theme for a fantasy campaign

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If they're relying on their own byproducts, you have the Perpetual Motion Fur Farm (raise rats, feed the rats to cats, skin the cats, and feed the cat bodies to the rats).

Bill Stoddard

That's where the bat guano comes in! Guano was the best pre industrial fertilizer. And potentially also collecting brush from the mountain.

My big problem with importing all their food is that I understood this to be a setting without reliable long distance transport or industrialized farming. So the dwarfs will get their food from the regions directly adjacent to their mountain. Say this particular mountain have three trading partners they get food from. If they get into conflict with one, the other two would have to increase their food export by 50% to keep up or the dwarfs will starve. If there droughts or similar, the adjacent regions will feed themselves first and then trade the surplus, if there is any. Again the dwarfs get the short end of the stick.

It seems that over a longer time all the dwarfs are bound to starve to death unless the transportation TL is much higher than the mentioned 1-2. The other solution is to let the dwarfs feed themselves, perhaps they farm in protected valleys (like Revelstone) if you don't like bats.