#i have NO SHEEP ally i had to get wool from spiders!!! and in my biome theres no flowers naturally so to get

[pancakeofsin]

mog becoming instantly clingy the moment he's in a multiplayer server and had his bed next to someone else ONCE is such a mood honestly. same mog. same

[sleepyblr-heart]

it’s MY six am I get to decide what thoughts i have about the warden!

what if it’s mouth isn’t a mouth but an eye socket? or maybe just a hole where ts face Used to be?

what if it’s a wandering spirit type of thing? an undead being that wants to protect what’s left of their home that their corpse attacks anything that gets near?

ok so. ts arms. those r fuckin bones. this bitch has 500 health and can kill in one hit. and it was almost Definitely stronger in the past. what was able to tear the warden apart so badly? and seemingly so easily? is there something else in the deep we should fear? something stronger than the warden?

ooo on those last two thoughts. it would make sense as to why the cities are ruins. the warden failed to protect the cities, died and or was badly injured, and in ts undeath it continues to try to do what it failed to do then.

ooo what if the souls in its rib cage are the souls of the people that once lived there, clinging to their protector in their most vulnerable state.

there are building in the cities that look similar to portals, or maybe the warden. what if whatever came out of those possible portals is what destroyed the cities?

i like to think that the glowing spots on the warden are mushed rooms. cause mushrooms r cool ::]

which came first, the sculk or the warden? did the people in the cities create the warden? was the warden there before the people and just agreed to help protect them?

SPEAKING of the people what WERE the people? players? villagers? some other humanoid being? maybe they are what the zombies and skeletons USED to be?

these people were clearly similar to villagers, if not a lot more advanced since they had to dig out so many materials and breed sheep/ fight spiders for the wool. they got soul sand from them then nether. they figured out how to reinforce deepslate with, what i assume to be, iron.

what if they made the ruined portals? they had to go to the nether somehow, and (from what i’ve seen) there aren’t any portals in the ancient cities themselves.

they also probably made the mineshafts, since their cities are underground. if they made all these things then what else did they make? did they get to the end? did they fight the dragon? the wither? did they make the ships that are wrecked in the deep seas? did some of them make cities in the end? the sea temples? the under water ruins? did they create the guardians? did they become the drowned?

WHAT WERE THEYRE RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE PIGLINS AND VILLAGERS??? WERE THEY ALLIES??? ENEMIES???? IS THERE A REASON THEY WERE UNDERGROUND????? WAS THE LAND ABOVE UNSAFE?????

[anthropologyarda]

The Machinery of Evil: Angband

In comparison to the more ragtag, disorganized orc led armies of the later Ages, Angband is an impressively effective force that is strong enough to withstand centuries of near isolation and self-sufficiency under constant siege. This suggests to me an extremely organized and structured system acting as its backbone.

I don’t think there were the modern kind of taxes or wages because I doubt there was a free market economy that needed those things to drive it. Angband is essentially a state built to fuel an army and I doubt that dark lords care much about the desire of their minions for luxury goods. So I think the most likely system was a command economy, where central planning makes all the economic decisions about how to use and distribute resources. For example, your orc will never have to worry about the cost of his helmet, because the dark lords arrange the production and delivery of all his equipment in exchange for labor at mining, farming, soldiering etc. as a specialist. Higher ranking orcs or beings probably get a bigger share of the resources and better stuff as an incentive to move up the ranks as much a possible. So there’s still a definite status system and ‘wealthier’ orcs.

Of course this opens up a host of problems too. This system takes an incredible amount of knowledge and planning to carry out, and if you don’t get the right number of helmets or chickens you need, you may end up executing rioters or having poorly equipped soldiers who lose battles. Not to mention you have to police the system rigorously for graft, theft, cheating, corruption, misreporting surplus, plain incompetence etc. Having a command economy also requires the creation of an enormous entrenched bureaucracy to organize and implement decisions made at the top.

Naturally this means that no currency is necessary, eliminating the cost in wasted metals and labor. I think that they might have created a currency later on for the sole purpose of trade with the Evil Men of the East, but I find it equally likely that Angband adopted one of their Eastern allies’ currency as long as the standard was valuable metal weights. Their chief trade goods were probably knowledge and high quality processed goods rather than raw materials anyway. This eliminates the problem of inflation internally, but not of scarcity.

Now, if you’re an orc and want a bit more than your regular rations or a nice present for your mother’s birthday, you’re going to have to barter for it.  Your options for getting trade goods are limited. You can steal a little extra from what you produce as a farmer, smith, miner etc. but this might get your head chopped off. You can save some of your rations and trade that, but this can be dangerous if you don’t have enough left for yourself or trade away vital items like armor, underwear etc. You can trade services for goods like ‘I’ll sharpen your knives if you give me your shiny stone.’ But your best option for getting trade-able items is loot taken from enemies. Angband didn’t have taxes, but you probably had to tithe a portion of your plunder to the dark lords and possibly your commander. I’m thinking that a footsoldier got to keep one-tenth, a general one-third or some kind of system like that was in place but there was probably a lot of fighting over the best items between individual orcs too.

How do you keep a vast underground army supplied with food and materials? I think Angband’s production and food problems are solvable with a truly ridiculous amount of forethought and planning, pinpoint precise control of workers and a healthy amount of magic. The dark lords would need a huge amount of food, far more than could be gained through raiding; somehow crops had to be grown to feed armies, and animals had to be raised for meat and goods. Angband must have had enormous underground farms for surface plants created through the laborious process of building plant beds, bringing in soil, and creating light and air shafts. But they also might have cultivated fungi, mushrooms, moss, roots and other edible plants that naturally grow in or near caves. Pre-siege they might have had some small scale agriculture on mountain terraces and foothills and pastured sheep or goats on the side of mountains.

Post siege they had to rely on animals that could be raised underground. Orcs probably ate little meat. Those animals would have been far more valuable for the other products they could provide, like hides, fat, or horn. Eggs or milk would be more likely, depending on availability. Bats, bugs, worms, larva, spiders, proteus salamanders, and cave crabs are natural cave creatures that might be deliberately raised as food. Fish in underground lakes would yield the double benefit of food and vital water reservoirs. Their primary meat animal would probably be pigs because they eat anything and can be intensively farmed. Dogs are also scavengers so they might also be eaten for food or raised for fur. Chickens can be cage-raised in battery farms, and they also eat almost anything, so they seem likely. Sheep and goats come from wild mountain dwelling ancestors, and would have been valuable for wool and hair and milk, but I’m doubtful they could be fed enough from Angband’s resources to be worthwhile to keep. Cows are a definite no; they just are too big for underground living and not efficient enough to be regular food animals. Horses are valuable as riding animals and it is seems likely a small number were kept for commanders, messengers and scouts.

Outbreaks of disease and contamination have an easy answer: never ever ever keep all of your animals/crops/drinking water in one place/field/reservoir. If you loose one herd to disease you can isolate it and save the rest; the more separate herds you have the smaller the loss. Potential disease vectors, like corpses, have to be disposed of immediately. Genetic bottleneck is no problem if you carefully manage your herds; scientists estimate the entire population of founding taurine (non-humped) cattle was around eighty for example; low genetic variation does not necessarily mean low fitness. If stores dropped catastrophically low, trade with Evil Men or raiding could have filled the shortfall until production could be restored.

Waste management and containment would have been vital for the health of Angband’s occupants and the viability of its economy. Mines and farms are kept running though forced labor by prisoners; no one lives who does not work. Everything has to be recycled - food and metals especially. Even the corpses of prisoners and orcs are eaten. Water supplies may not have been easy to find and would have to be kept clean and uncontaminated by mineral leeching. They would have to find ways to get rid of toxic trash that couldn’t be recycled. Environmental contamination would have been a real problem, given the volcanic atmosphere and the amount of volatile metals around. Some types of environmental contamination could have been avoided through good, ruthlessly enforced waste containment measures as well.  Magic may also be a good option here.

Were Angband’s ore deposits rich enough to support centuries of war? I’m honestly a little fuzzy on the geologic requirements for the creation of metals, but I’m going to handwave this one. If Melkor can make entire mountain ranges, then I’m going to guess he can guarantee an ample supply of minerals and metals for Angband’s forges. (Plus volcanic soils are incredibly fertile which helps with the food problem. The Polynesian islands are capable of supporting agriculture only because of soils made of volcanic ash deposited by wind, fun fact.)

My general explanation for the ability of Melkor’s war machine to support itself actually relies on a bit of headcanon. Sauron managed to escape the ruin of Utumno because of an extensive underground tunnel system that existed underneath it. I like to think that this is something Melkor and Sauron continued and expanded in their next stronghold once they saw how useful it was. However tall the mountains towered above the plain, below them Angband lay many times greater and deeper. Perhaps not just the entire plain, but whole mountain ranges were honeycombed with tunnels that stretched their fingers all the way back to Utumno’s vaults.

They may be evil, but Melkor and Sauron must have been terrifyingly competent.