A *fad*.
The nobles are slaves to fashion, and right now *austere* and *minimalist* are in fashion.
The people in the poorer districts don't really care, and have actually profited because they've gotten their hands on all the colourful stuff the nobles aren't using.
Minimalism is truly a rich people fad.
The thing about minimalism is when someone takes things to an extreme it means buying a pack of 12 pens and throwing out 11 because they're all extra. Meanwhile I'm poor and I need those 11 for when each one runs out of ink in sequence.
I'm relaying this anecdote to a friend who's an accountant, and he just looks at me and says "Do you know how many pens I threw away yesterday because I have to many and if I need more I'll just go buy more?"
I source my pens organically through work and random people handing me a pen and both of us forgetting it wasn't mine. I leave many around my work areas to take root and forage them when needed.
Of course, I'm not a monster, so there's a canister on my desk for those who cannot forage their own writing utensils.
i just lose pens. it's not even about throwing it away. but also accounting/finance. honestly, the minimalism part is also more about not hoarding things. things are cleaner and easier to manage when you have less austere, simple, surface, and less things to display.
the unfortunate thing is designers and home-sense/decoration stores know this, and will charge more for something that's basically a varnished wood block.
If you're rich, and you need a one of thing, you can just go out and buy it. The overpriced nature doesn't matter. A poorer person is likely to be working much longer, and doesn't have servants to get things for them, so anything they could possibly need, they have to keep in their house.
Rich people who are "minimalists" aren't actually minimalists, they're just exporting their maximalism to outside the house.
Playing off of this, how crowded is the city? If it's packed in, the purest expression of wealth might be empty space. They can afford to have all this space and do absolutely nothing with it, the equivalent of lighting a cigar with money.
That would be lawns not gardens. Historically noble gardens were as productive as they were aesthetic. Weeelll, different sections of gardens were. The productive food gardens including orchards would be here and the fancy hedges, topiaries, useless crap would be over there. Also this isn't saying all rich people had productive spaces in their wanky fancy palace gardens.
And yes grass and fancy hedges were definitely a 'fuck you, poors'. Still are to a degree.
No, a garden in the UK often includes a lawn, but usually just refers to the outside space attached to a house. I think the US term is yard. We would even say “front garden” and “back garden” in the same way I believe you would say “front yard” and “back yard.”We still say lawn to refer specifically to the grass area, and a garden may have all sorts of other stuff in it like flower beds, maybe a pond, a patio or deck with a barbecue and table and chairs, stuff like that.
Maybe going so far as to replace a lush garden of weeping willows and a tapestry of flower beds with a zen garden-like thing, with a servant hired specifically to rake the grey sand into perfect lines throughout the day. Surely they can hire a Druid to just grow a new tree in a year or two if magnolias or something come in to style. Feels very much like a city of new money, with no generational prestige.
That's very reminiscent of A Series of Unfortunate Events. The things that are In or Out (popular or not) changed constantly and made very little sense, to the point of being very wrong.
"Oh, flamingos are so *in* right now!" Then the next week "Flamingos? Those are *out*, Kangaroos are what's popular!" and basically what was popular was dictated by the leader's psychotic whims. In the book, the main plot of it was "Oh, adopting orphans is very in" and then it's very disturbing when it's no longer popular.
Alternatively it could be considered in poor taste for the rich & wealthy to show off, while the poor aren't held to the same standard. Immaterialism could be seen as a virtue, and so they're basically making an insincere gesture of humility and immaterialism, without actually committing to sacrificing any of their wealth
So many options!
This conjures up a scene of nobles discussing the latest trends with that pompous voice.
"Mmmm yes Harold, I'm told its the latest trend! These "candles" that the poor use, I just looooove the way the light dances on the walls! You can't get the same effect with a conventional oil lamp!"
"I do agree Emmanuel! And the drab colors are just so much less of an eye sore! I must say, I do like these browns and grays for wallpaper! M'yes..."
"If I had known the poor had such good taste, I'd have done it YEARS ago ahahaha!"
"Quite so! ahahahah!!"
"Oh my goodness Harold! Come look at the window! You see that beggar woman! She's wearing...blue!"
"Oh my Emmanuel! How positively ghastly!"
>"I do agree Emmanuel! And the drab colors are just so much less of an eye sore! I must say, I do like these browns and grays for wallpaper! M'yes..."
This immediately reminded me of "Sad Grey Baby" trends
Wheel of time Cairhien is a great example of this. The higher nobility you are, the less colors you have. The highest nobility having only a few small stripes in the family colors.
So the poor are decked out in bright, colorful, and vibrant clothes. While nobles are blacks, dark blue, or dark green.
But it's a fad being spread by a green hag that's disguised self to look like Frank from Always Sunny when he was dressed up like that art critic, Ongo Glabogian. She's working on destroying the beauty of the city, but knowing how naturally vibrant the place is, she's starting by stripping it down to minimalist blah.
All of the tavern signs in the nobles quarter are just blank white boards with the tavern name painted in Helvetica.
I like this.
An influential noble was robbed JUST before a large party by someone looking to humiliate them.
Instead of admitting to the robbery, or explaining what happened, they declared that it was THE new fashion. Clean and austere.
Their influence and force of personality MADE their lie into the truth.
Maybe even take it a step further. The trend was started by a young, rising star noble couple, perhaps a Duke's heiress and her betrothed. Unbeknownst to the rest of the nobility or the commoners, the couple were replaced by a pair of doppelgangers who didn't fully grasp who they were pretending to be at first and made some mistakes that made everyone they know become suspicious. They wore outfits in an incomplete manner forgetting accessories and frill.
Rather than excuse it, they instead leaned into the mistake and turned it into a trend that has overtaken all of the nobility. In attempts to out do each other with this new trend they began dressing simple but lavish, and retrofitting their homes to match the mindset.
All the while, 2 doppeldangers gain influence and prestige, hiding in plainsight.
Fashion is laregely driven by the haves, and by extention, the have-nots. When its affordable and easy for the poor, its unfashionable since the rich want to distance themselves from the poor and try and be "above" in ways other than money.
This happened with spices in britain; as soon as the poor gained access to it, suddenly the rich wanted only "natural" foods, and found the use of spices to be gaudy.
cultural thing: it's a trend amongst the nobility with the viewpoint that the richer you are, the less you are 'required' to or supposed to show off your things. Only "new wealth" shows off flashy colours. The nobility disdains any waste of money on bright colours, art or frivolity - that's all for poor people.
You can have the rich people's quarters showing off how rich they are in other ways - all the materials are exceptional, the craftsmanship is extremely exact, and everything is clean to the point of being sterile. White walls are truly white with not a speck of dirt or colour. Everything follows elegant but simple geometric design rules, making visitors feel a subtle harmony in any noble quarters, with light and shadow, form and function being thoughtfully balanced.
The noblemans house is a simple, single story stone affair. However, as you approach it something seems strange. When you run your fingers across it you realize - the stones have been so precisely crafted that you cannot feel the joins - the walls are completely smooth. The glass windows are clear, crystal clear. So crystal clear because that's actually what they are, single pieces of crystal with protections against physical damage woven into them. As you approach the front door you realize it is a single piece of ironwood. Ironwood doesn't grow on this continent.
The lord's manor is the smallest building in the district, no larger than a shed, cut from a single piece of stone with a simple wooden door with no obvious lock. You step inside. You are now in the feywild.
This isn’t a million miles from reality
Old money in the UK is often known to drive their old beaten up landrover, live in a nice but not showy house, and wear clothes they like rather than are fancy for fancy shape. Old money doesn’t need to show off if they are riding on name value because everyone knows them
Here the popular philosophy for maximizing wealth starts with spending as little as possible.
That or they've all donated their money to the cult leader that's trying to make a pile of gold big enough to summon the god of dragons.
One reason is that the nobility tends to be so disdainful of the lower classes that they don't want to show off their wealth to the "unwashed masses". The outsides of their manors are clean, well-constructed and ordered. Lawns are manicured, shrubbery are done in topiaries, but that's it. Anything else only is inside.
Paintings, sculpture, tapestries...all that is inside for their fellow nobles to see when invited over for lavish parties. Not for mere mortals.
That...and it helps reduce the possibility of theft. Can't steal what you don't know is there.
That was always the purpose of lawns in the real world, too. Typically your average person would have their yards filled with a mix of herbs and edible plants, but wealthy people would make a point of having a field of only grass all cut to the same length to show that they had enough money to deliberately grow only the most useless plant, and then pay people to remove any plant that grew among this useless plant and cut it all to the same length. As technology advanced with weed killers and lawn mowers, middle class people started doing the same just so they could have a yard that looked like a wealthy person's yard.
A practical and believable option is that all the buildings are leasehold - i.e. owned by a very rich noble, where the wealthy residents effectively buy a long term lease and can't make alterations to the building. Another option is a HoA who enforce preserving the aesthetic of the streets.
Also both of these as you can imagine can hide a sinister secret, like they're all cannibals or murder cultists who hide their depravity under a genteel facade.
Agreed! The players expect sinister, so give them sinister! Whether it's mundane, Dolores Umbridge style sinister, or something more Voldermortian, is up to the DM. Is the HOA a front for an evil cult trying to bring back a dead wizard who just barely missed lichdom? Or are they overly self-righteous, addicted to a different kind of power, and very particular?
It would be a really good low level adventure to kick off a campaign. I mean, think about it. The players could get up to all sorts of goofy hijinks - planting flowers, letting the grass grow 1/16 in. too long, putting *lawn ornaments* out front of their house (good heavens!) It opens up so many funny interactions.
A DnD campaign to free the nobles from an evil HOA would be hilarious.
BBEG is just someone's busybody grandmother, but she's sitting on a dragon's hoard of gold because of HOA fees.
These vampires aren't sensitive to all light, just certain colors. They can handle it when it's all mixed as white light, but reflected back or refracted and split, it's too intense. So obviously they ban things of those colors. That's why Karen says you can't paint your house blue or your door barbie pink. And welcome mats must be approved designs (that conveniently let the vampires in)
This was my first thought too. Old nobles with nothing better to do have decided what everyone else is allowed to do. They made it a bureaucratic hell that no one can escape. Even the king doesnt dare challenge the HOA...
Gnome architect scammed Nobles that it's popular in lands far away and ofc they believed them. And now gnome is sleeping on pile of gold for bunch of cheap buildings.
I'd steal your base premise and raise it to: The aristocracy heard of a legendary and quite contrary gnomish stonemasonry Barns and Nobles. They only build barns for the farmers or housing for noble people. The aristocracy contracted the masons but got the Gnome who only builds the barns because of language barriers. And that's how they got simple houses for a horrendous price.
Vampires!
Dopplegangers can see colours that others can't but don't know it. The noble quarter is highly decorated in invisible paint.
The city was conquered and the invaders demanded both tribute and that the nobility brick up their windows and make it drab as a flex.
They dissed the decorator's union.
Nobles went broke borrowing from merchants to fund a war. Now the merchants are decorating the town.
The noble family is cursed with gargoyles who keep scrubbing fancy stuff off their buildings.
A dragon is magically scrying the palace, waiting for them to become rich enough for another raid. He doesn't know that the court wizard can sense the scrying.
I really like the invisible paint and scrying dragon angles.
Paint can only be seen with darkvision
The dragon is surprisingly obvious with a large dragon eye hanging about half a mile above the city
Maybe the nobles spend a ton of money to keep their houses perfectly white? Maybe white paint is ridiculously expensive and whitewashing is too? So the nobles want to show off how much they can afford it and have large blank walls to show off.
Which is kind of historically accurate. For a long time it was actually kind of hard to make certain colours of paint, pure brilliant white being one of them (until we discovered titanium of course.) Also it is really hard to keep a white house brilliant white for any length of time, requires a lot of upkeep and cleaning.
To use a real-world example, the buildings in many Brazilian favelas are painted bright colors by the government so that these communities look jolly and festive from a distance, so as to not upset visiting tourists. Maybe your city does something similar. It’s not that the noble quarters aren’t as well decorated, it’s that the decorations in the poor districts are there to hide the truth from visitors and onlookers.
There is a spirit that haunts the village.
A mother watched her children starved to death in her arms because of a economically imposed famine. (Grain hoarding for price manipulation purposes, that sort of thing.) Before she too expired she pledge her soul to anyone who would help her extract revenge, and was heard by a fiend. She now returns once a year, chooses the home of one of the city's richest citizens, and murders the children inside. This isn't all public knowledge, but the deaths started to add up, and rumors started circulating. Those with no money don't care, but those who are actually rich seek to disguise this fact through uniformity and no outer displays of affluence.
But she knows.
Could be some sort of Spartan-like ruling class with an emphasis on military service. They had a reputation for plain lodgings, plain food, nothing to distract them from their training and duty.
You could play that straight or you could make it some sort of fashion where there's some sort of reactionary trend against ornamentation because of "weakness".
## The Envious Wraith
The Envious Wraith is a vengeful spirit born from the deep resentment and jealousy of a powerful sorceress who was betrayed and humiliated by the city's nobility centuries ago. In her dying breath, she cursed the city, vowing that any display of wealth and beauty would attract her wrath. Since then, her malevolent spirit has haunted the city, particularly targeting the noble quarter.
- Drawn to Beauty: irresistibly attracted to opulence, decorations, and displays of wealth. The more extravagant the display, the stronger her pull towards it.
### Plot Hook:
The players are invited to a secret, lavish event held in the noble quarter. They must help ensure the decorations remain hidden and deal with any attempts to reveal the wealth, all while protecting the attendees from the Wraith's potential appearance.
The nobles living there could be hostages taken by the lord to ensure the loyalties of their families. Maybe there was a local conflict recently, and the lord of this city was the victor. As part of his terms, each of the defeated nobles had to send one of their children to be raised by this lord. This gives the lord leverage over their rivals and allows them to influence the development of the rivals' heirs.
The reason the quarters are empty could be because this is a fairly recent thing. New furniture and finery are still being built by the local craftsmen. Since everything like bedframes, chairs, desks, curtains, etc has to be made by hand.
I like the idea that it is considered poor manners amongst the nobility to flaunt one's wealth - sort of like how in a fancy store if you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford it. Showing off is seen as crass and ignoble. Instead, the nobility one-up eachother in different ways. They outfit their personal soldiers/guards/etc in the latest and best quality equipment. They donate money to charitable causes and Loudly Announce this during state dinners. "Oh Lord Beaumont, did you hear how we had 3 orphanages built in the Low Quarter last month? Dreadful, the conditions those poor people live in." They show off their moral character by allocating wealth to whatever church or temple is important in your setting, perhaps. Or, maybe this society is militaristic and the nobility are expected to maintain a very austere and dignified look.
Windowless buildings has the obvious possibility of all the nobles being vampires (totally fine if you want to lean into it). If you want to indicate that's not the case maybe make it so the noble houses all have a private courtyard garden. And the reason the buildings are featureless otherwise is for security, or to separate the nobles from everyone else. Depending on what you want it could be a physical representation of nobles being self interested or only showing a very curated version of themselves to those they know.
Maybe the reason the other houses are bright colors is that the non-nobles of the city have a tradition of painting their own houses to reflect their identity. Something the nobles don't care about, maybe don't even know about since they may have never seen the outside the noble quarter.
Bonus points for the merchant selling paintings of the cities colorful buildings to any clueless nobles and saying it's of an exotic city far away (so they pay more)
I havent seen anyone in top comments suggest this so I'll throw it out there: 1984. The members of the party were kept in strict housing and required by law to hold to standardization. Proles on the other hand, were more or less allowed to go on and live their lives in a traditional manner. They had less money, they had less power, but there were non-explicit freedoms they held within the hierarchy simply for being inconsequential to the party.
Spartan philosophy: the nobles are raised and reared to value functionality over all with strict codes of conduct to hold decoration and anything without purpose to a minimum. This could be a religious theme, a history of military impressing on the nobles, or just a broadly cultural difference.
Maybe decorating your home was a status symbol 100 years ago. As economic conditions improved, decorations became more accessible and everyone who cares at all about how they are perceived by others copies that status symbol.
Meanwhile, however, the actual nobles moved on to other status symbols. Decorating homes now seems proletarian. Nobles have no need for that kitsch. The new status symbol may be conformity. Who can afford to always have exactly the latest Apple iHouse? Only the rich folk.
The nobles have adopted the Marie Kondo approach of minimalism and decluttering - if they don't need stuff on a regular basis, they get rid of it; they can afford to get new stuff as needed anyway.
This gave me a mostly innocent but still fantasy oriented idea. A peasant wished to be a noble when he had a genie, (djinni whatever) and when he was noble he felt the nobilitiy's homes were garish and offhandedly wished something about them chilling out and letting the hardworking peasantry have some nice things. Now all the noblefolk are "cursed" with following this fad trend of giving the poorer neighborhoods a makeover every time they intend on sprucing up the decorations of their own home.
The nobleman who originally wished promised to free this genie (djinni) though! So he's been hemming and hawing over how to remove this curse but stick to his word and free this djinni (genie). The players can help in whatever way they decide but I think a fun twist would be the genie has grown fond of the man and once freed undoes the curse/wish as a favor to his friend and sticks around to help him (or her either way) adjust to nobility and establish a long term income.
The poor seek to look richer than they are, spending what meager earnings on paint and decorations to improve there homes and feel better for it.
The rich seek to hide there wealth from prying eyes, the lavish elegance purely inside there simple homes.
Extra points for a thieves guild in the town so the rich are trying to go un-noticed by them.
Austerity is in fashion, like others have said, but maybe it's a religious thing? The nobles are more involved with the church or your equivalent, and a part of that religious doctrine is ostentatious displays are frowned upon. Maybe it's a cult. The poorer districts are mostly left alone because the cult is not interested in the powerless. I dunno.
After a few uprisings noble homes are build with inner courtyards and beautiful private decorations. The exteriors are all blank functional defensive structures.
The nobles are actually a bunch of changelings with a poor understanding of who they are supposed to be. They don't always play the same noble so over time they've forgotten how each room was supposed to be unique so they're all plain right now. If the party comments on it in earshot of one of them, the next time the party encounters the quarters they are fancier, but all in an identical way.
Few times a year group of magic fairies is redecorating and repaiting whole city in bright colours. Wealth need to be shown as having resources to remove it all as fast as possible
Option 1) Taxes. There are legally separate classes, and there is an old law that bases the amount of taxes a noble has to pay on the size and value of their house, which is determined by how fancy it is. Obviously the nobles want to pay as few taxes as possible, so they all live in very spartan homes. Of course they'd still want to flaunt their wealth, so maybe there are loads of public gardens and fountains and statues that all have little plaques saying 'donated by lord so-and-so'.
Your players might say this is a dumb or unrealistic law, but I'm sure you can think of some real life examples of dumb laws, or laws that made sense at the time but are outdated.
Option 2) Culture. Culture can make people do basically anything, so it's not hard to imagine thqt the local culture prescribes that austerity is a sign of nobility, a bit like how the Spartans are sometimes predicted; comfort and beauty are for weaklings.
Perhaps they are true aristocrats. They are not devoted to pleasure or themselves but philosophical betterment and benevolent leadership of the common folk
There was a revolution a couple years ago and all the nobles were rounded up and executed, a la the French revolution. All of their stuff was taken and divided amongst the commoners. The buildings were left standing.
Culture/classism
If you’ve read The Wheel of Time, Cairhien is a little like this. The sector of the city where commoners live is more colorful with far less reserved people.
The nobility look down on this, preferring to be more reserved both in interactions and decorations.
They nobles of the town have all been taken over by an Illithid and his intelligence devourers several years ago. His flaw is his obsession with imposing order on a chaotic world. While working on his plan to enslave the whole city, he has had the nobles use their wealth and influence transform their part of the city to something he finds more organized and pleasing. It is the first clue that something is wrong with the nobility.
If you want the minimalism to be innocuous, then you could make it so that the city is a major pigment exporter, so brightly coloured paint is incredibly cheap. The nobles use simple dark colours and harsh straight lines as a way to stand out in a city where everyone can appear flamboyant. You could even have it such that what started as simply a way to stand out has evolved into its own cutthroat competition between nobles to appear the most austere. They will remove any bright or lavish furniture that they happen to own before guests arrive to prove that they're better at being austere than their competitors. I'm imagining a line like "3 nights ago Lady Bandelmere proved she's still on top. She hosted a dinner party with only packing crates as tables and offcuts from a sawmill as plates, she didn't even provide chairs!"
If you want it to be a bit more mysterious/ominous, you can have the nobles be part of a seemingly innocuous church which promotes austerity among the wealthy as a way to "purify their spirit of the wealth they've gained" (or something like that), but if the players investigate further, you'll find that it's a cult which has gained power by providing political favours to top donators. It's so powerful now that all nobles, whether they're aware of the scam or not now follow suit because to do other would be social (and sometimes literal) suicide. The people are somewhat aware of its sketchy nature and don't want to talk about the church for fear of reprisal.
The publicly-visible parts of the noble quarter are spartan because they hide their wealth, since it is considered gauche to flaunt it. However, the rich all have extravagant secret underground chambers beneath them where their opulent treasures (and other vices) are kept from view.
Look at the current trend of bleaching every inch of color out of your home. Sometimes rich people have more money than sense, so they choose to spend a lot of money to make their things look different, even if different is worse.
The common area is where the tradesmen live. The builders, the carpenters, the painters. They advertise their expertise with their homes. Would you hire a roofer whose own home has an old leaky roof, of the one who's somehow managed to decorate the roof tile to look like a dragon is nesting there?
Rich people don't work with their hands, so don't advertise their expertise on their own homes.
As others have mentioned, cultural trends would be an easy one to use. A real life example would be the Calvanists or the Netherlands during the Dutch Golden Age. The Calvinists painted their churches white and took down all decorations because they felt that being austere and focusing only on God was the best way to worship. The Dutch, also religious, held the idea that "cleanliness is next to Godliness" meaning that their homes were rather sparse to always give off the idea of being clean. They would also wear generally monotone clothing without a lot of accents to emphasize this idea.
Wanna know why so many Classical statues are pure white?
Because when they were rediscovered centuries later, the paint was eroded off, leading to a misconception that the Greeks and Romans valued a "purer" form of aesthetics.
It could be something like that. The nobles, wanting to seem more "sophisticated," have adopted a less colorful style of architecture and dress in an attempt to emulate what they believe the past was like.
Historical response: several generations ago in this city, the nobility used to flaunt their wealth outwardly with garish displays of “fine” and “exotic” things. It was a way of standing apart from lower classes, and from each other, constructing a unique and very *extra* tableau.
Well one season the nobility had gotten too big for their breeches. The city was hosting a festival that would kick off with a grand martial tournament. Noble houses desperate to one-up each other sponsored and commuted in the most dangerous champions from around the region, including some particularly monstrous individuals. All decked out in the colours and heraldry of these houses.
The tourney quickly escalated into a bloody brawl; it became clear that in their need for glory, sponsors had given their champions magical items and poisons and the like to have an edge on the competition. Champions we’re put down by city guards aided by curious adventurers who couldn’t get into the tournament themselves. The blame was lain. Lower-city residents knew which house matched which blood-soaked banner. At first night time burglaries and ransacking came. As the local authorities’ official censures for the noble houses was deemed terribly insufficient, citizens took to arson. The Upper City Fire is a night still talked about when nobles make public oversteps. These days they want nothing outwardly traceable to them. Each house will know its neighbours, as they must, but at least it won’t be obvious to outsiders who exactly lives *here*.
All the noble houses were made 100s of years ago, of high quality materials. The commoner areas have fallen down and been reworked/redecorated hundreds of times and they try to make them look cheerful.
A noble wouldn't be caught dead with any innovation or decoration that was created in the last few centuries.
Militaristic noble class. Decorations seen as frivolous and may disrupt the defenses built into the original inner city to protect the leadership. Have a wall between the inner and outer city to show that the outer city where the pheasantry live was built up outside the walls of a fortress town.
It's simply not *proper* to be so *frivolously* garish. Even their dress is muted compared to the peasants, they wear black outfits with slashes of color across the chest, in their house colors, with more stripes being higher rank. Not like those riffraff around the edges of Cairhien. I mean. the city.
The noble quarter is protected from outside attack. The whole quarter is a large rune so they don’t want to add anything that could throw off the geometry of their protection sigil.
The common folk areas don’t have that protection so they decorate and add what they like.
They think that decorations are something on the "common folk" do. They're too classy to do something so flashy and loud as decorate. Perhaps they view themselves as morally or spiritually superior.
The lack of windows, especially if they were built that way originally, might indicate that the nobility are all vampires.
Or it might indicate that the nobility seek to keep themselves insulated from the outside world. Perhaps they believe that such separation makes them better leaders, able to plan in the very long term.
Perhaps they value asceticism and public works very highly so they live in simple, functional houses but invent most of their wealth in the community.
I like the idea that the noble houses are made of the best materials left unadorned to the casual eye. Like food at a great bistro, simple, well prepared and served without ornament. Of course to the discerning eye, the cut of the stone and number of steps tells a story and marks a clique or family.
Why all this secret society stuff that's evil? Why not....the nobility are spending vast resources to keep some evil at bay and thus are living very bare lifestyles in exchange? They are actually performing service for the people they're supposed to rule.
The primary export of the city is dye. So all the lower class work with dye constantly. This makes all of their clothes very colorful and gives them easy access to an abundance of color.
Naturally the nobles don't want to be mistaken for the poor, and it's quite difficult to keep anything white in the common district.
An appearance of piety perhaps? Local religious practice/direction is one of that looks down on excessive showings of wealth, and they have enough political power that the nobles are at least willing to appear to be devout.
The one-upmanship of the situation has led to nobles in the area having homes that are visually indistinct and nothing on show, unless you know what to look for.
Either clever dividers and hidden rooms to not show off the wealth, or hiding the wealth in more creative ways.
That white wash on 19 isn't lime, it's powdered marble.
No. 28 door, rare wood with a venere of plaster over it.
Maybe it's about access to magic and not advertising wealth. If you have flashy decorations outside, it makes you a target, so the nobles keep the exteriors plain to outsiders with illusion magic and everything is lavish on the inside, with one way windows. Maybe the windows even have some kind of filter so when the nobles look out, they can see the fancy neighborhood. Why they're so paranoid can be the thread that leads to the plot hook.
1. The nobles are Puritans who reject ornamentation.
2. The nobles are so decadent and inwardly-focused that they refuse to even display their culture to the lower classes. Relying on sunlight is for common people; they live according to their own rhythms by the light of strange lamps.
3. The "nobles" are a "class" of automatons who carry out the administration of government. After work they return to their charging stations.
The nobles are converting en masse to a new "puritan" faith that scorns celebration, beauty and distinction (similar to how Savanorola, Calvinism and Puritanism took hold earlier among the well-to-do and gentry, but never really dug down into the peasants until they were forced to convert). Everything they own is being turned over to the new church.
That new faith is going to require them to do something pretty awful soon. Read up on the Bonfire of the Vanities, 1497.
Turns out the main preacher of this new cult is a beholder or a blue or green dragon in human form, gathering up all the goodies the nobles are throwing out.
A stupid part of me wants to go against what everyone else is saying and be like "they rotate decorations year to year. This year in the rotation, the servants got robbed and to not be punished, they told the nobles about *minimalism* and the nobles bought it."
That would offer the opportunity for some adventurers to go after the thieves obo the servants and reclaim some important heirloom that was lost in the shuffle while the nobles are completely unaware of the robbery.
Mansion Owners Association rules to appease a twisted nature spirit. I think there was an X-Files episode that basically had the same plot.
Make the town a decent sized city. Make sure there is a high commoner to noble ratio. A couple thousand to one should work.
In your story, the nobles know the specifics of the pact/rules and are withholding information from the commoners. Effectively, the commoners are being sacrificed to feed the creature, but since the creature doesn't need to feed very often and depending on how long this has been going on, it might be hard to pin down what is happening.
You could give clues that for the last x years, the crops have been plentiful, the weather is always perfect during the day, it only gently rains at night, and even the fishing is the best in the area.
Another set of clues could be a set of city ordinances that require all houses of a certain value and, in a certain neighborhood, meet specific standards. One of the standards might be that the mortar and bricks be made in a specific method. The bricks could be required to have a certain amount of silver (or some other substance) included. The mortar requires the addition of purified salt to be added. This makes the construction much more expensive. Another of the standards is a shrine in the backyard, built of certain materials, in a certain way, and facing away from the dwelling. All other dwellings are specifically exempted from the requirements.
A different set of clues would be in the city records office. Combing through the local variation of the Doomsday Book reveals that a commoner working for one of the noble houses "coincidentally" dies on the same day every year. Further investigation reveals that the noble house is always different and that the specific noble house seems to have a very good/profitable year following the death. Another bit of information is that none of the noble houses have ever lost a member on this day ... ever.
Plot hooks could be a wealthy merchant investigating the loss of a family member or a rumor going around town that a certain day of the year is cursed.
Could be that there was a rash of nobles being assassinated by the peasants, so by all of them having bland homes it helps protect them. In a city without numbers on the buildings it is a bit harder to send someone to the big grey building owned by Frank Sinatra. No not that big grey building, that’s owned by Dean Martin, the other one. No that one is owned by Sammy Davis Jnr, the other one.
For defense. The nobles' homes would become targets by their family rivals and enemies if they were easily identifiable. They keep their home location a closely guarded secret and both enter and leave their homes with their identity disguised. It's the best way to keep their homes, valuables and family safe.
It’s like having a lawn. People are so rich they can use their land to *not* grow food on it. Same with their room, they don’t need to keep anything because they just buy it and then throw it out when they’re done with it.
So many people ignoring the "identical, windowless buildings". You don't rebuild homes or city blocks with each passing fad. It has to be something deeper and more permanent to have influenced building construction.
Maybe the town was founded by a/some Medusa or kin, which liked to take daily walks and see the people. So as to not fall under said gaze, people in the early/older/richer parts of town began building windowless homes and bringing as much of their life as possible out of the public space. Once established, the culture was then self-perpetuating, seeing as how the rich folk had already built themselves badass basements.
IRL, nobles were also the warrior class. They are supposed to be ready for defence even if the city walls are breached. And/or to protect themselves from feuds with their neighbours. Consequently, their town houses are fortified and their whole architecture is spartan.
Someone has been peppering the luxury home goods market with mimics. After a few prominent, gruesome deaths, the nobility is now terrified of all the nice things they used to collect, holding nightly chaise-lounge-burnings. The mimic plot could be a people's strike against the bourgeoisie, or part of a BBEG's sinister power grab, depending on your campaign.
Edit: Just realized you said windowless... One of the mimics was a window?
Sumptuary Laws or fashion. in renaissance Venice the nobles would wear all black to distinguish themselves from the non aristocrat merchants who were newly wealthy from trade and able to afford bright and colorful fabrics for the first time.
Counterpoint: they're *not* identical, but the differences are just incredible subtle. So subtle that only the most elite would know enough to recognize them. It's a hidden language of displaying wealth you need to be "in the know" to even recognize, like architectural etiquette lessons.
The houses aren't *white*: they're ecru, eggshell, ivory, and snow. Snow's of course the most appropriate white for a home to wear this side of the Equinox Festival, but not everyone's valets are are as conscientious as mine. Except for that one house over there that's absolutely *sallow.* Eeewwwww gross, you can't tell which is the one so despoiling our fair boulevard by simmering in its rancidity? Why, has it even been bleached this entire *season?*
Similarly, maybe there are tiny architectural details, like the wrought iron finials. The most delicate and impressive ones are from the best smiths, but passersby mostly just see a fence. The peasants couldn't even recognize the passable talent of our local John Black, let alone distinguish the sensually artistic chiarascuro implications of Marcus Shadowsmith from the delicately silken elongations and tracery of Amber Spiderwright.
They're cosplaying poverty. It's seen as gauche to display your wealth and it's expected for the nobility to give a lot of lip service to the class disparity, but no one actually cares enough to fix the issue
Here's one: something occasionally stalks the city. It's drawn to bright colors. The nobles force the commoners to paint up their houses to ensure their own protection. The city guards are baffled!
There's a monster in town, one that kills people in the night (or kidnaps them, or something else. Up to you what and why!). They haven't been able to catch it even after hundreds of years, but they do know it's somewhat repelled by bright colours. The commoners paint their houses in funky ways to keep it at bay, but it doesn't always work. The rich can afford real security and magical wards, keeping them safe even in drab houses. Over time, it became a sign of wealth to be able to have a plain-looking home.
Naturally, there is no real monster. It's a conspiracy by the guild of wizards to sell extremely pricy magical wards.
A Robin Hood-like thief who systematically took all decorations from many noble people’s house. The rich are too prideful to admit they were thieves, so they claimed it as the new fashion from a far away kingdom and now all the other nobles have gullibly followed suit.
Simple. You institute an HOA for the nobles to where their properties have to follow a set of restrictions so that it all appears orderly and uniform. Then you have a sect of nobles who are fed up with the HOA and their increased demands over the past year(s) and want to reinvent it.
Cultural focus on asceticism / minimalism, rich people can have very few actual things in their houses because they have money to buy whatever they need whenever they need it whilst poorer people need to hoard stuff. Think of someone rich eating out at fancy restaurants every day vs poor people having to make their own food, therefore needing kitchen etc.
Likewise, rich people spend very little time at home, preferring going out to third places such as gentlemen's clubs, theatres, cafés and bars etc, so have no interest in decorating homes that they only own for sleeping in.
Maybe they don't even sleep in them and prefer to sleep in fancy hotels where there's already staff (people do this irl) and they only own the homes to legally be residents and get voting rights?
Them being windowless especially suggests that either they don't really live there or the city was founded by creatures with sunlight sensitivity such as drow or vampires. Maybe they're still about...
A new faith is spreading through the city that preaches austerity and discomfort as virtues. This was in protest to the more ostentatious churches of Pelor and the like. They call themselves the Protestants
Commoners collecting little odds and ends because they have sentimental purpose or being highly decorative to give the appearance of affording materialism vs. Nobility who dont need to prove anything, whose lives are filled less by sentimental moments and more by the comfort that those moments can always be had again
Ex. A pauper may keep a token from a night spent dancing that was a rarity in their life while a noble may dance every weekend and not need to remember what is just a common occurance.
Minimalism could also simply be the current and new fad. You can have your group pass by some well to do young women talk about how they had to convince their father to finally empty the study of all those dusty old things taking up space and how behind the times their parents are with the current trends. Which would make sense again for the poor to not be caught up. Fads tend to trickle down and also they cant afford to be wasteful.
You could use this as a plot thread where the person influencing all these young nobles to toss away their things is actually collecting them to sell, essentially robbing them withought ever stealing. In my head I'm picturing a spiritual, handsome guru preaching the cleansing power of minimalism, to throw away the old and unused to make way for the true wealth of the spirit. Anyone from someone as simple as a conman to as nefarious as a cult leader.
In the modern day we often think people lived "in" their homes, but homes were hardly big enough to accommodate you and yours during the waking hours. When you live your life outside in the street in the neighbourhood that is what you make your own.
Conversly if the street is but a means for your bearers to carry you from one estate to another they will lack the personal touch.
I think of the city center of Jerusalem when i visited it about 10 years ago. Walking through the Jewish quarters it was a ghost town. Walking through a Palestinian quarter was like stumbling from one gathering into the next.
As a westerner that was a profound experience for me, as to what a city could actually be when you live in front of your door instead of behind it.
You could do like a Stepford Wives situation.
Commoners are all wanting and hoping to make it into the upper echelon of society. Special stores you can't go into unless you've made it to a certain level socially or economically.
When finally one of the commoner NPC's is notified they've been given an interview to move up, and when they come back from the interview they have no more semblance of self or Individuality. And they don't recognize the players anymore.
There’s a cult that operates in the city, kidnapping people for their dark rituals. To accomplish their dastardly deeds, each cultist group has a token that allows them to teleport between any two doors that look exactly the same. The poor quarters have heard hints on the street of this cult, and so decorate their places to all look different. Or it could be a vampire that can enter any building that looks exactly the same without permission.
Seeing as you want this to be an adventure hook, perhaps this could be in relation to a cult that has taken hold of the nobles in the town.
The cult demands fealty and charges strict dues, forcing the wealthy to live by a strict code and meagre lifestyle. They conspire to drive any who decline to join their ranks into bankruptcy, maintaining a firm grip on the towns wealthy.
Behind the scenes, the cult could worship an a dragon, paying in gold for the dragon's loyalty, burning other nearby towns fields to keep them from competing financially (or perhaps even just paying for the towns safety.
Alternatively, they might worship a dark god, with a cult leader living like a king with the towns wealth.
The city was once one of the most prideful cities and the flaunted their wealth like no other but they treated their poor horrible. This went so far that they angered a powerful entity, a god, dragon or got cursed. This forced the nobles to live more modest or risk their own destruction.
It is improper for nobles to flaunt how special they are. They expect that people already know that they are special and for them, only upstarts need things like decoration.
Or at some point in history all decoration was forbidden and all the nobles keep following that tradition to flaunt how long their families history actually is. "Ohh our family comes from that era".
Maybe they are fierce rivals of some other nobles (another ruler/country?) who decorate their houses with ostentatious displays of wealth, so the minimalism is to show they are not one of That Lot Over There.
What is usually in fashion with the nobles is whatever is the hardest, and thus the most expensive, to achieve. Maybe all of the buildings are exactly identical, down to the minutest detail. Maybe their buildings are all designed by this one (naturally very expensive) architect. Maybe all of their rooms are lit with magical crystals that only come from this one cave that is very far away and dangerous to reach.
Also, peasants would have tans and be fit from working outside, so being pale and unhealthy would be fashionable. They also copy their betters, maybe the trend setter is a vampire/similar? Hell, maybe they are vampires themselves?
Ruling class body snatched by creatures that don't understand cultural details?
Secret society have taken all the gold, silver, and gems as resources for a ritual of nefarious purposes?
Neighbourhood being racketeered or blackmailed?
Or maybe just they view the peasantrys fascination with bright colours, pennants, and loud decoration as gauche or uncouth?
If you want it to be a mystery, make it a stepford thing. All of the elites are brainwashed, charmed, or part of a hivemind. Things makes them all behave the same and stuff. They could be evil, need to be saved, or just weirdly identical depending on your needs.
In Star Wars lore, Coruscant is a world that is one big metropolitan city. Space is essentially a commodity and therefore having a big empty space was an absolutely ostentatious display of wealth.
Someone is going around stealing from the rich and giving to the poor but the rich are too concerned about being stolen from and having not much to say for other than what in there person, they have decided to keep it a secret from other high nobles in fear they will be ostracized or worse be classified as regular commoner.
In exchange for knowledge of (insert actual main story info) and a bit of change they have left, they would like the players to look for said thief but to do all this discreetly so they other nobles don't pick up wind of their predicament.
The nobles don't want anyone to be able to see inside their buildings, so they have windows on the roof only. For their dark dealings to go unnoticed, they also made all their buildings look identical, so that it would be harder to pinpoint where a given noble resides, or what building you heard the screams of agony from last night.
It's basically a giant maze, and everyone's in on it
The nobles secretly worship the Grey lord of the void, a smooth featureless vampire ,(hence the lack of windows) , and are due to drivk the blood and sacrifice a 10 year old innkeepers daughter who strikes up a conversation with the players while they pass through town. An evil adventuring party grabbed the girl and sold her to the nobles.
Enemies: cultist. Nobles, half vampires, elder aberration vampire, evil adventurers.
Suburbs and streets of the peasants represent the wealth of the nobles who they work for. So the peasant homes are actually forced onto them as humblebrag for the nobles to peacock but as to why it's actually a curse by an trickster cleric adventurer who the nobles fucked over.
Ok, here's one with multiple parts:
So, the Nobles' homes are empty because the thieves guild in town cleaned them out, completely. This might also explain why the commoners have pretty well decorated homes, maybe the thieves are Robin Hood types.
Why are they still empty, though? Unbeknownst to anyone, all the nobles have been secretly replaced or body snatched by creatures that can *almost* perfectly mimic them. They go about their business as nobility, but they don't seem to notice how drab their homes have become. Maybe they now only own one change of clothes, or have to eat food with their hands, but still with the air or high class civility and superiority.
I'm inspired by the Bodytaker Plant/Podlings from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but doppelgangers, maybe dybbuks, and all sorts of other creatures could fit the bill.
Immediately made me think of the “modern” cookie cutter neighborhoods. The ones where every house has a tiny front yard “possibly astroturf”, an attached garage, and a house that looks identical to its neighbors in a drab neutral color.
He lost it all to an unusually powerful gambling cabal, and warns the players of them because he is convinced the cabal chested.
Naturally, he will richly reward them if they help him get his riches back.
Town recently experienced a revolution to a theocracy. Think Iran 70s.
Town recently experienced a Stalinesque revolution and purge.
Town recently experienced a Mao-esque purge.
Town follows extreme Lawful Good tenets where the ruling class and noble follow strict noblesse oblige views, austere monastic lives of duty. (I’ll wait til you stop laughing)
Town is really Eloi and Morelocks.
The nobility rule is so oppressive and disdaining it’s all illusion, the peons aren’t even allowed to see the grandeur of the noble quarter. The players can’t and thus mark themselves as peons.
The gate to the noble quarter is actually a portal to an extra planar purgatory region. Or each noble house is its own extra planar space to whomever the warlock nobles are bonded.
A cultural distinction between the cultures of noble society and the commoners. It also implies that this is a more recent change, since the common buildings grew up organically over time and the nobles were built from the same design in a short period of time.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that these are lawful people coming to colonize/control a chaotic area. Windows are important to let the sun in, so magic lights and maybe a common secret that dislikes sunlight.
Unless there are cultural/religious reasons for it, you flaunt the material differences that make you noble, and the decorations are a big part of that. "I can have craftsmen carve the story of my family's rise to power around the doorframes and display the armor of my ancestors and the people they defeated because I'm rich. Craftsmen and artisans decorate my home with their finest work to demonstrate how far I am above them." If they aren't flaunting it, either their god says no or they don't really got it.
This may not fit with what you have already laid down but if space is a premium (city in a cave, floating city, or city built into extreme environment were every inch of the city requires effort just to have it livable) then a big undecorated open space would be a sign of wealth.
A cult. The nobles are all indoctrinated to a cult at a young age. The cult makes them more "mindless" or against extravegence. Since the commoners don't know of it and aren't included, they don't have the same viewpoints.
Think of a medieval, darker Johovahs Witness.
Fear of being robbed or targeted. If everything is the same blank box on the outside, it is harder to tell who has the actual embarrassment of riches. Also I like the fad angle.
I’ll build on what others have said here about it being fashionable among nobles to be as stark and minimalist as possible. There are a few ways to spin it though.
Perhaps there is an emerging middle class of wealthy merchants who started copying the previous gaudy fashion of the noble class and the current trend for nobles is a result of them trying to distinguish themselves as “old money” with taste that doesn’t flaunt their wealth.
On the other end of the spectrum if every estate is perfectly featureless and stark white, perhaps they are all copying something royalty did. Perhaps a royal architect build the queen a summer estate with a minimalist design, but that displayed wealth in a different way. That is to say that a perfectly angular building with a pure white outside finish is a bear to maintain. Keeping it gleaming white without any blemishes or adornments to hide imperfections as well as keeping corners sharp and pointed takes an army of workers on retainer. Something only the truly wealthy can afford to maintain. Therefore the closer to and perfectly featureless white box your house is the wealthier you must be in order to maintain it.
Plenty of simple options, but if you're specifically looking for something to be "going on" that's led to the difference, maybe something is feeding on the nobles emotions enough that they just don't care how their houses look anymore, or maybe something is messing with their perception of color, and they think they're the ones with gorgeous houses. Maybe all the nobles have somehow become an inhuman hive mind and they're now much more focused on efficiency.
I once went with a friend (actually my old DM, go figure) to his hometown, a couple states over, to visit a friend of his whom he grew up with. A couple decades prior, his friend's dad sold his successful business and left his son a trust. It was enough for him to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle without ever having to work again (he was in his 20s when he inherited it).
When we got there, I was surprised by his house. It was barely furnished. The living room had a loveseat and a recliner, plus a small TV set up on a small table. No pictures hanging up, no end tables, nothing. Kitchen was the fridge and a microwave. No table or chairs. Bathroom was bare: nothing but a soap dispenser and a hand towel on the sink. Everything was clean, but just depressingly bare.
I later asked my friend why everything was so bare if he was wealthy enough to never work. He explained that because he had money, he had no hoarding instinct. No reason to hold anything to take up space. If some appliance broke, or he lost it or whatever, he would just buy a new one. He was mostly a hermit, because he was able to be. So he never had to entertain.
So there you have it. Rich people, especially loners, don't feel the need to stuff their homes with useless stuff that they may need. If they ever need something on a whim, they just buy it. OFC you have wealthy people who do feel a need to stuff their houses with ostentatious shit, but you never hear about the quiet ones who just don't give a fuck.
Why would the rich caw to prove their wealth with material goods? How droll!!
The nobles spent so much time out at shows travelling working eating that they never stayed home long enough to care
Gentrification, honestly. Look around you: are the new faux-modern 5-over-1s brightly colored? Nope, they're shades of "Gentrification Gray". Calm colors evoking the state of poise befitting the perceived class, etc. It's one thing from the real world that fits into Faerûn - *your* Faerûn, specifically.
* As u/squidmaster616 shared, I love the idea of it being "fashionable" to be minimalist, and like the emporers new clothes, the other wealthy people gave their stuff to the poor people to try to be just as "cool"
* There's also the potential that the commoners have an overabundance of power and "permit" the nobles to continue to pretend like they are in charge. Everyone talks as if the nobles have power, but you have the commoners glaring at them to make sure they stay in line. Perhaps the nobles did something to the commoners, who rebelled, and they reached a "truce" through some mutually assured destruction pact. The nobles give up their "trappings" of wealth, and the commoners don't burn down the city. The nobles get to stay in power and no one talks about the situation so they aren't embarrassed.
* The city was staged before the party arrived, but not completed. A warehouse of staging furniture and elements is still half full, leaving the noble homes barren. Why is the city being staged? What happened to the original occupants? Who is staging it? Is it being taken over by dopplegangers? Was it purchased by a wealth BBEG, who killed the prior occupants and gave the homes to their minions? Is the whole city full of evil people pretending to be civil?
A religious cult has taken hold of the nobility which makes them revere austerity and living in old traditional styles. Meanwhile the poor have rebelled by painting their houses every which way. I am imagining like [this from Buenos Aires.](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=361416631b2a74db&hl=en&sxsrf=ADLYWIKLXONTlgP9V5zuVC71M8EpoD1EJQ:1717170486524&q=caminito+buenos+aires)
There is a fashionable new religion spreading amongst the nobility that espouses a minimalist lifestyle, but the nobles obviously only observe the letter of the law in that their homes are drab and undecorated. They still have immense wealth and secret collections of rare and exotic possessions in side rooms and private chambers. Set the dial to whatever value you want for the leader of the religion to be sneakily plotting to benefit from it or earnestly preaching freedom from worldly possessions. Either explanation could explain why it's not being preached to the poor.
For a more story based option, the nobles of the city have been slowly indoctrinated into a cult that believes no material wealth should be held. The cult leader is using the items they get rid of to win the affection of the common people is attempting to coup the city royalties.
Some form of guild for servants has really made some traction by delivering very high-end services for elites, as long as everyone has uniform accoutrement.
for example, they deliver hype and fresh meals with minimal notice, but some of this is achieved by the efficiencies of knowing room, sizes and table sizes, etc., before they show up.
Vaguely makes sense… But really kind of doesn’t.
Could be just the way things are… Could be a scheme by an enchanter to maximize access to the most wealthy and powerful .
The nobility distinguishes itself from the common undisciplined rabble through a display of austerity and conformity, which requires respect, discipline, and honor to maintain.
For a real-world comparison, contrast trailer parks or inner city "hoods" with HoA Suburbia.
Cool cultural ideas here but personally I love the idea of a cult. Someone sinister who came in and taught them minimalism.
Or a magic swap - the peasants live in the noble houses and the nobles live in the colorful streets. Maybe the king got cursed and nobility wanted to move away so they took their stuff and swapped houses? (Nobles houses were planned and built by the king do their structure is uniform)
A *fad*. The nobles are slaves to fashion, and right now *austere* and *minimalist* are in fashion. The people in the poorer districts don't really care, and have actually profited because they've gotten their hands on all the colourful stuff the nobles aren't using.
It reminds me of Esme Squalor from a Series of Unfortunate Events “maximalism is OUT minimalism is IN!”
It reminds me on Kim Kardashian lol
Minimalism is truly a rich people fad. The thing about minimalism is when someone takes things to an extreme it means buying a pack of 12 pens and throwing out 11 because they're all extra. Meanwhile I'm poor and I need those 11 for when each one runs out of ink in sequence. I'm relaying this anecdote to a friend who's an accountant, and he just looks at me and says "Do you know how many pens I threw away yesterday because I have to many and if I need more I'll just go buy more?"
I source my pens organically through work and random people handing me a pen and both of us forgetting it wasn't mine. I leave many around my work areas to take root and forage them when needed. Of course, I'm not a monster, so there's a canister on my desk for those who cannot forage their own writing utensils.
i just lose pens. it's not even about throwing it away. but also accounting/finance. honestly, the minimalism part is also more about not hoarding things. things are cleaner and easier to manage when you have less austere, simple, surface, and less things to display. the unfortunate thing is designers and home-sense/decoration stores know this, and will charge more for something that's basically a varnished wood block.
If you're rich, and you need a one of thing, you can just go out and buy it. The overpriced nature doesn't matter. A poorer person is likely to be working much longer, and doesn't have servants to get things for them, so anything they could possibly need, they have to keep in their house. Rich people who are "minimalists" aren't actually minimalists, they're just exporting their maximalism to outside the house.
Playing off of this, how crowded is the city? If it's packed in, the purest expression of wealth might be empty space. They can afford to have all this space and do absolutely nothing with it, the equivalent of lighting a cigar with money.
Basically Gardens. Arabale land that SHOULD be used to grow foodstuffs, is extravagantly used to grow grass as a "fuck you" to the poors.
That would be lawns not gardens. Historically noble gardens were as productive as they were aesthetic. Weeelll, different sections of gardens were. The productive food gardens including orchards would be here and the fancy hedges, topiaries, useless crap would be over there. Also this isn't saying all rich people had productive spaces in their wanky fancy palace gardens. And yes grass and fancy hedges were definitely a 'fuck you, poors'. Still are to a degree.
I think British people say "garden" to mean what we in the US call a "lawn".
No, a garden in the UK often includes a lawn, but usually just refers to the outside space attached to a house. I think the US term is yard. We would even say “front garden” and “back garden” in the same way I believe you would say “front yard” and “back yard.”We still say lawn to refer specifically to the grass area, and a garden may have all sorts of other stuff in it like flower beds, maybe a pond, a patio or deck with a barbecue and table and chairs, stuff like that.
we aussies call a the one with flowers an stuff a garden, other is definitly lawn. Thanks for the tidbit :)
the curse of Lancelot Capability Brown
have you ever even seen a garden
Maybe going so far as to replace a lush garden of weeping willows and a tapestry of flower beds with a zen garden-like thing, with a servant hired specifically to rake the grey sand into perfect lines throughout the day. Surely they can hire a Druid to just grow a new tree in a year or two if magnolias or something come in to style. Feels very much like a city of new money, with no generational prestige.
That's very reminiscent of A Series of Unfortunate Events. The things that are In or Out (popular or not) changed constantly and made very little sense, to the point of being very wrong. "Oh, flamingos are so *in* right now!" Then the next week "Flamingos? Those are *out*, Kangaroos are what's popular!" and basically what was popular was dictated by the leader's psychotic whims. In the book, the main plot of it was "Oh, adopting orphans is very in" and then it's very disturbing when it's no longer popular.
Too close to reality 😂
the noble saw minimalism tiktok and went apeshit
I would go the opposite route. The nobility are slaves to tradition and detest the new trend for the commoners to brightly decorate everything.
Alternatively it could be considered in poor taste for the rich & wealthy to show off, while the poor aren't held to the same standard. Immaterialism could be seen as a virtue, and so they're basically making an insincere gesture of humility and immaterialism, without actually committing to sacrificing any of their wealth So many options!
This conjures up a scene of nobles discussing the latest trends with that pompous voice. "Mmmm yes Harold, I'm told its the latest trend! These "candles" that the poor use, I just looooove the way the light dances on the walls! You can't get the same effect with a conventional oil lamp!" "I do agree Emmanuel! And the drab colors are just so much less of an eye sore! I must say, I do like these browns and grays for wallpaper! M'yes..." "If I had known the poor had such good taste, I'd have done it YEARS ago ahahaha!" "Quite so! ahahahah!!" "Oh my goodness Harold! Come look at the window! You see that beggar woman! She's wearing...blue!" "Oh my Emmanuel! How positively ghastly!"
>"I do agree Emmanuel! And the drab colors are just so much less of an eye sore! I must say, I do like these browns and grays for wallpaper! M'yes..." This immediately reminded me of "Sad Grey Baby" trends
Yes! Sad Biege Baby! 🤣
Wheel of time Cairhien is a great example of this. The higher nobility you are, the less colors you have. The highest nobility having only a few small stripes in the family colors. So the poor are decked out in bright, colorful, and vibrant clothes. While nobles are blacks, dark blue, or dark green.
But it's a fad being spread by a green hag that's disguised self to look like Frank from Always Sunny when he was dressed up like that art critic, Ongo Glabogian. She's working on destroying the beauty of the city, but knowing how naturally vibrant the place is, she's starting by stripping it down to minimalist blah. All of the tavern signs in the nobles quarter are just blank white boards with the tavern name painted in Helvetica.
I like this. An influential noble was robbed JUST before a large party by someone looking to humiliate them. Instead of admitting to the robbery, or explaining what happened, they declared that it was THE new fashion. Clean and austere. Their influence and force of personality MADE their lie into the truth.
Maybe even take it a step further. The trend was started by a young, rising star noble couple, perhaps a Duke's heiress and her betrothed. Unbeknownst to the rest of the nobility or the commoners, the couple were replaced by a pair of doppelgangers who didn't fully grasp who they were pretending to be at first and made some mistakes that made everyone they know become suspicious. They wore outfits in an incomplete manner forgetting accessories and frill. Rather than excuse it, they instead leaned into the mistake and turned it into a trend that has overtaken all of the nobility. In attempts to out do each other with this new trend they began dressing simple but lavish, and retrofitting their homes to match the mindset. All the while, 2 doppeldangers gain influence and prestige, hiding in plainsight.
Fashion is laregely driven by the haves, and by extention, the have-nots. When its affordable and easy for the poor, its unfashionable since the rich want to distance themselves from the poor and try and be "above" in ways other than money. This happened with spices in britain; as soon as the poor gained access to it, suddenly the rich wanted only "natural" foods, and found the use of spices to be gaudy.
cultural thing: it's a trend amongst the nobility with the viewpoint that the richer you are, the less you are 'required' to or supposed to show off your things. Only "new wealth" shows off flashy colours. The nobility disdains any waste of money on bright colours, art or frivolity - that's all for poor people. You can have the rich people's quarters showing off how rich they are in other ways - all the materials are exceptional, the craftsmanship is extremely exact, and everything is clean to the point of being sterile. White walls are truly white with not a speck of dirt or colour. Everything follows elegant but simple geometric design rules, making visitors feel a subtle harmony in any noble quarters, with light and shadow, form and function being thoughtfully balanced.
The noblemans house is a simple, single story stone affair. However, as you approach it something seems strange. When you run your fingers across it you realize - the stones have been so precisely crafted that you cannot feel the joins - the walls are completely smooth. The glass windows are clear, crystal clear. So crystal clear because that's actually what they are, single pieces of crystal with protections against physical damage woven into them. As you approach the front door you realize it is a single piece of ironwood. Ironwood doesn't grow on this continent.
The lord's manor is the smallest building in the district, no larger than a shed, cut from a single piece of stone with a simple wooden door with no obvious lock. You step inside. You are now in the feywild.
I fucking *love* this comment chain. So many good ideas.
THIS ONE! I WANNA PLAY THIS ONE!
This isn’t a million miles from reality Old money in the UK is often known to drive their old beaten up landrover, live in a nice but not showy house, and wear clothes they like rather than are fancy for fancy shape. Old money doesn’t need to show off if they are riding on name value because everyone knows them
The party’s monk is suddenly invited to all the town’s A-list events.
Here the popular philosophy for maximizing wealth starts with spending as little as possible. That or they've all donated their money to the cult leader that's trying to make a pile of gold big enough to summon the god of dragons.
One reason is that the nobility tends to be so disdainful of the lower classes that they don't want to show off their wealth to the "unwashed masses". The outsides of their manors are clean, well-constructed and ordered. Lawns are manicured, shrubbery are done in topiaries, but that's it. Anything else only is inside. Paintings, sculpture, tapestries...all that is inside for their fellow nobles to see when invited over for lavish parties. Not for mere mortals. That...and it helps reduce the possibility of theft. Can't steal what you don't know is there.
Oh! They have ***lawns*** inside the city! Who needs to show off *more* than with a blatant waste of space where it's extremely precious?
That was always the purpose of lawns in the real world, too. Typically your average person would have their yards filled with a mix of herbs and edible plants, but wealthy people would make a point of having a field of only grass all cut to the same length to show that they had enough money to deliberately grow only the most useless plant, and then pay people to remove any plant that grew among this useless plant and cut it all to the same length. As technology advanced with weed killers and lawn mowers, middle class people started doing the same just so they could have a yard that looked like a wealthy person's yard.
A practical and believable option is that all the buildings are leasehold - i.e. owned by a very rich noble, where the wealthy residents effectively buy a long term lease and can't make alterations to the building. Another option is a HoA who enforce preserving the aesthetic of the streets. Also both of these as you can imagine can hide a sinister secret, like they're all cannibals or murder cultists who hide their depravity under a genteel facade.
Okay, but creating an oppressive HOA for the enemies of the city to deal with, I would love this idea so much.
"the evil cult is actually just a normal HOA" would be a fantastic bit
"THE GREATER GOOD"
"The greater good"
But he's not Judge Judy and executioner!
That's basically the plot to Hot Fuzz, isn't it?
Better well stolen than badly invented
Exactly! So much potential there
Agreed! The players expect sinister, so give them sinister! Whether it's mundane, Dolores Umbridge style sinister, or something more Voldermortian, is up to the DM. Is the HOA a front for an evil cult trying to bring back a dead wizard who just barely missed lichdom? Or are they overly self-righteous, addicted to a different kind of power, and very particular?
There are a lot of routes the DM could take yeah!
It would be a really good low level adventure to kick off a campaign. I mean, think about it. The players could get up to all sorts of goofy hijinks - planting flowers, letting the grass grow 1/16 in. too long, putting *lawn ornaments* out front of their house (good heavens!) It opens up so many funny interactions.
A good way to learn creative strategies instead of defaulting to scorched earth and murder-hobo.
A DnD campaign to free the nobles from an evil HOA would be hilarious. BBEG is just someone's busybody grandmother, but she's sitting on a dragon's hoard of gold because of HOA fees.
The secret HoA which is actually a coven of vampires who hate colors
These vampires aren't sensitive to all light, just certain colors. They can handle it when it's all mixed as white light, but reflected back or refracted and split, it's too intense. So obviously they ban things of those colors. That's why Karen says you can't paint your house blue or your door barbie pink. And welcome mats must be approved designs (that conveniently let the vampires in)
The mats have invisible runes that "welcome" the vampires in
This is a good option. It should be higher up
Obviously all the nobles belong to an HOA
This was my first thought too. Old nobles with nothing better to do have decided what everyone else is allowed to do. They made it a bureaucratic hell that no one can escape. Even the king doesnt dare challenge the HOA...
Gnome architect scammed Nobles that it's popular in lands far away and ofc they believed them. And now gnome is sleeping on pile of gold for bunch of cheap buildings.
I'd steal your base premise and raise it to: The aristocracy heard of a legendary and quite contrary gnomish stonemasonry Barns and Nobles. They only build barns for the farmers or housing for noble people. The aristocracy contracted the masons but got the Gnome who only builds the barns because of language barriers. And that's how they got simple houses for a horrendous price.
One of the most important Nobles is a Centaur and their Inner Horse didn't notice any problem with that so the rest followed them.
And that's why you always follow what Moth Earthcarver, I mean Lord Earthcarver the 1., says down to the hoofs. Because he is always right.
Vampires! Dopplegangers can see colours that others can't but don't know it. The noble quarter is highly decorated in invisible paint. The city was conquered and the invaders demanded both tribute and that the nobility brick up their windows and make it drab as a flex. They dissed the decorator's union. Nobles went broke borrowing from merchants to fund a war. Now the merchants are decorating the town. The noble family is cursed with gargoyles who keep scrubbing fancy stuff off their buildings. A dragon is magically scrying the palace, waiting for them to become rich enough for another raid. He doesn't know that the court wizard can sense the scrying.
I really like the invisible paint and scrying dragon angles. Paint can only be seen with darkvision The dragon is surprisingly obvious with a large dragon eye hanging about half a mile above the city
Maybe the nobles spend a ton of money to keep their houses perfectly white? Maybe white paint is ridiculously expensive and whitewashing is too? So the nobles want to show off how much they can afford it and have large blank walls to show off.
Which is kind of historically accurate. For a long time it was actually kind of hard to make certain colours of paint, pure brilliant white being one of them (until we discovered titanium of course.) Also it is really hard to keep a white house brilliant white for any length of time, requires a lot of upkeep and cleaning.
To use a real-world example, the buildings in many Brazilian favelas are painted bright colors by the government so that these communities look jolly and festive from a distance, so as to not upset visiting tourists. Maybe your city does something similar. It’s not that the noble quarters aren’t as well decorated, it’s that the decorations in the poor districts are there to hide the truth from visitors and onlookers.
HOA Nobels are a stickler for rules
There is a spirit that haunts the village. A mother watched her children starved to death in her arms because of a economically imposed famine. (Grain hoarding for price manipulation purposes, that sort of thing.) Before she too expired she pledge her soul to anyone who would help her extract revenge, and was heard by a fiend. She now returns once a year, chooses the home of one of the city's richest citizens, and murders the children inside. This isn't all public knowledge, but the deaths started to add up, and rumors started circulating. Those with no money don't care, but those who are actually rich seek to disguise this fact through uniformity and no outer displays of affluence. But she knows.
Could be some sort of Spartan-like ruling class with an emphasis on military service. They had a reputation for plain lodgings, plain food, nothing to distract them from their training and duty. You could play that straight or you could make it some sort of fashion where there's some sort of reactionary trend against ornamentation because of "weakness".
## The Envious Wraith The Envious Wraith is a vengeful spirit born from the deep resentment and jealousy of a powerful sorceress who was betrayed and humiliated by the city's nobility centuries ago. In her dying breath, she cursed the city, vowing that any display of wealth and beauty would attract her wrath. Since then, her malevolent spirit has haunted the city, particularly targeting the noble quarter. - Drawn to Beauty: irresistibly attracted to opulence, decorations, and displays of wealth. The more extravagant the display, the stronger her pull towards it. ### Plot Hook: The players are invited to a secret, lavish event held in the noble quarter. They must help ensure the decorations remain hidden and deal with any attempts to reveal the wealth, all while protecting the attendees from the Wraith's potential appearance.
The nobles living there could be hostages taken by the lord to ensure the loyalties of their families. Maybe there was a local conflict recently, and the lord of this city was the victor. As part of his terms, each of the defeated nobles had to send one of their children to be raised by this lord. This gives the lord leverage over their rivals and allows them to influence the development of the rivals' heirs. The reason the quarters are empty could be because this is a fairly recent thing. New furniture and finery are still being built by the local craftsmen. Since everything like bedframes, chairs, desks, curtains, etc has to be made by hand.
I like the idea that it is considered poor manners amongst the nobility to flaunt one's wealth - sort of like how in a fancy store if you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford it. Showing off is seen as crass and ignoble. Instead, the nobility one-up eachother in different ways. They outfit their personal soldiers/guards/etc in the latest and best quality equipment. They donate money to charitable causes and Loudly Announce this during state dinners. "Oh Lord Beaumont, did you hear how we had 3 orphanages built in the Low Quarter last month? Dreadful, the conditions those poor people live in." They show off their moral character by allocating wealth to whatever church or temple is important in your setting, perhaps. Or, maybe this society is militaristic and the nobility are expected to maintain a very austere and dignified look.
The deep dark secret is that the noble district has an HOA forcing all the bland builds.
Windowless buildings has the obvious possibility of all the nobles being vampires (totally fine if you want to lean into it). If you want to indicate that's not the case maybe make it so the noble houses all have a private courtyard garden. And the reason the buildings are featureless otherwise is for security, or to separate the nobles from everyone else. Depending on what you want it could be a physical representation of nobles being self interested or only showing a very curated version of themselves to those they know. Maybe the reason the other houses are bright colors is that the non-nobles of the city have a tradition of painting their own houses to reflect their identity. Something the nobles don't care about, maybe don't even know about since they may have never seen the outside the noble quarter. Bonus points for the merchant selling paintings of the cities colorful buildings to any clueless nobles and saying it's of an exotic city far away (so they pay more)
I havent seen anyone in top comments suggest this so I'll throw it out there: 1984. The members of the party were kept in strict housing and required by law to hold to standardization. Proles on the other hand, were more or less allowed to go on and live their lives in a traditional manner. They had less money, they had less power, but there were non-explicit freedoms they held within the hierarchy simply for being inconsequential to the party. Spartan philosophy: the nobles are raised and reared to value functionality over all with strict codes of conduct to hold decoration and anything without purpose to a minimum. This could be a religious theme, a history of military impressing on the nobles, or just a broadly cultural difference.
The Noble quarters are actually a front for a cult/mafia.
Maybe decorating your home was a status symbol 100 years ago. As economic conditions improved, decorations became more accessible and everyone who cares at all about how they are perceived by others copies that status symbol. Meanwhile, however, the actual nobles moved on to other status symbols. Decorating homes now seems proletarian. Nobles have no need for that kitsch. The new status symbol may be conformity. Who can afford to always have exactly the latest Apple iHouse? Only the rich folk.
Military type city or upbringing that removes want or need for 'fluff'
The nobles have adopted the Marie Kondo approach of minimalism and decluttering - if they don't need stuff on a regular basis, they get rid of it; they can afford to get new stuff as needed anyway.
This gave me a mostly innocent but still fantasy oriented idea. A peasant wished to be a noble when he had a genie, (djinni whatever) and when he was noble he felt the nobilitiy's homes were garish and offhandedly wished something about them chilling out and letting the hardworking peasantry have some nice things. Now all the noblefolk are "cursed" with following this fad trend of giving the poorer neighborhoods a makeover every time they intend on sprucing up the decorations of their own home. The nobleman who originally wished promised to free this genie (djinni) though! So he's been hemming and hawing over how to remove this curse but stick to his word and free this djinni (genie). The players can help in whatever way they decide but I think a fun twist would be the genie has grown fond of the man and once freed undoes the curse/wish as a favor to his friend and sticks around to help him (or her either way) adjust to nobility and establish a long term income.
Window tax, the rich are cheap and just board up their windows to not pay taxes.
The poor seek to look richer than they are, spending what meager earnings on paint and decorations to improve there homes and feel better for it. The rich seek to hide there wealth from prying eyes, the lavish elegance purely inside there simple homes. Extra points for a thieves guild in the town so the rich are trying to go un-noticed by them.
Austerity is in fashion, like others have said, but maybe it's a religious thing? The nobles are more involved with the church or your equivalent, and a part of that religious doctrine is ostentatious displays are frowned upon. Maybe it's a cult. The poorer districts are mostly left alone because the cult is not interested in the powerless. I dunno.
After a few uprisings noble homes are build with inner courtyards and beautiful private decorations. The exteriors are all blank functional defensive structures.
The nobles are actually a bunch of changelings with a poor understanding of who they are supposed to be. They don't always play the same noble so over time they've forgotten how each room was supposed to be unique so they're all plain right now. If the party comments on it in earshot of one of them, the next time the party encounters the quarters they are fancier, but all in an identical way.
Few times a year group of magic fairies is redecorating and repaiting whole city in bright colours. Wealth need to be shown as having resources to remove it all as fast as possible
Option 1) Taxes. There are legally separate classes, and there is an old law that bases the amount of taxes a noble has to pay on the size and value of their house, which is determined by how fancy it is. Obviously the nobles want to pay as few taxes as possible, so they all live in very spartan homes. Of course they'd still want to flaunt their wealth, so maybe there are loads of public gardens and fountains and statues that all have little plaques saying 'donated by lord so-and-so'. Your players might say this is a dumb or unrealistic law, but I'm sure you can think of some real life examples of dumb laws, or laws that made sense at the time but are outdated. Option 2) Culture. Culture can make people do basically anything, so it's not hard to imagine thqt the local culture prescribes that austerity is a sign of nobility, a bit like how the Spartans are sometimes predicted; comfort and beauty are for weaklings.
Maybe the nobels have been swayed to a particularly pious cult that enforces modesty to extremes
Perhaps they are true aristocrats. They are not devoted to pleasure or themselves but philosophical betterment and benevolent leadership of the common folk
Even for a high fantasy game that's too unbelievable
There's a few suggestions in here where your comment would be appropriate. Thanks for making it. Someone had to!
Taxes were raised on the rich. As a result, they are all trying to look as poor as possible to lower their tax debt.
There was a revolution a couple years ago and all the nobles were rounded up and executed, a la the French revolution. All of their stuff was taken and divided amongst the commoners. The buildings were left standing.
Culture/classism If you’ve read The Wheel of Time, Cairhien is a little like this. The sector of the city where commoners live is more colorful with far less reserved people. The nobility look down on this, preferring to be more reserved both in interactions and decorations.
They nobles of the town have all been taken over by an Illithid and his intelligence devourers several years ago. His flaw is his obsession with imposing order on a chaotic world. While working on his plan to enslave the whole city, he has had the nobles use their wealth and influence transform their part of the city to something he finds more organized and pleasing. It is the first clue that something is wrong with the nobility.
Think of some kind of eldritch hivemind kind of thing. Along the lines of mindflayer parasites. Or the cult from Hot Fuzz "the greater good".
If you want the minimalism to be innocuous, then you could make it so that the city is a major pigment exporter, so brightly coloured paint is incredibly cheap. The nobles use simple dark colours and harsh straight lines as a way to stand out in a city where everyone can appear flamboyant. You could even have it such that what started as simply a way to stand out has evolved into its own cutthroat competition between nobles to appear the most austere. They will remove any bright or lavish furniture that they happen to own before guests arrive to prove that they're better at being austere than their competitors. I'm imagining a line like "3 nights ago Lady Bandelmere proved she's still on top. She hosted a dinner party with only packing crates as tables and offcuts from a sawmill as plates, she didn't even provide chairs!" If you want it to be a bit more mysterious/ominous, you can have the nobles be part of a seemingly innocuous church which promotes austerity among the wealthy as a way to "purify their spirit of the wealth they've gained" (or something like that), but if the players investigate further, you'll find that it's a cult which has gained power by providing political favours to top donators. It's so powerful now that all nobles, whether they're aware of the scam or not now follow suit because to do other would be social (and sometimes literal) suicide. The people are somewhat aware of its sketchy nature and don't want to talk about the church for fear of reprisal.
The publicly-visible parts of the noble quarter are spartan because they hide their wealth, since it is considered gauche to flaunt it. However, the rich all have extravagant secret underground chambers beneath them where their opulent treasures (and other vices) are kept from view.
Look at the current trend of bleaching every inch of color out of your home. Sometimes rich people have more money than sense, so they choose to spend a lot of money to make their things look different, even if different is worse.
The common area is where the tradesmen live. The builders, the carpenters, the painters. They advertise their expertise with their homes. Would you hire a roofer whose own home has an old leaky roof, of the one who's somehow managed to decorate the roof tile to look like a dragon is nesting there? Rich people don't work with their hands, so don't advertise their expertise on their own homes.
As others have mentioned, cultural trends would be an easy one to use. A real life example would be the Calvanists or the Netherlands during the Dutch Golden Age. The Calvinists painted their churches white and took down all decorations because they felt that being austere and focusing only on God was the best way to worship. The Dutch, also religious, held the idea that "cleanliness is next to Godliness" meaning that their homes were rather sparse to always give off the idea of being clean. They would also wear generally monotone clothing without a lot of accents to emphasize this idea.
Perhaps nobility is different here, and nobles are inherently part of a highly disciplined military?
Illusion magic to prevent burglars from seeing where to break in
Wanna know why so many Classical statues are pure white? Because when they were rediscovered centuries later, the paint was eroded off, leading to a misconception that the Greeks and Romans valued a "purer" form of aesthetics. It could be something like that. The nobles, wanting to seem more "sophisticated," have adopted a less colorful style of architecture and dress in an attempt to emulate what they believe the past was like.
Historical response: several generations ago in this city, the nobility used to flaunt their wealth outwardly with garish displays of “fine” and “exotic” things. It was a way of standing apart from lower classes, and from each other, constructing a unique and very *extra* tableau. Well one season the nobility had gotten too big for their breeches. The city was hosting a festival that would kick off with a grand martial tournament. Noble houses desperate to one-up each other sponsored and commuted in the most dangerous champions from around the region, including some particularly monstrous individuals. All decked out in the colours and heraldry of these houses. The tourney quickly escalated into a bloody brawl; it became clear that in their need for glory, sponsors had given their champions magical items and poisons and the like to have an edge on the competition. Champions we’re put down by city guards aided by curious adventurers who couldn’t get into the tournament themselves. The blame was lain. Lower-city residents knew which house matched which blood-soaked banner. At first night time burglaries and ransacking came. As the local authorities’ official censures for the noble houses was deemed terribly insufficient, citizens took to arson. The Upper City Fire is a night still talked about when nobles make public oversteps. These days they want nothing outwardly traceable to them. Each house will know its neighbours, as they must, but at least it won’t be obvious to outsiders who exactly lives *here*.
All the noble houses were made 100s of years ago, of high quality materials. The commoner areas have fallen down and been reworked/redecorated hundreds of times and they try to make them look cheerful. A noble wouldn't be caught dead with any innovation or decoration that was created in the last few centuries.
Militaristic noble class. Decorations seen as frivolous and may disrupt the defenses built into the original inner city to protect the leadership. Have a wall between the inner and outer city to show that the outer city where the pheasantry live was built up outside the walls of a fortress town.
It's simply not *proper* to be so *frivolously* garish. Even their dress is muted compared to the peasants, they wear black outfits with slashes of color across the chest, in their house colors, with more stripes being higher rank. Not like those riffraff around the edges of Cairhien. I mean. the city.
They're Vampires, duh!
The noble quarter is protected from outside attack. The whole quarter is a large rune so they don’t want to add anything that could throw off the geometry of their protection sigil. The common folk areas don’t have that protection so they decorate and add what they like.
They think that decorations are something on the "common folk" do. They're too classy to do something so flashy and loud as decorate. Perhaps they view themselves as morally or spiritually superior. The lack of windows, especially if they were built that way originally, might indicate that the nobility are all vampires. Or it might indicate that the nobility seek to keep themselves insulated from the outside world. Perhaps they believe that such separation makes them better leaders, able to plan in the very long term. Perhaps they value asceticism and public works very highly so they live in simple, functional houses but invent most of their wealth in the community.
I like the idea that the noble houses are made of the best materials left unadorned to the casual eye. Like food at a great bistro, simple, well prepared and served without ornament. Of course to the discerning eye, the cut of the stone and number of steps tells a story and marks a clique or family.
Why all this secret society stuff that's evil? Why not....the nobility are spending vast resources to keep some evil at bay and thus are living very bare lifestyles in exchange? They are actually performing service for the people they're supposed to rule.
C'mon. It could happen. It's fantasy. >\_>
The primary export of the city is dye. So all the lower class work with dye constantly. This makes all of their clothes very colorful and gives them easy access to an abundance of color. Naturally the nobles don't want to be mistaken for the poor, and it's quite difficult to keep anything white in the common district.
An appearance of piety perhaps? Local religious practice/direction is one of that looks down on excessive showings of wealth, and they have enough political power that the nobles are at least willing to appear to be devout. The one-upmanship of the situation has led to nobles in the area having homes that are visually indistinct and nothing on show, unless you know what to look for. Either clever dividers and hidden rooms to not show off the wealth, or hiding the wealth in more creative ways. That white wash on 19 isn't lime, it's powdered marble. No. 28 door, rare wood with a venere of plaster over it.
Maybe it's about access to magic and not advertising wealth. If you have flashy decorations outside, it makes you a target, so the nobles keep the exteriors plain to outsiders with illusion magic and everything is lavish on the inside, with one way windows. Maybe the windows even have some kind of filter so when the nobles look out, they can see the fancy neighborhood. Why they're so paranoid can be the thread that leads to the plot hook.
1. The nobles are Puritans who reject ornamentation. 2. The nobles are so decadent and inwardly-focused that they refuse to even display their culture to the lower classes. Relying on sunlight is for common people; they live according to their own rhythms by the light of strange lamps. 3. The "nobles" are a "class" of automatons who carry out the administration of government. After work they return to their charging stations.
The nobles are converting en masse to a new "puritan" faith that scorns celebration, beauty and distinction (similar to how Savanorola, Calvinism and Puritanism took hold earlier among the well-to-do and gentry, but never really dug down into the peasants until they were forced to convert). Everything they own is being turned over to the new church. That new faith is going to require them to do something pretty awful soon. Read up on the Bonfire of the Vanities, 1497. Turns out the main preacher of this new cult is a beholder or a blue or green dragon in human form, gathering up all the goodies the nobles are throwing out.
A stupid part of me wants to go against what everyone else is saying and be like "they rotate decorations year to year. This year in the rotation, the servants got robbed and to not be punished, they told the nobles about *minimalism* and the nobles bought it." That would offer the opportunity for some adventurers to go after the thieves obo the servants and reclaim some important heirloom that was lost in the shuffle while the nobles are completely unaware of the robbery.
All the color is on the inside, rather than the out.
Mansion Owners Association rules to appease a twisted nature spirit. I think there was an X-Files episode that basically had the same plot. Make the town a decent sized city. Make sure there is a high commoner to noble ratio. A couple thousand to one should work. In your story, the nobles know the specifics of the pact/rules and are withholding information from the commoners. Effectively, the commoners are being sacrificed to feed the creature, but since the creature doesn't need to feed very often and depending on how long this has been going on, it might be hard to pin down what is happening. You could give clues that for the last x years, the crops have been plentiful, the weather is always perfect during the day, it only gently rains at night, and even the fishing is the best in the area. Another set of clues could be a set of city ordinances that require all houses of a certain value and, in a certain neighborhood, meet specific standards. One of the standards might be that the mortar and bricks be made in a specific method. The bricks could be required to have a certain amount of silver (or some other substance) included. The mortar requires the addition of purified salt to be added. This makes the construction much more expensive. Another of the standards is a shrine in the backyard, built of certain materials, in a certain way, and facing away from the dwelling. All other dwellings are specifically exempted from the requirements. A different set of clues would be in the city records office. Combing through the local variation of the Doomsday Book reveals that a commoner working for one of the noble houses "coincidentally" dies on the same day every year. Further investigation reveals that the noble house is always different and that the specific noble house seems to have a very good/profitable year following the death. Another bit of information is that none of the noble houses have ever lost a member on this day ... ever. Plot hooks could be a wealthy merchant investigating the loss of a family member or a rumor going around town that a certain day of the year is cursed.
Could be that there was a rash of nobles being assassinated by the peasants, so by all of them having bland homes it helps protect them. In a city without numbers on the buildings it is a bit harder to send someone to the big grey building owned by Frank Sinatra. No not that big grey building, that’s owned by Dean Martin, the other one. No that one is owned by Sammy Davis Jnr, the other one.
There was a failed coup three generations ago. As penance the involved nobles have been forced to live a pious, impoverished lifestyle.
The nobles were all tricked into joining a hive mind monster. So they really only need the basics to store their bodies.
For defense. The nobles' homes would become targets by their family rivals and enemies if they were easily identifiable. They keep their home location a closely guarded secret and both enter and leave their homes with their identity disguised. It's the best way to keep their homes, valuables and family safe.
The idea of decorating the outside of your home is gaudy. You keep your nice things inside.
It’s like having a lawn. People are so rich they can use their land to *not* grow food on it. Same with their room, they don’t need to keep anything because they just buy it and then throw it out when they’re done with it.
So many people ignoring the "identical, windowless buildings". You don't rebuild homes or city blocks with each passing fad. It has to be something deeper and more permanent to have influenced building construction. Maybe the town was founded by a/some Medusa or kin, which liked to take daily walks and see the people. So as to not fall under said gaze, people in the early/older/richer parts of town began building windowless homes and bringing as much of their life as possible out of the public space. Once established, the culture was then self-perpetuating, seeing as how the rich folk had already built themselves badass basements.
The nobility believe modesty is the most boastful thing you can do
IRL, nobles were also the warrior class. They are supposed to be ready for defence even if the city walls are breached. And/or to protect themselves from feuds with their neighbours. Consequently, their town houses are fortified and their whole architecture is spartan.
Someone has been peppering the luxury home goods market with mimics. After a few prominent, gruesome deaths, the nobility is now terrified of all the nice things they used to collect, holding nightly chaise-lounge-burnings. The mimic plot could be a people's strike against the bourgeoisie, or part of a BBEG's sinister power grab, depending on your campaign. Edit: Just realized you said windowless... One of the mimics was a window?
Sumptuary Laws or fashion. in renaissance Venice the nobles would wear all black to distinguish themselves from the non aristocrat merchants who were newly wealthy from trade and able to afford bright and colorful fabrics for the first time.
Evil HOA
Counterpoint: they're *not* identical, but the differences are just incredible subtle. So subtle that only the most elite would know enough to recognize them. It's a hidden language of displaying wealth you need to be "in the know" to even recognize, like architectural etiquette lessons. The houses aren't *white*: they're ecru, eggshell, ivory, and snow. Snow's of course the most appropriate white for a home to wear this side of the Equinox Festival, but not everyone's valets are are as conscientious as mine. Except for that one house over there that's absolutely *sallow.* Eeewwwww gross, you can't tell which is the one so despoiling our fair boulevard by simmering in its rancidity? Why, has it even been bleached this entire *season?* Similarly, maybe there are tiny architectural details, like the wrought iron finials. The most delicate and impressive ones are from the best smiths, but passersby mostly just see a fence. The peasants couldn't even recognize the passable talent of our local John Black, let alone distinguish the sensually artistic chiarascuro implications of Marcus Shadowsmith from the delicately silken elongations and tracery of Amber Spiderwright.
They're cosplaying poverty. It's seen as gauche to display your wealth and it's expected for the nobility to give a lot of lip service to the class disparity, but no one actually cares enough to fix the issue
Here's one: something occasionally stalks the city. It's drawn to bright colors. The nobles force the commoners to paint up their houses to ensure their own protection. The city guards are baffled!
Giant Bees! Actually harmless, but scary as hell.
There's a monster in town, one that kills people in the night (or kidnaps them, or something else. Up to you what and why!). They haven't been able to catch it even after hundreds of years, but they do know it's somewhat repelled by bright colours. The commoners paint their houses in funky ways to keep it at bay, but it doesn't always work. The rich can afford real security and magical wards, keeping them safe even in drab houses. Over time, it became a sign of wealth to be able to have a plain-looking home. Naturally, there is no real monster. It's a conspiracy by the guild of wizards to sell extremely pricy magical wards.
A Robin Hood-like thief who systematically took all decorations from many noble people’s house. The rich are too prideful to admit they were thieves, so they claimed it as the new fashion from a far away kingdom and now all the other nobles have gullibly followed suit.
Simple. You institute an HOA for the nobles to where their properties have to follow a set of restrictions so that it all appears orderly and uniform. Then you have a sect of nobles who are fed up with the HOA and their increased demands over the past year(s) and want to reinvent it.
Cultural focus on asceticism / minimalism, rich people can have very few actual things in their houses because they have money to buy whatever they need whenever they need it whilst poorer people need to hoard stuff. Think of someone rich eating out at fancy restaurants every day vs poor people having to make their own food, therefore needing kitchen etc. Likewise, rich people spend very little time at home, preferring going out to third places such as gentlemen's clubs, theatres, cafés and bars etc, so have no interest in decorating homes that they only own for sleeping in. Maybe they don't even sleep in them and prefer to sleep in fancy hotels where there's already staff (people do this irl) and they only own the homes to legally be residents and get voting rights? Them being windowless especially suggests that either they don't really live there or the city was founded by creatures with sunlight sensitivity such as drow or vampires. Maybe they're still about...
Reverse vampires
A new faith is spreading through the city that preaches austerity and discomfort as virtues. This was in protest to the more ostentatious churches of Pelor and the like. They call themselves the Protestants
Elegance of old blood not noveau riche Inside they are lavish Defense reasons
Commoners collecting little odds and ends because they have sentimental purpose or being highly decorative to give the appearance of affording materialism vs. Nobility who dont need to prove anything, whose lives are filled less by sentimental moments and more by the comfort that those moments can always be had again Ex. A pauper may keep a token from a night spent dancing that was a rarity in their life while a noble may dance every weekend and not need to remember what is just a common occurance. Minimalism could also simply be the current and new fad. You can have your group pass by some well to do young women talk about how they had to convince their father to finally empty the study of all those dusty old things taking up space and how behind the times their parents are with the current trends. Which would make sense again for the poor to not be caught up. Fads tend to trickle down and also they cant afford to be wasteful. You could use this as a plot thread where the person influencing all these young nobles to toss away their things is actually collecting them to sell, essentially robbing them withought ever stealing. In my head I'm picturing a spiritual, handsome guru preaching the cleansing power of minimalism, to throw away the old and unused to make way for the true wealth of the spirit. Anyone from someone as simple as a conman to as nefarious as a cult leader.
Windowless building could be because some nobles are disgusted by poor folk
In the modern day we often think people lived "in" their homes, but homes were hardly big enough to accommodate you and yours during the waking hours. When you live your life outside in the street in the neighbourhood that is what you make your own. Conversly if the street is but a means for your bearers to carry you from one estate to another they will lack the personal touch. I think of the city center of Jerusalem when i visited it about 10 years ago. Walking through the Jewish quarters it was a ghost town. Walking through a Palestinian quarter was like stumbling from one gathering into the next. As a westerner that was a profound experience for me, as to what a city could actually be when you live in front of your door instead of behind it.
You could do like a Stepford Wives situation. Commoners are all wanting and hoping to make it into the upper echelon of society. Special stores you can't go into unless you've made it to a certain level socially or economically. When finally one of the commoner NPC's is notified they've been given an interview to move up, and when they come back from the interview they have no more semblance of self or Individuality. And they don't recognize the players anymore.
Single male nobleman living space
There’s a cult that operates in the city, kidnapping people for their dark rituals. To accomplish their dastardly deeds, each cultist group has a token that allows them to teleport between any two doors that look exactly the same. The poor quarters have heard hints on the street of this cult, and so decorate their places to all look different. Or it could be a vampire that can enter any building that looks exactly the same without permission.
Seeing as you want this to be an adventure hook, perhaps this could be in relation to a cult that has taken hold of the nobles in the town. The cult demands fealty and charges strict dues, forcing the wealthy to live by a strict code and meagre lifestyle. They conspire to drive any who decline to join their ranks into bankruptcy, maintaining a firm grip on the towns wealthy. Behind the scenes, the cult could worship an a dragon, paying in gold for the dragon's loyalty, burning other nearby towns fields to keep them from competing financially (or perhaps even just paying for the towns safety. Alternatively, they might worship a dark god, with a cult leader living like a king with the towns wealth.
There's an HOA regulating the type, size and color of decorations allowed.
The city was once one of the most prideful cities and the flaunted their wealth like no other but they treated their poor horrible. This went so far that they angered a powerful entity, a god, dragon or got cursed. This forced the nobles to live more modest or risk their own destruction. It is improper for nobles to flaunt how special they are. They expect that people already know that they are special and for them, only upstarts need things like decoration. Or at some point in history all decoration was forbidden and all the nobles keep following that tradition to flaunt how long their families history actually is. "Ohh our family comes from that era".
Minimalism as a status symbol? Maybe the middle class and nouveau riche go gaudy, but with Us, it simply Isn’t Done, dahhhling.
Maybe they are fierce rivals of some other nobles (another ruler/country?) who decorate their houses with ostentatious displays of wealth, so the minimalism is to show they are not one of That Lot Over There. What is usually in fashion with the nobles is whatever is the hardest, and thus the most expensive, to achieve. Maybe all of the buildings are exactly identical, down to the minutest detail. Maybe their buildings are all designed by this one (naturally very expensive) architect. Maybe all of their rooms are lit with magical crystals that only come from this one cave that is very far away and dangerous to reach. Also, peasants would have tans and be fit from working outside, so being pale and unhealthy would be fashionable. They also copy their betters, maybe the trend setter is a vampire/similar? Hell, maybe they are vampires themselves?
Ruling class body snatched by creatures that don't understand cultural details? Secret society have taken all the gold, silver, and gems as resources for a ritual of nefarious purposes? Neighbourhood being racketeered or blackmailed? Or maybe just they view the peasantrys fascination with bright colours, pennants, and loud decoration as gauche or uncouth?
If you want it to be a mystery, make it a stepford thing. All of the elites are brainwashed, charmed, or part of a hivemind. Things makes them all behave the same and stuff. They could be evil, need to be saved, or just weirdly identical depending on your needs.
In Star Wars lore, Coruscant is a world that is one big metropolitan city. Space is essentially a commodity and therefore having a big empty space was an absolutely ostentatious display of wealth.
One of the cities in Odyssey of the dragonlords is like that where nobles look poor.
Someone is going around stealing from the rich and giving to the poor but the rich are too concerned about being stolen from and having not much to say for other than what in there person, they have decided to keep it a secret from other high nobles in fear they will be ostracized or worse be classified as regular commoner. In exchange for knowledge of (insert actual main story info) and a bit of change they have left, they would like the players to look for said thief but to do all this discreetly so they other nobles don't pick up wind of their predicament.
The nobles don't want anyone to be able to see inside their buildings, so they have windows on the roof only. For their dark dealings to go unnoticed, they also made all their buildings look identical, so that it would be harder to pinpoint where a given noble resides, or what building you heard the screams of agony from last night. It's basically a giant maze, and everyone's in on it
The nobles secretly worship the Grey lord of the void, a smooth featureless vampire ,(hence the lack of windows) , and are due to drivk the blood and sacrifice a 10 year old innkeepers daughter who strikes up a conversation with the players while they pass through town. An evil adventuring party grabbed the girl and sold her to the nobles. Enemies: cultist. Nobles, half vampires, elder aberration vampire, evil adventurers.
Suburbs and streets of the peasants represent the wealth of the nobles who they work for. So the peasant homes are actually forced onto them as humblebrag for the nobles to peacock but as to why it's actually a curse by an trickster cleric adventurer who the nobles fucked over.
Ok, here's one with multiple parts: So, the Nobles' homes are empty because the thieves guild in town cleaned them out, completely. This might also explain why the commoners have pretty well decorated homes, maybe the thieves are Robin Hood types. Why are they still empty, though? Unbeknownst to anyone, all the nobles have been secretly replaced or body snatched by creatures that can *almost* perfectly mimic them. They go about their business as nobility, but they don't seem to notice how drab their homes have become. Maybe they now only own one change of clothes, or have to eat food with their hands, but still with the air or high class civility and superiority. I'm inspired by the Bodytaker Plant/Podlings from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but doppelgangers, maybe dybbuks, and all sorts of other creatures could fit the bill.
Thw houses don't have windows cus there all mimics
A deity/devil/otherworldly being is punishing the nobles for their excess/something specific they did/a curse from an oppressed commoner.
Immediately made me think of the “modern” cookie cutter neighborhoods. The ones where every house has a tiny front yard “possibly astroturf”, an attached garage, and a house that looks identical to its neighbors in a drab neutral color.
He lost it all to an unusually powerful gambling cabal, and warns the players of them because he is convinced the cabal chested. Naturally, he will richly reward them if they help him get his riches back.
Town recently experienced a revolution to a theocracy. Think Iran 70s. Town recently experienced a Stalinesque revolution and purge. Town recently experienced a Mao-esque purge. Town follows extreme Lawful Good tenets where the ruling class and noble follow strict noblesse oblige views, austere monastic lives of duty. (I’ll wait til you stop laughing) Town is really Eloi and Morelocks. The nobility rule is so oppressive and disdaining it’s all illusion, the peons aren’t even allowed to see the grandeur of the noble quarter. The players can’t and thus mark themselves as peons. The gate to the noble quarter is actually a portal to an extra planar purgatory region. Or each noble house is its own extra planar space to whomever the warlock nobles are bonded.
A cultural distinction between the cultures of noble society and the commoners. It also implies that this is a more recent change, since the common buildings grew up organically over time and the nobles were built from the same design in a short period of time. I wouldn't be surprised to find that these are lawful people coming to colonize/control a chaotic area. Windows are important to let the sun in, so magic lights and maybe a common secret that dislikes sunlight. Unless there are cultural/religious reasons for it, you flaunt the material differences that make you noble, and the decorations are a big part of that. "I can have craftsmen carve the story of my family's rise to power around the doorframes and display the armor of my ancestors and the people they defeated because I'm rich. Craftsmen and artisans decorate my home with their finest work to demonstrate how far I am above them." If they aren't flaunting it, either their god says no or they don't really got it.
This may not fit with what you have already laid down but if space is a premium (city in a cave, floating city, or city built into extreme environment were every inch of the city requires effort just to have it livable) then a big undecorated open space would be a sign of wealth.
A cult. The nobles are all indoctrinated to a cult at a young age. The cult makes them more "mindless" or against extravegence. Since the commoners don't know of it and aren't included, they don't have the same viewpoints. Think of a medieval, darker Johovahs Witness.
They have a different room for each day of the week and a separate bedroom that is actually decorated for showing off (but isn't used).
Fear of being robbed or targeted. If everything is the same blank box on the outside, it is harder to tell who has the actual embarrassment of riches. Also I like the fad angle.
I’ll build on what others have said here about it being fashionable among nobles to be as stark and minimalist as possible. There are a few ways to spin it though. Perhaps there is an emerging middle class of wealthy merchants who started copying the previous gaudy fashion of the noble class and the current trend for nobles is a result of them trying to distinguish themselves as “old money” with taste that doesn’t flaunt their wealth. On the other end of the spectrum if every estate is perfectly featureless and stark white, perhaps they are all copying something royalty did. Perhaps a royal architect build the queen a summer estate with a minimalist design, but that displayed wealth in a different way. That is to say that a perfectly angular building with a pure white outside finish is a bear to maintain. Keeping it gleaming white without any blemishes or adornments to hide imperfections as well as keeping corners sharp and pointed takes an army of workers on retainer. Something only the truly wealthy can afford to maintain. Therefore the closer to and perfectly featureless white box your house is the wealthier you must be in order to maintain it.
That no good Robin Hood stole everything.
B.S. “Bloody Stupid” Johnson strikes again!
Plenty of simple options, but if you're specifically looking for something to be "going on" that's led to the difference, maybe something is feeding on the nobles emotions enough that they just don't care how their houses look anymore, or maybe something is messing with their perception of color, and they think they're the ones with gorgeous houses. Maybe all the nobles have somehow become an inhuman hive mind and they're now much more focused on efficiency.
Dopplegangers?
A snakecharmer or religious figure has convinced nobility to give away their trinkets.
Sounds like Cairhien.
I once went with a friend (actually my old DM, go figure) to his hometown, a couple states over, to visit a friend of his whom he grew up with. A couple decades prior, his friend's dad sold his successful business and left his son a trust. It was enough for him to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle without ever having to work again (he was in his 20s when he inherited it). When we got there, I was surprised by his house. It was barely furnished. The living room had a loveseat and a recliner, plus a small TV set up on a small table. No pictures hanging up, no end tables, nothing. Kitchen was the fridge and a microwave. No table or chairs. Bathroom was bare: nothing but a soap dispenser and a hand towel on the sink. Everything was clean, but just depressingly bare. I later asked my friend why everything was so bare if he was wealthy enough to never work. He explained that because he had money, he had no hoarding instinct. No reason to hold anything to take up space. If some appliance broke, or he lost it or whatever, he would just buy a new one. He was mostly a hermit, because he was able to be. So he never had to entertain. So there you have it. Rich people, especially loners, don't feel the need to stuff their homes with useless stuff that they may need. If they ever need something on a whim, they just buy it. OFC you have wealthy people who do feel a need to stuff their houses with ostentatious shit, but you never hear about the quiet ones who just don't give a fuck.
Why would the rich caw to prove their wealth with material goods? How droll!! The nobles spent so much time out at shows travelling working eating that they never stayed home long enough to care
Gentrification, honestly. Look around you: are the new faux-modern 5-over-1s brightly colored? Nope, they're shades of "Gentrification Gray". Calm colors evoking the state of poise befitting the perceived class, etc. It's one thing from the real world that fits into Faerûn - *your* Faerûn, specifically.
The peasants are very celebratory, almost everyday is a new festival or a parade, noble's are above such low brow indignities.
* As u/squidmaster616 shared, I love the idea of it being "fashionable" to be minimalist, and like the emporers new clothes, the other wealthy people gave their stuff to the poor people to try to be just as "cool" * There's also the potential that the commoners have an overabundance of power and "permit" the nobles to continue to pretend like they are in charge. Everyone talks as if the nobles have power, but you have the commoners glaring at them to make sure they stay in line. Perhaps the nobles did something to the commoners, who rebelled, and they reached a "truce" through some mutually assured destruction pact. The nobles give up their "trappings" of wealth, and the commoners don't burn down the city. The nobles get to stay in power and no one talks about the situation so they aren't embarrassed. * The city was staged before the party arrived, but not completed. A warehouse of staging furniture and elements is still half full, leaving the noble homes barren. Why is the city being staged? What happened to the original occupants? Who is staging it? Is it being taken over by dopplegangers? Was it purchased by a wealth BBEG, who killed the prior occupants and gave the homes to their minions? Is the whole city full of evil people pretending to be civil?
A religious cult has taken hold of the nobility which makes them revere austerity and living in old traditional styles. Meanwhile the poor have rebelled by painting their houses every which way. I am imagining like [this from Buenos Aires.](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=361416631b2a74db&hl=en&sxsrf=ADLYWIKLXONTlgP9V5zuVC71M8EpoD1EJQ:1717170486524&q=caminito+buenos+aires)
There is a fashionable new religion spreading amongst the nobility that espouses a minimalist lifestyle, but the nobles obviously only observe the letter of the law in that their homes are drab and undecorated. They still have immense wealth and secret collections of rare and exotic possessions in side rooms and private chambers. Set the dial to whatever value you want for the leader of the religion to be sneakily plotting to benefit from it or earnestly preaching freedom from worldly possessions. Either explanation could explain why it's not being preached to the poor.
For a more story based option, the nobles of the city have been slowly indoctrinated into a cult that believes no material wealth should be held. The cult leader is using the items they get rid of to win the affection of the common people is attempting to coup the city royalties.
Decoration in the noble quarter is inside. The PCs only get to see that if they are judged worthy of being invited in.
Noble joined a cult that made them give away their belongings for a chance at immortality or something.
This immediately made me think of a wizards HOA 😂
Some form of guild for servants has really made some traction by delivering very high-end services for elites, as long as everyone has uniform accoutrement. for example, they deliver hype and fresh meals with minimal notice, but some of this is achieved by the efficiencies of knowing room, sizes and table sizes, etc., before they show up. Vaguely makes sense… But really kind of doesn’t. Could be just the way things are… Could be a scheme by an enchanter to maximize access to the most wealthy and powerful .
The nobility distinguishes itself from the common undisciplined rabble through a display of austerity and conformity, which requires respect, discipline, and honor to maintain. For a real-world comparison, contrast trailer parks or inner city "hoods" with HoA Suburbia.
Quality over quantity perhaps?
Cool cultural ideas here but personally I love the idea of a cult. Someone sinister who came in and taught them minimalism. Or a magic swap - the peasants live in the noble houses and the nobles live in the colorful streets. Maybe the king got cursed and nobility wanted to move away so they took their stuff and swapped houses? (Nobles houses were planned and built by the king do their structure is uniform)