Well, now I will get into theorycrafting too:
Who are the shopkeepers? Are they Oric's minions? Or are they independent beings who profit from the cycles?
-If the first, then, as it has already been stated, the idea of the Warrens is to give Ciro the feeling that she is in a game.
-If it is the second, then Oric is spending a fortune to finance the cycles (creating loot and money), which means that Oric was either rich or very good at business before the whole business thing.
As far as I can tell, it's the second. Why would they give such nonuniform prices if they were all under a single leader?
They still have to compete for the admiration of their great Leader.
...I don't follow.
Go to a Wal-Mart. Go to a Wal-Mart one town over. They might not have identical prices, but they're going to be pretty close, almost certainly closer than either will be to a K-Mart in the same town.
How is Wal-Mart different from this hypothetical Oric monopoly?
1. Yes, but why are they that big? If the Underside is carved into the sides, that makes the original vents thicker than most areas of the Warrens. Why do air vents need to be the biggest part of the building--or crawl-throughable at all?
2. Where do the people come from, and how many people bring planks and bricks into a dungeon?
3. Why bring the people there and not just the Illborn?
1.Who said it only transports air from one place to the other? We have seen small armies of searchbots in the vents adjacent to the Underside.
2.They fall into the Warrens. Don't forget that people who can actually their Stars before they run out of charge able to accomplish feats of varying greatness.
3.Proxxy is obviously Anti-discriminatory
1. So, people settled the area traversed by the deadliest critter in the upper Warrens?
2. That does answer half of the question, although it leaves unanswerabe ones unanswered. It also leaves one to wonder where the building materials for the house come from.
3. Proxxy isn't the boss of the Warrens.