OldHuntsman, who created the original version of this game, is the source of the majority of the "lore" as we call it. We've tried not to contradict his vision. I agree that there are inconsistencies, but I am unconvinced by some of your reinterpretations or suggested revisions. If we can identify some revisions that are acceptable to all, I'm not opposed to incorporating them in the game. However, development is more or less on hold at the moment because of other demands on our time. You're more than welcome to continue developing your ideas and building consensus with the community here.
Well if you want everything that's in the lore to remain exactly the same. Yea, totally impossible.
There are just way to many conflicting issues. I did a good bit deeper analysis after the last discussion.
I did this using a two model for the system or world. The first is a pocket universe in which the city exists. The second is the city is on a full-size world but the storm prevents crossing to the outer world with any ease. The second of those fared a good bit better than the first. It makes a lot of difference.
Take something as simple as gravity. A pocket universe only has the mass contained in it thus gravity would be quite limited and potentially nearly non-existent depending on how the mass is distributed in it. So if the pocket universe just contains the city the storm and so on you would have a fraction of the moons mass thus a fraction of the gravity at best. That can create its own issues like floating off into space and or nothingness. Lack of atmosphere suffocation...
Logistics:
Logistically a city in such a pocket universe with such a limited supply line / logistics would be dead near instantly.
Just to maintain life. The average person consumes about 1 acre of food a year if you just rely on crops.
They also need about 3.7 liters of water for a male and 2.7 for a female a day. Just for drinking that doesn't include bathing and hygiene.
A pocket universe would need massive amounts of people coming in with food to replenish supplies and they would need to bring in water also. You made it clear that isn't possible there is a limited amount that can be brought in.
Given the way you also described the city there isn't the farm space needed. Pretty clear the person who wrote this story never worked on or researched a farm in their life. I've not only worked and my family currently owns one.
Even with hydroponics you still need space and all the roof tops and parks in city aren't enough to usually feed its population.
If the city is connected to a planet you can easily come up with a water supply for the city. Underground aquifer that is replenished with rain fall. You will still need food. You will need building material for everything to be up kept in the city. You will also need materials for anything you want to make new such as clothing.
That underground aquifer gives you some solutions though. Lets say it is used as the stone quarry you do that to expand its capacity. You can also say the rains that supply it are seasonal and water levels drop for a few weeks out of the year just low enough for you to use some small boats to sail down it and get to the other side of the storm. You use that time to harvest wood and other resources or materials you can find on the other side of the storm. You can't send massive numbers of number of monsters coming out of the mist are far more on that side. There is effectively an entire planet full of them. So the best you can do is maintain a small foothold base at the entrance to the aquifer.
That keeps your supplies limited to the point you need alternative methods. But it also gives you the ability to come up with an amount needed to maintain the city. Sure maybe in time you can build a larger stronghold on the other side but presently that isn't the case. Maybe, there are politics involved and some in charge really don't want that because of whatever reasons they have such as keeping control of the city and its populace serves their interests more. I mean if humans didn't need to live in the city the vampires and others might not have a decent supply.
It isn't just maintaining the city. Clothing, furniture and so on all need materials. Any tools also or machinery need materials to make. You have no supply line for any of it. Sheep could be used for wool, cotton plants, no forest to harvest timber for anything, (I know its minecraft and you are going to use one tree and feed it bone meal and keep replanting). No rock quarry. How about salt mine, iron, or any other material need to make anything useful.
Maybe you buy those materials from outside in the limited supply you can. With what. What do you produce as a society in this world or city is of value for trade with the outside? If you can go back and forth that much for those things it kind of kills the excuses for pretty much all the rest.
Social issues disparity.
The second fastest thing that would kill this city is revolt or uprising. Currently the system in place is far to unbalanced.
If slaves and those being shoved to the bottom felt that wasn't possible they would usually go to the last resort of control over their own life. Slaves have done things like bite their own tongue off, drank water and to the point they die of water intoxication, Choked themselves to death by scarfing down food, smashed their own skulls, ... In short if they want to die they will and you can't really stop them.
But first you would need to deal with revolts. Slaves have killed their masters time and time again. People put them in roles such as cooking, making the beds, doing laundry, buying food and supplies. So unless everyone wants to check the food they eat for poison every single meal, check the bed, chairs and so on they sit on for spring boards and daggers, test their clothing before wearing it to see if it has been laced with stuff like foxglove or other poisons how you treat slaves matters a hell of a lot.
You probably are thinking well so they kill their master and when the city finds out they will punish them.
You might be right if it was just one household it happens in. Now, consider slaves and the work they do. You send them to school with other slaves, they do gladiator and races... All of which they get time around other slaves. They can communicate and plan. That means not just one household but many at one time. Also how often does the master show their face in public. When do they have to show up? Maybe, the head slave takes care of the books, and others do the buying or have food and such delivered. It could be weeks, months or even years before someone realizes that master is dead.
It would be better if the slaves being used as food wasn't a widely known thing. That a limited few used them for meat and that only certain types of slaves were used.
Humans will justify a lot of stuff if you give them a difference to focus on and disassociate themselves with the person you are causing harm to. Need proof ethnic minorities, and sexual persuasions that aren't heterosexual how much have they been targeted. Hutu and Tutsi difference was in the job they did. Hutus are farmed crops. Tutsi tended livestock.
Add to that some sort of ritual or spiritual aspect and you have even more of a reason. Some head hunter tribes sacrifice individuals for tribal members to consume.
Other wise the races who share or have the burden of being live stock put on them are going to be asking the question why just us all the time. They are going to look at those who partake in it as why are they so special... What is it they provide that makes them deserving of our people sacrificing some of us for them? The greater the disparity the more people will help the slaves out.
You have way to many issues that would pit the populace against one another. You already had class differences and more.
You also haven't shown the influx of slaves in a capacity that would be needed to feed even a small city. I think I gave you the requirements needed for a small populace of only 10,000.
Conservation of mass and energy:
Food consumption and conversion to meat. Most of us people excrement a large portion of the food. We don't have a perfect 1 to 1 ratio of what we eat becoming part of us. Maybe, that is what the spell does. However, if that is the case you are still just turning one pound of food into one pound of food. If your spell can do that by adapting a person it would make more sense to cast the spell on the food directly.
Your lore says the gates connect to worlds even more advanced than we are today. We can grow meat in a petri-dish. We are getting close to growing it as part of a plant. We already have tomatoes that have DNA from fish in the skin. We do that to reduce the insects eating them. So we can mix plant and animal DNA.
For a city that supposedly has access to advanced technology and other magic worlds people's it shows no real signs of that. Hell it seems to struggle even matching the current real world. That's only an issue that will get worse over time with the issues created.
A deductions:
There are some things we can deduce. The storm doesn't affect stuff below the ground and nor does the gates. If it did it would be effectively like the inside of a food processor filled with coffee while it is on. No one man or beast would be going in or out of it and living at all. There would be no footing to walk on at all.
That however conflicts with the reply I made about tunneling past the storm or to the gates for safe passage.
With that level of churning going on around the city, in the close proximity previously described were parts of the city can come in contact with the storm, the cities foundation would erode and sink into the ground. It would also be having constant tremors.
Questions:
Size of City, Map...?
Population total and racial break down?
What does each race bring to the table besides their burdens?
Justifications and solutions:
Humans used for food are from hordes that come from another world were madness has taken root. You'd be doing them a favor by killing them and using them for food is just giving them some final usefulness.
Better still they come from a world were magic is over abundant and drives the inhabitants insane because it erodes the mind. Sort of a mental overload. Same effect as above and reasoning. You could also use it for punishing the worst criminals and others that people will have little or no remorse for and consider it a turn of justice.
You would need a shit load of them daily to provide enough food. Don't forget you are going to need one pound of food to make one pound of meat even with magic preservation of mass and energy. So you need a crap load of crops still to fatten them up. That also means more time for the food to hit the plate. You need to grow a crop and then feed them.
You need farm land, forest and quarries no matter how you look at this.
While a small pocket universe surrounding the city and storm would spell instant death of the city.
Having a pocket universe the size of a small solar system would work. It would allow for you to have the water you need to supply the city even limited access to supplies seasonally.
The more you understand how stuff works the more solutions you can come up with to solve problems.
If you consider how stuff fits together and affects and interacts with other stuff you can recognize conflicts.
Instead of having to remove something such as the idea of a pocket universe you could give it a more detailed description to a pocket universe containing a small solar system. This way you have full functioning weather, day night cycles, water source...
You realize stuff like the storm has to only affect what is above the ground or you would never see anything come out of the storm because there would be nothing to walk on and the city would just sink into the earth in short time as it crumbled apart.
Then you need to consider stuff such as how the population will react. I gave some examples above. Adaptation and acceptance are usually tail ends and met with resistance. In short they will try many things first before they go that rout. Even to the point of just taking their lives.
The madness in the suggestion above can have an added benefit lack of the preservation of life. They don't even realize they are being fattened up to be eaten. So no resistance their. They just think they are in sort of happy place they can eat to their hearts content.
