I care less about ridiculously abundant food production and storage, and more about the story-creating ideas you can get out interrupting all that food:
1. Plagues of pests such as rats, weevils, locusts, etc can wipe out your food stores or decimate your crops and force you to rely on those stores.
2. During the Time of Tumult, armies marching on their stomachs are going to march through your land and devour your stores and possible burn or salt your fields, and warfare will interrupt agricultural production: famine may not have happened in centuries, but it's going to start happening now.
3. Supernatural entities can muck with your production: your multiple-harvests-per-year can be royally screwed up if your local field or harvest god is corrupt and decides to give you a year or two of hardship in the hopes of blackmailing your king to build him a bigger temple, or if a pack of Dogs of the Unbroken Earth get exiled from their forest through divine politics and take up residence in your fields, or if the local Elemental Court gets summoned one by one by an Exalted Sorcerer and their dispute with her interrupts their management of your local ley lines, or if a demon gets loose and Omen Weather rains blood on your crops.
4. Cash Crops are great for the guy who owns the land...and if you're living on a fuedal lord's lands and farming at his command, you don't necessarily get to decide between food and funding for his navy/new castle/epic romance/occult research. He wants you to start farming opium and selling it to the Guild or House Cynis, and that's what you farm, starvation in the neighboring kingdom with less fertile farmland you've traditionally sold it to be damned. Hell, starvation in the neighboring kingdom might be exactly what your ruler wants, to weaken his neighbors.
5. Frequent blood sacrifices to the field gods might inadvertently create a Shadowland! Suddenly farming gets dangerous, and the fecundity of your fields plummets!
6. The cities of the South have plenty of food, but they're low on water, without which they'll still die. Stop the drought!
7. Doesn't matter how good your food production is if an unnaturally long winter sweeps down from the North to blanket the East for two whole years: there will be famines and riots and doomsayers prophesying the end of the world. Even if you've got decent stockpiles, expect people with swords to show up to take them from you in case this unceasing winter doesn't let up.
8. Ever heard of the Panama Disease? It's a fungal plague that almost wiped out the Gros Michel Banana in the fifties (and is still prevalent, preventing growers from getting sizeable orchards going) and led to everyone switching over to our currently popular Cavendish banana. It's only a matter of time until the fungus mutates to affect these too, and banana merchants are already diversifying their crops just in case. It's an easy story to get inspired by: in Creation, a plant-only plague could easily wipe out a major food crop (rice, corn, yams, bamboo) or a vital herd animal (mad cow disease in Harborhead) and wreak ungodly havoc on the local economy and spiritual landscape. It's a decent idea for an Abyssal or Genesis Lord plot...which I sorta want to run in Chaya now, just for the hell of it.
1. Plagues of pests such as rats, weevils, locusts, etc can wipe out your food stores or decimate your crops and force you to rely on those stores.
2. During the Time of Tumult, armies marching on their stomachs are going to march through your land and devour your stores and possible burn or salt your fields, and warfare will interrupt agricultural production: famine may not have happened in centuries, but it's going to start happening now.
3. Supernatural entities can muck with your production: your multiple-harvests-per-year can be royally screwed up if your local field or harvest god is corrupt and decides to give you a year or two of hardship in the hopes of blackmailing your king to build him a bigger temple, or if a pack of Dogs of the Unbroken Earth get exiled from their forest through divine politics and take up residence in your fields, or if the local Elemental Court gets summoned one by one by an Exalted Sorcerer and their dispute with her interrupts their management of your local ley lines, or if a demon gets loose and Omen Weather rains blood on your crops.
4. Cash Crops are great for the guy who owns the land...and if you're living on a fuedal lord's lands and farming at his command, you don't necessarily get to decide between food and funding for his navy/new castle/epic romance/occult research. He wants you to start farming opium and selling it to the Guild or House Cynis, and that's what you farm, starvation in the neighboring kingdom with less fertile farmland you've traditionally sold it to be damned. Hell, starvation in the neighboring kingdom might be exactly what your ruler wants, to weaken his neighbors.
5. Frequent blood sacrifices to the field gods might inadvertently create a Shadowland! Suddenly farming gets dangerous, and the fecundity of your fields plummets!
6. The cities of the South have plenty of food, but they're low on water, without which they'll still die. Stop the drought!
7. Doesn't matter how good your food production is if an unnaturally long winter sweeps down from the North to blanket the East for two whole years: there will be famines and riots and doomsayers prophesying the end of the world. Even if you've got decent stockpiles, expect people with swords to show up to take them from you in case this unceasing winter doesn't let up.
8. Ever heard of the Panama Disease? It's a fungal plague that almost wiped out the Gros Michel Banana in the fifties (and is still prevalent, preventing growers from getting sizeable orchards going) and led to everyone switching over to our currently popular Cavendish banana. It's only a matter of time until the fungus mutates to affect these too, and banana merchants are already diversifying their crops just in case. It's an easy story to get inspired by: in Creation, a plant-only plague could easily wipe out a major food crop (rice, corn, yams, bamboo) or a vital herd animal (mad cow disease in Harborhead) and wreak ungodly havoc on the local economy and spiritual landscape. It's a decent idea for an Abyssal or Genesis Lord plot...which I sorta want to run in Chaya now, just for the hell of it.
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