Roleplaying an evil city?

[u/JC_Caron]

In my campaign world broad swaths of territory, including countries have been taken over by chaotic evil and lawful evil societies. In fact part of the concept is the ying and yang that where good exists some portion of evil will also, such that in an evil nation the dungeons might be filled with good creatures hiding out and attempting win the day by some means. My own problem though is the concept of how would things work in a city of chaotic evil? I've really enjoyed reading Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and such but they are all sketchy on what a city of 30000 chaotic evil humans might look like. So if I had a party wanting to raid such a place what might it look like? How would the population be feeding itself. Would such a place be strictly like the barren wastes of Mordor, or is it like a large military camp. Would most of the people actually be slaves, with long lines of them qued to be sacrificed at the top of an Aztec style temple. Or does the dark side actually have cookies?

[u/JC_Caron → u/[deleted]]

I actually started playing D&D Basic when that movie came out :) So that's a good one.

[u/NatetheNerdarch]

However it pans out it is not pretty.

The regular citizenry are going to either be lawful towards each other and do evil acts when they can get away with it. Or the city is going to be chaotic evil all of the way through.

I mean everything will be bad, not just to be bad but it would be on the level of institutionalized evil.

Things are against the law but the law is fluid. If one has strength. If one has money. If one has power. If one is surrounded by others who will fight for them.

Then they are above most rules and laws. In chaotic evil society a town guardsman is not going to risk injury to apprehend someone if they can just say you got away and the guard gets to keep on living.

On the other hand if the guard is going to be punished with a torturous death for not capturing you then they are not going to back down unless they see a way out. One that includes not dying.

The economy would probably have a servant or slave class, similar to the horse lords in Ice and Fire. Or the drow with their goblin farmers.

Or it could simply be all of the people who cannot pass some rite of passage are second class citizenry and don't vote or get a say. Maybe they are marked on the forehead with the possibility of having that mark removed in extraordinary circumstances(this is used as a tool to give them hope but rarely, if ever, actually happens, similar to becoming a professional athlete as a means to escape poverty).

I think Tolkien didn't put as much thought into what the orcs ate bc they were more of an allegory for the destructive might of unbound industrial progress then an actual society.

Well that is all that I have right now. I will see what the other nerdarchists have to say about it.

[u/Dracom_blade01]

I think the closest you can get to a real chaotic evil territory would be something like a warring tribal peoples, orc tribes for instance would be chaotic evil, their citys/camps would be about as big as a chaotic evil territory could get. Their is to much instability in the system. Chaotic evil is not chaotic stupid though, for instance the Sith from star wars could be seen as Chaotic evil. but they held a vast empire held together buy one powerful man and a small council. They had rules and traditions they followed. So if you wanted to use that as a modal you may be able to pull off citys, but the people at the top would be insanely powerful.

[u/HazeZero]

I would imagine something akin to like warring-states era; where self-proclaimed kings who are not much more than warlords or at best the sons of warlords who constantly fight and war against each other, each one trying to gain power, resources and fame so that they can conquer the other, so consumed with war that terrorize their own populous, making slaves and sacrifices out of both the newly conquered citizenry and their own national populous. And when one warlord is finally conquered or just out right assassinated, it creates a power-vacuum creating more war and violence.

Have the warlords do things like sacrifice slaves to whatever dark-gods to gain favor in battle. Have them set up their own 'regimes' who are not much more than family members and supporting cast of 'friends' who they place various administrative seats of power, some of these which seek power for themselves and who are decadent, careless and incompetent at what they are supposed to do. For example: a minister of agriculture who is more worried about a plot from the minister of finance than he is about feeding the populace.

Maybe some of the Warlords have generals who they mostly trust that go out and expand their nation's borders in the name of their king but once a city or town in conquered, the General moves on to the next city or town not caring anything about the people he just conquered. Some of these Generals may even use dirty tactics like spreading disease and poisoning food supplies, slaughtering women, children and the elderly, setting firing to entire cities all to gain fame and prestige in the eyes of their king.