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Old 08-06-2022, 05:21 PM   #7
Dalillama
 
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Default Re: what does a recently founded fantasy city look like?

If there's no pre-existing infrastructure at all, and assuming that the coastline provides a deep-water harbor (if it doesn't the place won't ever be more than a village) with a river feeding into it, a rough sketch:

First month: The ships will be beached and provide shelter, along with tents made from sails and spars. The smallest vessel or the gigs/jolly boats if present will be used for fishing. Cooking is over open driftwood fires.

First year: the ships have been dismantled and used to build 5-6 fishing boats and several small huts. More housing has been bult from fieldstone and/or deadfall timber and/or mud brick depending on local resources and customs. Most houses have a garden out back hrowing tubers and herbs. There may be grain fields. Someone has started brewing an alcoholic beverage from whatever ferments and will provide it in exchange for food, currency, or services.

Three years in: Everyone has some kind of permanent housing. A few hundred acres are under cultivation, the older children are reaching adulthood, and some dozens of new ones have been born. There's an established alehouse, a small but reasonably well-built temple/church, netmakers and/or a chandlery supplying the fishing fleet, a pier or wharf that larger vessels can dock at, possibly a full-time (more or less) herbwife or cunning man. Local government will consist of whoever the king put in charge or a semiformal village council that settles disputes and allocates timber and other resources.
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