theme for a fantasy campaign

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Bengt

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.

The other side of that coin, though, is that if you let your conflict with the dwarves cause you to stop trading with them, and the dwarves all starve (or even close down their mines and move away), you have no source of metals and minerals. That has a downside for your ability to wage war. So there is going to be some selective pressure against engaging in that kind of conflict.

I'm sure there are dwarves who acquire food for themselves from the surface around their mines. A dwarven community that doesn't grow any of its own food may well be unusual. But it makes sense to me that some food is transported in, and traded for mineral products, and that a dwarf community that loses its market falls on hard times, including a measure of famine.

Bill Stoddard