Question Game: Post Agricultural Fantasy Setting.

[weby]

Originally Posted by (E)

Education

Question
What are (some of) the various fairy races?

No one knows how many faerie races there are in total, but the number is huge.

The most common faerie races encountered in the Empire are the humanoid -aerii races. There are apparently dozens of such races with names like De-aerii, Arak-aerii, Ulo-aerii, Nastuk-aerii, Fertuk-aerii and similar.

Common to all -aerii races are a humanoid form 3-5 feet tall, with greenish or brownish skin, thin build and sharp chiseled looking faces with really big eyes, compared to humans, that have no visibly separete pupil and iris. They do not have any body hair. They are known for asking random seeming questions from people and paying something for good answers. The questions can be really anything.

Less common, but still not uncommon:
Itarii:the humanoid faerie race that is closest to humans in look. They are on average about 6 feel tall, with slightly slender build and fair to reddish skin. They have hair like humans and in bad lightning can pass for a human if one does not note the eyes. The eyes are definitely nonhuman with no white, iris or pupil, the whole visible part being black. Also in good light the non human face proportions are clear. A sizable minority think that they cause bad luck to people who are too close to them too long.

Then there are a multitude of flying Faeries ranging from the 1 foot long Asliti to the 7 foot long Damataa. Their body looks vaguely like a flying insect, but with just four limbs like most encountred faeries. When walking they use their hands and legs, but they tend to mostly fly. Their faces are vaguely humanoid, but with the large eyes common to most faerie. They apparently use magic to help fly and use the wings mostly for steering as the wings are clearly too small to support their weight and the flapping motion is slow. They are known to have been occasionally in accidents when some mage has cast some large spell nearby, and in almost all such cases the mage has been driven crazy as response.

There are a huge number of smaller humanoid faeries, but they are so rarely seem among humans that it almost seems like each such looks different from each other.

There are apparently also a large number of non-humanoid faeries, but their interaction with humans is if possible even more rare. But people talk about things like a spiked ball about two feet in diameter that have spoken mystical warnings, creatures that look like a bush with no leaves that have identified themselves as faeries and asked for directions and many more. As such sightings are rare it is not clear how many are real and how many are the result of someones imagination.

When asked how many types of faeries there are, the faeries themselves tend to seem confused by the concept of the question, though they readily identify their own race if asked.

Why are human souls made to rule fairyland?

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by weby

Why are human souls made to rule fairyland?

Human souls (in particular the Golden Emperor and his ancestors) are being made to rule in fairyland because the Golden Emperor comes from a long line of great leaders. The particular faction of fairies that the Golden Emperor made his request to needed capable military and civilian leadership to defeat their opponents. So, the souls of the Golden Emperor and his ancestors were made rulers, and defeated the opponents. The weakening of the empire was a bonus because it makes this particular faction more powerful.

Question: What do people do for fun?

[(E)]

What do people do for fun
With increased spare time and fast long distance travel the population are in general sports fanatics. Dozens of different sports exist with large team sports being popular. A football variation with 50 a side is quite common. Parkour style racing is favored in some cities. Unarmed bouts and gambling are big in others. Amongst the wealthy bets and gambling on outrageous races and contests are a display of status.

Question
What is the most popular unarmed combat (sport) style like?

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by (E)

Question
What is the most popular unarmed combat (sport) style like?

Good armor is abundant due to magic. As a result, most people are too afraid of injuring themselves to rely on punches or kicks. Instead, they prefer to topple their foes to buy time to rearm or escape. The most popular combat style is called "Richnoun" (Greek for "throwing"). A martial artist from our world perceive it as a fusion of Judo and Aikido uses Judo moves for offense and Aikido moves for defense.

Martial arts tournaments are extremely popular. "Exhibition" tournaments use brackets because that is easiest for the public to follow. In Richnoun tournaments, victory goes to the first contestant to topple their opponent a given number of times. The number of topples required for victory ranges from 3 to 7. Endurance and hydration is an important factor in these competitions.

Richnoun has 8 ranks: Rope Belt, Leather Belt, White Belt (made out of cotton or similar), Earth Belt, Crimson Belt, Violet Belt, Black Belt, and Gold Belt. In Richnoun, your skill relative to your class mates is the most important determinant of belt progression until you hit Black Belt. To determine relative skill, each belt level except for Black and Gold Belt has an annual round robin tournament. Pairs of contestants spar with each other for 5 minutes per round. Whoever achieves the most topples is considered the winner. The top 70% of candidates get promoted to the next belt level.

Note that the privilege of participating in a belt tournament is granted by the martial artist's instructor. Instructors are free to bar unworthy students from participating.

The Gold Belt is worn by the leader of the Richnoun martial art. They are selected by a majority of vote of the all Richnoun artists above Rope Belt. To become the Gold Belt, you must have achieved the rank of Black Belt.

Question: What is Code of Honor(Richnoun)?

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

Question: What is Code of Honor(Richnoun)?

I'm going to post an easier question, since this one caused the thread to stall.

Question: What is the currency like in the Manna Empire?

[weby]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

I'm going to post an easier question, since this one caused the thread to stall.

Question: What is the currency like in the Manna Empire?

The basis of money are very dense metals. The denser the material the more work it is to create with magic and after a certain point the mage also needs to be more and more skilled to do it.

While even a starting conjurer can create something like stone and most conjurers can conjure steel items, already copper items are slightly more limited and only very few mages can conjure silver items. There has only been one verified conjuring of a lead item by a specialist research team after long and complex research and conjuring process.

Thus the lesser coinage is usually lead and the higher gold or platinum. The coins came in variety of form factors as there is no single authority to issue them and the merchants usually just weight them and use a magic purity detector to detect the purity.

There exists also a form of paper currency, the promissory note where someone promises to pay the holder a certain amount in gold or platinum. These are variably valued based on who issued them. The notes of the largest manufacturing families are the most trusted and widely accepted.

Question: How densely populated are the cities?

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by weby

Question: How densely populated are the cities?

Cities support very high population densities. The capital city is the densest, with an average density of about 2000 people/km^2 and a peak density of 7400 people/km^2. Most other cities break an average density of 1400 people/km^2. The capital isn't the largest city, even though it comes in the top ten.

Question: How many people live in the Manna Empire?

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Cities support very high population densities. The capital city is the densest, with an average density of about 2000 people/km^2 and a peak density of 7400 people/km^2. Most other cities break an average density of 1400 people/km^2. The capital isn't the largest city, even though it comes in the top ten.

Question: How many people live in the Manna Empire?

I'm going to assume that the cities are separated by large swatches of unpopulated wilderness. In a post agricultural setting, most people wouldn't bother to live in the countryside. So we only have to worry about the urban population.

Since TGLS has established the average population density at 1400 people/sq km (or ~3627 people/sq mi), we can figure out the population based on the area occupied by the cities.

I highly doubt that cities would be more than a day's travel in diameter. Portals would be faster for any location farther than a day's travel away. Most urban planners would build (roughly) circular cities with radial main roads leading to their portal.

Most people can march 50 mi (80.5 km) in a day, assuming an average Basic Move of 5, roads that count as average terrain, fair weather, and that people are going to spend all day traveling. But it should be possible for people to cross the city in a day in bad weather. Due to high unemployment, cities have enough labor to keep snow accumulation below ankle depth. So we only need to halve the city size to account for bad weather. This gives us a city diameter of 25 mi (40.2 km).

However, it is unrealistic that people are going to spend all day traveling. When people travel, they probably have some business in mind. I'm going to assume that "traveling all day" means traveling for 12 h. Traveling for 8 h and then spending 4 h carrying out business or socializing is the upper limit of what is reasonable to accomplish in a day. In bad weather, most people would have an average speed of 2.5 mph and be able to travel 20 mi.

Therefore, the upper limit on city diameter is approximately 20 mi (32.2 km). Each city has a diameter of 3d + 2 mi, with an average of 12.5 mi (20.1 km).

According to the Census Bureau, there are 758 cities in the US with populations over 50,000. This sounds like a good number to use for the Manna Empire. Assuming that the city diameter distribution exactly matches the 3d distribution, we have the following distribution:

4 cities with a diameter of 5 mi (8.04 km)
11 cities with a diameter of 6 mi (9.66 km)
22 cities with a diameter of 7 mi (11.27 km)
36 cities with a diameter of 8 mi (12.87 km)
53 cities with a diameter of 9 mi (14.48 km)
74 cities with a diameter of 10 mi (16.09 km)
88 cities with a diameter of 11 mi (17.70 km)
95 cities with a diameter of 12 mi (19.31 km)
95 cities with a diameter of 13 mi (20.92 km)
88 cities with a diameter of 14 mi (22.53 km)
74 cities with a diameter of 15 mi (24.14 km)
53 cities with a diameter of 16 mi (25.75 km)
36 cities with a diameter of 17 mi (27.36 km)
22 cities with a diameter of 18 mi (28.97 km)
11 cities with a diameter of 19 mi (30.58 km)
4 cities with a diameter of 20 mi (32.17 km)

These cities would collectively occupy an area of 99,371.93 sq mi (257,370 sq km).

Conclusion: the Manna Empire has a population of 360,412,706 people. In other words, you would roughly have the population of the United States crammed into the United Kingdom. Although much more livable due to the portal network.

Question: What happens when a criminal manages to leave a city's jurisdiction via portal?

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

Conclusion: the Manna Empire has a population of 360,412,706 people. In other words, you would roughly have the population of the United States crammed into the United Kingdom. Although much more livable due to the portal network.

Reflecting on this, 360 million people sounds like a bit much for a TL4 society. According to Wikipedia, in OTL circa 1450, the world population was 350 to 400 million people. Population should be higher due to food magically appearing on people's tables. But a population recovering from being wiped out by asteroid strikes shouldn't be that high.

Part of the problem was that 758 cities gives too large a population with the city sizes and population densities I used. I think 25 cities is a much more reasonable number. This gives a population of 16,388,221 people.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

I'm going to assume that the cities are separated by large swatches of unpopulated wilderness. In a post agricultural setting, most people wouldn't bother to live in the countryside. So we only have to worry about the urban population.
...

Spoken like someone that never met an antisocial person.
Most of us live in urban areas because we don't have a choice.
Living safely yet miles away from most other people sounds idyllic not bothersome.