Having herbs being lords over preds is always a unique setup. However, one has to wonder where omnivorous humans and these chimera species fall on the spectrum of prey or predators?


Philosophies/Religions
The prey having a philosophy or religions sounds fascinating. To me, sky burials come to mind... forking over a body to scavengers and predators so the soul can be released and carried away to heaven.
*(More symbolic if birds did it than a ground-based predator but still... maybe certain species are seen as the desirable earthly messengers/workers of a god?)
**(Or the predators are philosophically believed to be handlers of the dead/sick/crippled/dying (whatever their cause of death), thus deserving of their flesh and responsibility to dispose of the body in some "proper" fashion, thus ultimately, keeping in line with how real pred-prey ecosystems work.)

But... if the prey are the slavers and the predators the enslaved, and people generally don't like being enslaved... The predators can't be too happy even if they are getting free meat, right?


Setting
Seems fine. Only thing to me that seems a bit odd is muskets coming back full sale. If the original calamity was very bad weather patterns leading to famine, it seems like a lot of the old infrastructure might still be around.

*Example: it got ±150℉ for decades/100 years around in x hemisphere. Millions/billions died/vacated because of the weather and no food, then fighting over scraps years later. I think as people died/left the areas, most infrastructure not related to food/clothing production or immediate basic survival would remain better intact (but still decrepit), even 200 years later, mostly preserved by:

1 non-essential survival/raiding target in the early years
2 subsequent mass famine and death of folk
3 semi/mostly-preserved by the various weather regions, cold/hot, wet/dry, etc.
4 not thoroughly destroyed by things like asteroid showers, *nuke strikes, *mass carpet bombing, *(I'm assuming wars didn't really breakout/have an impact since you mentioned weather as society's downfall)


Sure it got abandoned as people died in the beginning years and as the centuries moved on. But with the weather and famine backdrop, it feels like there might be enough tech not utterly wrecked but semi/mostly-preserved by the weather, that people could return to, study, and get up and running again. Especially for something relatively simple like bullets.

But, I can totally see musketry as the small town/poor man's, scavenger's or raider's weapon of choice. Still easy to make and use for a lay man.

Good point on the enslaved predators being unhappy even if they get meat...

Omnivores would be a kind of middle class (in more ways than one!) - tolerated by both, but not the kind of company most would want to have in 'polite society.' A kind of rough and ready middleman class that acts as mediators and merchants.

My main idea for the setting was just to avoid having swords and armour in a medieval setting. And I hadn't really taken the time to figure out what technology would or wouldn't have survived...

And bullets are simple, but try making the firing caps! Especially if you don't have or can't make the thin copper sheets needed to make them.

Flintlocks are still an okay option. Caplocks are the beginning of cartridge systems, but you can make rifled flintlocks ( using Minie balls ) just fine. When you fight on distance or from ambush, your lower firerate doesn't harm you as much, and with all parties aware of scent, the defender, aware of terrain and weather patterns, has the advantage - as usual.

Even a muzzle loader is more deadly than your average crossbow or bow when you consider it needs less strength to use than a bow in the first place and is, at comparative strength, faster in reload than a crossbow.

As for accessing the raw materials:
https://www.wildernessarena.com/sup.....assium-nitrate
That's not too difficult when you look at areas the size of continents. You'll find plenty off the locations needed.
On an large island like Iceland or Madagascar you'd have one to three locations for sulphur and a bunch for potassium nitrate.
Actually, running the niter farms might be the reason for a society introducing sewer systems as to gain and concentrate the production. A shit job, but an explosively important one.

Such locations would also serve as crystallization points for industry and commerce, as they either trade with resources everyone needs, but are entrenched in a position to defend against anyone wanting to make a grab of those resources, OR they are the centers of stability.

Good points, but would it make sense for localized powers (think cities that turn themselves into fortresses or city states) to lose soo much technological know how in this setting? Or would such an extreme technological regression be possible or even expected?

Assuming modern technology, the knowledge wouldn't actually be lost - securely stored systems, printouts, the important knowledge can be secured.
It might simply not be reliably usable, or too valuable for anything other than emergency or specialist use.

The problem is the ressource base.
Take an object in your household and try to think where its parts come from, and where the raw materials for the parts come from.
Then remember which problems occurred when Covid19 affected the distribution chains.

It must not neccessarily come to such levels.
But when you want to build a "hard" world instead of a "soft" one which simply is at the point you want it to be, check a bunch of factors:
Important consumables:
Power, Foodstuffs, Medicines
Their sourcing, transport, storage and distribution:
Local product; local, but reliant on external support products ( fertilizer ); imported product; need to store the product under special conditions; ...

That all is part of "HARD" world building. The problem is, you don't always end up where you want to be.

Else, assemble what you want to have. Then take the rough comb and check what things exclude or include stuff.
When they can build electronic computers, they must have some reliable power souces, they'll need either good skills at fine mechanics and glassblowing ( tube computers ) and beefy powersupplies for the resulting computers, or they need to have a complex chain of raw material acquisition, auxiliary chemicals and such when they can do silicone or germanium semiconductors.

When its just "Computing machines", well, there's the Aqualator, a computer that is build with hydraulic components, valves and pipes.
It can be digital or analogue in its working, and can be programmed via punchcards - which also allow for automatic weaving.

And as for the wars, they would have been small scale regional wars at best. Most likely the 'wars' were the result of the populations from uninhabitable regions moving into the ones where food could still be grown. This would lead to friction and probably accelerate the decline in living conditions that the people were experiencing. Add to this localized authorities (probably at the state level or lower) tightening control on every aspect of life to keep the veneer of civilization in tack, possibly breaking away from their countries as resources continue to decline and you have the 'wars' that would be 'remembered' by future generations.

A great idea in it's entirety. Muskets or not, it makes for a nice aesthetic, but through the religion/philosophy aspect alone, I think distinguishes it the most.

Firearms aren't my strong point. In fact I know jack shite about them! All I know is that blackpowder in modern semi automatic weapons is hit or miss. Case and point:

Blackpowder stops an AK!
Blackpowder turns an AR15 into a unreliable single shot rifle!
Blackpowder works in a glock!?
And blackpowder works best in coyboy weapons!

That is fascinating. Always figured it wouldn't work (or work well) for a lot modern era weapons but the to see proof is nice!

The issue is the fouling the blackpowder causes. A few shots are fine, but after that there is soo much carbon and lead fouling in the gun that it ceases the action up. This probably explains why no true semi-auto weapons existed before the advent of smokeless powder. And even if you could get one to work imagine cleaning it afterwards!

And I am now thinking that coybow firearms or bolt action rifles would be a better idea than going all the way back to muskets.

Haha but some of those are cartridge types too! Unless you're talking about the ball and (percussion) cap ones or the Prussian needle guns (forefather to the bolt-actions)

Good point... but if we take this to its logical extreme, is a percussion cap that much easier to make than a primer? You could argue that you'd need to go back to flintlocks! But I guess that depends on what technology the national/regional powers were able or willing to lose...

True that. Also depends on how much the weather semi-preserved/destroyed. A global mega hurricane and major sea rises would certainly knock civilizations farther back than a deep freeze or glaciation which has a better likelihood of persevering things almost as they were last left.

One more thing that that might happen in this setting would be large-scale sabotage of all computerised networks, activities and systems. Think cyber terrorism/warfaree, cyber crime and even hacktivism.

GPS? No longer works. What's the time? You're guess is as good as mine! News? Good luck getting onto social media and sorting the real news from the fake. Getting hungry? You're local stores rely on computers to know what to ship where, and they don't store things for long...

I like the idea of the muskets.

^^