>>I didn't claim that casualties due to injuries disappear, but it is >>a clear fact that there is medical care. There are healers who walk >>around and prevent diseases from growing into epidemics.
> They can only prevent epidemics after there is an outbreak.
One stead member gets sick - probably no healer is called. The victim is subjected to care and herbal remedies.
6 out of 18 stead members lie down sick - one of the junior stead members is sent to kin or chieftain to get aid (if just nursing through). (If the disease is contagious, quarantine is effectively broken in this step...)
Kin or chieftain will send for the tribal healer if the disease is contagious (and threatens to spread across other steads, including the chieftain's, as well).
Necessity will procure "converts" to CA once the healer has arrived, probably candidates from the elderly (but still fit).
> Secondly the populations are far too small and too rural
> for epidemics (ie communities are in effect quarantined).
See above.
>>If a healer is around when such a rare lethal (though not >>immediately so) injury occurs the lethality could be stopped by >>the healer.
> And given the extreme rarity of healers in Orlanthi society,
> the chances of a healer being in the vicinity is not good.
One per tribe is one per 7000 people. Not quite modern coverage, but not bad either. (The Tysfjord community in northern Norway has one physician (and a share in a dentist) for about 5000 people, and is spread over an area of 200 km x 50 km... More distant farmsteads can be reached only by boat. Of course there are hospitals in the "nearby" cities - 100 km distance at least - but they aren't in the vicinity.)
> Hence the effect of a healer on the rural death rate (in
> which most deaths would occur) is minimal.
Swiftly approaching death is uncurable except by Resurrection.
And you still haven't addressed the "associate" aspect.
>>Yes, there were farmers among the Heortlings - but farming alone >>wouldn't have sufficed to bring them through the Darkness.
> Why not? If there were Pine Forests growing in the Darkness,
> then farming would have been effective. It would have been
> subsistence but it still would have been effective.
Simple comparison with subsistence farming in Northern Norway. If the people of Halogaland would have relied on agriculture alone, they would have had serious starvation every third year, on the average. Even with fishing and fish trade as supplementary diet times weren't easy.
Let's even assume that Grey Age "Bless Crops" prevents an utter failure of the crop, and you will get a guaranteed yield of 110% or more of what you sowed. All it needs to get starvation is a plague of rats...
>>I doubt farming would have yielded much. A lot of effort would >>have had to go into supplementary activities to feed them.
> Such as? The only alternative is hunting/gathering in which
> most of the nutrition comes through gathering activities.
Exactly. Iron Age farming did rely on the nearby wildmark to provide additional nutrition. Nuts, acorns, berries, mushrooms, even pine-cones, bark, moss come in handy.
Hunting rabbits does wonders to your protein intake (but leaves you with fat deficiencies). Fishing can become a necessity rather than a pleasant pastime if things went wrong with the crop or the storage.
> Since
> agriculture is a more advanced method of gathering, to take up
> hunting/gathering to supplement agriculture is a non-starter.
If your crop doesn't suffice, you'll do anything to get enough to eat. Gathering may require some roaming if your resources nearby have been depleted, but if there is need, there will be manpower for such expeditions. Hunters will be out as well...
Transfer of ideas leading to land of milk and honey:
>>It isn't just the people whose mortality rate goes down and whose >>fertility increases - their cattle, sheep, and grain do so as well.
> But the Heortlings already had sheep and cattle. So what
> difference does the exchange of ideas with the Ditali make?
The agricultural Heortlings would have profited less than their neighbours (although getting some of the Aramite breed of pigs would have helped), agreed. The non-agricultural Heortlings (yes, there were such) would have profitted, as well as the other peoples. The Heortlings made up only about half of the human population of that time, including the Esrolian matriarchy.
Somehow this is arguing backwards. There was a huge expansion of population at the dawn, with doubling of the population numbers occurring every thirty years or so, and this while some tribes disappeared and others fared badly. This means that some tribes at least must have been at 3% growth _or higher_ during all this time. There must have been reasons for such a growth, and there are two factors which come in for the area observed: the effects of the Dawn, and the Lightbringer and Unity missionaries. I am pesenting an attempt at an explanation for this effect. If mine is wrong, what were the reasons?
>>To gain any of Lhankor Mhy's magics, one needs to take a vow >>of not to lie. I fail to see any Orlanth Lawspeaker really doing so.
> And where are lay healers in modern Orlanth society? Chalana
> Arroy is an extremely specialized cult whose impact on Orlanthi
> society is minimal. A healer is about as common as a neurosurgeon
> in modern RW society and has as much impact.
Wrong. A healer is a political position in a tribe as well as a medical profession. The tribal healer will have pupils and assistants. Chieftains will want at last semi-specialized healers among their companions - and more than half probably have one.
>>>The shamans and wisewoman would know healing magics but most >>>gloranthans had them at the Dawn.
>>The Ernalda cult does have powers over fertility, and may have a >>healer specialisation which, while far from as powerful as CA herself, >>may provide adequate basic coverage for all but the most unlucky >>mishaps.
> In other words, no more or less effective than the healing
> magics available to most gloranthans at the Dawn.
Your average clan priestess at the Dawn may not have had the healing magics - these will need some mediation and attention at specialized cultic sites (remember RQ temple rules? not just a game mechanic). The Lightbringers brought communication and exchange.
Many of these magics had to be re-awakened. I have no published information on how this occurred with the Ernalda cult, but the similar cult of Aldrya required the Awakeners to get things in motion again, including available magics.
>>>and Bless Crops would not be unique to the Heortlings.
>>Bless Crops would be known to some of the agriculturalist societies at >>Dawn, but they still knew the old, pre-Darkness forms of addressing >>their deities. Even the fairly sophisticated Ralians of Hrelar Amali >>altered their techniques of worship towards the more effective >>Theyalan model in the long run.
> All rituals of addressing the gods are pre-darkness in origin and
> would be equally effective.
That's where you ought to reread the sources on the Lightbringer missionaries. Most directly spelled out for Prax, but other cultures encountered by the Theyalans were little more advanced than the Praxians.
> And since Flamal died at Hrelar Amali, I strongly doubt that the
> Galanini changed to get a better version of bless crops.
Flamal died. The old rites were tailored to Flamal alive, though. The Lightbringer rites addressed the surviving deities, in their state of power at the Dawn. Do you see a difference?
> In any case, they converted well after the years in question (ie the
> first century after the dawn).
Because contact was made only that late. There was this problem in Pralorela...
>>>[Weed control] would require an elf to be living near a farmstead and >>>co-operating fulltime. I hardly think this is realistic.
>>Tarndisi is a fixture in Colymar lands, and should easily be able to control >>the tributary vally towards the stream. She could help harness the newly >>abundant fertility of the land, and probably did for the local Orgovaltes.
> And Tarndisi is not an Elf.
Never said she was. I said Aldryami, which includes dryads, doesn't it? Alongside with pixies, elves, runners, and what-not.
> And she cannot distinguish between
> the fertility of useful plants and the fertility of weeds.
In that case I wonder how the aldryami ever developed useful war plants in their forests. If aldryami can't control plant life, who can (other than destroy outright, I mean)?
>>>[The] effectiveness [of lawspeakers] in reducing slaughter [...]
>>The Icelandic sagas >>are full of lawsuits going slowly bad, but the alternative would have >>been direct, genocidal slaughter of one of the parties, genocidal >>slaughter of the perpretators in revenge, and a strong war between >>the avengers and the perpretators' further kin.
> The slaughter cannot be 'genocidal' for then there would be no
> survivors to take revenge upon.
Read Njal's saga. About mid-way in the book, Gunnar is slain along with all other remaining members of his stead. The rest of the book continues with the destruction of Njal's family. There is always kin to demand reparations, or revenge.
> If there are no lawspeakers to
> mediate, then the outcome would be clan feuds which can fester
> for ages. Given that these feuds happen in Orlanthi society
> anyway, one wonders whether the lawspeakers are actually needed.
Without lawspeakers to mediate, a clan would be eliminated, _and_ the feud would fester afterwards. Net difference: one clan per incident.
Otherwise, imagine they would agitate for battle instead of discussing legal minutiae...
> [Alchemical Transformer as Farmer's best friend?]
>>>Which does what exactly? Turn the local creek any color you want?
>>Check RuneQuest Adventures #5, the Dwarf inlay. I suppose the >>Transformer "boosted the Bless Crops rituals" by providing magical >>fertilizer.
> Promoting 'growth'. Can anyone see how unmostali this would
> be for the average dwarf? Let alone Isildian whose 'hatred
> of Aldryami impaired his judgement' KoS p103.
If Isidilian saw a period of increased growth in the schedule, he will have supported it. It is always better to have humans deal with the troubles than to waste valuable work on it. Isidilian even cultivated pet humans, later known as the Cannon Cult.
> On the other
> hand, RQA merely speaks about the humans having 'limited access'
> to the alchemical transformer with no mention about its use.
It can't just have been to produce their booze... I seem to recall more specific mention of the thingy, but can't remember offhand where I have seen it.
> If it were used for fertilizer then IMHO it would have resulted
> in massive eutrophic growth in the local river valley making it
> uninhabitable for humans. The sooner gloranthans get the idea
> that Dwarf technology is totally illsuited to human wants and
> needs, the better off they'll be.
Perhaps it produced insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Would that be more in character?
The fact remains that the humans of Kerofinela occasionally used the transformer or its effects during their period of fast growth. The huge detrimental effect didn't take place then. For MGF you may assume a delayed consequence, but somehow this failed to appear during the 1620 years of history.
> The underpopulation or fertility of the land is not relevant
> to whether a 3% growth is sustainable. The problem is that
> the proportion of fertile women in the population decreases
> and so the growth rate is under pressure to slow down.
This is where the healers step in... It can be arranged for magics to ease births. Midwives would be the lay healers you demanded above. if they get the magic to decrease the lethality of birth, the decrease in fertility is reduced to the mere statistical effect of greater numbers of kids. Which have been around in frex Pakistan for ages, anyway.
>>Make it 10% for repairs, and 10% for expansion [of infrastructure].
> Why would they be expanding at 10%? This is far beyond their
> capabilities!
I was taking into account that clearing a field or raising a barn takes more effort than repairing one, or keeping one clear.
>>Against this stands an increase in productivity by a factor of at >>least three, if not higher, so that labour previously going into >>agriculture now could be applied to infrastructure.
> But one still has to weed the field. The increased fertility cuts
> both ways. It's simply not a case of 'I can sit on my fat arse and
> drool like a village idiot all day long'.
The amount of work which goes into a bushel of grain has been reduced by a factor of three, given the same amounts of work and seed used before the Dawn. This surplus grain reduces the effort which has to go into less productive supplementary activities (gathering), and frees labour capacities. Not one-to-one, but significantly.
>>In other words: people got the relief from the daily >>struggle for survival and could specialize on their crafts once more.
> And crafts are not conducive to maintaining a 3% growth rate.
But they are conducive to better access to tools, cutting down working time for a given amount of produce, or increasing the amount people can produce.
> Have you any idea what that implies? Consider the fertile
> women. If 1/2 the population are kids, then the women would
> need to be pregnant at a rate of least 12% (depending on
> the proportion of post-menopausal women). Figure in statistics
> for infant mortality (assume 0%) and women who don't have
> families (assume 15% from 'all Orlanthi women have families'),
> you end up with the fertile women each having 6 kids apiece
> in the span of their fertile lifetimes (assumed at a generous
> 30 years).
Sounds fairly ordinary Sartarite Orlanthi to me. A stead of four women in childbearing age should have at least one pregnancy at any given time, and your numbers demand one in eight.
> Tinker around with those statistics and they get worse. One
> would have to start buggering Nandans to keep up the growth
> rate.
I wouldn't go that far and suggest that Nandans step in for the 15% of women deciding not to give birth or otherwise unable to. :-)
>>>A growth rate of 3% means that the Orlanthi would have to work >>>significantly harder to provide for all the new mouths (ie building >>>new homes).
>>Not in the first years.
> Given that we are discussing the first few decades (up to 200 years
> was the original claim), I am not concerned with 'the first few
> years' but rather the growth rate over four or five generations.
And I showed you where the extra effort can be taken from. I don't assume either that the Orlanthi 'sit on [their] fat arse and drool like a village idiot all day long' once the basic coverage has been produced. Orlanthi are as ambitious as anybody, and like to be remembered as "he who founded so-and-so stead".
>>>This is above and beyond the backbreaking labor >>>involved in bringing the little 'uns into the world. At some >>>point, they are going to get sick and tired of the work involved >>>and not produce as many kids.
>>While worshipping O&E rather than Eurmal?
> I fail to see your point.
You brought it up yourself, above:
> It's simply not a case of 'I can sit on my fat arse and drool like
> a village idiot all day long'.
I doubt the Orlanthi would have practiced much birth control during this era, so they wouldn't just have decided to get along with fewer pregnancies. Not only in troll society is the woman with the most kids likelier to be an alpha-female.
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #170
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