On Making a Civilization

Nirrum lives in a desert town with no natural water source.

I, on the other hand, live in one of the most inhospitable places for pre-industrial society.

Countries are places where people live. This is important, and some people seem to forget it when they build their civilization centers.  Before you begin writing about your volcano civilization, your treetop village, your gloomy town where nothing grows and there are ghosts behind every rock and all the townsfolk are always sick, ask yourself:

But Y Þo?

Why wouldn't those people  live Literally anywhere else. Why would anyone ever,  think it is a good idea to set up the place where they will keep their children inside of an active Volcano. There is prime real-estate that is far, far more preferable, next to the volcano for example. Or Y'know, in a Grassy vale, next to a fish-filled freshwater glacial river not tremendously far from a forest or the nearest Xanaran's Bar and Inn.

People Live Places For Reasons

So let's make a formula for that.

Let me dispel the notion that your civilization should not be in a Volcano. Au contraire. Always put a civilization in a volcano. Just explain why.

Picking a location is honestly the least hard aspect of making a civilization. This goes double for Fantasy settings, and double again for settings with problems like "monsters". Throw a dart at a globe,  google the location and see what's there. Pick a biome, pick a weather type, Pick literally any geographically defining feature. The real secret is to use your amazing powers of bullshit to explain why someone thought that this was a good idea and enough people agreed with them to put up a couple of houses. 

As an example, The people of Skalmirthon are primarily dwarves. D:\Heitz\Toady\Tolkien.JPG Dwarves. They live in the largest active volcano on continental Varomar in the only real mountain range worth talking about. 

Our actual great challenge is the bullshit. We know that volcanoes are hot and full of Lava and have a vague bowl or pipe shape, but is that enough? Let's Check Wikipedia for a second. Well shit.  volcanic ash, and gases huh? Well that's worrying. What's so bad about volcanic ash though?  A few minutes into this rabbit hole, and you stumble across the terrifying realization that pyroclastic flow is one of the more terrifying things to exist on the planet. Just ask these guys. So why would dwarves choose to live here? Why would the people of Steinhaven choose to live on a barren coast? Why does the country Saudi Arabia Exist? Profit, Mostly.  

In the case of Skalmirthon, they wish to plumb the Kimberlite pipes of the great Skal Volcano to tease out comparatively easy wealth. High-density accumulations of gems like Peridot, Kornerupine, Diamond, and metals such as Iron and gold.

     Google search: Gemstones of <place> to find out what's being mined in your civ!

The Dwarves (or Dwarfs if you wanna be oldschool) are not lavaproof, so they're gonna have to figure out a way to deal with the lava. By the powers of bullshit, the citizens of the western Aegis, skal, Skalmirthon, have either:

• Made a portal to the plane of GTFO
• Made a complex system of pipes, Magmaducts, redirecting the lava outside the mountain or inside specially built chambers to harvest what is mostly obsidian
• Made their god fix it
• Mined, sold and consumed the Lava faster than it could build up pressure, slowly draining the pipe faster than the rock was melting
• Changed something to make the lava not a problem, don't worry 'bout it K?

So the first real steps of making your Civ are

• Find a Place
• Get rid of the dangers
• Find a resource in that area that's worth being there for

True Formula

   So now that we've found a place that has some form of Reason to live here, we get to our true list.

1. Where do they get their water? Provided they are our sort of biology, your people need to get some sweet sky-juice through their blood tubes somehow and the first step to that is getting it inside them. Springs are fairly ideal for most people. Clean water with the only danger being threatening mineral deposits like lead.  Rivers are great but what's upriver is always a concern. Lakes have a similar meme with the caveat of being home to danger. Rainwater works where rain is, Well water and Aquifers work where it doesn't. Glacial deposits on distant (or exceptionally nearby) mountains or just the runoff from the highlands surrounding your civ all work. So does trading for water, or aqueducts.
2. Where do they get their food? People tend to die without food, though the subversion of this trope has come up a few times. Food is a harsh part of reality. Agriculture is hard to start, Hard to maintain, but spectacularly rewarding when you have a good harvest. Provided you have some sort of vitamins and some sort of large animal to supplement your diet, you can probably hunt for meat. Maybe your resources bring in trade, but we'll get to the dangers of trade in a later post. The Dwarves of Skalmirthon farm some of their own on isolated terraced gardens on the north side of the mountain, but most of it comes in as trade for their abundant but well-controlled trade of refined metals, their crafts, and their trade hub with underdark civilizations
3. Why are they here? Resources? Political refuge? Tax evasion? The local monks make good beer? Is there any reason to believe that living life here is easier than living somewhere else? 
4. Where does the poop go? IT DOESN'T JUST EVAPORATE, WASTE MANAGEMENT IS A SERIOUS CONCERN, DO YOU WANT YOUR PEOPLE TO GET CHOLERA FROM DRINKING WHAT THEY SHIT IN? The dragonborn of the Lower Gannaga are notably immune to this disease, but most people just fucking shit themselves to death. The dwarves throw theirs into the outflow lava pools (from a safe distance)
5. What's the downside? We're writers. Nothing can be actually pure and idyllic. That's narratively worthless. The dwarves of Skalmirthon live in a city overtaken by multiple facets of corruption. Economic, Religious, and good old fashioned extortionist. They work long hours in mines and workshops and only see a fragment of their value returned to them.

I'll talk more about politics on a later date, but I think this is a good start for now.

Betlys'u'lo
- Nirrum