>To bring this into Gloranthan perspective (since this is a HQ list), I think
>that what we're all pointing out here is how much time in travel people are
>willing to put up with for what purpose. When population density permits
>villages are close together so that they're perhaps an hour walk between
>them. This allows trading and visiting to occur - visiting being especially
>important for ensuring that you don't get inbreeding. If you can't regularly
>get to other villages, your populace is going to get genetically odd fast
>(which explains, I daresay, some of the peoples of the Appalachian Mountain
>region in America where, in fact, it might be more than a day's walk from
>place to place).
>
>I'm assuming that in Glorantha horses are ridden rarely enough (I'm thinking
>Sartar, of course), to make walking the only common form of travel. Now, my
>parents are retired, living in America which makes travel really easy (no
>matter where you go there'll be a MacDonalds off of the offramp), and
>affluent enough to spend money on travel. Looking at an ancient model,
>people aren't given vacation (holiday, for you Brits) time - you work or die
>of starvation mostly. So I think that even a day away is probably a rare
>enough event. Any more than a day and I'm going to guess that the trip is
>going to be seen as a major expedition.
I don't know of any society which worked every day. Granted there were no long vacations but a day a week was common with religious holidays on top. There are also periods of the year when there is little farm work to be done - a chance for the young men to go raiding, courting or whatever else they fancy.
>Meaning that you have to go there, do what you came to do, and get back in
>the same day.
>
>Now, over on the rules list I think there was a discussion of how far you
>can go in a day. I think that for practical purposes it's actually pretty
>short. Yeah in times of desperation a man can go a long way in one day. But
>given normal traveling conditions in which we assume that the traveler
>doesn't want to be hurt badly by the process, I think that even 10 miles is
>about the limit on day trips for Orlanthi getting to the next village.
>That's about 3 hours walking there, a few hours doing what you're doing, and
>then 3 hours back. Sounds easy until you try it. You'll be very tired the
>next day.
When I was young, and a lot fitter, a twenty mile walk was a leisure activity. Tired at the end of the day but nothing that a good night's rest wouldn't cure. I would expect the average Orlanthi to be much fitter than that - a ten hour day behind a plough would certainly be harder work even if he only managed a mile an hour.
>Meaning that most Orlanthi will rarely have been further from home than 10
>miles, and that assumes straight roads and such. Oh, perhaps for special
>religious ceremonies and such (flying probably gets you far fast, I'd
>guess). But otherwise I think that they're mostly very limited in how far
>they get from home. Using Jane's figures for English village density (which
>are probably a bit high for Dragon Pass), that's still as many as 30
>villages, actually, given optimal distribution. So there's still potentially
>lots of population to meet. But it's still very local population.
Actually a more useful indicator is the distance between market towns, a farmer needs to get from his farm to a market town and back with his cart in a day allowing time in the middle to sell his produce. Now carts, particularly ox carts, travel slower than walking speed so five miles each way is probably the limit which implies about ten miles from one to the next. The equivelent in Orlanthi culture is the clan market so I would expect the maximum distance from one end of the tula to the other to be about ten miles with the market near the centre. Plenty of Orlanthi would make that journey on a regular basis.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
Powered by hypermail