This article will fall under a new category I’m feeling musings. These will be short articles about whatevr rpg topic I happen to be thinking about on a given day. There will probably be 1 or 2 of these shorter, less polished articles each week alongside a single more in depth and more heavily edited article.

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I have been thinking about what kind of structures and communities survive after the fall of the empire. I’ve had the thought that there should be two classes of structure; improvised structures and those that for some reason survived the cataclysm relatively intact.

I think that the majority of settlements are of the “improvised” variety. Examples of these would be abandoned forts, crashed vehicles, tunnels dug into rubble piles. I think that tiny settlements, made up of a hundred or fewer person’s represent the majority of settlements, not of the population just the distinct settlements. The world of the empire before the fall was moving away from structures that could natural survive in the planet’s harsh environment without the use of advanced magic and technology. Most of the immediate survivors found themselves separated from safe spaces and had to quickly make their way to the safety of the few structures which still had reason to be built naturally strong and resistant to damage such as banks or military structures. They have to make frequent forays into the surrounding wilderness to salvage the supplies they need to survive.

The other kind of structure are those which were designed to function without the modern technology of the empire. Older subterranean cities are probably the best example of such structures. These old cities were largely being abandoned in the days before the fall in favor of the more modern, open cities on the surface. Because of their size and self sufficiency I think the small handful of these cities represent the majority of the population, making them the new centers of technology and development.