>>8876
>Starry Skies and his friends are on some sort of coming of age journey?
>Like, more than just them looking for their lost relative.

Right, and the only reason I bring Able Planter up is my expectation is he's living inside the caldera / 'cauldron' as some respected city official. Cue awkward reunion speech.

> I found it just a bit odd for it to be right out the gate
Partly I was considering the discussion here about the Quicksilver thief - the accidentally immortal couple that met in a bar, and Roasting Hops asked if the guy was paying in pony bits or human gold, and I realized that I'd need currency for the kirin if the story was to be fleshed out.

Which, by the way I think that since the story I was basing those kirin on had them as relying on lightning-affinity magic, they probably have 'sparks' as their currency unit.
Maybe.

>five families that were cousins and one that died out
The inital piece had three families for sure, Skies and Planters and Farmers, but that wouldn't really be enough to maintain a healthy population for two hundred years. So some of the early work of building "the big city" was done by doomed isolationists who, yes, bred themselves out of existence so the rest of the community knew to have cultural processes for encouraging a broader, more robust gene pool.