Smell and Sanitation in Kintargo


Hell's Rebels


What do you think the sanitation situation is like in Kintargo?

On the one hand, the use of cremation means that one big problem in Medieval city sanitation is handled already--graveyard gasses in overtaxed burial yards for old cities aren't a problem. Magic presumably makes at least The Greens pleasant, and the nearby water probably served as a disposal system.

On the other hand, nearby water didn't exactly help London for centuries, which featured garbage heaps of household waste on side streets, public urination, and backyard cesspools of human excrement removed at night by bucket. Their well water were threatened for a while, until the Victorians took up sanitary science. There's no garbage dumps, public toilets, or washhouses listed, unlike in Rise of the Runelords. And sanitation seems to be indicated to be an undercity of the prior Kintargo streets which was built over due to flooding. So there's water, but it's not designed as a sanitation system of unified sewers. And the Thames was basically a sewer, so I'm wondering if that's the same here.

So are horrifying smells a part of the Old Kintargo experience?


In Hell's Bright Shadow p. 61 wrote:
A sprawling undercity exists under much of southern Kintargo, where the city’s original buildings were buried and built over to raise the low-lying reaches of Jarvis End, Old Kintargo, and Redroof above the seasonal flood zone. Many of these tunnels now double as sewers, while to the north, the more modern drainage tunnels below Villegre and the Greens are less prone to concealing hidden chambers. Both regions are somewhat dangerous, with the typical infestation of sewer-dwelling criminals and scavengers and long-forgotten traps and hazards.
In Hell's Bright Shadow p. 60 wrote:
Taldor’s “Red General,” Cherletra Andos, declared herself lord-mayor of Kintargo on that date and used her political clout to wheedle engineers and gold to update the small community’s infrastructure, including a massive undertaking to raise much of the city’s elevation in what are now the districts of Jarvis End, Old Kintargo, and Redroof to combat seasonal flooding. Reshaping the city in this way provided Kintargo with a unique undercity; many of the local basements are former first-floor shops, and old roads now serve as sewers. By the time of Cherletra’s death 14 years later, Kintargo had grown from a thriving fishing town into a wealthy trading and manufacturing city.

I think you definitely hit it on the head, though I'd imagine their sanitation system is somewhere just pre-Victorian in terms of its design due to the fact that it was at least somewhat engineered. Maybe there are Canterbury Tales-esque insults thrown out by members of the elite on the northern side of the Yolubilis about their smelly southern neighbors.

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