Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Cavienn 08-15-07, 04:28 PM	I'm reading through Sharn: City of Towers (and am in love with it). One question comes to mind... I've always imagined most of the buildings in Sharn--the shops and residences and whatnot--opening onto the outside of towers, with doors to balconies that ring the tower and connect via bridge to other such balconies. This seems to be closer to what a lot of pictures of Sharn suggest. However, some descriptions in the book seem to indicate that most of them are in fact *inside* the towers, with streets running through the middle of a tower... Is this how they're set up? If so, how does that work? Like, would a tower have a hollow core with walkways and ramps and stairs, with entrances to buildings that ring around the outside? Is each tower just a really big hollow cylinder with parts of a city built inside of it? I just can't seem to picture it properly...
naturax 08-15-07, 04:42 PM	I pictured everything would open up on the inside, like a huge shopping mall. The only real access ways to the outside would be the balconies, which are more like docks, at each end of the huge room (huge enough for buildings inside) for pedestrian access. If I lived in Sharn I would hate to have to go outside anytime I wanted to go anywhere - I'd need my own method of flight. If there was a real street in front of my door I could walk down and around and across a bridge to any other place with a street in front of its door. Also, I hear it rains a lot in Sharn.
Cavienn 08-15-07, 05:15 PM	Hm, I suppose that would work... Though along the lines of it raining--it sort of loses a lot of it's feel if you're inside all the time when it's raining!
Meloncov 08-15-07, 05:54 PM	Some of each, I assume.
TiwazTyrsfist 08-15-07, 06:10 PM	So, if you've got a building that's like a half mile in diameter, and 150 stories tall, you can have weather patterns inside the building. A number of large hotels (generally 60+ stories) in the real world, that have an open core, often have trouble during high humidity periods with spontanious indoor rain, and even snow, as a result of air flow issues.
Alex_ 08-16-07, 02:31 AM	So, if you've got a building that's like a half mile in diameter, and 150 stories tall, you can have weather patterns inside the building. A number of large hotels (generally 60+ stories) in the real world, that have an open core, often have trouble during high humidity periods with spontanious indoor rain, and even snow, as a result of air flow issues. Not to mention with House Lyrandar around, you can probably create artificial climates inside buildings for even more dramatic effets.
grifo 08-16-07, 06:38 AM	personally, I like to imagine Sharn with the buildings opening outside, this way the city has a more fantasy feel to it. It's not hong kong, a city made out of a lot of different inside spaces, it's unique, a city where streets are narrow balconies stretched across entire building floors and connected by bridges. After all, what's adventuring in sharn if at the end of the finel fight of the session, as the group finally traps the villein alone on the balcony with no way to escape, he jumps over the edge, activating his feather fall amulet and gliding into the night. (man I have to finish my next game like that!)
Cavienn 08-16-07, 01:43 PM	That's what I would think too. Having read some more of the book, and with interior buildings in mind, it does seem likely that a large amount of the city is indoors. Here's what I'm going to end up doing: The higher you go, the more is outdoors. The slums in lower Dura and whatnot are almost entirely indoors, which would add to their feel of ... well, slumminess. (It's a word, I swear) The upper levels, where people have a little bit more money and can afford the occasional skycoach ride, are much more open, with wide balconies around each tower and bridges arching across the sky. Gives it a much more open feel. Anyway, that's what I'm going with.
naturax 08-16-07, 04:57 PM	Having certain places, like fancy restaurants, with air-only access is something I've done in my game too. It's a great way to keep undesirables away.
justjarjar 08-21-07, 10:13 PM	I think it is a city with air platformes added on and intertwsting into muti towers in cahos. I would think that buldings would be in the towers but like an ofes bulding with small walkways. There would be some outside areas with odd floating neberhoods. Thus i think that some more upper-class middle peps live in floting platfroms but lower down and scaterd.
OctaviusIII 08-22-07, 03:49 AM	After all, what's adventuring in sharn if at the end of the finel fight of the session, as the group finally traps the villein alone on the balcony with no way to escape, he jumps over the edge, activating his feather fall amulet and gliding into the night. (man I have to finish my next game like that!) Even better: design an item that is a hand-held magical lift tether that allows you to point, shoot, and swing from the point the tether latches onto. Release the tether, point, shoot, repeat. Like an actual lift tether, it lets you retract or release more magical tether, letting you raise or lower yourself. Now work that into a chase scene. Anyway, I'd also see Sharn as some of each. In my Sharn, there are boulevards that go along the outside of towers as well as through them. There are terraces and gardens, shopping malls that are half in, half out. The really nice restaurants ("Reservations for two? How does does two years from today around 8 o'clock sound?") employ House Lyrandar to maintain the climate on the terrace during bad weather. Lastly, the broader avenues would probably have courtyards and markets, and people would probably want to shop in the open air every so often. The thought just struck me, though: would schoolkids be taught the proper functioning of a talisman of featherfall? And when to activate it?
Cavienn 08-22-07, 01:27 PM	The thought just struck me, though: would schoolkids be taught the proper functioning of a talisman of featherfall? And when to activate it? I would think so--if they lived in the mid- or upper-levels, anyway. The people in the lower levels wouldn't need them as much--much less be able to afford them. Your other ideas are pretty awesome though. Definitely going to go with a mix. Here's another question though, related to the map of Sharn. The map shows each quarter separated by chasms between plateaus, which does pretty much conform to the description of the city. How do you get between wards, though? Is flight the only way? Shouldn't there be bridges? But those chasms are huge, the bridges would have to be massive...
goblin_pride 08-22-07, 08:16 PM	Sharn is a city built on the ruins of multiple cities before it and on itself. I would imagine that it's a wild, honey-combed city with back alleys, dead ends and wide thoroughfares built both inside and outside of the towers. Bridges, butresses and balconies would dot all it's many levels and as the city goes higher, the base spreads out just a little bit more. The towers aren't just solitary spires but more outcroppings of the creature that the city itself has become, reaching skyward like a stalk thrusting it's leaves towards the sun.
Demangel 08-22-07, 08:32 PM	I haven't had a chance to pick up COT yet, but from what little I have been able to glean and make up on my own, heres how I handle things: 1: Treat open air, like water in Venice. Essentially Sharn is Venice but with the "water" allowing for vertical travel as well as horizontal. 2: For the most part, everything, including the skyway can be reached on foot if the need arises. Whether it be because you walk up an inclined ramp, take a tensers disk elevator (free), or a spiral stair. 3: Most things are also accessible by air. There is public/civic air travel in Sharn, with livery sky coach drivers ferrying people who have the coin to and fro. IT doesn't have to cost ten arms and two legs and a night with your sister, instead the drivers/owners make their money on volume. That being said, if you preferred not to walk, traveling from one end of sharn to the other shouldn't cost all that much. Also I imagine the city would subsidize or otherwise bail out such public livery services (think a city buss or subway service, which is often both privately owned, but also run by the city). 4: The higher one goes, the more room there is between towers and the less plentiful become the bridges. Indeed, for some towers the only way to reach the higher levels is to either enter the tower from below and go up somehow (elevator, stairs, ramps). Or take a ferry directly to the "dock." 5: The Lower one goes, the more crowded it becomes, with the towers starting to choke out the daylight like it would in a dense forest with a thick canopy. In the middle levels, the city is a labyrinth of twisting and turning bridges, balconies, ramps, docks and elevators. At or near the bottom, it's more like long passages running between tower bases. 6: Tower layouts: Thanks to the manifest zone, builders can make their towers do things we couldn't normally conceive of. A tower getting wider and thicker as it gets higher with more and more tower additions added on. Some towers are literally only connected to anything by a ramp or bridge and get no structural support from the ground at all. 6A: Some towers have massive open air roof type things, for example near the top of the tower, the tower splits in to 1 or more lesser towers, with a large open air surface area (possibly a market, park, or some other reasonable excuse to have open air). To a person on this level, the tower below would be like the ground, and the tower extensions would seem like the towers themselves. 6B: Some towers have large halls inside of them which seem a lot like open exteriors, but have a ceiling. These vaulted interiors typically have a larger open air interior that may be 5-10 stories high and maybe a central elevator shaft, with apartment buildings built into the interior walls with exits leading to balconies outside. 7: The builders of sharn had a conscious intent of creating "layers" in the cities structure when possible (to avoid planning/navigation confusion, and lessen disorientation), at the upper middle levels, more of the kinds of towers mentioned in 6A can be found which can make the city seem less like a network of towers, and more like a city built over a bunch of cracks. 8: The skyway I treat like a normal sky city with a few eye popping towers, and tons of potential falling hazards. City blocks are treated as islands, with the roads and walkways connecting them and running between them treated most commonly as bridges. 9: It is uncommon for people in the middle and upper sections to fall to their death in Sharn as most places where you could fall are treated with a feather fall spell that saves the lives of those without the ability to use the spell themselves. The higher you go in the city vertically, the more wealthy the people tend to be, and the more common these safeguards are. Of course in the lower levels where there is less public works money, such niceties are a lot less common or otherwise used up and in disrepair... 10: Moods: In Final Fantasy 7, right at the beginning, is a good feeling for how I view lower Sharn to at least feel like... Little if any sky to be seen with only ambient twilight like that of sunset bathing the lower levels at mid day. While upper sharn also fits the FF7 ambiance. The higher you go, the more sky you can see, until at last on the skyway, all of the sky is fair game and easy to see in the crisp air of high altitude. 11: Sharn is an easy place to get lost in, even for those who live their whole lives within it's limits. A new comer is advised to never stray far from where they know they can go, or can get a guide/cabbie to take them or risk becoming hopelessly lost for hours on end probably finding out they are a dozen stories up, and a couple hundred yards south of their intended destination with no clear path to reach it, even if they can see it. I DO NOT see sharn as a twisting nonsensical maze like you might see in some abstractionist drawing (you know the ones with all the staircases), but rather a chaotic mass of planned and reactionary construction. I do not see sharn as a place were one wrong step means your dead, unless your on the lower levels. I do not see sharn as a place that has any easily defined BOTTOM layer/Ground floor. As this varies from location to location. Some drops lead directly to the cogs, while others lead to old, sometimes abandoned alleys between the towers at the bottom. Furthermore, the lower you go, the worse visibility becomes, I suspect fully that in some places that are technically outside, it looks more like night time with all the smog blocking out the sun above. Now you want something hard to picture? Think about the sewers... They cannot simply exist at the bottom, as there has to be a way to get the waste down that far, and perform maintenance along the way. The sewers I view as being things that also link between towers in some cases, but are mostly vertical pipes (some barely big enough to climb down, let alone fight in) the higher you are with few horizontal sections. Likewise there would be tons of large chambers, catch basins if you will. Exploring them isn't like it is in a normal city were most of it is simply walking down the length of the tunnels and getting lost in a flat maze, but rather walking a hundred yards, and climbing down, or up as the case may be to reach a new tunnel. This eventually gives way to the more familiar sewer structures far below that have fewer drops into deeper sections, but plenty of places to climb up. The lower sections are made up of much much larger tubes and tunnels, almost like underwater rivers some potentially several dozen yards across with very slow flow. The Sewers of the Skyway I haven't had much thought about, I mean how do they get rid of the waste? Does it just fall to the city below as endless cascading sewerfalls? That doesn't seem quite right, or at least not complete... I have a feeling there is a combination of magical recycling going on, and special sewer falls that are designed to spill into the rooftops of select towers far below built with big catch basins. Imagine for example that the Skyway (and indeed lower Shawn) uses some animal (Mage Bred insects for example) to eat the waste, and break it down enough so that magical means can eventually purify it and return the water to the people, and the solid junk to the farmers as an exportable product. Of course, in the modern world, we have a similar solution, we call them cesspools. Which I suspect (with magical improvements) may be how the skyway solves it's sewage problem. I can definitely see the sewers in both areas as a place were a lot of Warforged and other constructs can be found not just working, but living as there dulled senses of smell would make it easier for them to adapt to life down there... but as they can still smell, they would still be a smelly surly lot.
OctaviusIII 08-22-07, 09:43 PM	Demangel brings up a good point: navigation. Maps of Sharn would be such a pain, although here's a couple thoughts: A book map of Sharn would have vertical maps of towers and horizontal maps of bridges and the like with each tower marked with a page number. Each plateau would have their own "local" horizontal maps for each level. The nicer residence towers and hotels have a magewright in the lobby that operates a talisman (or schema, or wand) that projects a 3D map of the area you're going to and advises a route to your destination. Meanwhile, the Public Works Department is engaged in an ongoing mapping project of the lowest levels of the city, as well as the sewer system. It's a thankless job, but it pays well.
Phaseroth 08-24-07, 10:28 PM	The Sewers of the Skyway I haven't had much thought about, I mean how do they get rid of the waste? I'm thinking some combination of otyughs and bound elementals for general sanitation. Water elementals inhabit the "plumbing" and wash all solid waste (both excrement and general trash) to a central area, where it is further broken down by otyughs. Once its been run through the otyughs, it's transported to another area where it is dried by bound air elementals and perhaps sold as fertilizer, or burned outright by bound fire elementals. If burned, air elementals could be employed to make sure that the smoke always drifts away from Skyway.
Lucifer_the_Puritan 09-03-07, 01:26 AM	I haven't had a chance to pick up COT yet, but from what little I have been able to glean and make up on my own, heres how I handle things: 1: Treat open air, like water in Venice. Essentially Sharn is Venice but with the "water" allowing for vertical travel as well as horizontal. 2: For the most part, everything, including the skyway can be reached on foot if the need arises. Whether it be because you walk up an inclined ramp, take a tensers disk elevator (free), or a spiral stair. 3: Most things are also accessible by air. There is public/civic air travel in Sharn, with livery sky coach drivers ferrying people who have the coin to and fro. IT doesn't have to cost ten arms and two legs and a night with your sister, instead the drivers/owners make their money on volume. That being said, if you preferred not to walk, traveling from one end of sharn to the other shouldn't cost all that much. Also I imagine the city would subsidize or otherwise bail out such public livery services (think a city buss or subway service, which is often both privately owned, but also run by the city). 4: The higher one goes, the more room there is between towers and the less plentiful become the bridges. Indeed, for some towers the only way to reach the higher levels is to either enter the tower from below and go up somehow (elevator, stairs, ramps). Or take a ferry directly to the "dock." 5: The Lower one goes, the more crowded it becomes, with the towers starting to choke out the daylight like it would in a dense forest with a thick canopy. In the middle levels, the city is a labyrinth of twisting and turning bridges, balconies, ramps, docks and elevators. At or near the bottom, it's more like long passages running between tower bases. 6: Tower layouts: Thanks to the manifest zone, builders can make their towers do things we couldn't normally conceive of. A tower getting wider and thicker as it gets higher with more and more tower additions added on. Some towers are literally only connected to anything by a ramp or bridge and get no structural support from the ground at all. 6A: Some towers have massive open air roof type things, for example near the top of the tower, the tower splits in to 1 or more lesser towers, with a large open air surface area (possibly a market, park, or some other reasonable excuse to have open air). To a person on this level, the tower below would be like the ground, and the tower extensions would seem like the towers themselves. 6B: Some towers have large halls inside of them which seem a lot like open exteriors, but have a ceiling. These vaulted interiors typically have a larger open air interior that may be 5-10 stories high and maybe a central elevator shaft, with apartment buildings built into the interior walls with exits leading to balconies outside. 7: The builders of sharn had a conscious intent of creating "layers" in the cities structure when possible (to avoid planning/navigation confusion, and lessen disorientation), at the upper middle levels, more of the kinds of towers mentioned in 6A can be found which can make the city seem less like a network of towers, and more like a city built over a bunch of cracks. 8: The skyway I treat like a normal sky city with a few eye popping towers, and tons of potential falling hazards. City blocks are treated as islands, with the roads and walkways connecting them and running between them treated most commonly as bridges. 9: It is uncommon for people in the middle and upper sections to fall to their death in Sharn as most places where you could fall are treated with a feather fall spell that saves the lives of those without the ability to use the spell themselves. The higher you go in the city vertically, the more wealthy the people tend to be, and the more common these safeguards are. Of course in the lower levels where there is less public works money, such niceties are a lot less common or otherwise used up and in disrepair... 10: Moods: In Final Fantasy 7, right at the beginning, is a good feeling for how I view lower Sharn to at least feel like... Little if any sky to be seen with only ambient twilight like that of sunset bathing the lower levels at mid day. While upper sharn also fits the FF7 ambiance. The higher you go, the more sky you can see, until at last on the skyway, all of the sky is fair game and easy to see in the crisp air of high altitude. 11: Sharn is an easy place to get lost in, even for those who live their whole lives within it's limits. A new comer is advised to never stray far from where they know they can go, or can get a guide/cabbie to take them or risk becoming hopelessly lost for hours on end probably finding out they are a dozen stories up, and a couple hundred yards south of their intended destination with no clear path to reach it, even if they can see it. I DO NOT see sharn as a twisting nonsensical maze like you might see in some abstractionist drawing (you know the ones with all the staircases), but rather a chaotic mass of planned and reactionary construction. I do not see sharn as a place were one wrong step means your dead, unless your on the lower levels. I do not see sharn as a place that has any easily defined BOTTOM layer/Ground floor. As this varies from location to location. Some drops lead directly to the cogs, while others lead to old, sometimes abandoned alleys between the towers at the bottom. Furthermore, the lower you go, the worse visibility becomes, I suspect fully that in some places that are technically outside, it looks more like night time with all the smog blocking out the sun above. Now you want something hard to picture? Think about the sewers... They cannot simply exist at the bottom, as there has to be a way to get the waste down that far, and perform maintenance along the way. The sewers I view as being things that also link between towers in some cases, but are mostly vertical pipes (some barely big enough to climb down, let alone fight in) the higher you are with few horizontal sections. Likewise there would be tons of large chambers, catch basins if you will. Exploring them isn't like it is in a normal city were most of it is simply walking down the length of the tunnels and getting lost in a flat maze, but rather walking a hundred yards, and climbing down, or up as the case may be to reach a new tunnel. This eventually gives way to the more familiar sewer structures far below that have fewer drops into deeper sections, but plenty of places to climb up. The lower sections are made up of much much larger tubes and tunnels, almost like underwater rivers some potentially several dozen yards across with very slow flow. The Sewers of the Skyway I haven't had much thought about, I mean how do they get rid of the waste? Does it just fall to the city below as endless cascading sewerfalls? That doesn't seem quite right, or at least not complete... I have a feeling there is a combination of magical recycling going on, and special sewer falls that are designed to spill into the rooftops of select towers far below built with big catch basins. Imagine for example that the Skyway (and indeed lower Shawn) uses some animal (Mage Bred insects for example) to eat the waste, and break it down enough so that magical means can eventually purify it and return the water to the people, and the solid junk to the farmers as an exportable product. Of course, in the modern world, we have a similar solution, we call them cesspools. Which I suspect (with magical improvements) may be how the skyway solves it's sewage problem. I can definitely see the sewers in both areas as a place were a lot of Warforged and other constructs can be found not just working, but living as there dulled senses of smell would make it easier for them to adapt to life down there... but as they can still smell, they would still be a smelly surly lot. Demangel has it right on.Read some of the Eberron fiction set in the city,like the Death Mark trilogy (a bloody good read too).It has some awsome chases through Sharn. Lucifer the Puritan
Herodot83 09-03-07, 07:45 AM	Even if it's kind of a "heretic" thought...:P I think Coruscant, the republican/imperial capital in the star wars universe, could be a good example of how Sharn might look, technically. At least if you replace the speeders and spaceships with air coaches and floating disks and give the towers a somewhat more fantasy-like architecture. Just to visualise it a bit, not more. Large towers, the rich living on the uppermost levels, where the towers have much space between them and you travel by speeder from tower to tower, and more traffic and closer spaces at the lower levels, with a more "dark" environment, much criminality, filthy taverns and clubs and so on - such an environment and the appropriate feeling/athmosphere can nicely be seen in the star wars movies, in my opinion.
mosaic 09-30-07, 01:42 AM	[I originally posted this in a thread called "Sharn maps help," but I think this is a better place for it. Sorry for the double post.] I haven't read any of the Eberron novels, so I may be completely off on some of this, but my wife and I were talking about Sharn in the car a few days ago and what it would look like if it grew organically. Being from LA and having lived in Mexico City, we imagined several medium towers (5-10 stories) being built a good distance from each other. As these towers grew too small for their owners' needs, they would have built larger towers AROUND the first ones. So the first 5-10 stories of the new tower would be ring shaped, and then the new floors - say 11-20 - would be more like a standard tower. The windows of the old tower would have to be blocked up, and old external doors would now lead to rooms in the newer portion. Some years later, the towers would again be too small for the needs of the owner, his/her family, their business, whatever. So they build another layer around the towers, adding another 10 floors. The bottom 10 would now have three rings, the next 10 would have two rings, and the newest top 10 would just be regular circular towers. [What were imagining is something very much like a tree, where you could estimate the age of a tower by the number of rings at its base. This "rings of growth" idea isn't as far fetched as it may sound; this is how most Aztec pyramids were built - on top of and around older pyramids that had grown too small for the Aztec's needs.] Again, older windows and doors are sealed or lead into new, interior rooms. But as the owners have grown wealthy, they'd like to live in the larger, more spacious apartments at the top of the tower, now 30 stories tall. So very few doors in the inner tower connect to new, outer tower. Instead, a hallway/alley cuts through the outer ring at about street level and leads to what was formerly the front door of the old tower [You sometimes see this in Venice, Italy]. The rooms of the old tower are converted to small, dark apartments - a tenement basically. What is evolving here is social stratification where the wealthy live higher up the towers or at least on the outside where they can get light and fresh air, and the poor live deep inside in dark, dank ghettos at the end of a maze of hallways and alleys. This pattern of growth really helps me envision what the interior of these towers would look like. Imagine the changes in architecture and style as travel deeper into a tower. It also means that the bases of the towers would be pretty thick. I remember seeing a map or a drawing of a tower once and thinking, "That's WAY too skinny! There's no way that thing goes up a mile in the air, even in a manifest zone. It's going to look like spaghetti!" Now the towers are more like huge, growing stone and mortar trees. Once these things get really big, like 100+ stories tall (maybe even sooner), things get interesting. People at the top aren't going to want to go down just to go up another tower, so they start building bridges to other towers, and these bridges will eventually get built upon too [I think of the Rialto in Venice or the Ponte Vecchio in Florence]. They'll also build platforms that jut off the sides of the towers to have some outdoor space. And as the really big towers get wider, their bases will start running up against smaller towers. Some of these small towers will be torn down, but most will just be incorporated into the new layer. Because tower walls are not entirely perpendicular and taper slightly as they rise, like trees that have grown together, old towers may just out the sides of new towers. Eventually they may disappear completely, but the floorplan would reflect the history. [This is where LA and Mexico City come in. Both cities were once a collection of towns that grew and grew until they ran into one another. There are colonial neighborhoods in Mexico City, with cobblestone streets and historic buildings, surrounded by glass and steel towers because the little "neighborhood" was once a town until the modern city grew and oozed around it like mud or lava.]. Then things get really funky. Keeping with the tree metaphor, sometimes the heart of the tower would die; the original tower(s) would collapse or be torn down, leaving a huge, open shaft down the middle of the tower. It could be dark and empty, almost like an cavern reaching 1000 feet above the ground, or maybe there are openings to the outside letting light and fresh air in. There might even be a revival [think gentrification] as suddenly the interior becomes desirable again. Hanging gardens, interior balconies, like the atrium of some big hotel or mall. And like big cities have buses and trolleys, maybe the shaft has lifts that rise and descend on fixed schedules [the 10:15 serving floors 135-198]. Outside, thinks at ground level would be a mess. Certainly crowded, but imagine all the refuse and debris that would fall from above. I imagine piles of detritus a story or two tall. Shanties built of scrap built against the sides of soaring towers [images from some time I spent in Manilla]. Smoke everywhere. Most "civilized" folk would take care of business at least a few stories up. Here the balconies from one tower would extend almost to the balconies of the other towers, almost - or entirely - sealing off the "ground" below. Most towers would probably have balconies that partially encircle them every few floors because apartments and shops only extend a few rings in; interior access would consist mostly of alleys and back doors. The really big balconies might have traditional, free-standing structures built on the (or at least leaning on the tower), and some of these might pile up 3 or 4 stories themselves. [I'll add more later when I get a chance, but this is our "organic" imagining of Sharn. Enjoy, Mosaic]
Label 09-30-07, 03:59 AM	This "organic" imagining of Sharn is interesting... but the fact is that Sharn was built like this from the begining. Galifar I has ordered to build a city there and Cannith had a lot of fun. To the OP : Yes road mostly passes through the towers, and bridges connects the towers between them. So yes the city is mostly inside. The "City Architecture" section at the start of chapter 2 describes it well enough. And BTW, skycoaches fairs ranges from 1sp to 6sp. It's a common and affordable transport that works like buses.
Just_some_Evil_Wizard 09-30-07, 06:02 AM	And BTW, skycoaches fairs ranges from 1sp to 6sp. It's a common and affordable transport that works like buses. 1 SP = wage of an untrained laborer for a whole workday. 5 SP = wage of an architect/engineer. Not that affordable for most, I'd say.
Gurv 09-30-07, 08:16 AM	That is brilliant Mosaic. I've always pictured Sharn a lot like that, and the organic concept makes is a great way to explain it. With the benefits of the manifest zone, House Cannith, and magic in general I can see all of that happening much more quickly than the city-evolution found on Earth. The extreme economic gap found in such a society also means that the growth might not occur only when needed, but also whenever a powerful noble becomes bored with the current design. This "organic" imagining of Sharn is interesting... but the fact is that Sharn was built like this from the begining. Galifar I has ordered to build a city there and Cannith had a lot of fun. It has been a while since I read the history of Sharn, but I'm certain that there was already a goblinoid city where Sharn now stands. Galifar might have commanded that a city be (re)built there, but I highly doubt that it resembled present-day Sharn for many many years. I think that Mosaic's concept is closest to how the city would have developed. Certainly, it wasn't completely accidental. But neither was it preplanned. It fits with published information, which suggests that much of what remains in the lower levels is forgotten or given new purpose. And I never liked the idea that the bases of the towers were thicker solely for architectural reasons. Good concept Mosaic! I'll be keeping it in mind the next time I have to explain what the lower levels of the city looks like.
Label 09-30-07, 04:02 PM	Sharn has got at least 4 "owners". The first where the goblins. It was their metropolis, carved in the stones (instead or raising towers, they lowered the ground...) The Daelkys came. The goblins and druid managed to win but the city was devastated, and was never rebuilt. Then that guy came from Sarlona, and attacked the south border of Khorvaire. When he conquered the city, he sealed the ruins and build a new city on top of it, renaming the city and took the remaining goblins as slaves. Then the leader of the nowaday-Breland wanted the prosperous. But the city lords refused, and the would-be conquerer ordered his wizards to destroy the city. He then conquered the city, and rebuilt it. He named it Sharn, and towers began to rise. Then it was the War of the Mark. The aberrants used the city as HQ, taking the control of the city. At the end of the war, when the true dragonmarks were closing in, the aberrants released their powerful magic and the city was once again destroyed : earthquakes destroyed the towers, fire burned all, vermin haunted the place and deadly plagues were released. The city was abandoned, and for a long time it was believed cursed. Then came in Galifar I. The location of the city has a lot of strategic and economic value so he ordered the reconstruction of the city. House Cannith, dwarf engineers and nobles' money played crucial roles in this endeavour. When they arrived in the ruins, only some towers and other buildings were still there, but the superstitions and rumors of curses leaded to the decision to seal the old city. (This zone is now called The Depths, a place where only brave adventurers and treasure hunters go to pillage the remnants of past empires. It is underground and there is nothing visible from the surface.) So in short : every time the city was rebuilt, remnants of the past where burried and sealed away. So : no, nothing of the past ruins remains in the lower levels, since the lower levels where built on top of it. It doesn't say if they built the tower a mile high at the begining, but descriptions of the districts suggest that they planned that the city will grow higher and higher, and over the time they added more and more stories to the towers. As for inside the towers, everything could have been refurbished when needed. Outside walls are very thick, but inside walls are not and can be destroyed to open more space in a room, and new walls can be built to create new separations. All the modifications in the city were mainly inside, and I'm pretty sure the city was planned that way.
Edymnion 10-02-07, 12:55 PM	I'm thinking some combination of otyughs and bound elementals for general sanitation. Water elementals inhabit the "plumbing" and wash all solid waste (both excrement and general trash) to a central area, where it is further broken down by otyughs. Once its been run through the otyughs, it's transported to another area where it is dried by bound air elementals and perhaps sold as fertilizer, or burned outright by bound fire elementals. If burned, air elementals could be employed to make sure that the smoke always drifts away from Skyway.Thats a bit much, IMO. It is almost constantly raining in Sharn (remember its equitorial, and the King's Wood right next to it is labled as a rainforest environment), which means there should be ample water coming from above. you just catch it, and let it flow down via gravity. No need for bound fire elementals of any kind, because we know there are great forges and possibly volcanic vents in the cogs. Thats all the heat you need right there. Which is an added thing that I think most people forget about the lower reaches of Sharn especially. Its incredibly freaking humid, I'd imagine 80+% humidity would be the NORM at ground level in Sharn. Higher up you go, the elevation would help cool and dry the air.1 SP = wage of an untrained laborer for a whole workday.And just remember that untrained laborer = ditch digger. Thats the kind of pay someone with no serviceable skills of any kind gets from sweeping streets and hauling buckets of water. Anybody with even mediocre intelligence and the slightest drive to succeed would have learned a skill, like blacksmithing or singing, and would be making Craft/Profession/Perform checks for money. Actual citizens would have jobs (since you can't farm in Sharn), and would make substantially more than 1 sp per day. Thats more akin to what beggers would make.
Just_some_Evil_Wizard 10-02-07, 01:36 PM	Beggars? Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day. Don't see anything about beggars there. You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. That would give a non-elite person (+1 bonus from attribute) with Skill Focus: Profession/Craft (+3, for a total of +4) about 1 GP per day. Might even be a professional beggar btw. Half a day's pay for an inner city skycoach trip... hm...
Label 10-02-07, 02:06 PM	I'm thinking some combination of otyughs and bound elementals for general sanitation. Water elementals inhabit the "plumbing" and wash all solid waste (both excrement and general trash) to a central area, where it is further broken down by otyughs. Once its been run through the otyughs, it's transported to another area where it is dried by bound air elementals and perhaps sold as fertilizer, or burned outright by bound fire elementals. If burned, air elementals could be employed to make sure that the smoke always drifts away from Skyway. Well if you actually read the book, you'll know that Sharn's sewers are well described. From the upper wards, chutes let the garbage fall down in the sewers where they are put into chambers where they can rot and be eaten by vermin (and/or used by sewers inhabitants like goblins) As for wastewater, tunnels transport it to other chambers where magewrights use stones of purify to clean it before redirecting it in the river. This place is said to be well guarded by a special division of the Watch. That would give a non-elite person (+1 bonus from attribute) with Skill Focus: Profession/Craft (+3, for a total of +4) about 1 GP per day. Might even be a professional beggar btw. Half a day's pay for an inner city skycoach trip... hm... The skycoach prices are per mile, and it range from 1sp to 6sp (the book example gives that price for a Lower Tavick--Upper Dura trip). So the laborer lives pretty far away from his job if he pays 6sp for the trip. People tend to live close to their jobs, to be more economical in time and money.
Just_some_Evil_Wizard 10-02-07, 05:06 PM	People tend to live close to their jobs, ...and go to work on foot instead of spending at least 20% of their income on transportation, I'd say. ;) Skycoaches are, I suppose, just not a reasonable medium of transportation for the lower class. There are Skycoaches in Sharn, there may even be a lot, but just as horses they are expensive to use. One could imagine, however, that there is something similar to a modern bus service, with preset routes and people sharing the cost of each tour. For long journeys across town to visit city hall, a temple or something like that, even a poor person might spend the necessary silver to avoid the dangers of walking through a city inhabited by ogres, gargoyles, changelings and so forth.
Vharuck 10-03-07, 09:43 AM	That would give a non-elite person (+1 bonus from attribute) with Skill Focus: Profession/Craft (+3, for a total of +4) about 1 GP per day. Might even be a professional beggar btw. Half a day's pay for an inner city skycoach trip... hm... Ever take a taxi? Those skycoach prices (1sp to 6sp, so 1/10 a day's pay to 3/5) aren't that much a stretch of the imagination. ;) People tend to live close to their jobs, to be more economical in time and money. I'd say most people tend to live behind the shop where they run their business. Remember, factories don't exist (House Cannith may be the exception), so there isn't a place where a dozen or more carpenters go to work together. Tradesmen may have to travel to go where they're needed, but many tradesmen and almost all craftsmen can work from a single location. If they can't afford a shop, chances are they'll set up a stand or blanket in a busy section of town.
OctaviusIII 10-03-07, 07:25 PM	That would give a non-elite person (+1 bonus from attribute) with Skill Focus: Profession/Craft (+3, for a total of +4) about 1 GP per day. Might even be a professional beggar btw. Half a day's pay for an inner city skycoach trip... hm... Well, let's see here: Commoner 1, with proper tools, a skill focus and a modifier to the right ability would have a 4+3+2+1=+10 bonus to their profession or craft check. An average roll of 10 would yield 10 gold per week, which translates to 2.5sp per hour, assuming an 8 hour day and 5 day workweek and 480gp per year. Too poor for a regular skycoach, but not too poor for mass transit. Someone without class levels yet (just a straight "Human" or "Bugbear") would get the 1sp per day. They'd definitely be too poor for anything but walking.
Label 10-04-07, 03:08 AM	Too poor for a regular skycoach, but not too poor for mass transit Skycoaches are mass transit.
OctaviusIII 10-04-07, 03:13 AM	Skycoaches are mass transit. I thought they were taxis...
Edymnion 10-06-07, 04:40 PM	Skycoaches are mass transit.I don't recall any skycoaches that could carry 20-30 people at a time. And if there were, the price would still likely be per mile, meaning everyone on it would split the price. Just like two strangers taking the same taxi to the same place would be able to split the fair. Cabbie gets paid by the trip, not by the passanger.
Label 10-07-07, 01:19 AM	It's says that skycoaches range from rowboat-sized skycars to longship-scale tour coaches. (it's clearly stated in the chapter 1) Longships can transport 60 persons. You call that a taxi, or a bus? And they can be found at 3 places : airship tower, orien's lightning rail, and the docks. They can be summoned from larger balconies. Okay, the rowboat-sized one (4 persons) may act like taxis, but all the others are more like buses. IMO.