What doesn’t happen in Ravenland given the low population density?

I suggested yesterday that population levels in Ravenland are really , really low compared to what most people would assume, and people appear to have liked it, which was gratifying. I want to go into a bit more detail on the sort of thing that typically won’t happen in a land with basically nobody, with very few specialists. (Obviously if you do get a higher population density area, like e.g. in the Rust Brother-ruled Alderlander lands surrounding Vond, you may have more in the way of currency, laws, thievery and anonymity.)

Trade and travel

The average settlement has about 40 people and is 30km away from another settlement of a similar size, in a similar terrain type. Neither settlement is likely to be producing a surplus of anything in particular, because most people have to be subsistence farmers and there isn’t much of an opportunity for economies of scale. If the harvest has been good this year, chances are your neighbours also had a good one; regardless, they probably make and need the same things you do.

There is a settlement at Z17 which is superbly located for trade: at the confluence of the Wash and the Elya, and just downstream from Lake Varda, most of Ravenland is upstream, and if you go downstream into Anger Bay, hug the coast, then sail up the Meli or the Yendra you can reach much of the rest. There are probably vast, ancient docks, huge towering warehouses, dry docks for ship building and repairs, all sorts of inns for travellers, merchants, sailors and their various hangers-on. And they’re almost certainly abandoned, because most people stay at home and don’t trade with other people.

Exception: some settlements are closer and/or larger, and might have more frequent opportunities to trade. e.g. the forest settlement in O8 and the plains and river settlement at N11, or the similar pair in Belifar at Ae44 and Ac44. Dwarven settlements (e.g. the cluster of locations in Beldarand in the extreme north-west) may be linked by underground caverns, in which case the blood mist was never a problem (although dwarven clannishness might have been).

Exception: people will go a long way to make their food more interesting, or for intoxicants of any kind, and traditional recipes tend to vary more than you would expect. Neighbouring settlements might trade e.g. our famous cheese for your special beer, and if a settlement knows how to distill spirits (many will have lost this knowledge), a bottle of whisky is small enough to fit in a pedlar’s pack and might be just the thing to persuade someone in a position of power to make a deal they otherwise wouldn’t have. Dyes and spices are similarly typically localised (this is the only place where you still get this particular type of beetle / people know to grind them up and make a paste out of their shells), and worth a lot to someone who wants a change from the usual boring clothes or food.

Exception: shiny things, beautiful paintings and impressive statues are of no use to a peasant, but they’re invaluable to anyone looking for power and influence. Who are you more likely to do a deal with: a random guy in a wooden hut, dressed in brown like everybody else, or the ruler of a dressed stone stronghold lined with statues, wearing clothes of a rare hue and cut and with jewelled rings on their fingers? Those ancient statues in the ruin you just cleared out may be of no practical use to you - there aren’t even any traps or secret doors hidden behind them - but maybe if you and your mates go and get a horse and cart and lug them through the woods and swamps, your stronghold will be more impressive next time an emissary from Zertorme shows up.

Taverns and shops

Every settlement will have someone who brews beer or makes wine, because life sucks and every little bit of pleasure helps; and beyond a certain size there’ll be a dedicated building where people can go and drink and talk. There may even be stables, probably because people used to ride in from surrounding farms, before the blood mist, and the building hasn’t fallen down yet.

What there won’t be is rooms for hire. Everybody drinking here lives locally and will go home, apart from one guy who’ll get merry hell from his wife if he goes home in this state tonight, and maybe it’s better if the innkeeper makes him up a pallet in the common room instead. That’s where your PCs will be sleeping, unless there’s a villager who’s widowed and has a spare room now and would like the company, or there’s an abandoned building that the kids play in even though we tell them not to, maybe you could borrow a broom and tidy it up a bit?

Similarly, there will be people who can tan hides, make arrows and bows, bash metal. They’ll be able to deal with damage to your gear, although they might not have everything they need to hand and you might have to help them get what they need. What they won’t have is a pile of spare weapons or armour that they can sell you, because (1) you don’t have any money that they want and (2) there’s no point in making something like that speculatively if you have better things to do, like digging your garden so you can eat.

If you want someone to make you a sword or armour, that can be arranged if it’s worth their while, but it will take a long time. If you run your own stronghold, you’ve built a Forge and you’ve hired a Smith, you can probably have them make you a chain mail shirt during the winter. Otherwise, you’re better off looking for ruins and hoping for the best. Maybe the smith can do something to the rusty chainmail you found?

You will almost certainly not be able to just rock up at an inn and buy horses. No, to get horses you either need to find some wild horses and tame them, or find some Aslenes who either have a surplus right now, or reckon they will have a surplus in a year if someone can drive away the goddamn gryphons. Hey, you folks look like you’re handy with swords and bows and stuff. Do we have a deal?

Thieves, bandits and war

It’s debatable why there even is a Rogue profession. Who exactly have you been impersonating, sneaking up on or poisoning during the blood mist? In a small community, anything you steal from someone is likely to be quickly recognised if you try to sell it or pass it off as yours. You need the anonymity of a large, mobile population, and the semi-plausibility of widely-accepted currency, for stealing to be a viable career path.

Similarly, organised bandits are going to have a tough time setting up ambushes by the side of the road if nobody’s travelling along the roads at all regularly.

Needless to say, the sheer scale of the world and the lack of surplus population means that organised slavery for trade is a non-starter. Where have you got these spare people from and why did nobody notice? Who’s buying them from you? (And with what money?)

Perhaps more surprisingly, there’s little opportunity for war either. In Medieval times, you go to war with a neighbouring country and you hope to defeat their army, grab a bunch of territory, add it to your kingdom and rejoice in the increased tax revenues. But there isn’t a neighbouring country; your neighbours are a bunch of empty land. Maybe you can try and subjugate a settlement a few hexes away, but that assumes you have an excess of people that you can use to conquer the newly-conquered settlement, and an additional excess of people to regularly travel to the new settlement and back to make it clear to the people who live there now that you’re still their ruler and they should forget any ideas about independence.

Exception: if a settlement has fallen on bad times and e.g. nearly all the people who know how to grow food are gone, or a demon is squatting in the most productive fields or something, then desperate people may turn to banditry. And if you turn up to a settlement and you look like you have some nice gear, maybe the locals will try to rob and kill you rather than welcoming you with open arms. (Oh hey, that’s why there’s a Rogue profession.) The key, though, is desperation, or opportunism.

Exception: you can still have individual settlements that rely on slavery or similar types of subjugation where a strongman and his cronies extort the labour from dozens of downtrodden masses. The PCs could even accidentally stumble across such a settlement and end up getting press-ganged, or find an escapee who wants their help in rising up against their cruel oppressors. This might just be out of cruelty and laziness, or there might be a precious resource of interest to sorcerers and/or demons that is more valuable than the productivity of healthy labourers (if those in charge have even thought that far ahead). It’s just not viable in the long term or across vast distances.