Give this person a book to write, for the love of!
Possible heresy regarding the Levy.
What if the levied prisoners do not actually die / are not killed? What if that is just terror or other propaganda deliberately released for whatever reasons? Illusions, light and mirrors?
Instead, after being slowly drained of and by something: pushing giant spokes, treadmills turning thousands of gears, running on a giant hamster wheel, or some other prison power generating scheme for a time, they are transplanted to other cities, compete with a complimentary mind wipe ritual. Some might even recover their health. Those that donāt make it are desicated of all their water and turned into nutritious food bricks or something else equally horrific and Dark Sun appropriate?
This idea would prevent waste of resources on multiple levels, prevent inbreeding, prevent the loss of manpower, and might also explain why no one seemingly rebels against the Levy for so long, plus how the population keeps up with the constant drain on the genetic pool.
Being that I am unaware of the details of what is in the novels, as has been repeatedly mentioned here on the forums, I am not sure how much tweaking might be necessary to harmonize this idea with Lore.
Or we could just say there are secret caverns of pods birthing countless Lifeshaped humanoids for the dragon-stork to bring into cities.
Some of the ideas that we have ended up working with at our Table is that the number is not an exact science. Nor is it always the same needed. The idea is that sometimes the Dragon just taxes certain cities harder (if at all) because that Sorcerer Monarch was causing issues or getting too strong.
I had thought about Life Shaped, and that could be a possibility, but in the long run it comes down to - ādo life shaped creatures have soulsā. If so, then its expensive, but possible (leading to another problem of a resource shortage).
The other option was that there are smaller settlements scattered around, leading to the raids. The city states are the only ones with the truly sizable populations, but this leads to constant situations of smaller āvillagesā needing protection from whatever Monarch claims them for the time. In this same situation, a village could change hands, with the real prize of the population being the people, so the soldiers would fight - for the right to have the population for the tithe, which in turn is equally screwed up.
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Humanoids may tie to their Rhulisti ancestry, hence the need for either halflings or rebirth races which the kreen are not, the kreen are not shaped by the energy of the Pristine Tower and so perhaps lack a certain necessary quality or essence.-
That seems awfully feasible, plus the Kreen may have weapons of war we may not be aware of.
The fact is we do have maps that suggest greater realms with forests and cities, so perhaps there are other dragons but the Levy isnāt just for defiling, maybe a percentage is used for slave labor, that and the other dragons are not part of the whole keeping Rajaat in prison.
Also other countries may have their own protectors in the form of elemental lords.
Nok, I also believe, was prepping for the return of the comet and his people.
Another thing to ponder is that maybe that these areas to the east are client states to Ur Draxa to supply the city with food and or other resources.
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