Hey all.

So, I've got a city that will eventually become pivotal to the plot, so it's important I've ironed out all the details. One of them, is how to write the city itself.

The city in question is a prominent city built by you classic waring colonizers. The colonized the island continent with some very arrogant beliefs. Very violent to those who aren't them. After this kingdom fell, this particular city was way on the outskirts and held onto most of their beliefs, but more. The kingdom fell to civil war, slave rebellion, and outside pressures. This city ended up devoting themselves to a betrayer god of war until being occupied by another kingdom aiming to expand into the region.

Many years later when the game is, this city is a sort of city state growing restless and largely trying to become independent. If the crown stepped in more, there would probably be conflict.

These guys are very arrogant, constantly at war with nearby goblins and demon incursions, and are under a waring theocracy. I'm aiming for high fantasy in most of the world, with this city being between high fantasy and grimdark, taking inspiration from a lot of sensationalized medieval Europe. 

If anyone has some cool, unique, grounded or interesting ideas for literally anything as I'm open to change, please feel free to give me some advice or ideas.

If the players are going to be in the city I think the two biggest things to think about is how are the leaders selling all this war to the population and how do the population feel about it. If it's in the name of a god do they think they're engaged in a glorious holy crusade or do they resent how many of their friends and family are dying in pointless conquest? Is there propaganda everywhere encouraging people to join the army and selling the conflict to the people or is it a more muted "one more battle and we're done" that never actually ends?

How does it effect the economy? War is expensive (the reason medival Europe had so many 100 year wars and 30 years wars is they had to keep stopping for breaks to raise funds to start again) so are great chunks of the city starving as everything is devoted to funding the army or are they relatively rich because of loot and plunder?

Also is there rebellion against the constant war? Is it a vocal rabble rousing against their leaders, a quiet but growing under current of resentment or is there a secret police ruthlessly stamping out even the smallest sign of disent?

If they are a warring theocracy as you said, then you're looking at religious indoctrination : so all schooling, libraries, heralds and other sources of knowledge in the city should be run by the church and be heavily censored to conform to their beliefs. You could have the party upon entering hear a herald shouting news that the party know is false or misleading to promote that city's and religion's superiority. 

In terms of policing, it should be very strict with something akin to a religious inquisition to route out anyone who goes against the religious doctrine.

Economically, a large portion of the city should be dedicated to munitions and military supplies. If you want high-fantasy then perhaps rows of alchemists shops producing alchemist's fire and other magical explosives, along side rows and rows of enchanters cranking out Wands of Fireball or Wands of Magic Missile or other offensive magic items. There should also be very high inequality with the aristocrats whom are also religious faithful getting tons of financial rewards from war-looting, while common folk are pressured to sacrifice everything they have for the war effort.

Tech superiority is also a crucial feature of colonizer settlements. You might also want to have the city be using unique war-mounts (griffins or elephants or something else cool) that are imported from the colonizing country. Or have unique enchantments or weapons from the colonizing culture. Or perhaps a unique technology like air ships. If they are on the verge of being independent they should have set up facilities to breed the mounts / build the unique tech within the city.

Culturally, being a warrior should be highly valued. Most of the aristocrats / political leaders should be generals or former generals. Entertainment and sport should be combat centric - wrestling, racing, gladiator fights, mock combats, battle reenactments, military parades. And artistic expression should be discouraged/suppressed unless it is to the glory of their god or a celebration of their victories - i.e. statues of generals crushing their enemies, or carvings of great battles. Alternative it should be religious in nature - e.g. public prayer sessions, religious festivals.

You'll need to decide how the military and the religion interacts - are the religious leaders superior and the military serves the interests of their god, or is the military superior and the religion teaches of the moral goodness of being a warrior and blesses the military to ensure their victory.

From that description you might find some inspiration from Hwamgaarl / Pan Tang from Michael Moorcock's Elric series.

Thank you, all of this is actually quite helpful. I do often forget about the economy in war. I have the culture pretty sound, but ideas like a stadium are good, and bringing tech from beyond the borders is a cool idea, especially given the lore.

To answer some question, this particular city is like a city state. At conception, it was expansion of an old colonizer kingdom. After supply lines fell and civil unrest brewed, most of this kingdom was reduced to idenpendant states. This city is one of them. They've been around for a while, but just recently got annexed into a different kingdom. This kingdom is very different and largely unrelated to that old colonizer state. After a recent war ended, this city became less nessisary  and thus gained more autonomy. With this autonomy, they began to disent from the larger kingdom. They are still a part of it, but hold little political power, and hold a large amount of autonomy. Rebellion is brewing not out of necessity, but rather pride. They don't like that this larger kingdom could technically call them to their bidding, and just recently, they have been doing that.

I would like to pose some questions. Would you figure a city like this would be open to travellers, or distrusting. I could see it going either way, given glory is a prime principle.

How far is reasonable for the policing? The kingdom standard is dungeons, public executions and occasional flogging, but public displays of punishment aren't common around the area, and the kingdom attempts to endorse civilty. Coming from the perspective of someone walking from one city to another and it being believable this place hasn't been occupied, how far should I go?

And is it believable to have a religious state that doesn't need censorship? I'm going with the idea that the people are all behind the powers. For the most part, at least. And of course, they are all taught and come from the ways of this old, frankly barbaric civilization. Is it wrong to assume they would believe the beliefs of the theocracy as though it were law? Like, rather than censoring a defeat, the people would rally behind revenge? Or that rather than hiding the prophets of the other gods, their teachings are seen as simply wrong in the eyes of the populace? In simpler terms, is it believable to have a military theocracy that doesn't censor because the people are already indoctrinated?

In simpler terms, is it believable to have a military theocracy that doesn't censor because the people are already indoctrinated?

Not really, either the people must be powerless or the people must have their view of the world skewed to maintain followership of an evil-warrior god. Indoctination doesn't work equally on everyone, there will always be doubters, questioners, contrarians, a theocracy needs to perpetually eliminate these people. 

A city that's a religious theocracy based on military conquest is by default going to be hostile to outsides.  Merchants might occasionally be allowed in, but they're not going to be seen as equals.  They can expect to be segregated in specific areas and not be allowed to roam freely the way citizens would.  Anyone caught with a holy symbol from another god is likely to be arrested, if not worse.

6thLyranGuard, to this specifically, I wanna elaborate to see if you still think so.

The specific city after being brought into the new nation fought with them to send off a demon invasion. This demon invasion is specifically tied to the war god, so they do have their own reasons, but they still got annexed. Is it better to have them beaten, or have them work willingly? I figure willingly going along with it may go over better, so it lowers tensions which are already pretty high. Increasing them may give a different vibe given no rebellion has happened in quite a while, so it's just built. Additionally, some war cultures view war and stories as paramount, thus travelers are welcome. Nothing in this gods domain dictates anything about tales, only glory and sober mindedness. I feel like you're right, but I'd like to hear your thoughts there.

Then, the god in question is a betrayer god, who liberated his people from the imperfect rule of gods, became a tyrant of his people, and was locked away. How do you figure they would react to other religions? This is more relevant if you think they'd be open to travelers above, but I'm still curious. What are some good laws to add for that context, and would it be too far to assume they may be willing to persecute someone more powerful and cause political suicide?

This is going to sound weird, but the actual specifics of the religion don't matter that much in a religious theocracy. Come up with a few particular signifiers: unique articles of clothing, repetitive mannerisms, or specific rote phrases are good ones because they're easy to spot. These things will mark the religious in-group from the out-group. The rest of the belief system can be reverse engineered from the society you want to create.

Figure out how the theocracy behaves in practice. It seems like this city mobilizes a lot of its resources towards military production. The people may be relatively poor and unsafe, but they have a strong sense of civic pride. What religious beliefs would be necessary to allow a society to work this way? Understand what I'm saying here: the beliefs do not produce the society. The society produces the beliefs.

The theocratic government needs obedient workers who do not flee to other cities; whatever beliefs the religion might have started with, the theocratic doctrine will emphasize the divine importance of hard work, the superiority of the faith community, the barbarism and violence of outsiders. The theocracy needs population growth to feed the military and industry; the doctrine will extoll the virtues large families (and likely place strong restrictions on the role of women).

Figure out what the theocracy needs. Figure out what the people would need to believe in order to do those things willingly. That's what the doctrine will be. Now here's the crucial thing: the theocracy should reward those who buy in to the doctrine, but it should reward them unequally. Some people must be intrinsically better, more pure, more righteous than others. This creates a hierarchy, and no matter where people are in that hierarchy, they will do horrible things to avoid falling lower. The people should fear those above, and hate those below. They should be on constant alert for threats to their status (even if their status is squalor). The law should reinforce these feelings by stigmatizing those of low status and lauding those of high status. This prevents rebellion because the people won't trust and organize with those "beneath" them. Regardless of other aspects, all theocracies rely on these hierarchies of purity to stabilize themselves. Perhaps you can think of historical examples of societies arranged this way to draw further inspiration from. (If you can't, I would recommend looking at the fallout of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, or early American colonialism)

Quote from Mdhe >>

Figure out what the theocracy needs. Figure out what the people would need to believe in order to do those things willingly. That's what the doctrine will be. Now here's the crucial thing: the theocracy should reward those who buy in to the doctrine, but it should reward them unequally. Some people must be intrinsically better, more pure, more righteous than others. This creates a hierarchy, and no matter where people are in that hierarchy, they will do horrible things to avoid falling lower. The people should fear those above, and hate those below. They should be on constant alert for threats to their status (even if their status is squalor). The law should reinforce these feelings by stigmatizing those of low status and lauding those of high status. This prevents rebellion because the people won't trust and organize with those "beneath" them. Regardless of other aspects, all theocracies rely on these hierarchies of purity to stabilize themselves. Perhaps you can think of historical examples of societies arranged this way to draw further inspiration from. (If you can't, I would recommend looking at the fallout of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, or early American colonialism)

 Looking at how the British Empire conquered and ruled India would also give some good inspiration. Britain (or at least England and that's who we're really talking about when we discuss the British Empire) was already pretty post religion by the time that expansion started but they used exactly this stratification of society to maintain control of the much larger Indian population. Encourage and further entrench the existing caste system (and make sure they were seen as the top caste), reward those who started dressing and acting more English as a way of enforcing their own beliefs and othering those who didn't, drive a wedge between different lower casts and different religious groups so there was no way to organise resistance

The problem with taking examples from real world counterparts is that most of eauropean beliefs, the easiest ones to reference, are entirely different from this place. They share similar culture, like if imperialism started earlier. But the religion is entirely different. God says purity is paramount. Kindness is sublime. The pantheon of my world teaches ambition, living the most out of your life, and a healthy dose of selfishness. And this specific city believes in purity through glory. Only those who shed blood have purified their own.

I do think the hierarchy is something I overlooked. I want it to be different from serfdoms in Europe. Sure they all believed in the theocracy, but they believed different things than the top, and they really couldn't rise in power. This religion believes the same thing from top to bottom. Corruption is way steeper, with most of the hierarchy believing fully in the doctrine same as those below them. And even the leaders believe it, just are of course corrupt, as tends to happen with governments like this. I want rather than your place in the hierarchy dictating your reward, it be their following of the doctrine. As in, those who embody their gods. Tacticians, Hero's, and anywhere in between, those are the most rewarded. So those born stronger are rewarded better, but anyone can be the greatest if they prove themselves to be in their gods image.

It's tough, because I can't think of many real world parallels with this. Maybe Sparta, maybe vikings, but I don't know enough about them to know if I'd even be going down the right path. To be clear, the priests don't wear robes, they wear plate. The don't hold staffs, they hold claymores. Only those who embody god may speak on his behalf. Thus, religious practice is war based and very aggressive.