Assassins

[Gman]

On size of population and plausability then - you being the history buff Kgauck. - what was Japan's population when they had a clan of Ninja warrior assassins - or at least more than one. (much as I wanted to avoid the word Ninja). How does this compare to all of Aberynnis?

[kgauck]

In the ballpark of eight to ten million.

[ryancaveney]

population... How does this compare to all of Aberynnis?

That's a familiarly contentious question. =) Cerilia alone, at the population level the original rulebook (pp. 33-34) would have you believe, has about 7 million inhabitants. Comparison with actual medieval European population density shows this to be extremely low, so I and others prefer an overall Cerilian population of something like 50 million. Then there is the question of just how big the planet is, given that Cerilia itself is tiny -- all of Anuire put together is about the size of France (somewhat smaller than Texas). The comparison most often seen around here is Australia, but that's actually an overestimate of the whole Cerilian continent by a factor of about three. Therefore, if Aebrynis is about the same size as Earth, and the same land/sea fraction, then the whole planet could very well have a billion people, if the climate regions are distributed right. If, on the other hand, most of the landmass is desert or tundra, then the population could be much smaller, but really ought to be at least 100 million. Still, even the most conservative estimate we have for the population of Cerilia alone matches the figure Kenneth gave for feudal Japan (which is only one-sixth the size of Cerilia).