
The Armand are Eberron-native Communist armadillo-scholars, a little like a cross between Air Nomads, the Took clan, and plate armor. They live in deserts, and also burrow.
Between being nomadic and living in harsh deserts, the armand are never going to be a major race. Their numbers will be too few, and their idols limited to small, portable ones. They would likely live outside the Domains of the great gods, with young wardens frequently hoping to join various ministries to travel the land and learn what they can. How accepting the ministries will be depends on the god, ministers, and armand involved.
Of course, some gods will enslave any armand tribes they find, perhaps exploiting their durability and small size to dislodge sewage clogs or similar infrastructure issues. Non-enslaved armand communes would likely hunker down in more-stationary burrows, or perhaps live with asherati or other subsaburran* races.

*"Saburra" is Latin for "sand". Or "grit," or "ballast," or whatever.

Asherati
Humanlike but hairless, the Asherati are to sand dunes as merfolk are to waves. The Asherati trade by day but steal by night.
Asherati would likely not enjoy living in City-Statues, since sand is a terrible building material for load-bearing structures. (Citation: Matthew 7:26) City-Statues with lots of Asherati might have special sand-tubes for them to swim through, but it would probably make more sense to have extra water-tubes for aquatic races to swim through; water is lighter, after all, and more useful.
If Asherati were integrated into a greater god's Domain, they would likely live in the Parishes, maintaining subsaburran settlements for anyone who

Crucians
Despite the name, crucians have more in common with tortoises than crabs. Either way, they're tough and territorial. Each band controls an oasis, meaning that they're more settlement-oriented than most desert folk. They regularly raid one another (for what, it isn't clear), aside from every couple of decades when a great leader brings a bunch of bands together to raid cooler lands, returning once they realize that they're not actually an evil race. In times of peace, they like to try and draw as much information out of the other party as possible without revealing their own; they like knowing how people think, allies or enemies. This doesn't make them fun at parties.
I don't see the crucians getting far. At best, they'd be left semi-autonomous in exchange for supporting one god's desert ventures. At worst, they'd end up enslaved. Being as tough as they are, and how few people would care about them, they would likely be sent to work in dangerous areas.

Templates (especially Lich)
Go home, Wikipedia, you're drunk.

Spoiler: Half-breeds

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In general, half-breeds will be more like whichever parent race whose culture raised them, with some tendencies of their other parent race (particularly those caused by outside pressures or expectations). Throw in some standard stuff about being trapped between two worlds and you're done.
Half-breeds will be more common in cosmopolitan areas, like most Statue-Cities. Speaking of which...

Spoiler: Race in the Statue-Cities

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In many worlds, "race" and "nation" might as well be synonymous (except for humans, who have many nations, and savage races, which have none). No reason for that to be the case here! (Partly because I think that's dumb.) While most gods once had a congregation composed almost entirely of one race, any god which wants to succeed has to be willing to include most anyone with the proper talents.
That doesn't mean racism doesn't exist, of course. It just means that the typical reaction to a gnoll is to shun and ignore it, not to run away or kill it. Generally. (If you'e in Crime Alley and encounter a member of a race known for being criminals, you would likely assume that that guy is a criminal and not a victim fleeing from an elvish mugger.)

At the top of the "racial hierarchy" in most "non-evil" City-Statues are humans, elves, and a few rarer races with social grace, talent, and a willingness to accept their ultimate dominance. These guys are who you find at the upper ranks of society, and are disproportionately represented in basically any position which holds a modicum of power. Then you have dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and other races which are similar to humanity in appearance, reasonably cordial with them, and have enough useful skills to not be liabilities. They're sometimes found in positions of power, but less frequently, and they often have to deal with patronizing attitudes from those higher than them when it comes to things outside their race's stereotypical areas of expertise. Even if that individual happens to have that as their personal area of expertise.
It just gets worse from here. Next on down are dromites, minotaurs, flying people, and others who have extremely useful skills or abilities, but which look...well...ugly. There's still not much open discrimination against them, but they are heavily pressured to stay in their place, almost never get a position of power beyond supervising their prescribed specialty, and are often feared when they don't and misblamed for crimes which had nothing to do with them. Next are the various big, strong, savage races which are good at some kind of hard labor, but also look ugly and scary. They're generally thought to be thugs and criminals, which sometimes turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is where you start to see frequent open discrimination, with such races often being lumped together as "savages," even if individuals are more civilized and polite than an establishment's typical human clientele. Finally, you have races which are just plain hated; some have all the negative history associated with the savages and none of the usefulness, others refuse to fit in (or can't), and still others (e.g, tieflings) just have such powerful negative associations that it overrides anything positive individuals or even communities might accomplish.
These categories are far from concrete. They're blurry, informal, and vary between people and groups. Dwarves are generally in the second "rung," but their abrasiveness and the perception of an extremely specialized skillset means they're sometimes treated more like minotaurs and other "useful monsters". Dragonkin are big, "savage" fliers, which puts them somewhere between that and the general "savage" rung. And so on.

Obviously, City-Statues not run by humans or elves are going to look different. Many evil races will have more formalized racial categories. Dwarves are going to value or look down on races differently than humans would. And so on.

Also, a few random spells I thought of that would be good to include, just to make City-Statue-builders' lives easier.

Spoiler

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Column of Iron
Conjuration (Creation)
Level: Sor/Wiz 7
This spell functions like wall of iron, except that it creates a cylinder of iron instead of a plane. The cylinder is one foot across per caster level, and twenty feet long; the length may be quadrupled by halving the diameter.
Material Component: An iron rod plus gold dust worth 50 gp

Mound of Stone
Conjuration (Creation) [Earth]
Level: Clr 6, Drd 7, Sor/Wiz 6
This spell functions like wall of stone, except that it creates one five-foot cubes of stone per caster level (instead of a five-foot square).
Arcane Material Component: A chunk of granite at least twice the size of the caster's fist.

Wall of Branches
Conjuration (Creation)
Level: Drd 5, Sor/Wiz 5
This spell functions like Wall of Thorns, except that it creates a wall of non-thorny wood and vines. This wall is solid enough to support weight, and the Strength check DC required to push through increases to 30, but does not make it harder to cut or burn through. The wall does not cause damage to anyone touching or moving through it. The caster creates five 5-foot cubes of wall per level.
Wood shape may be used to transform this wall into a solid wooden wall, which cannot be moved through without destroying it. This also makes it more difficult to burn or smash; use the rules for normal wooden walls.

Next will probably be looking at the big D&Deities to see how their Domains would run in this world. I'm planning to include all the deities in the 3.5 PHB as major players, as well as Lolth and maybe Kurtulmak, and would like to hear suggestions about what others y'all think are worth adding in some significant respect.

[Nifft]

The other day, I read about a typo in some old D&D book which said that a god could only be killed by another god of higher statue.

In case you're curious, you probably read that here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...&postcount=406

Cheers.

[GreatWyrmGold]

In case you're curious, you probably read that here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...&postcount=406

Cheers.

Yeah. I didn't think anyone would care, but there's probably someone who'd find the context niffty.

[Becca Stareyes]

This is interesting enough that it does get you thinking. (I admit the undersea stuff fascinates me, but that is because I am weird and find the deep ocean delightfully strange. Any aquatic civilization that was seriously into this would need a division between 'parishes' up top to grow food and the builders who could work at the pressures and dark of the deeps, probably with different races handling things and spellcasters or folks with magic items as the only intermediaries. Underwater statues would also be harder to attack (maybe not to find if you have spellcasters).)

Which also gets one thinking about air pressure and if that is a thing in this world, or it's just another thing that the magic has to be used for.

Re: People arguing about god shape.

Is there a rule that the statue has to be of a standing god? It might be that it's a tradeoff between material costs (if it is height in the sense of 'vertical distance from base to peak, with vertical defined by the direction of gravity', then a standing statue of 10 feet would take far less material than lying-down statue) and stability (a lying-down statue of 10 feet vertical extent has a far bigger base than the standing one; the standing one can be pushed over, while the lying-down one can't).

That's probably more of a historical note in that the statue-cities are probably stuck in what format they are now either way, but went through a lot of jury-rigged growth from their initial concepts, but it might be something the repair workers and architects consider -- can we shave off some mass in places to add height or shift it lower to improve stability? If we need more magic to combat a plague, can we switch from using magical reinforcement to materials?

It may be that it really is more efficient to scrap everything and design a 6-mile-high statue from scratch, rather than keep upgrading a statue to 6 miles high, but no one is certain how a god could survive the deconstruction and reconstruction without everyone else turning on their worshipers.

(I like the rule that it has to be in some way representative of the god, which puts limits on construction. I can also imagine experimental artist-priests testing what they can get away with in terms of engineering.)

[GreatWyrmGold]

This is interesting enough that it does get you thinking.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I hope you don't mind that I don't have much to say on most of your thoughts.

(I admit the undersea stuff fascinates me, but that is because I am weird and find the deep ocean delightfully strange. -snip-).)

There's plenty of possibilities there. I want to focus on the land civilizations for now, since that's where 90-odd percent of games and stories happen, but I'll get back to the briny depths eventually.

Which also gets one thinking about air pressure and if that is a thing in this world, or it's just another thing that the magic has to be used for.
(I like the rule that it has to be in some way representative of the god, which puts limits on construction. I can also imagine experimental artist-priests testing what they can get away with in terms of engineering.)

I've considered doing a post with more detail on how Statue-cities work, including the necessary enchantments and enough theological physics to explain why the coolest strategy is the most practical; I'm just not sure I'd have enough there to be interesting.
The statue-needs-to-represent-the-god bit is part of it, with some reciprocal stuff going on. Like, the statue needs to reflect how the god is viewed, but the statue also influences how the god is viewed, which is good for getting a perfectly representative statue but bad if you have your god's main statue lying down, since that makes them look lazy (and a lazy god is not a helpful god).

[Hugh Mann]

Some ideas to make more efficient statues:

1. Trans planar statues - seeing the insane resources they have available, and since they already seem to be able to open portals to other planes, they could attempt to place large sections of the statue on other planes and leave the attached through permanent portals. This would help mitigate some of the weight issues. One could also solve the issue of low air at high altitudes: a permanent portal to the plane of air.

2. Statue ception - It is really a waste to throw out those small statues each time you need to make a bigger statue for your god. To maximize power output and minimize time spent a city could create one big statue out of a lot of small ones. This can be done by using cement or stone shape to combine tiny statues into one miles high. Alternatively, the city statues can be filled with older, smaller versions of itself, like one of those Russian nesting dolls.

2a. Voltron- given that pagan religions simply don't have the resources to make one big statue, some industrious one might combine 4-5 other pagan statues to make a hideous conglomeration of a god. Effectively permanently melding their gods together in an attempt to gain more power.

2b. Statue convergeance- The plan of 2a taken to the extreme, all the pagan gods combine into one. Massive body horror of small gods arise.

3. Fourth dimensional statue- Some crazy wizard decides to make a 4D statue of a god. By sheer mathematics it would be infinitely larger than any 3D statue. The 4D statue could fit in your pocket and give more power than a city statue. If possible it would be like creating Cold Fusion.

4. A Fully Customizable Statue- Rather than focusing on making the god bigger, just give it more swag. Worship a warrior god? Give it an extra sword. Worship a god of learning? Give it some books. Just keep adding stuff and call it part of the statue.

5. A living statue- rather than statues of stone, wood, or metal, have statues of flesh. We already have some messed up healing practices, why not take it a step further. Some splicers could graft up a massive, unthinking, unmoving statue of flesh in the shape of a god. Powered by the plane of life, it basically repairs itself. Sure the worship power might allow it to gain sentience, sure it would be gross to live in a tourtured undying flesh statue. But there is probably less maintenance.

6. Undead statue- basically the opposite of the Living statue. Just use necromancy on every dead worshipper/slave/pagan/etc, then command the bodies to stack up in the shape of the god. All the clerics are given special command codes so that only they can contro, the undead. Every time they need to replace or repair a section, they order the undead in walls to shuffle around.

7. Dream statues- If you have a plane where dreams go, this is a must. Have a bunch of casters invade the dreams of their citizens and make them dream copies of the statues. If the plane of dreams is real then for the duration of the dream the statue is real. Added points for trapping large chunks of a population in a permanent dream state and siphoning their dreams.

8. Genesis statue- Someone casts genesis and creates a demiplane that is just a giant statue.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Some ideas to make more efficient statues:

1, 7, 8: D&D's planar stuff makes everything more complicated. (It reminds me of a quote I heard somewhere about how multiverses, time travel, and paranormal stuff tend to take over a story once introduced.) I'm not sure how, but I'd like to find a way to de-emphasize them.
2 prime: If you're not talking about deconstructing old statues for materials, it's easier to cast wall of stone and stone shape than to get a bunch of old statues to stick together and then shape them into something that isn't a mess. As for Matryoshka City-Statues, they'd be redundant (you can't really worship at multiple statues simultaneously), and it would wreak havoc with city planning.
2a, 2b: That's...I really need to explain how these things work in my head, don't I?
3: Is a small cube bigger than a big square? The question doesn't even make sense. (Also, not particularly possible. Might as well ask a stick figure to build a cereal box.)
4: Where would you put that stuff, and how is it going to make the statue significantly bigger?
5, 6: Aside from using flesh (an inferior structural material), what benefit does this have? Okay, it can self-repair a little, but not much; you'd probably waste more magical energy keeping it standing than you would repairing all the little breaks in a stone statue, and manual repair would be faster. Not to mention, where would you get all that flesh? Making it out of individual undead would be even worse, and not just because of the smell; it would be ridiculously unstable. Imagine making a house out of one of those human pyramids you see at gymnastics competitions and stuff; now imagine scaling that up to a miles-high city.
There's also that whole "how the statue looks reflects how people see the god, and therefore the god itself" deal. A god who created a monstrous statue would become more monstrous, and nobody wants that. (Except the god's enemies.)

I'm glad people are trying to break the system; it lets me test and refine the system, figure out what changes need to be made (e.g, the planar stuff), and maybe get some interesting ideas.

[sktarq]

I always figured the typo was Stature=>Statue not Status=>Statue but that may just be me.

Actually a lying down god would need to have massive disadvantages to avoid the benefit of being MUCH larger. Besides not having to worry about the fact that those that live in the head would have trouble breathing due to being above the atmosphere, the god wouldn't have to vent much of their own energy to hold their own statue up. Also if the feet are say two miles tall then the whole thing could well be 12 miles long all on a mile tall plinth. . . all in a far more stable system. . . . and built out of a small tall mountain range to need less materials (well mostly the plinth). That statue would be MUCH MUCH bigger than any of your 6 mile tall pillars.

Also in terms of raw stability minimizing and simplifying the interior for just reinforcement and repair access would help build the statue higher. Sure a small repair community in the middle would probably be helpful but since the base is only 3-4 miles away having the repair (and possibly leadership) people living in the statue itself while most people live in a city around the base would be far more efficient and more importantly allow for the statue to be built larger.

I could well see a fair number of the "minor races" aarakocra (who came out of 2e Dark Sun I think), Hobgoblins, kobolds (esp kobolds) tabaxi etc only having a single statue city. While the "major races" have several. This wouldn't stop there being 'Pagan" versions of the same elsewhere in the world.

With the Yuan-Ti the whole serpent god sideline discussed above has a natural mate. Plus they could well be steeling people from the parishes to grow their own. They then use the walls to also hide their own cities. They thus become a semi regular issue who can threaten various statue cities at once. There are dozens if not hundreds of various serpent walled mini cities hidden around each trying to grow bigger and each eventually being discovered and destroyed by various statue city armies or alliances of armies.
Meanwhile such a position of manipulators and and spies from these cities fits in well from the classic Yuan ti playbook.

also "multi faced" gods...those that have several physical forms are classic. Getting into egyptian hyphen named gods is just a start. So these gods could well have several "medium" statues one for each "face" which would be easier to construct that one huge one. Set them in a semi circle around a city and people worship toward the arc. All the statues are of the same god anyway.

Also for pterrans look up the Forgotten Realms version from shining south....still a 3.5 version that could fly.

[Hugh Mann]

4: Where would you put that stuff, and how is it going to make the statue significantly bigger?

The idea was to make it bigger in the same way adding a hat makes someone taller, or adding armor makes someone heavier. Just stone shape a buster sword 4 miles tall onto the statue, and stick it to the back.

5, 6: Aside from using flesh (an inferior structural material), what benefit does this have? Okay, it can self-repair a little, but not much; you'd probably waste more magical energy keeping it standing than you would repairing all the little breaks in a stone statue, and manual repair would be faster. Not to mention, where would you get all that flesh?

Honestly the benefit is that positive and negative energy is usually more readily available than the ability to magically enhance/create stone. As for how to get the flesh, just use some very unethical experiments with the plane of life. Plane of Life causes incurable growths? Make entire populations farms for incurable growths. Imagine all the biomass a human would have if none of their cells died since birth. And the Stitchers could horribly warp the flesh on the inside to large vaults held up by bone. And since it is made of flesh it can be repaired by positive energy. Higher level spells like heal and regenerate can do wonders if the flesh statue is considered a single creature, which it very well might be if grafted together properly. And in the very worst scenario just cast true resurrection.

There's also that whole "how the statue looks reflects how people see the god, and therefore the god itself" deal. A god who created a monstrous statue would become more monstrous, and nobody wants that. (Except the god's enemies.)

There are a few types of gods that might try something monstrous, or stupid, to get bigger regardless of the chance of failure:

-Monster gods- some gods like those of aberrations or crazy gods like Tharizdun would probably love a monster look.
-Desperate gods- the system is very competitive, and it seems like everyone is afraid of getting destroyed by everyone. If a god or civilization was afraid enough of destruction they might get desperate enough to try unsavory methods of statue creation.
-Hateful gods- If you want a god that's sole purpose is to destroy you enemies, and leave them ravaged husks. Make the statue more monstrous. Using some mental gymnastics and convincing doctrine, I'm sure the priests could convince the people to view the horrible hate statue as a sort of massive guard dog. (I.e. It only murders enemies and is very happy and playful around the people it protects)

[Bohandas]

Does the statue have to be a full body statue? Because if just the front half of the body was acceptable it could be carved into an existing mountain like the statues in Mt.Rushmore

[JBPuffin]

Does the statue have to be a full body statue? Because if just the front half of the body was acceptable it could be carved into an existing mountain like the statues in Mt.Rushmore

That would run into the problem of "our god is only a torso," I'm guessing.

Honestly, GWG, you might want to consider not closing every loophole in the system. If the players really become interested in creating their own statue(s), and can manage the investment required, there ought to be some "fast-tracks" available to them, even if it's something as simple as an unconventional body shape or using another plane of existence to build/store their statue. Additionally, if you create something that's too internally consistent, it robs the players of some of their creative influence. After all, this is a campaign setting, not a novel setting.

One thing you should consider is statue conversion - can a statue of one god be transformed into a statue of another, or does the existing one have to be torn down for another god to claim those resources? You say there's temporary world peace, but one successful conversion attempt could send all of that crumbling to the ground...Another thing would be why the gods need all of this power. Is there some extra-dimensional threat they're trying to prepare for? Are they all really that egotistical and selfish, despite what their followers would have you believe? Are they constantly fighting each other and need to be able to withstand the constant combat? If there's not a good reason for their constant rivalry in the higher planes, you need to come up with one in the Prime Material for sure - maybe something as simple as religious exclusivism or xenophobia, maybe something as complex as a network of international alliances which have ultimately culminated in a cold war as they prepare for the real fighting's resumption. I'd say the whys may be more important than the hows, especially since you are assuming the full 1-20 level range if I'm reading into this correctly, and at the higher end magic is literally "shut up, I'm Tier 1, do what I ask you to" (your mentioning of tiers and the class examples you provided for the Heralds also makes me think this is based in 3.5 rules, so I believe that's a fair summary of magic as it would appear in this setting).