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Effects from fantastical factors on human society

Gurkhal

Auror
So I've got a question or perhaps more asking for some additional perspectives on a setting I've been tinkering with as of late.

The setting is intended to be a West European, high medieval, feudal society inhabited by humans, mostly. But with two factors added to this.

The first is that there's an overlord/great king/liege/whatever called the Vulture King who rules over most of it according to a feudal hierarchy. There are many parts that resist him but a majority bows down. The thing that separates him from other kings and lords is that he is eternally young and not a human but a hybrid between a vulture and a humanoid.

The second is the demand for a Carrion Tax from the human communities where the Vulture King and his Vulture Knights demands alot of humans to be eaten by them in gluttenous frenzies of raw and rotting flesh, of which they like human flesh the best. If it was only the Vulture King and his knights where in the dozens then the burden would probably not be all too heavy to carry but there are thousands of Vulture Knights spread across the settings in various strongholds and all of them demand a Carrion Tax for their gluttenous appities. Making this a factor for much of the world.

So the point of this thread is me asking for opinions and suggestions from other perspectives than my own on how human socities would be adapting and changing or resisting under the influence of these two factors?

If you want or need more details then just ask and I'll try to provide answers.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
My attitude towards this is that there is a war we should be having against the vulture king and there is no point putting it off.

But....one way I might handle this is with war against another undesirable nation, that creates a lot of tribute.
 
My thoughts are, if there are vulture-human hybrids, who are eternally young, where do they come from? Why have they managed to carve out their existence making humans serve them? If there are vulture knights, there must be vulture women? What is their society like compared to humans? Are they ever fair? If humans out number them why weren’t they overthrown years ago?
 

Genly

Troubadour
My attitude towards this is that there is a war we should be having against the vulture king and there is no point putting it off.

But....one way I might handle this is with war against another undesirable nation, that creates a lot of tribute.
Yeah, if there are a lot of Vulture knights, the only way that this society would be sustainable would be if the Vulture King occasionally declared war on another country and ate a lot of its citizens. A crisis might be created if one of those other countries were particularly successful at resisting invasion.
 

Gurkhal

Auror
My attitude towards this is that there is a war we should be having against the vulture king and there is no point putting it off.

But....one way I might handle this is with war against another undesirable nation, that creates a lot of tribute.
Its an understandable attitude to fight the person who is at the core of the problem.

Attacking others to not have yourself or your loved ones being eaten is also a very understandable way, if less sympathic, to deal with this.

Reasonably there should be communities who do either of them. Resisting the Vulture King and his Carrion Tax or putting the burden of the Carrion Tax on someone else. I would think that people who lives under the Vulture King's rule or have some form of important ties might be more inclined to feed others into the vulture's belly while those who don't have such situations or ties would be more inclined to resist, as they would any other outside aggression against them.
My thoughts are, if there are vulture-human hybrids, who are eternally young, where do they come from? Why have they managed to carve out their existence making humans serve them? If there are vulture knights, there must be vulture women? What is their society like compared to humans? Are they ever fair? If humans out number them why weren’t they overthrown years ago?
My thoughts at this moment is that the Vulture King is pretty much a unique individual, at least in this world in the universe, while the Vulture Knights are created from melding a human with a vulture through magical means together with a stable diet during the transition of rotting flesh. Thus all hybrids are created to serve as warriors, or knights if you like, for the Vulture King. There might be women among them but they are as much warriors as the men are. Natural recreation may or may not be possible for them, I haven't really thought about that.

As it stands right now the Vulture King gained this world as a fief thousands of years ago by a Keeper. And since then the Vulture King has set up shop and made himself at home. As I dislike good-vs-evil stories and static worlds I would think that the Vulture King was less tyrannical and gluttenous in the past, just as his Vulture Knights were far fewer then. But as time has passed with him in power and with complacency, corruption and hubris seeping in from having said power, he has descended into tyranny and irresponsibility. The part of eating people would probably "only" have been a thing for maybe a few centuries. It started with scare tactics when he would eat the bodies of his enemies or certain criminals but he developed an irresisteble taste for it and his fall into gluttenous decadence may "only" have existed for century or two. The main thing I want to say, or try to say, is that when he really became a man-eating monster in an unsustainable way he was already in power since a very long time and had firmly entrenched structures and systems to keep himself in said power. Thus many have probably tried but it isn't very easy to remove him.

The Vulture Knights live, as I imagine them, in a way that's mix between the lives of petty human nobles, professional soldiers and with social lives of vulture (I'll have to do some research on that) and combined with gluttenous feasting as a central social activity. Preferably on humans.

But I should also add that most of the Vulture King's servants are humans themselves. As with so many other tyrants if you can do or provide something useful and put that at the tyrant's service, you can live a pretty good life. Much better than you would otherwise be able to live. Same with the Carrion Tax. Serve the Vulture King and it will take alot before you or your loved ones ends up as part of it. Keep your head down and cause no problem and the odds are much less that you will be picked out. Cause problem and resist? I hope you fancy becoming a snack.
Yeah, if there are a lot of Vulture knights, the only way that this society would be sustainable would be if the Vulture King occasionally declared war on another country and ate a lot of its citizens. A crisis might be created if one of those other countries were particularly successful at resisting invasion.
You are very correct on both points. As I imagine the Vulture King to primarily be a warrior, him striking out with organized violence at obstinate communities who don't bow down to him seems like something he would do on a semi-regular basis to feast on the dead and dying on the battlefield and haul off a large number of the prisoners to his strongholds for eating them later.

The whole situation probably isn't very sustainable but then it don't have to be sustainable. One of the points of the story is that the MC(s) will mostly work to bring down the Vulture King and as mentioned above this form of tyranny hasn't been around for a very long time. Far too long when looking at the body count, but it isn't a matter of millennia.
 

Rexenm

Maester
You could go for Vulture Queen, that way no war would break out. Have her banished from the feast in what she thought was the laps of luxury. Maybe a Vulture Knight in cahoots over a game wifh stone pieces, brainstorming their return to the Carrion Tax.
 

ixris

Scribe
I'm gonna chime in and say that looking at it from the people who are bowing down to the Vulture King, they have to get something out of it - possibly a lot of protection? Is there a benefit to the Vulture King as opposed to like ... a human king / feudal society?

I would imagine that the amount of capital punishment in the areas that choose to follow the Vulture King is high. You killed someone? Execution. You stole your neighbor's cow? Execution. You talked too loud in the town meeting? Execution. Keeps down crime AND feeds the Vulture Knights. (And gives you a clear antagonist / dystopia to solve.)

My question would be how many bodies do they want for the Carrion Tax? How often does this occur? If this occurs too often / at too high a tax rate, you run into the logistics problem of humans take a long time to gestate, a long time to be fertile, etc. If it's just 1 or 2 people from a village, you could potentially do a lottery system (Hunger Games, The Lottery, etc), but if they want more than that, you're potentially gonna be plumping out your numbers with pigs or something and hoping no one asks too many questions.

(Love the terms you got going on for this btw - very evocative. :) Love a good dystopia to play in.)
 
So the vulture king would rule with fear? It’s a viable plan, and there are some real life examples of dictators, and tyrannical rulers of essentially the same ilk. The old kings of England were essentially ye olde gangsters, so this type of setup is not so unbelievable. I think the carrion tax would tie in well with the tax systems we seen in the real world too. I suppose my other question would be of lineage, as in once humans have been turned into vulture-hybrids, do they reproduce with human females to produce a royal and noble lineage? Or otherwise how would the monarchy continue?
 
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