On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, daniel mcsorley wrote:

> I didn`t say there were human wizards there, I said 300,000 men.

I think that`s probably pretty reasonable.

> Whether elves are sorcerors or wizards (in 3e) is a matter of taste.

Agreed.

> I say there are no sorcerors in BR, just wizards,

Agreed.

> but it`s not germane anyway, because we`re talking about humans,
> /after/ Deismaar.

Agreed.

> > no more than 20 (TWENTY!) people in the whole domain are blooded.
> Sounds low- it doesn`t fit with the demographics.

Agreed.

> Even if the blooded only married each other the population would still
> tend to grow.

Agreed.

> Heck, they`d grow faster than the general population, because they end
> up wealthy, often have magical powers, and gain more access to
> clerical healing magic.

Agreed. OTOH, they`d also be more inclined to kill each other (or be
hunted down by awnsheghlien) for bloodtheft. Still, I agree that overall
their growth rate (birth rate minus death rate) would be higher.

> They wouldn`t all be high bloodline, because it would tend to dilute over
> time, but there would be a lot of them.

If they were only marrying each other and occasionally spent RP to
increase bloodlines, the bloodlines would have tended to grow on average
(even if the very highest lines did slide towards the middle). Frequent
bloodtheft could drive it either way: if the winners of bloodtheft duels
tended to have higher bloodlines than the losers, average blood score
would go up; if winners started lower than losers, the average would go
down (slightly less quickly, since some blood points would be gained).

The existence of many tainted bloodlines and the well-known RW phenomena
of royal bastards and families rising up from the common folk over
generations to eventually become nobles imply to me that there has been a
great deal of outbreeding, which continues to this day, so I am inclined
to consider any blooded proportion much under the rulebook`s 1% to be too
low. PS Muden`s figure of 0.1% is IMO the absolute lower limit.

> Say they average 1% growth per generation (rather low, medieval
> population growth was around .35% per year),

These figures don`t mesh well if you use the RW rate for the commoners!
0.35% per year is a bit over 11% per 30-year generation. In the same 1500
years that the blooded grew 64%, the unblooded would have grown by
189,000%! Clearly there must be something else going on, or relatively
there wouldn`t be enough scions to fill all the regent jobs. Also, if
true, it might imply 300,000 at Deismaar is much too large a figure. But
we ought to remember that at its height ancient Rome was a city of at
least that many inhabitants, and many think it held a million or more, a
figure not seen again until the industrial revolution, some 1500 years
later. Perhaps a significant fraction of the population of Cerilia
perished at Deismaar or in its aftermath effects on society -- and global
climate! -- in order to enable continued moderately rapid growth since then.


Ryan Caveney

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