Why don’t the monsters in your world attack cities often?

[CrimsonGenius]

Is there a barrier or something else. I want to include a reason why monsters don’t attack often.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Which world are you asking about? In some they do... in some they try to keep a low profile and pick off individuals. In some there are none.

 

[CrimsonGenius]

Tales of Vesperia game had a blastia barrier.

 

[BreadIsACuisine]

They are busy searching their ruler, The Mother Of All Sins, who ran away with The Hero Of All Blades.
And since they know that The Hero has anthropophobia aka fear of humans, they avoid and kill any who trespasses in their territory.

 

[Bartun]

Because humans hunted them down to almost extinction

 

[Akkizakura]

Why would they attack cities? They are citizens.

 

[NotaNuffian]

Street sweepers aka adventurers aka sellswords exist, much to the disapproval of nobles and elites of the world, knowing that there are other armed forces other than theirs.

 

[Golden_Hyde]

what monsters? ?

There are no monsters in my cities. I don't know what you're talking about

 

[Corty]

They do alright. Especially at winter. It has been established that it's the season when they come.

 

[Zagaroth]

"Monsters" aren't exactly a unified category of creatures, and by definition mostly means non-sapient creatures. Most of the time, it effectively means animalistic/aggressive/predatory but with magical abilities.

They no more attack cities than bears attack cities in our world, but they are significantly more dangerous than most real world creatures, outside of Australia and Moose.

There are of course some urban monsters, but they need some level of cunning and discretion. Big cities tend to have thing like priests and knights on the one hand, and any criminal organizations that have managed to avoid the scrutiny on the other. The criminal sorts will absolutely hunt out any monsters that interfere with their business, so monsters that simply prey on people have to avoid both sides of the law at the same time.

Sewer monsters, on the other hand, tend to be able to propagate just fine, so long as they stay down there.

 

[RainyLiquid]

...they do. Life sucks in my novels.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

This falls under world building and rules of magic.

For example, When I worked out my magic system, I worked out how magic works for the entire cosmos, then how it operates on an individual level per universe. I created an entire type of Physics for Magic involving monads as the funidmental partical and the various types. Up, Down, Weird, Demonic, Angelic, Top.

"Free" mana is two up monads and one down monad. Mana is manufactured from "souls". Souls are made up of the other four types, but monads can break down into other types. Human souls are made of top monads and human souls act like Plankton. They provide the "oxygen" that more "higher" memetic creatures need to exist. Why Fae, Demons, and Angels are so facinated with humans.

For the most part, humans manufacture "Positive" and "Negative" mana depending on their emotions. However, said mana "builds up" and then "runs off" This is what produces Ley Lines and Dragon Lines. "Moving" mana does not accumulate anywhere that it can build up to create "Natural" outbreaks.

So, while humans consume "Positive" mana, said mana becomes "depleted" and becomes "negative" mana. This mana becomes "run-off" and flows "downhill".

You will note I use quotes alot, because this is all Metaphor. Considering that their are six dimensions, what is "Downhill" is not what you or I think of. Massive number of humans results in a "Pressure Gradient" in the higher memetic dimensions, so rarely does "negative" mana build up there.

Instead the negative mana "runs off" and will "pool" somewhere. Ths location then accumulates negative mana that will eventually crystalize into more condenced form or monads, usually demonic. Get enough demonic energy, you will get demonic crystals that will start to form bodies based on local prevaling negative memetics.

In otherwords, you get a dungeon.

However, it might be a forest, a hole in the ground, or the top of a mountain. It all depends on what is the Memetic topography of an area and where mana can accumulate. Sort of like a particles of dust in the air can cause clouds to form, so too can crystalizing negative mana result in demonic lifeforms.

However, they rarely form inside cities. They usually pool away from "high pressure" areas, such as cities. If left unchecked, yes, you will get large number of demonic beasts who will attack, but since they start small, it can take a while before the demonic horde gets large enough to attack a city. So, the lack of attacks are usually because the local population noticed this happening, and thus sends in adventures to clear out a "dungeon" before it gets out of hand.

 

[Garolymar]

The main big bad creatures of my universe are stuck to what the inworld residents call mires. They're like zones that are haunted with stagnant life energy, the creatures themselves are built and animated by this energy and if they stray too far from it for too long then they'll eventually get weaker and die. They do expel a little bit of the energy themselves if they eat something that is living and that's how they slowly spread their territory.

The way I got my monsters into a city was through a terrorist attack. This guy manage to sneak in a device that held a bunch of the mire energy inside of it and when he detonated it, the market districted turned into a mire and the people cause in the intial blast, their corpses were animated by the mire and turned to monsters that would hunt down the people outside the initial explosion.

 

[Arkus86]

It really depends on your setting, the state of cities of your world and what you actually consider a monster, but some of the simpler reasons are:

• Regular hunting parties/patrols around cities (regular/private armies, adventurers, city guard...) are keeping monster population low in the area, reducing the threat of monster attacks.
• Monsters instinctively avoid (large concentrations of) humans unless they are hungry/desperate or something else drives them to attack.
• Monsters are aware (instinctively, through collective experience, or through intelect) cities are well protected and too dangerous to attack, but will happily pick off any less protected settlements or individual groups.

 

[Ai-chan]

In The Hounds of Hell, they do attack settlements. But they are brainless and driven by instincts. So if they have attacked a place a few times and failed to gain much, they will stop trying until they forgot that it was a very risky place to hunt. They still wander around outside settlements to attack the unsuspecting loners.

In another story, the only reason they don't attack cities is because the cities have cleared up the forest and they have weapons to kill monsters from a distance before they can come close. So at most they would attack the outlying villages and farmlands.

 

[Elmir_Arch-Ham_of_Omega]

Ironically, because dungeons.

It starts with permanent rifts where monsters pour out. People start building a dungeon over and around it (since they usually are located deep underground), all the usual dungeon stuff like hidden passages, secret rooms and traps? They're there but the difference is that they're all built for the dungeoneers. Most monster casualties are from in-fighting or starving to death to because of traps. Still requires adventurers to go down to keep the numbers even lower because said creature are still very dangerous.

I say ironic because first you start with an outpost for dungeoneers to rest and stock up, then it quickly grows into a prosperous city.

What rifts haven't been dungeoned are usually very far and/or are in places where the local fauna prey on them.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

In my story there is hardly any monsters in the setting. Like the American greywolf most large predators deadly to humans have been hunted to near extinction. Those that still exist live in the unexplored places far from human society.

The only ‘monsters‘ that are actively detrimental to humans are vampires, which aren’t even really a monster in my story. They are instead an elf from the faerie realm who makes a series of oaths, things such as living by only drinking blood or never appearing under the sun, that allow them to manifest in the human world.

 

[DaelyxLenAuphydas]

In Immaculate at least, theres a divine barrier around the mountain valley where the only as-of-yet known settlement is located. The more powerful something is, the harder it is to get through the barrier. So on rare occassion they get random wolves or maybe even a lesser shadowspawn, but nothing bigger. Except when a really big shadowspawn tunnels in from underneath the barrier, but Hylicia will deal with that sooner or later...

In Birthright (...Yet to be posted), the monsters have just been mostly hunted down within the more urban areas. More do encroach upon the region occassionally but they get hunted down by knights in short order, just such a thing occurs in the anthology. But it's really less of a "The urban areas have already hunted down all the monsters" and more "The urban areas cropped up exclusively where there were few enough monsters to deal with", as the Forbidden Lands out east are very lightly populated as a result of all the dangerous creatures.

and in Heartlands as a larger setting (The setting Immaculate takes place in), the most dangerous stuff tends to congregate around the Heartlands, leaving the external edge of the continent comparatively safer. Several regions just kind of have their own Divine Beasts that they are associated with that protect them from others. Sylvans have the unicorns and plenty of forest spirits, the Forskan have their human-sacrifice-demanding serpent deity, the Dragar have all manner of lesser dragonkin... Etc.

Still, all of those kinda pale in comparison to the inner heartlands regions. And even then, several populated regions do have to deal with attacks on a somewhat frequent basis. The Kingdom of Sathyras in the east has to constantly hunt down malefic abberations to protect the other civilized lands past them, the Myst-lost kingdom is, well, lost because of constant incursions of Mystborn, the Forskan civilization is just barely hanging on and only because they are associated with a powerful protector deity in their own right. Hallatonttu are just built different and are good enough at fighting to deal with the monsters in their regions, having plenty of sorcerors and advanced technology to work with.

a somewhat recurring thing for me is that civilizations exist in regions with relatively low savagery and can cope with occassional attacks, but generally speaking if the savage wildlands get really stirred up it tends to go badly for civilization.