>> The city will be the gathering place for the tribes'
>> warriors and fyrds but generally won't have any special troops.
>
>Again, I disagree - highly impractical. Tribal forces are gathered at the
>sites of the tribal moots, usually located in territory under tribal
>control. There may be an additional muster at the cities at certain
>festivals (i.e. when the tribal kings meet for the annual rites of the
>confederation) or when the city confederation as a whole is asked for
>(prior to the conquest for the muster of the Sartarite forces). There may
>be maneuvers or competitions while warriors from all four tribes are
>present at the cities (or rather may have been, prior to the conquest).
I think the tribal kings will tend to establish themselves in the cities rather than a separate village. Otherwise we get two competing centres in each tribe and the city has a big advantage.
Any city levies are going to be poor quality by comparison with the clan warbands because part of the strength of a Heortling force is that everyone is related to the people they are fighting with.
>Then there are other mercenary forces present in Sartar. IIRC, the Army of
>Tomorrow has a company in Sartar (a Malkioni mercenary band described as
>an example in the Hero Wars era, on glorantha.com), the Sun Domers will
>have small contingents in a city or two (also as contacts for greater
>contracts), and plenty herobands will hire as guards to feed hungry mouths
>between stabs at their destinations. Trade attracts mercenary work.
But which side are they on in 1602? I suspect the Lunars would hire a lot of mercenaries just to prevent the Prince of Sartar using them.
>A city of 1500 might support five bakers, and thereby maybe a fledgeling
>guild. Including the two city's millers, and maybe the two brewers as
>well, will form a sufficiently large interest group to be on the ring, so
>that's what I would look out for. Yes, I know that those occupations don't
>have that much in common except that they all work with grain. That's a
>market segment worth controlling, though, and two millers alone wouldn't
>be able to do so. IMO, IMG.
That assumes the cities have windmills or watermills to grind grain. Without that the trade of miller doesn't exist. In which case either the bakers have to grind their own corn which will require more than five or bakers don't exist and all bread is made at home.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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