Ecology of Xin-Shalast


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


The city of Xin-Shalast is described in Rise of Runelords: Anniversary Edition and in Lost Cities of Golarion. As written, even after millenia of being forgotten by most of the world, a significant numbers of lamias, giants, and other monsters still inhabited the legendary capital of greed.

I'd like to understand how they were able to survive. I'd assume that while Thassilon existed it was supplied from lower altitudes, or numerous mages created anough food with magic. But then Xin-Shalast was cut off from the rest of the world and forgotten. The lamias are said to raise a herd of mountain aurochs, but on that altitude there's nothing that the aurochs could eat, and even if they could find something, it would not be enough to feed a herd numbering in thousands, that by my estimations would be necessary to feed the inhabitants of the city.

So how do you think, how such a city (located at extreme altitude, cut off from the rest of the world) could sustain at least a small population?


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It was built in an area where the border with Leng is especially thin, specifically in order to take advantage of the edritch energies that leak through. Perhaps those energies affect the local ecology enough to allow mutated grasses to grow and sustain the aurochs.

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