Lithier
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Side-Write: Food and Prosperity
🕑 Added 2022-02-01 06:48:35 +0000 UTCI'm still working steadily on Project Wild One, and that means this month's side-write will continue our exploration of what's necessary to make this project's world "work!" Unlike my previous projects, PWO is being designed mechanics first and the story will grow around that, so this takes a pretty different approach to figuring out what this world "needs to be." The ideas below build on the side-writes from the last two months, so you might be a little lost diving into this one blind!
That said, this one also gets a little morbid. Well, they've all been a little that way. Sorry to keep dragging out such dreary subjects! It feels a little necessary in figuring out the foundational operation of a society, but we're wrapping things up on that end of things, hopefully. I hope you find some of these ideas for what's going on in the background of our developing world interesting!
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In a world where death by violence is never actual death, how does a society form? Would it actually form, or would necessity drive us into a more nomadic, lawless lifestyle? Predation and monsters would be little concern, but starvation would be a constant threat. Farms would be incredibly precious, but difficult to guard. Maybe even hidden to prevent others from poaching vegetables or grains?
How would personal possessions work? It would be impractical for any significant amount of the things you own to "go with you" when you're killed, so surely it would be easy for a few thugs to kill someone and take their things before they can come back. But unlike in real life, killing a witness does not do you much good staying clear of the law. There would be a strong drive to maintain some kind of law enforcement to protect one's material goods, one's livelihood, while one is disposed of, and to retrieve stolen goods. But would people be able to practically gather together and settle in cities?
As with in our world, the question comes down to food. How would a large, densely populated city feed its population? In this world, any kind of plant-based food would be scarce. But what about meat? That question is answered easily enough if we're accepting the explanation that vore is a thing. For those capable of swallowing another being, food is effectively an unlimited resource. It might literally be commonly accepted that just about everyone needs to be able to swallow other people to maintain their caloric intake, maybe even using some kind of supernatural aids to help make it possible if need be. Only the minority that can't do so for some reason would get by on all-vegetable diets, and others would mix some in as a luxury more than anything, especially if we're assuming the vore ends in the prey being converted to a "nutritional paste" that meets all basic dietary needs.
But what about if someone is playing this game without vore enabled? It's important to me that this game "works" both as a vore experience and as a sex game without any vore at all. This is where the broader questions of story and world feel a little uncertain. If vore is disabled, are people still swallowing each other whole, just off screen?
No. That wouldn't be an acceptable answer. The player needs to have some power to "set the rules of this world," and that is one important question which changes the dynamics of things on many levels. But if there's no vore in this world, then do all the carnivores die out?
No. That simply means that in this world, death leaves a body. You still come back, but your remains are left behind. In a way, this creates another kind of horror show.
In this world, meat is an incredibly cheap and plentiful commodity. Carnivores would multiply without end, omnivores would have some difficulty, and herbivores would struggle to get enough to eat. Many might choose to only eat the meat of animals, or of certain species, just because there's so much meat going around they can afford to be picky, but meat would unquestionably become the primary part of every diet that could possibly contain it. And even then, the world would fill up with bodies. The prime cuts would be taken and the rest thrown away, and scavengers would also become incredibly numerous. Of course, with food being this plentiful, this might only describe a transitional period before society developed more refined and violent killings were reduced. Even with monsters in the world, an endless pile of half-butchered corpses might be enough to practically domesticate them and keep them far from civilization, with the use of constant shipping from cities to feeding grounds.
Meanwhile, in voreworld, those that could swallow others would live comfortably, and those few that could not would struggle, possibly creating a dichotomy of sorts between the fat and the starving, or the numerous and the few. Still, food would be resolved easily enough as a challenge and cities would indeed spring up, though with a somewhat different economy than we're used to.
In either world, the population could easily grow to rival or even surpass ours, and on top of that, people could be much more reckless than those in our world. Things like going out to wrestle with lions or bears might be popular sport in some circles, and almost any danger would be less frightening as long as you had a friend with you to put you down if things went wrong. The balance would be to never risk instant death when doing dangerous things like climbing mountains or what have you, but to freely risk grave injury or slow death. Monsters in the wilds could very well be specters of carnage, but only feared for what pain or unpleasantness they might inflict before they killed you. Many might even enjoy hunting them for sport.
Depending on the era, their nature might change, but people might be easy to find at any time wandering through monster-infested areas. The basic area we see in Project Wild One so far is some sort of forest where you can encounter both creatures and people, and it looks like this may be reasonably practical. The main danger here would be the things that want to kill you or have sex with you, so if you can put up enough fight to force them to kill you or leave you alone, then you theoretically have little to fear. If there's a certain degree of amorous intent common among all the creatures in this woods, it might even draw in people interested in such ventures-- looking to gather fresh berries and mushrooms, but quietly looking forward to an intimate encounter with something strange and new if the opportunity should come up.
Of course, that brings up another side of the question of how to build this world. What is it about this world that makes creatures and people so ready to turn to sexual intercourse when they meet someone or something new? Arguably, logically, that's not something that would come up that often, especially with complete strangers of different species. Is there something in the nature of the monsters that makes them amorous as well as dangerous? Are we supposing that the furries of this world are simply happy to throw a yiff out with just about any living being they meet? Is that a cultural thing, or part of their inherent nature? Is it the influence of the same mysterious force that makes violent death impossible?
Our fear and our mortality defines much of our behavior, but maybe we've spent enough time exploring that. There are other forces at work, that must be at work, to create the world where everything this game needs is possible. Next time, I think we'll explore this more pleasant question. What is it that can bring such different beings together in intimacy so readily in the chaos of the wilds?
Comments
Lithier
Well, this gets back into the morbid side of things again x3 Pain is certainly a factor, but the role it plays can vary a lot. Death itself is an escape from pain, though for us it's one that has many drawbacks. That's why it can literally be helpful to stay near someone that can kill you in a world like this, so that if you do break a bone, you don't have to spend weeks or months healing and suffering. It's not hard to believe that with some basic intelligence, even magical creatures would come to understand that they could have more food if they learn to kill the willing swiftly and painlessly. And while death and the pain involved may seem frightening, if you've already been killed several times in your life, it becomes less of a fear and more of an annoyance, something you learn to deal with, not unlike tearing off a bandaid. It's true that I don't focus on pain too much, maybe partly because it's a pretty unsexy side of things to a lot of people. If you get in a lot of fights then it's to be expected, and some discomfort at least is natural with very large insertions and such, but most of us don't want to see our characters suffer, so there's reason to minimize that side of things. But yes, it would be a factor in the choices all the creatures in this world make, though it might not frighten them as much as it would us. We live in a world where the idea of a papercut tends to provoke a more visceral reaction in us than the idea of being run through with a sword, and where many of us deal with more pain from internal sources than external. In a world where such violence is more "normalized" and expected, the fear is reduced, especially knowing it will only be temporary, as it is so often followed by death and renewal. It's true I don't focus on pain as much as maybe I should in figuring all of this out, but to some extent, I think that represents one of the reasons we wouldn't do as well in this world as those that live there. I think people in old times dealt with a lot more pain and suffering even when they didn't have an easy escape like death and renewal, and they bore straight through because it was just a necessary part of life. In this world, everyone must be killed repeatedly to satisfy the sheer quantity of meat-eaters out there in an ever-expanding population, but struggling and fighting against it would only be more painful. It's unhappy to think about, but still practical. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Aclian Lore
I'm glad you don't seem to have forgotten about pain, reading some of these side writes I grew worried you might underestimate how big of a factor pain is in driving our decisions, it is THE function of the body to tell you something is wrong, that your in danger, that something isn't good. I often find when someone is immortal or heals real quick authors gloss over pain, or make overly light off it. But it is so much Korean important then they seem to realise and much more defining. You can certainly argue that some simpler creatures might not know what death is, but they can avoid it by avoiding pain. Before the fear of death is realised in someone there's the fear of pain, Heck you could even say that without pain death wouldn't be so scary. And a part of me really wants to explore this.
