City Musings: Monsters?

[sythyry]

There have been extensive mutterings and murmurings that I should construct a city, in which we -- wrongfolk, monsters, angels, and other undesirables -- can live as we wish. I certainly haven't decided not to, though it's probably a terrible idea for a great many reasons.

Still ... how do we wish to live?

Specifically I am thinking about the monsters -- Vae, of course, and the Elfimel. And hCevian, of course, though his case is less troublesome, mainly because he is nearly impossible to exclude from a city. But the other monsters cannot.

We could be an ordinary city. Primes inside, monsters outside. Vae is certainly used to this. The angels will be unhappy, but the angels are here as refugees anyhow.

Or we could let those four creatures inside the walls. It's not as if walls keep us safe from Vae anyhow, and the angels are not very dangerous. This will probably cut our prime immigrants by half.

Or we could, I suppose, try to allow other monsters inside the walls as well -- mherobump and taptet and other generally safe ones. This isn't that extraordinary, though few cities make much of a point of it.

Or, say, we could have a "Monster Ghetto". Monsters may come to a certain portion of the city, inside one set of walls, but outside of another set. The inner city is, of course, reserved for primes alone, just like a normal city. But, unlike most cities, monsters can come inside of some walls. And I'm thinking of, e.g., trying to make sure that some important cultural areas are in the monster ghetto -- like the museum and theatre districts, and the governmental areas, and the best shopping, if I can manage that. The inner city could be mostly for prime homes. That would be unusual.

[Poll #1726949]

Comments

[relee.livejournal.com]

My suggestion would be to have a policy of personal responsibility, where each monster is responsible for themselves and their effects, and will be rightly punished for any action which brings harm to others. Vae could destroy the whole city and if you're going to have one monster that can do that, you might as well let them all in.

You could also include a principle of group responsibility, where the monsters police themselves, so that for the sake of their home, they keep more violent monsters from acting out their violences.

You might not get a lot of prime immigration, but surely those monsters have uses besides horrific killings and fates worse than death? There would be exotic primes, monsters and monster lovers, and of course the wrongfolk. Eventually the special talents of these folk would bring others seeking them, as well as adventurers seeking the thrills of a city of monsters.

I suppose the greatest worry you would have is that people might paint you as the evil overlord of a nation of evil evils and make war upon you in the name of goodness and purity and things like that.

Surely you're not the only wizard with a powerful skyboat full of adventurers and deviant principles of right and wrong; you might have more threat from primes than monsters.