Me>> Your calculations also ignore the growth rate in the societies over
>> time (and 54 years is a significant period of time).
>If the population were smaller then the effect of the Bat would be greater.
The point was that you ignored the growth rate to conclude that 1 in 10 is eaten by the bat. Given that this is over two generations, some people are likely to die before they even have a chance to meet the bat and so the proportion of people eaten by the bat falls.
Assuming a 5% replacement rate (ie 5% of the population die and are replaced by newborns) and that any growth in population is eaten by the bat, that means that over 54 years the Bat feeds from an effective population that is 2.7 times larger than the number of people living at any one time. Which reduces the proportion of people eaten to only 3.7% which is well beneath the proportion of lowlifes in Lunar Society.
>Does anyone know the population of the Empire say, 3 wanes ago? Assuming it
>was much smaller then the chance of the Bat eating one of your relatives gets
>even higher.
It was very lower than it is now. Sheng Seleris was on a rampage then. But the strength of the Bat may be due to the number of good lunar citizens and so it would have been weaker and less hungry in those days.
>As for cattle numbers - what about the cycle of life and death
>that hunter cult, Eiritha and presumable Uralda go on about?
Nowhere is it said that new spirits are not created AFAIK. To take a simple thought experiment, your argument imposes a constraint on the number of cows that can exist at any one time. Thus if the cows in the world increase beyond number X, some will be born soulless for there are no spirits for them. Does this seem plausible?
Joerg Baumgartner:
KN>> I always thought that the amount of stuff and souls that the Crimson
>> Bat had to consume and utterly destroy every week was appallingly
>> high.
>It is, and this has even bothered Lunar authorities, including Her
>Redness herself.
Monstrous lies. The Bat is an integral part of the Goddess's teachings. To be a good Lunar, one must stop worrying and Love the Bat! Only then will one have conquered the fear of Death that pervades the Cosmos.
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