The Clearwine Fyrd can muster 500 warriors quickly (Sartar Companion p32) out of a total tribal population of 15,500. Out of the Fyrd, only a hundred are described as being Thanes and Bodyguards which would be my guess for what any Orlanthi tribe could afford to send far beyond their borders. Applying these numbers to the Heortling troop numbers at the battle of Night and Day I get
Orgovaltes: 46,500 people (up from 8000 circa 125 ST). The current population of Sartar in roughly the same area is 100,000.
Koroltes: 46,500 people (up from 7000 circa 125 ST)
Total Heortlings: 155,000 (up from 55,000 circa 125 ST).
The total Heortling numbers are skewed because many of the northern tribes have already been defeated.
For Dara Happa (Khordavu period), a bygone monograph (History of the Dara Happan Army) estimates that Dara Happa had a total population of 200,000 and could put up 10,000 men in the ten stonewall phalanxes whereas other enemy alliances could put up only half that at best. Even assuming that Dara Happa was sending only its best troops a long way to the Battle of Night and Day some 150 years later, I get the impression the Dara Happa sent an undersized contingent for political reasons and that it could send double or three times that number if it really wanted to. So my population estimates are circa the Battle of Night and Day are:
Dara Happa: 800,000 (currently 1,400,000)
The next set of numbers we have are the troop numbers for the Dragonkill.
Peloria (Dara Happa, Carmania and Saird): 70,000. The Lunar Empire
currently has 25,500 (WF#15 p52) out of a total number of 78,000 troops
(Guide to Glorantha p220). Because of this, I assume the populations
are pretty much the same size as they are now.
We don't have much in the way of the death toll for the Gbaji Wars, the
Dragonkill or the Seleran Wars. A good real world analogy, the Thirty
Years War, killed something like 20% of the total population over 30
years. A devastating loss for those who lived through it but one that
could be made up within a generation or two. Other mortality models
(the Black Death 75% or the New World epidemics) don't strike me as
likely because one would then have to explain why a smaller unaffected
group (ie Tarsh or Prax) doesn't simply take over the place.
--Peter Metcalfe
Powered by hypermail