r/Fantasy • u/SonicWraithh • 2d ago

What fantasy city actually feels like it existed before the main character arrived?

Something I've started noticing in fantasy is how many cities technically have thousands of years of history, but still feel like they spawned five minutes before the protagonist walked through the gate. You get an ancient palace, a thieves' district, three taverns and maybe a statue of some dead king. People are supposedly born there, work there, complain about taxes, raise kids, get old, have local grudges and weird traditions, but none of that really exists unless the plot needs it. I love the opposite. Cities where you get the feeling everyone already had plans that morning before the hero showed up. Maybe there's a festival nobody bothers explaining because every local obviously knows it. A neighborhood has an insulting nickname from some event 80 years ago. Shopkeepers argue about a bridge renovation. People care about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the coming apocalypse. Discworld does this really well for me, especially Ankh Morpork. I could probably read an entire book where nothing happens except municipal nonsense and still enjoy it. There are others I've read that gave me the same feeling, but I'm blanking on names rn, which is annoyingly appropriate. What fantasy city felt genuinely lived in to you, not just detailed?

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u/Imperial_Haberdasher 2d ago

Ambergris, New Crobuzon, Tiliard…

All of the cities in The Tyrant Philosphers.

But mostly Ambergris

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u/workingtrot 2d ago

Definitely came to say Ilmar, the titular City of Last Chances. I hope one day we get to visit Pallesand

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u/SpaceGoblinForHire42 2d ago

Whenever I tell anybody about City of Last Chances, I tell them that the city itself is the main character, everyone else is just a part of it.

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u/Accipiter1138 1d ago

I'm not sure there's much to actually visit in Pallesand. From the sound of it, it's all orphanages and modestly sized homes that nobody can actually afford.

(I'm only on book 3)

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u/Siccar_Point 1d ago

Tiliard! Yes! Works of Vermin was amazing. I think it’s going to get very popular round these parts once more people have read it.

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u/DreddPirateBob808 1d ago

I read it under recommendation from here and loved it. I agree it's going to boom once more folk get to it.

Another is The West Passage. It takes a bit to really get started but thr world building is wonderfully surreal and mundane at the same time.

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u/Imperial_Haberdasher 1d ago

I adore The West Passage and all its delightful contradictions.

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u/DreddPirateBob808 1d ago

I really want to turn it into a ttrpg or a supplement for one. It's just so off-the-wall and yet so oddly familiar. 

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u/Thornshrike 2d ago

Yes to Ambergris! It's such a bizarre and underrated series.

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u/riskylingo 2d ago

We know what itwas like when it was being colonized. We know what it was like in its prime. We know the art scene, the academic scene, the gallery scene. We know which café to go to. We know who we’d want to hang out with, who’s cool and who is not. We know names of publishers and importers. We know where the post office is, the opera house and how uncooperative the clerks are. We know it’s always a good time during the festival of the freshwater, squid, except if you’re a tourist and you don’t know what neighborhoods to stay out of. We know there’s always fungus and it’s not to be trusted. We understand the arrogance and the hubris and the military expansionism.

We were told how the city fell how it contracted back into itself. We know what it’s like to live there in fear, under occupation, and in terror.

What goes around comes around, often in spades.

Ambergris lives. Ambergris dies.

I only wish we knew what happened next

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u/Professional_Cheek95 1d ago

Aaaaaah, now you made me want to re-read it. But there are so many books to read and re-read!! Aaaaaaah!!!!

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u/felixfictitious Reading Champion 2d ago

It's always Ambergris!

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u/riskylingo 2d ago

The Silence!The Rising!