Thread: TARAK TALES BACKGROUND THREAD - WORLD MATERIAL (no comments)

Tarak the Tower City - Daily Life Inside the city, it can be hard to tell the time of day, so many residents simply operate whenever it is convenient for them. Gemlights see the Gear section of various sizes and colors dot the passages, providing most of the illumination against a background of luminescent fungus that seems to be attracted to out-of-the-way corners of the populous areas. Municipal Air Bottles see the Gear section are mounted in some of the wider hallways, just to keep the city breathing. The citizens frequently rely on minor enchantments to make life easier, but the magic commonly available doesn't help keep them gainfully occupied. Therefore, Tarak is a constantly active place. It's sometimes said that the Tower City never sleeps there's always something happening, and it's not always positive. The economy of the Tower City has adapted to the times. No single person owns any territory in the city the city itself, as managed by the City Council hereditary nobles and some elected merchants, owns all the territory, and every residence or business is leased from the city, most often by the remnants of the ancient land-owning nobility, who have maintained their power and prestige by adapting to the times. The nobles then sublease property within Tarak, which is how they maintain their wealth. Development and transfers and so forth are all overseen by the real power of any city, the bureaucracy. It is the City Records Service that makes sure nobody breaks through anyone else's ceiling, that maintains the Gemlights and Air Bottles, that arranges for waste recycling, processing, and disposal, and so forth. The mines bring some mineral resources to the city, with the rest being provided by a robust recycling policy augmented by magic. Similarly, there are the resources of the field and forest available, as hunters, fishers, farmers, and animal tenders venture out during the day, and there are unique foostuffs available from the city's rooftop gardens and fungi caverns that dot the Warrens and Mines. New goods are brought in via trading, and fresh funds are received through minimal tariffs and storage fees on large shipments. Mostly, however, Tarak's money keeps circulating within itself, and with the basics of life accounted for, few are in need. For those who can't afford their own Water Flasks see the Gear section, there is some limited water distribution the city's Water Wheel , a chain of buckets hooked to a large and powerful Ever-Spinning Wheel see the Gear section, takes water from a seepage well far down in the mines and carries it up to the Reservoir on the surface of the plateau. From there, water mains burrowed in the rock channel the water to major points throughout Tarak. Citizens collect their water as they need to from these points, from their own Water Flasks, or from a local shrine, as the clerics are always happy to provide when they can. Similarly, clerics also provide sustenance to those who need it, who do not have their own Food Bowls see the Gear section, or who cannot afford fresh goods produced by gardens, hunters, or herders. Feeding the populace in such a circumstance would be next to impossible if it weren't for the existence of magic. Waste disposal is an immense problem in any city, and Tarak has the same issues as any. There is a well-developed program to recycle metal bits, clothing, etc., and many citizens make ample use of Disposal Cabinets see the Gear section or the like. Others have to do with neighborhood Disposal Centers , which are basically garderobe holes with covers to control the smell. The dump shafts receive a trickle of cleansing water from the water distribution pipes, but it's still pretty awful down at the bottom, where the waste is processed with heavy use of Forged workers, who are unaffected by the smell for a description of the Forged, see the Gear section and used to grow fungi. After some early epidemics, the city long ago found it useful to use the waste to grow a small, inedible but disease-resistant type of fungi, a frequent ingredient in Healing Salves see the Gear section and antiseptic preparations, and then distribute that harvested growth as fertilizer for underground food crops. This has made the whole process immeasurably safer, and has made fungi farming in the neighborhoods much less smelly. Like all cities in the known world, Tarak makes good use of its magic-users. The Guild of Wizards Chapterhouse is on the Sun Levels, but the Guild keeps offices in both the River Shaft and the Dragon Shaft. The chapterhouse holds Tarak's major library on both magical and mundane subjects, which is open to the public for in-house reading, as well as dormitory-like quarters for sorcerers who cannot afford their own. The Clerical Orders also maintain the Great Temple of Tarak on the Sun Levels, but smaller shrines are dotted all throughout the Tower City. Shrines provide free food and water, as mentioned above, and they also serve as news outlets and mail service acolytes based in different shrines frequently visit neighboring shrines several times a day, bringing news and any messages dropped off at the home shrine that are destined for a particular direction. Thus news and correspondence percolates gradually to wherever it is supposed to go. People work at all sorts of duties in Tarak. There are miners and animal tenders and hunters and farmers, and the full range of service people that provide the tools and necessities of those people, as well as tend to the off-duty needs of the everyday workers, and there are also traders and merchants and those who work the docks when there are ships in port, and there are specialized professions, like entertainers and stone shapers and bureaucrats. Then there are nobles, and governmental employees, and the City Guard , and so on. The Tower City is a full metropolis, given the nature of the global society, and as a major trading hub, one can find or do almost anything there.