True Relics: A Fantasy World Setup
Here are the bare-bones ideas for a fantasy set-up, with one central idea and many consequences that might follow from it.
Basic Premise
There are a small number of powerfully “magical” objects, relics, which bestow general benefits of health, energy and good luck on everyone in a given radius. These effects are not blatant, but nonetheless detectable, and well understood by everyone. The relics are held by rulers in the centers of cities, and watched over by the priesthood. They are few in number and physically cumbersome, like a giant stone.
Settlement Patterns
Everyone wants to live near a relic because the effects are substantial over the course of a life. As a result, settlement patterns differ substantially from the middle ages in western Europe. People are clustered much more in sizable cities, rather than towns. Even the hinterlands of cities are worked by people who migrate daily or through the course of the year to near-city residences, perhaps just outside the walls.
Villages far away from cities still exist, in order to work the land, and are owned by lords, but these lords are mostly absent: rather than retiring to their country estates, they spend all their time in the cities, maybe moving between a few. This means that a key trend in the later middle ages and renaissance is reversed: rather than mercantile cities gaining progressively more rights, and decreasing the power of the nobility, cities are the nobility’s strongholds. Villages are still critical to a lord’s wealth, but he sends agents to manage them. Peasants owe less service, in farm labor or in war, and instead are encouraged to pay rents. This has encouraged a money economy, but without the great economic advances made by trade-dependent towns of, say, Italy.
Cities cannot grow too large, though, because the radius of effect of the relics is finite, and a mile or less, depending on the size. Thus, huge capitals like Paris are non-existent, unless a powerful ruler has placed multiple relics throughout it.
The Cities
Cities have naturally grown so that the relics are in their centers. The most profitable positions are closer to the core, creating very visible physical stratification by class. Of course the rulers get best proximity: the palace and the main shrine are built directly on top one another, even if separate. Outside of this are the estates of the lesser nobility, the magnates of trade, then the lesser gentry, craftspeople, paupers. Barracks are usually located relatively close-in, because the effect of the relic on health, and recovery from wounds, is great; a hospital, run by the priests may also be close in.
THe public will have some access to the main shrine, especially if the sick are tended to in part of it. But they are strictly cordoned off from the palace and the very central room where high-level clergy work—including the reliquary room itself. This cordoning is done not with guards usually, but walls: maybe a single street will allow access into a piece of the shrine for the public, but the rest is essentially invisible.
To maximize the available area with close proximity to the city’s relic, they are not housed near ground level, but several stories up. This has created pressure to build high; far more than was usually done in the historical middle ages.
Kingdoms
A king or duke might travel regularly between the cities under his control, or that of allies, to oversee his affairs, negotiate alliances, take place in tournaments, etcetera. The importance of a lordship still deals with land, but the control of cities is even more important, and the greatest lords control those with the largest relics.
Logically, wars also center around cities. Fortifications and siege warfare have developed substantially, so that defenders have an even greater advantage than they did historically — additionally, they benefit from their own relic, even during a siege, while the encompassing army does not, unless they dangerously choose to take one on campaign with them. Because of these factors, knights are highly averse to prolonged campaigns, and would rather occupy themselves with tournaments and the like. Although money is more important, mercenary armies have little more success, so are rare. Must aggression between lords is therefore on a smaller scale, involving spies who infiltrate an enemy city to opens its gates, assassinate leaders, or even attempt to steal the city’s relic.
Nature of the Relics
What exactly do relics do? I will leave this largely to your discretion. But they should promote health and success in various ways. Those near a powerful relic might live to be 110 years old, instead of 60. Citizens of a large city will feel happier, and more harmonious. They will produce more children, eat less, and make fewer mistakes in their daily work. Perhaps the relics go even further, and promote good fortune in ways having nothing to do with mind or body. All effects, though, are largely invisible and take hold over a long period of exposure; relics do not allow priests to wield flame and lightning, or to see into the future.
How do relics interact? They don’t. Their effects are not multiplicative or additive, but merely a case of greatest-wins. Thus, there is no benefit for rulers to hoard relics in a single location; in fact, the advantage comes in spreading them out over a wide area. If a city had multiple small relics, there might be a dead zone between them, likely a slum.
Where do relics come from? This must certainly be left to you. Perhaps they are mined or recovered from meteorites. Perhaps they are the bones of an ancient saint, or the eggs of dragons. Whatever the specifics, there are two substantial questions you will eventually need to address. First, are more relics available? If so, enormous efforts would surely be mobilized to acquire them; if not, the game of trading and stealing relics is an infinite game with no end. Second, can relics be destroyed? If so, is this merely difficult or nearly impossible? Do they, in fact, wear out from use, time, or some other kind of event? Your answers to these questions will likely determine a great deal of what players in your game find themselves doing.