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140 years ago, the world was nearly torn apart as rifts to other realms sprung up across the continent. Former societies of elves, humans, dwarves, halflings, and more were devastated, and now new settlements have risen. The crux of my question is this: How would new villages, towns, and the like rebuild after such an event? What needs to happen in order for the people to begin recovering?

Essentially, I want to know what it takes to move a world from a post-apocalypse into a sort of post-post-apocalypse. For some context, these realm rifts are the like of planes of fire, water, earth, air, heavens, hells, and whatnot. It also is a fantasy with Vancian-type magic and heavy Lovecraftian horrors.

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  • $\begingroup$ Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking. $\endgroup$
    – Community Bot
    Jun 28 at 4:51
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    $\begingroup$ Hello @Merripen. (a) Whenever you see that automatic comment from the Community BOT, it's a bad thing. It means your question failed Stack Exchange's minimum requirements test for questions. In your case, the problem is that you're not asking for help with a specific, well-focused problem. (b) To answer your question you would need to provide a ton of details: tech level of each civilization, extent of each civilization, cultural weaknesses and strengths, what caused the apocalypse, the ensuing climate of each region... just to name 1% of the data we need. (*Continued*) $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Jun 28 at 4:59
  • $\begingroup$ But I suspect it's not necessary to have any of that. How did your villages and societies form in the first place? That's your maximum recovery time and solution. Anything shorter is based on knowledge and resources retained after the apocalypse. Ultimately, however, exactly how long that is depends more on your story than it does the rules of your world. Please remember, we help you build worlds, not tell stories. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Jun 28 at 5:01
  • $\begingroup$ What are those rifts? Are they emanating destructive energies, passable, transitive (can be passwd both ways), connecting distant parts of land with short path, etc? Can any peoples survive within the rift, on the other side, do they have or have acquired knowledge or magic to do that? Answers to this bunch of questions could lead to cities forming near certain rifts, wastelands forming around others, wild magic and anomalies around the third type etc etc, and if either areas overlap, things start happening regardless of rebuilding efforts. Too much unknown to answer reliably. $\endgroup$
    – Vesper
    Jun 29 at 12:14
  • $\begingroup$ Have you looked to history? Ie the Justinian plague is estimated to have killed about 25% of the population in large regions. Post WW Europe.various natural disasters such as flooding, tsunamis, earth quakes and volcanoes. All should have general trends. $\endgroup$
    – Gault Drakkor
    Jun 29 at 19:57

2 Answers 2

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If we take the word village broadly to mean any collection of huts, then those will develop once agriculture is restarted. Prior to that, people are desperately hunting and gathering enough food to survive each day. Crude shelters might be erected near a good hunting area, but these would need to move often. Looking at archeology, the first towns seem to have developed in the middle of incredibly rich growing areas where people didn't have to migrate with the game and growing seasons.

Food determines if towns can be built.

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  • $\begingroup$ Water also, there are places where food can be grown but there's scarce water supply, so the areas are used as pastures instead (or fields with irrigation), but towns appear nearby in places where there's enough water. $\endgroup$
    – Vesper
    Jun 29 at 12:09
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Is rebuilding a world the same thing as putting everything back the way that it was? Would that even be a good thing? These are the questions that people will clash over.

If a village appeared where my family used to live, obliterating them, I might blame the people in that village. I might think that I have every right to own the same bit of land... even though something else is there. I might go searching for my family hoping that they were simply moved.

This is the problem of displacement a very really human problem-- caused by changes in climate, wars, or campaigns to "restore" a distant past. Displacement can lead to more displacement and more wars.

If there is any semblance of government, and if the people running it want to help they would need to establish rules for land ownership that are some kind of fair compromise.

Of equally great importance is reestablishing networks of trade, food production and communication.

At last coming to terms with the change, either by a long term campaign to restore things the way they once were... or acceptance that the world will never be the same.

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