Natural Resources by Provence???

[Gwrthefyr]

yes but "raping the land" produces more profit and more work for the people, that produces more new towns and people, that produces more taxpayers and more potential soldiers, that produces more money for the regent, unless the regent is too weak ruler, and way would any regent say "oi!" ?
Sorry but i don't believe in the conscience of the humans, except if the regent is a wizard, or have really powerful wizard adviser who will use that power of the nature in the name of the regent and for the good of the country.

IIRC, the court mage in Talinie has about as little conscience as the guilds (and frankly, it's not like renaissance industry is anything like victorian or contemporary industry; quite simply, with the paltry official material fleets and dark age densities, they hardly have much to do with all that wood and farmland, unless the climate of Anuire is warmer and moister than we thought, or they decided to base their productions on copper, cotton and glass, which is rather improbable, but I digress, this has been discussed at length already) - he is rumored to have a way to harness source from developed land and I seem to have heard mention of sapient sacrifices.

[Gman]

Pre Industrial era - Pre steam power - raping the land is much harder - thousands of slaves in a open cut mine is not really Anuirean either.

For example a guild is more likely to get all the quiltweavers in the province to keep making something that is very marketable for them by giving them a guaranteed market than by setting up a mass production rag house. - The concept of which is anacronistically available to us but not to Anuirian's, Brechts or particularly Vos etc.

If someone was dumping their dirt in the river from a mining operation the local herders / Rangers and Druids may( aka various Westerns) go back upstream to chastise the dirty water people - mainly because their animals are suffering.

But you would need some nifty sluicing and pumping to really get a river silted up and I don't think the tech is there - or the applications of it for them.

Guilds with masters and apprentices and "guild secrets" that craft fine handmade products are more the go in my mind.

[AndrewTall]

The whole point about Talinie and other lands however is that the guilds are doing things the cheap way. They aren't replanting, or using any other method to prevent or restore damage, it's just log every tree in sight and float it down to the coast, rip open the land for mines and leave a scar, etc.

There are of course many ways to reduce the damage or restore the land afterwards when logging, mining, etc - particularly in a magical society, but all of these will have a cost and therefore reduce profits. That appears to me to be the difference between the guilds in Talinie and elsewhere, the guilds are acting in an unsustainable fashion and as yet only the elves (and their wizard stoge) are complaining - everyone else is growing fat of the increased profits without connecting the landslides, successively poorer crops, flooding, etc to the way the guilds are working.

Magic can easily as MT pointed out replace technology, his 'disintegrate silicon' spell works both as mining and as refining tool, etc but that risks turning BR into Ebarron; fine if you want it of course but not for all tastes.

[Sorontar]

The thought of a mage and druid working in industry like that just doesn't work for me. It just isn't right for Cerilia. Druids just don't help large scale guilds. The Emerald Spire is actually actively against it.

However, I could imagine a guild or province mage/cleric regent developing a "Locate resource" realm spell to do the exploration for particular ore bodies etc.The issue is whether they would bother using it when a lot of the resources are first found on the surface and whether they could get any underground resources out of the ground to a large scale.

In the Rjurik provinces, the populations up north seem so low that there is not enough man-power to over harvest any resources. Plus the temperature and the druids wouldn't allow it. Therefore the province level does reflect the production level of the province.

Sorontar

[Gwrthefyr]

The whole point about Talinie and other lands however is that the guilds are doing things the cheap way. They aren't replanting, or using any other method to prevent or restore damage, it's just log every tree in sight and float it down to the coast, rip open the land for mines and leave a scar, etc.

Maybe, but it's a point that has little to do with the 15th century. You also can't log every tree in sight when you lack the manpower, and you don't log every tree in sight when the economy doesn't need every tree in sight. About the only possible way a Talinie with the official population numbers (78k) could remotely devastate is if they seasonally burned the forests for hunting purposes, had intensive cotton plantations, and employed gathering instead of farming, which, even then, they would still lack the manpower to actually devastate on a scale of less than centuries.

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[ConjurerDragon]

Gwrthefyr schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
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> Gwrthefyr wrote:
> ------------ QUOTE ----------
> The whole point about Talinie and other lands however is that the guilds are doing things the cheap way. They aren`t replanting, or using any other method to prevent or restore damage, it`s just log every tree in sight and float it down to the coast, rip open the land for mines and leave a scar, etc.
>
>
> -----------------------------
>
> Maybe, but it`s a point that has little to do with the 15th century. You also can`t log every tree in sight when you lack the manpower, and you don`t log every tree in sight when the economy doesn`t need every tree in sight. About the only possible way a Talinie with the official population numbers (78k) could remotely devastate is if they seasonally burned the forests for hunting purposes, had intensive cotton plantations, and employed gathering instead of farming, which, even then, they would still lack the manpower to actually devastate on a scale of less than centuries.
>
I doubt that fact. Libanon for example was not a treeless coast in
ancient times.
If they don´t need the trees in Talinie itself then the guilders will
sell them elsewhere. Building boats in Rjurik comes to mind when one of
the guilders is from there and restrictions are heavy on logging trees
in Rjurik lands.

[kgauck]

Based on official numbers, the Rjurik have such a low population that if the land and climate supported it, the forests would be expanding, not retreating. Even with the restrictions described in the PS, wood would be an export item from Rjurik lands (and is described as such in the PS).

[AndrewTall]

Logging for specific varieties of valuable trees only (you leave the lesser trees to rot) or to clear land for small scale faring (which may swiftly deteriorate without the trees binding it in place) can cause damage across a far wider extent than should occur simply through need for wood. A look at Scotland, one source for Talinie, shows a good historic example of destruction of land through lack of understanding or concern - the Highland clearances left bitter memories but were brought about through necessary change of land use (a hill side supports a flock of sheep and 1 shepherd not a dozen small crofters) and similar problems may well be in Talinie's future.

My argument is of course putting the cart before the horse by trying to find a justification for the comment in PS Talinie rather than looking at Talinie's industry (mostly small scale family businesses and noble/temple estates) and working out the environmental impact. If I was building Talinie from scratch I might have highlanders complaining about the poorness of the soil and the fact it can only sustain sheep whereas in their grandfathers day they hunted and grew crops a plenty, etc but wouldn't have anything like the rapid environmental damage noted in the PS. Even if you increase the population to a more reasonable level (x5-10) by ascribing BR population as 'taxpayers only', or 'families' or 'hearths' or the like it should take a generation to see real damage to the realm.

Gwrthefyr
with only a possible minority that actually gives a thought to industry at all (and they most likely do not live in Anuire, which would, economically, be something of a feudal wasteland in comparison to Brechtur, Khinasi or Rjurik).

I use industry in a fairly wide sense not just in terms of factories and mills; Anuire, as a feudal system is obsessed by nobility - and that really means obsessed by wealth. A noble who uses their capital to encourage mining, planting of crops, invests in businesses, etc increases their wealth and therefore their standing; similarly any noble who neglects their estates or investments will in time lose all station; whatever the appearances desperately maintained (Mines? Gosh never touch them - so common!) the nobility must be ruthlessly practical to survive and prosper and so are likely very closely tied to merchants and industry - impoverished nobles marrying wealthy upstarts has a long history in RL for both maintaining the wealth of the nobility and preventing social upheaval - the 'new' rich may be scorned by some but the social class system in Anuire is likely far more fluid than any of its people admit or even recognise.


Anuire is therefore almost certainly as industrially advanced as Khinasi - who may be less obsessed with station (arguable at best imo) but likely favour theory over practice (similar to the roman:greek divide) will be well ahead of the Rjurik and Vos (both with lower populations, poorer land and climate) and on par, but possibly falling slowly behind, the Brecht (who have poorer land but a more fluid and thus efficient system).

[Gman]

Hmm If the soil and ecosystem in Talinie/parts of Anuire is more like a jungle ecosystem - once the top soil is washed away and the forest is felled then the land/soil is basically rubbish.
If you used a vibrant ecosystem on poor soil that is magically linked to the land - then once the magic and ecosystem has been given the chop then unless a nation is really concentrating on doing replanting/forestation then it would probably make sense to be like it is.

Obviously some areas have descriptions of verdant grasslands/ Ariable etc but Talinie may have a poorer soil.

[MatanThunder]

<snip to split thread>

Maybe, but it's a point that has little to do with the 15th century. You also can't log every tree in sight when you lack the manpower, and you don't log every tree in sight when the economy doesn't need every tree in sight. About the only possible way a Talinie with the official population numbers (78k) could remotely devastate is if they seasonally burned the forests for hunting purposes, had intensive cotton plantations, and employed gathering instead of farming, which, even then, they would still lack the manpower to actually devastate on a scale of less than centuries.

The clear cut removal of trees was a long used method, and it did lay waste to vast stretches of land. Magic could remove this blight.

As to cutting down every tree. The population centers always imported their fire wood and wood for industry. Usually stripping away nearby forests in order to provide for their needs. In a society in the northern latitudes almost garuntees that the forests are stripped over time in order to provide cook/heating for their populace. In rural areas the forests repair themselves, but in population centers, there is a constant need to import for their needs.

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Later