Nochet down to 5000 inhabitants: That sounds worse than post-Roman Londinium (or Rome itself after the collapse of the western Empire).
Old Karse suffered a similar regress, and became known as a field of ruins. Take the Big Rubble supplement for an optimistical estimate how an abandoned city will look like. Wooden building components will be used up for heating by the survivors clinging to the place.
Lacking agricultural area even outside the city, I would assume that the remaining Nochetians will be mainly fisherfolk and traders.
One thing I have always been curious about is Nochet's role as grain port. How does the grain get into the city? The Lysos River (or whichever river was joined by the Creekstream after Belintar dug the New River) drains only a small part of Esrolia, so riverine transport would have to go to the river mouths of Rhigos, and thence to Nochet. Overland transport of grain is rarely done over long distances - value to weight ratio is bad.
The 5000 population sounds like an all-time low as the grain transports (or similar) ceased and the food situation grew critical.
The Nochet knowledge temple and similar institutions would persist in very diminished form (as many as can be fed).
Rightarm Islanders
> I know there aren't many Rightarm Islanders (about 31K if I recall),
> but I have assumed that they were crucial in creating and manning the
> Kethaelan navy. Have you played around much with the relationship
> between the Kethaelan Navy and the Rightarm Islanders?
Firing in from the sidelines: Gloranthan Military Experience (the Different Worlds article hidden on the Glorantha site) mentions a coastal population of Pelaskites for both Esrolia and Heortland, and there is of course Karse. Assuming that the navy will recruit from local seamen, it will be urban and coastal sailors as well as Islanders who serve in the navy.
> Assuming that a significant portion of the navy is manned by the
> Rightarm Islanders, the destruction of the fleet in 1616 must have hit
> the Islanders harder than any other group in Kethaela. If just 5k
> sailors died (which is probably low given that a fleet of 100 triremes
> might have as many as 15-20,000 people), the social impact must have
> been unimaginable.
No comparison to the Dragonkill. Besides, the social impact was lessened by the subsequent plundering (read: depopulation) of the isles. The fisherfolk have little treasure to offer but slaves and food once the ships are sunk. The merchant sailors... they won't have participated with their ships, but been on the seas. Their families would be hit along with the fisherfolk, and their portable (unhidden) wealth will be gone, too.
So one theory can read the 31,000 population as post-1616 census.
A slave population of several thousand (mostly women who might just have been widowed) may be transported to Threestep Isles.
Another theory says that while the ships were sunk, many sailors were saved by merfolk. That might explain a lower death rate.
> Anyways, I am curious about your thoughts along those lines....
Given that trireme rowing is a precision job requiring as much training as regimental longbow archery or Swiss pike regiments, I expect the naval units to be based on communities manning a ship - similar to say Harald Finehair's system of a ship militia. Thus it would be larger settlements providing such rowing team militia, or professional rowers in the navy.
I have no data about the different fishing events throughout the year.
Seasonal migration of sea fish will dictate when there are fisherfolk available for military adventures. That might be different from agricultural seasonal activity (with Fire Season mainly involving the first haymaking and transhumant herding). Bird egg gathering would take place in this season, I suppose - climbing or abseiling coastal rocks.
Do Gloranthan seas have blooms of toxic algae? That would influence shellfish and crab harvesting. Possibly around Fire and Earth Season.
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