#and this one lady gets different colours of things so its less clinical or formal like just getting white

[elibeeline]

I'm a slut for those restocking tiktoks goddamn

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

Out of curiosity what is Deep City’s culture like?

Sorry for the long wait!

This got quite long XD And it isn’t even all I have, but I decided to stop before I had a 3k ramble at my hands people most likely won’t slog through. If any of you have any more specific questions I’d be happy to answer them!

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For all that they are living in hiding, the citizens of Deep City are actually a pretty loud, colourful and dramatic bunch. They are a tight knit community where everybody knows everybody (or at least know someone who know someone, and so on and so on) and Noctis’ clinic is one of the social intersections.

(I can’t really write it because there are alreay so many OCs and other stuff happening to keep track of, but people don’t only go there to get treatment, but also for a hot meal, if they can’t procure one otherwise, and to gossip.)

Money as a currency fell out of favour quite early on. Favours and material goods are used as objects of trade instead. Most people not part of the Shadow Market have a ‘you pay what you can’ policy going on. The Shadow Market itself is a bit different.

Originally it was formed by merchants who would go out and buy stuff from outside Deep City and then sell it there. But the more secluded the Deep City people became, the less often those merchants ventured out. Instead they resorted to working together with the Insomnian black market (and theft), which is how it functions today. It became its own social construct within a social construct, with a leader and a police (sort of). Merchants who sell their wares there need to pay a fee for a stall.

Overall the society of Deep City is organized in castes, which function more like historical guilds than anything else. The Shadow Market is its own caste. Then there is one for farmers, for metal workers (the people of the Heap), one for public offices (which include priests, healers, teachers, nurses, any and all admin work, etc.), one for the people living in the old aqueducts, since they mainly trade in water, and one for builders (which include masonry, construction workers and most other heavy manual labour).

Creating a new caste is kind of a Big Deal, so new jobs get folded into existing ones most of the time. Because of this the castes have sub-divisions, so to speak, for the specific kinds of work. There is movement between the castes. If you change jobs, you change your caste, though it doesn’t happen very often.

As to what a caste acutally does: Well, they are a form of insurance. They make sure agreements are kept, that you have a roof over your head and enough to eat, they help footing medical bills and help taking care of family members should a person die. They also are part of ones retirement arrangement.

All offices needed to keep a caste running are elected, and they do that like the Senate in Ancient Rome. There are speaches for and against people that are put forth for elections (or put themselves forth), which can never last longer than 5mins.

Those six castes I named above? They are the biggest and most influential ones and form the Small Circle that is basically the government of Deep City. There’s a Big Circle as well, which encompasses all the castes, but the Small Circle is the fast response to crises.

Historically, Deep City was created during the Second Cultural Reformation under the 79th King of Lucis. (Who I named Lucius the Preserver.) The First Reformation already created a rift in the people, since it reinterpreted the Cosmogony in significant ways and discarded whole passages entirely.

The Second Reformation was essentially Bahamut putting his foot down. All temples but the big one for all six Astrals and the one for Bahamut were closed, books were burned, the Cosmogony was revised even more, the rank of the Senator was abolished as well as many old traditions. And to make sure it all stuck, the non-conformists were hunted down and killed.

So all who could, went to ground. Literally. Traditions transformed to fit the new circumstances, but the important part to the people was, that they kept them. They still burn all their dead, they still believe water is the medium through which a soul travels, they still know someone ferries the souls of the dead into the Beyond, even if they forgot who.

Most children generally learn how to read with the older versions of the Cosmogony, though there is no compulsory education, so it is not too uncommon to meet someone who is functionally illiterate. (Don’t know if it came through, but Fodio Lapis is in fact illiterate. He can read construction plans, but that’s it. But he’s amazing at math because of his job.)

So yeah, school is optional and many kids are homeschooled by their parents, relatives and/or a family friend. Kids are old enough to begin an apprenticeship at 13 and most get into the jobs their parents have, but not always.

Deep City also has a large slew of titles everybody has, that signify their standing in society. They are used when people are formal with each other and in official capacity. It’s considered a huge insult to call someone by the wrong title. So when you introduce yourself to someone new, you always use your title. (Yes, Cor unintentionally insulted Hiemi by calling her ‘Lady’ and not ‘Dame’, which is the title of a married working woman, who is also the female head of the family and/or has a business with employees.)

Fashion wise Deep City is a really mixed bag. Technically trousers are a practical thing for work and not worn anywhere else. But then you have the few people like Noctis who came to Deep City later and don’t really prescripe to the wearing tunics and togas thing.

Quite a large portion of their fashion is handmade from cloth or reworked second hand stuff from the upper parts of Insomnia. There’s this one silk maker in Deep City, who managed to make himself very wealthy.

Language wise it’s a bit chaotic. Technically Sol is the language in which they write down official documents, but it is rarely, if ever, spoken. What they speak is not quite its own language but also not quite a dialect of Lucian. Its this weird thing in between, but people from upper Insomnia wouldn’t understand someone going full tilt. The people living in the old aqueducts actually have their own language because they mostly keep to themselves. Other than that people are pretty much on a sliding scale on how much ‘proper’ Lucian they speak. Hiemi is actually very good at it from her people’s point of view.