world building

[Nedward Underhill]

Let me open this discussion up for input:

Population of Crainil

A town needs food and supplies; the shops and other commerce would normally cater to the population of the town and outlying areas. If Borelin is unusual for living outside of the town walls, where do they get their food?

Your description of Crainil and its abundant shops and kennels implies an economy that serves a lot more than "perhaps a hundred souls". I'd say more like a thousand. Note that a school of a hundred kids is extraordinarily small: Westwood Collegiate was a smaller school when I was in it, with about 300 kids: as a result I pretty much knew everyone in my grade.

Also, shops and kennels are only a small part of a population: there is the 'non-working' population (housewives & children, and the elderly), employees of others' businesses, non-retail workers who operate out of their house: menders, builders, etc..

[Nedward Underhill]

I'm working out the economy and sociology as I go. Given the harsh climate of Aerliand, there will be few plant crops (there is a super hemp, and there will be a sugar-cane like crop that can be fermented...). Societies like Crainil will be live primarily on meat and be fed by hunters.

As for "a hundred souls"...

Crainil's main industry is the kennels. They also have wood, which is scarce. And of course the holy waters of the chapel. I'm not sure they have any more economic drivers. 3 is a lot of a small town.

It might look something like:

ADULTS:
6 kennels, say 3 ppl each on average. Total = 18
Hunters: 8
Blacksmith: 2 (1 + 1 apprentice)
Tailors: 4
Chapel & infirmary: 3
Leatherworkers: 4
Woodworkers: 4
Carpenters: 4 (2 + 2 apprentice)
Cooks (Great Hall): 3
Serving girls (Great Hall): 3

total: 53

53 kids to maintain population

TOTAL: 106

What am I missing?

(there is no school. there is no daycare. there are no stay-home moms.)

[Nedward Underhill]

hm...elderly, forgot them. Alright, add another 30 seniors.

Also, some of the traffic in town would be shoppers from neighboring towns and remote locations coming to shop for sled dogs or to take the cure.

...Which means I need a few places for ppl to stay. Lodges, Bed & Breakfasts, or at the Great Hall. Say +10 staff? (which adds +10 kids)

Updated total: 156

[Sorcha]

53 adults + 53 children does not give you a stable population.

In a frontier economy like you are describing, people become adults around age 15 or 16. For convenience, let us say 15.

We will consider anyone of an age where females can no longer reproduce to be elderly.

Let's say that people are classified as follows, then:

0-15 years: a child
15-50 years: an adult
50-70 years: elderly

This means that each person has 35 years to reproduce himself. If every child grows up to reproduce himself (so each male fathers an average of 2 children and each female produces an average of two live births, and nothing interferes with this), you need about 42% as many children in the population at any one time as you have adults. The elderly do not count as adults: they reproduced when they were classified as adults.

In subsistence areas, you don't generally see people reproducing at a rate that creates a growing population, as the resources of the region will usually not support population growth.

Now, some people do not reproduce for whatever reason. You therefore need a slightly higher rate of reproduction to maintain the population. However, the key thing is that adulthood is longer than childhood, so not all the children needed to replace the current set of adults must be children at the present time.

Assume a non-reproduction rate of 20% (which is a little high but you're talking about a subsistence situation here). This will give you a requirement to have about half as many children as adults at any one time.

If for some reason, you really want an equal number of children as adults, you will either need to lengthen childhood while shortening adulthood, or else significantly increase the rate at which people do not reproduce (either by raising the rate of deaths prior to reproduction, artificially limiting reproduction perhaps by reserving fecund women to a few males, or something else).

/end arithmetic

[Nedward Underhill]

i.e. Population Crainil: 110
53 adults, 30 seniors, and 27 children