Populating and fleshing out Saltmarsh

[azato]

I would like to run a game of THE SINISTER SECRET OF SALTMARSH. (yes I know there is a hero conversion out there) and the module writers give no details to the town or many of the personalities. I would like to flesh this area out.

First of all - I imagine this portion of Keoland about the same climate/terrain as southern Louisana. The region is sort of bounded by a huge and humanoid populated swamp and vast untamed (goblin infested) forest. The nearest "country" has naval superiority (Sea Barons) and wishes to undermine Keoland. There is a nearby fort. THe town is described as having about 1,500 people...which is fairly good sized.

That being said... I am thinking what would be the economy of the region and/or the town of Saltmarsh?

*Foremost would be fishing. While whaling is an industry in Keoland the may be better reserved to a closer and larger city of Seaton.

* The fort would cause a need for support (small crops, entertainment, alcohol, etc) much like a miliary base today indirectly inputs cash into a local economy.

* Ship building would be a possible industry, but maybe focus on smaller boats rather than larger ships.

* I am thinking about making this region a site for the manufacture of blue dye - derived from shells (or something like that)

*Bricks - a lot of clay.

*Nets

*Sail making



I imagine the following imports would be very important:

* metals - to make into whatever
* grain
* grain alcohol
* salted meat
* stone
* women
* weapons
* cloth



What are your thoughts???

[Cancer]

Your blue dye could be a swamp plant, sort of like the real-life indigo plant. Another possible export could be wood (if your swamps have trees with rot-resistant wood, that's a trade commodity in that tech) and perhaps leather or hides of swamp animals. Shipbuilding as an industry is unlikely, because that usually means you have a large resident population around there engaged in maritime activity (and so there's lots of the specialist craftsmen already at hand), as well as abundant timber suitable for shipbuilding.

[Kristopher]

Perhaps instead there's some harvesting of a product that's important for ship-building, such as a plant that produces high-quality fiber for rope, or a resin that makes a good ingredient in water-proofing and/or sealing joints between the hull planks.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Flax is "retted" in pools of stagnant water. More generally, pre-modern textile industries often flourish where there wasn't other employment.* Textile-manufacture was a huge business in pre-modern times, and it was very competitive. I'm immediately recalling some of Egypt's delta cities, which were big textile towns. Imagine crowded little islands in the middle of a "sea of green," crowded with expert weavers. Their wages were kept low by the fact that weaving was the only game in town, and they were well-fed, thanks mainly to herds that grazed the region in the dry season and which were then culled during the Nile flood, before the herders headed out for the desert ranges of "Libya" and "Arabia" (scare quotes because while the pastures were in those directions, they were mostly within the borders of modern Egypt).


*Sometimes spectacularly so. The fez, which is practically the stereotyped hat of an Eastern Mediterranean Muslim, used to be produced exclusively in the Fezzan, a region of agricultural oases in central Libya. So if you saw a merchant in Istanbul wearing one of those funny, flat topped hats, you know that it started life in a mud hut in the ancient kingdom of the Garamantes, and was shipped across the Sahara to Tripoli on the back of a camel.

[mayapuppies]

I'm fascinated by populating any region in a game world, so this kind of thread I like to follow. Please continue with these great ideas.

[Susano]

This lives out in the swamps:

http://surbrook.devermore.net/original/creatures/grandfather.jpg

Character sheet here:
http://surbrook.devermore.net/original/creatures/grandfather.html

[Old Man]

Them's good eatin'.

There could be a kind of hunting trade out of Saltmarsh too, similar to how the fur trade used to work in the New World. Only instead of fur, the goods would be croc skin and hydraturtle shell.

[Susano]

Not to mention crawdads and catfish.

[azato]

So we can add flax derived textiles to the list.

Dye could be derived from plant or shellfish....I think I prefer the plant.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lets says we have a population of about 1,300 residents in the town. How would that break down for the following:

1. Bars/Inns
2. Blacksmiths
3. Carpenters
4. Coopers (or would that be imported?)
5. Tanning (I imagine most of the leather would be imported)
6. Leather workers.

I think there would be a business for mass preserving raw fish, perhaps serving as rations for sailors (smoked/salted).


Somebody, somewhere stated that if you take the population of a town you could multiply that number by 3 to get a feel for how many people were in the town for any given day (thus adding people coming for business)

The region is probably not very well educated. The author(s?) of the module state that the people are very superstitious and I am going to play that heavy for the module.

I was thinking about staying that a group of Olmans were one of the original settlers along this region. They were not conquered so much as absorbed by Keoland and over time became marginalized. Originally the lived in small fishing villages but now play the role of servants and manual laborers. Their skin color and culture keeps them from integrating into the larger culture. I am not sure I will go this route...but it is a possibility.

[Susano]

So we can add flax derived textiles to the list.

Dye could be derived from plant or shellfish....I think I prefer the plant.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lets says we have a population of about 1,300 residents in the town.


That's a huge town when compared to the average middle ages town or village.



How would that break down for the following:

1. Bars/Inns
2. Blacksmiths
3. Carpenters
4. Coopers (or would that be imported?)
5. Tanning (I imagine most of the leather would be imported)
6. Leather workers.


As in how many in a town that size? If you divide the population evenly, you get 400 men, 400 women, and 400 children (with 100 left over). If you figure one tavern serves 100 locals (not all at once mind you) that's 4, maybe 6. You'd have at least one blacksmith, with apprentices. The town is right on the water, so you'll need a lot of carpenter, maybe even a basic shipwrights. And if you have fishing boats, you'll need people to make the rope, sails, and rigging. This means you would have a coopers. There would probably be a tanner if there's a decent supply of local hide (say crocodile?). And there would be multiple leather workers. You also need fishermen, brewers (alewives?), farmers, hunters, candle makers, and tailors.



I think there would be a business for mass preserving raw fish, perhaps serving as rations for sailors (smoked/salted).


That falls under the fishermen. They'll preserve what they catch.




Somebody, somewhere stated that if you take the population of a town you could multiply that number by 3 to get a feel for how many people were in the town for any given day (thus adding people coming for business)


I find that hard to believe. These days, yes, in a period setting? Not so much.



The region is probably not very well educated. The author(s?) of the module state that the people are very superstitious and I am going to play that heavy for the module.

I was thinking about staying that a group of Olmans were one of the original settlers along this region. They were not conquered so much as absorbed by Keoland and over time became marginalized. Originally the lived in small fishing villages but now play the role of servants and manual laborers. Their skin color and culture keeps them from integrating into the larger culture. I am not sure I will go this route...but it is a possibility.

[Captain Obvious]

This (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=55264&filters=0_0_0_0_0) should help with the numbers and types of businesses present. There was a 2nd ed AD&D product called the World Builder's Guide that's pretty useful, as well, and there used to be PDFs of it available on rpgnow, but it doesn't look like they're there anymore.

[azato]

Remember....there is an even Larger city Seaton about 30 miles away. A certain level must be achieved to be self-sufficient but not all trades need to be in force to support the city. Obviously the town would need carpenters, and plenty of them, but would it need that many of other trades. Plus we need to have a reason for trade...even if it is slightly exaggerated.

[Susano]

30 miles is just over a day's travel. The town is going to need tradesmen that can keep things going, especially with a population of 1,300. Their reason for trade is easy -- salted and dried fish, possible shellfish (packed in wet seaweed), and things from the marsh -- turtles, turtle shells, crocodile meat and hides, and so on.

[Old Man]

30 miles a day? In a swamp?

[Armitage]

FYI, the Dungeon Master's Guide II (3.5 version) has a complete description of Saltmarsh, although it's set a number of years after the original adventure. The town was flooded with refugees after slavers razed a good portion of Seaton, so it's up to almost 4,000 people, but it could provide a foundation for the older version.

[azato]

30 miles a day? In a swamp?

Heh, look at the map mister! The there is a fort to the west that borders the great Hool swamp. The town itself is not in a swamp and the road to the next town is in the direction away from the swamp. Now why the town's name is Saltmarsh, who knows?

[azato]

Hmmm. Now I need to get find a copy since I don't own and have never read DMG 3.5. Thanks.

[Susano]

30 miles a day? In a swamp?

Actually, I think 20 miles is a day's travel. Provided you have the terrain. In a swamp? Who knows.

[Markdoc]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lets says we have a population of about 1,300 residents in the town. How would that break down for the following:

1. Bars/Inns

If there's trade, ie: people passing through, there'll be inns. How many depends on how much trade. Given that Saltmarsh appears to be on a major road, there'll be at least one one or two in the town itself. Probably in fact more than one given that it looks like it's 20 miles or so to Seaton making it a good day's travel. If passengers travel much by sea, they'll want an inn too. I'm guessing, probably two inns, though you might get by with one large one. Bars? Many - if there are sailors stopping by on a regular basis, many, many. A dozen? Maybe more. In medieval times a lot of bars were actually simply the front room of somebody's house, or even a lean-to that could be folded away at night. That's still true today in many places. In a lot of African villages, you pass through there might be one "real bar" and 6 houses with an upside-down cup on a stick outside which means "cheap drinks available here". 1400 people, a fishing village, on a major road - anywhere from 2-12 bars is not beyond the bounds of possibility depending on how big they are.


2. Blacksmiths

Given that there's both a city and a fort nearby, both of which will have their own, I'm guessing one. Maybe two.


3. Carpenters

Carpentry woodshops? Maybe none. Carpenters in medieval times tended to either be guild members (meaning city) or itinerant. A lot of woodwork you can do yourself or get done by a friend and a town (1400 people is really a town rather than a village) within a day's walk of a city probably wouldn't have enough work for a full time carpentry workshop: if you wanted something fancy, you could get it from the city.


4. Coopers (or would that be imported?)

Coopers on the other hand there might well be several of - many of the goods you are talking about (dye, salted fish, etc) will go in barrels so there'll be a constant demand and enough work making them. You could always get them from the city, but that adds two day's travel (there and back) to the cost of each lot of barrels. I'm guessing it would be more economic to make them on the spot.


5. Tanning (I imagine most of the leather would be imported)

You don't import hides, if you don't have to. They rot and even salt-cured, they stink. They're heavy, too. Tanning is usually done near to where you slaughter the animals. That said, there's a lot of open land north of Saltmarsh - if cattle are raised there, they might be driven to town to slaughter and the hides tanned as well. I'm guessing probably not though. Medieval cities have an inexhaustible demand for meat, so it'd probably make sense to drive the cattle to Seaton and slaughter them there. The hides might come to Saltmarsh if the city forbids tanneries, but most likely the tanneries will be on the road outside Seaton, is my guess.


6. Leather workers.

One hides are tanned, they are easy to move - so there might well be leather workers. I'm guessing, though that these are likely to be found in Seaton, instead. Why ship tanned hides to Saltmarsh, if the hides are already right where larger market exists? It's cheaper to put the finished leather goods on a ship and sail em up to Saltmarsh, if you need 'em


I think there would be a business for mass preserving raw fish, perhaps serving as rations for sailors (smoked/salted).

This sounds like a good idea. Bulk preservation is not something that fishermen tend to do themselves, because preserving fish (or any sort of meat) takes a lot of time. You need to decide how it is preserved. Saltmarsh is on the sea, so they can make salt in pans. That's a labour and time expensive business, so if it's done that way, there'll be big salt pans nearby and poor people to work them. People who made salt (as opposed to their bosses) have always been among the poorest of the poor - it's horrible, backbreaking work. The requirement for lots of coastal land makes the business less attractive to cities, so this is a logical job for Saltmarsh. Alternatively, there's a swamp right next door - charcoal burners could operate there, cutting wood and providing fuel for smoking fish. I that case the town would have lots of smokers outside the town walls (because of the risk of fire). Which you go for depends on climate. Damp and humid? Not so good for salt pans (still possible though: that case you use fire to heat and evaporate the brine out of metal pans). Either way, if preserving fish is a major business, there'll be sheds for gutting fish, sheds for hanging it up to cure the town will have a "certain odor" and you will definitely need coopers and woodcutters. A third option - not as much used, but possible - is to ferment the fish instead. Fermented fish is more expensive and heavier to transport, but was considered a luxury a lot of places.


Somebody, somewhere stated that if you take the population of a town you could multiply that number by 3 to get a feel for how many people were in the town for any given day (thus adding people coming for business)

In Medieval europe (and today, in places where people travel by foot or animal) people tended not to travel to shop the way we do - instead they come to market (often once a week). That way you can be sure that if you have stuff to sell, there'll be buyers - an important point when a lot of things were difficult to preserve or had limited market size. It also means relatively few travelers most of the week and then 3-5 times as many people one day of the week. Of course, not all towns had markets. Bearing in mind that Seaton is close by, I'm guessing you'll have at most a farmers' market once a week and a bigger market in Seaton that would draw more specialized goods.

If you don't have markets (or even if you do) there's also a place for merchants. While Seaton is only a day away, it's a PITA to make a two day trip (or one really long day) to get one or two items. A merchant could make a living loading up on small items that people used regularly (like pins, thread, fancy trimmings for clothes, horn for lanterns, candles, glass for windows, cooking pots, etc) and ordering stuff for them and then either fetching it himself or having it dropped off from a ship. If much shipping goes through the port - and there are fishermen - you'll also have a place for a chandler who sells pulleys, rope, tar, canvas, etc. There might even be place for a ropemaker. I'm guessing there probably won't be shipyards. The logical places for those are Anglor or Torvin where there's either plenty of wood close to hand, or you can send it down the river to town.

Last of all, what about religion? There's probably going to be one or more temples, possibly with a hostel for travellers.

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Heh, look at the map mister! The there is a fort to the west that borders the great Hool swamp. The town itself is not in a swamp and the road to the next town is in the direction away from the swamp. Now why the town's name is Saltmarsh, who knows?

I'm guessing ... because the marsh is salty? It's on the coast after all. That tells you right there it's either saltgrass country, mangroves or - given what you wrote before - tidal bayou (cue orcs with banjos!)

When I ran this scenario for my guys, I changed the name to Salterton, and put the village at the top of a cliff, with a winding path down to a narrow harbour, making it a cross between a slightly Lovecraftian New England fishing village and a Cornish fishing village. It had precisely two industries. Fishing and smuggling. Maybe three if you count looting the flotsam from ships wrecked on the rocky coast. :)

cheers, Mark

[AlHazred]

I loved the original Saltmarsh, and used it in my Fantasy Hero games in college. I wasn't too concerned with fleshing things out as much then. Sinister Secret was the first of a three-part series of modules produced by the UK branch of TSR. If the plot seems better fleshed than a lot of the other modules TSR used to put out, you can thank the gamers of Britain for their contributions to the hobby. :)

I would avoid the bits of Saltmarsh in the Player's Handbook II for 3.5. The feel of the town was completely different: in the original, I got the feeling it was a rough-and-tumble port town, where it was usually every-man-for-himself; the new version seems more polished and gaudy. They have an image that's supposed to be from Saltmarsh, which shows a casino with a statue of a Dryad on it that's got to be 40 feet high! That's not the sort of thing that has a place in my game, but YMMV.

The sequels in the U series of modules (U for Underwater, I suppose) are Danger at Dunwater and The Final Enemy. I don't want to spoil things too much, but they have far less detail about the town, although they are all related to Saltmarsh. Probably worth skimming.

[Armitage]

Also regarding the 3.5 version, it's stated that Saltmarsh has become the base of operations for adventurers exploring the Hool Marshes and surrounding areas, so there has been an influx of people with much more money than common sense and taste, with appropriate effects on the character of the town.

[azato]

The plan is to make this more of a sword and sorcery tale. There will be no magic items and no magic mouths. My goal is to play up on the paranoia....

The original owner was a dabbling sorcerer who, with most of his servants (all Olman) died in his secret lab in the basement when a summoning went VERY wrong. One man made it out and when to town for help. He was panicked and excited (and can barely speak Keoish) and the towns people realize something bad has happened. They go there but cannot find anybody and everything seems like the people just disappeared. They do hear some unearthly shrieks but cannot find the source. They are a superstious people and they leave...post haste. The servant leaves unannounced and disappears.

One his way back to home he sails with smugglers (Sea Princes) and tells them all. Time + alcohol + guilt loosens his tongue. What interests them the most is the secret access from the sea to the home and realize that this would make a perfect place to smuggle their goods.

They kill the servant and threw him in the sea (close to land) ) knowing he would wash up on the shore. They also posed as merchants coming from Seaton and remarked about strange things happening on the property. They started playing a very shrill Oman instrument at odd hours that made horrible shrieking noises. The started killing animals and throwing them around the perimeter.

Before this time people believed the place was haunted. A number of calamities that befallen people associated with the house (like those who went there that first night) were attributed to that place. Kids and others who went by the place reported strange and horrible things (imaginations gone wild). So when the smugglers came it took little effort to push the townspeople over the edge. The road that went past the property has been rerouted.

The neighboring farmland goes unused. The owner cannot get anybody to work it. He (a merchant) hires the PCs to figure out what is going on.

[Matt Holck]

a town on built on a maze of bridges
and cold wind and the cackle and cries of sea birds

[Killer Shrike]

Here is some reeeeeeeeally old material from a GreyHERO campaign I ran in that area around 12 years or so ago; might have something of use:

http://www.killershrike.com/ADDConv/places/places.htm

and an old Greyhawk map of keoland:

http://www.killershrike.com/ADDConv/places/Maps/keoland.jpg


I just pulled this stuff out of my archives, so don't be shocked if some of the dependent links don't resolve.

[Susano]

The first thing the PCs see when they enter Slatmarsh is a stray dog running past carrying a human hand in its mouth.

[Old Man]

What movie was that? Wild at heart?

[Susano]

What movie was that? Wild at heart?

Yojimbo

[Lawnmower Boy]

A pond below the heaped causeway, brilliant red with cranberries floating in the bone-chilling water. And in the middle, a body floating, dead eyes staring upwards....

[Susano]

Some bodies up on the weird wheel-like objects on long poles you see in certain paintings from the later middle ages.

[IndianaJoe3]

Some bodies up on the weird wheel-like objects on long poles you see in certain paintings from the later middle ages.

That would be a Catherine Wheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel).

[The Weapon]

Actually, I think 20 miles is a day's travel. Provided you have the terrain. In a swamp? Who knows.

Roman legions marched 25 miles a day carrying armor, weapons and standard kit and built and knocked down a fort into the bargain. Now admittedly that's with good roads and fit young(ish) adult males. If Saltmarsh is anywhere near a big town it has a road through the swamp. It's not a good road, in fact maybe it's just dirt piled up and compacted a bit so you're not walking on something soggy. Still if you could march 4 miles/hour (standard british march rate) on good roads then you could get at least 3 on this which means in 10-11 hours including lunch you could be in the city.

[Susano]

Roman legions marched 25 miles a day carrying armor, weapons and standard kit and built and knocked down a fort into the bargain. Now admittedly that's with good roads and fit young(ish) adult males. If Saltmarsh is anywhere near a big town it has a road through the swamp. It's not a good road, in fact maybe it's just dirt piled up and compacted a bit so you're not walking on something soggy. Still if you could march 4 miles/hour (standard british march rate) on good roads then you could get at least 3 on this which means in 10-11 hours including lunch you could be in the city.

I think there's a huge difference between Roman legionnaires and what one can expect from the general population. Also, I'm pretty sure Saltmash isn't in the swamp, just near it, and there's no road through the swamp. And I'm also pretty sure that in period, it was far easier to go around than through a swamp, forest, or any thing similar.

[Markdoc]

Roman legions marched 25 miles a day carrying armor, weapons and standard kit and built and knocked down a fort into the bargain. Now admittedly that's with good roads and fit young(ish) adult males. If Saltmarsh is anywhere near a big town it has a road through the swamp. It's not a good road, in fact maybe it's just dirt piled up and compacted a bit so you're not walking on something soggy. Still if you could march 4 miles/hour (standard british march rate) on good roads then you could get at least 3 on this which means in 10-11 hours including lunch you could be in the city.

Actually, according to Vegetius, the standard march was a bit under 18 miles, over a period of 7-8 of our hours. That was, as noted, fit young men, who spent most of their training learning endurance running. At that rate, a fit strong man, carrying a decent load could make it from Saltmarsh to Seaton in a day - someone in lightly less sprightly condition, could do it one long day. People's speed degrades over time - just because a legionary could do 18 miles in 7 hours, doesn't mean they could just as easily do 24 in 10 - in fact, most of them probably could not. And that's not with campaign kit, but, with only their weapons and armour. Here's the comment from his section on monthly training "The foot were obliged to march completely armed the distance of ten miles from the camp and return, in the most exact order and with the military step which they changed and quickened on some part of the march. ". Incidentally, the Roman foot = 0.9708 English foot and the Roman mile = 1,000 paces of five feet each. So, the Roman mile was roughly, 9/10's of an English mile. The bit about "changed and quickened" refers to the roman practice on forced march or alternating the quick march with the ordinary march. That's a pace which isn't even possible for many people and corresponds to about 2.5 MPH.

Things haven't changed much: According to modern US Army doctrine, the average rate of march for trained infantry under favorable weather conditions is 2-1/2 MPH over roads and 1.5 MPH cross country. A normal foot march covers 20 miles per day (That's from U.S. Dept of Army. Staff Officers' Field Manual: Organization, Technical, and Logistical Data, Part I. FM 101-10, Oct 1961.pp. 123-124. FM.) During the napoleonic era, French infantry (considered the fastest in Europe at the time) under Napoleon marched at the ordinary rate of 3 mph, for 10-12 miles per day, with quick march doubling that distance - at the cost of attrition as soldiers who could not keep up started dropping out. They moved faster, but for short periods of time. As far as the British army goes, far from 4 miles per hour, the standard British army marching speed is regular infantry, 120 paces per minute, the Light Infantry or Rifle pace, 140 per minute, double time is 180 paces to the minute: corresponding to between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 miles per hour, with the regulation 10 minute pause per hour - not that different from the Romans, actually. The idea that infantry can march at 4 MPH is a mistake taken from training: for example, to join the Royal Commandoes, the last - and hardest - of the tests is the dreaded "30 miler", where would-be recruits have to cover 30 miles with full kit in 8 hours - a speed somewhat less than 4 miles per hour. Admittedly, that's not on a good road - or indeed a road at all! US Delta Forces have an even longer test (40 miles) but for that 20 hours is allowed, showing how speed falls off as distance increases. Neither of those are marches: they are endurance tests, designed to weed out all but the very toughest. For regular light infantry, the EIB standard is 12 miles in 3-hours. That's wearing fatigues, boots, helmet, rifle, LBE and a light rucksack - but no ammunition is carried. And again, that's a qualification test, not a regular march. Keeping that up for 11 hours though .... not going to happen.

Given all that, Saltmarsh to Seaton in a long day isn't an unreasonable pace, but it would be a grind: not something you'd do casually.

cheers, Mark

[Susano]

I also recall reading that riding a horse doesn't get you there any faster. Horses need rest, food, and water, and so you'll cover about 20 miles a day on horseback - it's just you'll be able to carry more and will probably be lest tired.

[azato]

I imagine that most of the travel between towns is via horse/donkey/mule and cart. Active soldiers are given the right to a free ride on an cart not fully burdened. Paying hitchhikers may be a common thing as going back to the the home city with an "empty" cart would mean the loss of economic opportunity.

As far as distances traveled in a day...I think a lot comes down to
the existence of a road
the condition of a road
the phsical shape a person is in (if walking)
how used they are to traveling
the pace


We walked an 11 mile trail in the Smokies. It killed my butt for days and I was shot afterward. But if i were to walk that way frequently it would not be that bad.
No road
Bad conditions of the "road"
Reasonable shape
Not used to conditions
unencumbered.
Good cool weather.

[assault]

The obvious question is: what other communities are there between Seaton and Saltmarsh?

My guess would be that both towns are market towns, and each serve as magnets for the communities between them. Trade between the two would be less important than trade with the smaller communities around them.

I'm not familiar with the map: is it possible to travel between the two towns by water? If so, that would be the quickest and easiest way - in the absence of monsters!

FWIW, where I am in Australia, there is a nice little string of towns located a day's travel by bullock cart apart from each other along the main road inland from Brisbane. Even the relatively large city where I live (Toowoomba), was originally a watering hole at the top of a mountain range (escarpment).

[Lawnmower Boy]

Another approach is to look to actual geography. Pulling out my road atlas of Great Britain (it was cheap, and who doesn't need more atlasses?) I've found a short stretch of coastal road through the Fens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fens), a well known real world marshland. The A149 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A149_road) between King's Lynn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Lynn) and Hunstanton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunstanton), a distance of --eyeballing it here-- 20 miles. It's not quite the Fens Causeway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fen_Causeway), the great Roman road built across the Fens to link East Anglia to (the larger traditional region of which Norfolk is a part), but it is close. Imagine a causeway, 60 feet wide and paved with gravel raised well above a land of marshes and mud flats.
King's Lynn is a relatively new town, created in the early stages of the Medieval drainage of the Fens at the point where some major canals emptied into the River Ouse at its outlet into the Wash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wash), creating Norfolk's main port during Medieval times. The Ouse scours a path through a "bleak landscape of salt marshes, mud flats and braided rivers" to reach more navigable waters.
The A149 is not a coastal road. There is no coast, only a gradual transition from dry land to open sea. Here's a resource for historical Norfolk maps (http://www.old-maps.co.uk/IndexMapPage2.aspx) from the 1800s showing, none too clearly, the small town of Ingoldsthorpe along the A149 on the way to Hunstanton. Ingoldsthorpe probably means a village built on an artificial mound "thorpe," and named for the heroic Ingold. Notice the nucleated layout of not only the villages and estates, but even the woodlots in the area around Ingoldsthorpe. Even in 1856 this was a closely managed landscape, with drainage ditches and canals, and windmills for even more intensive draining. When Ingold first set out to build, those blank squares would have been, at best, wet pasture. Even today some of this landscape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dersingham_Bog) is left undrained and "wild." At Heacham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heacham), a little town hemmed in by the sea and a river, the road reaches an area of rocky uplift. Heacham lost 9 people in the great North Sea Flood of 1953 when the sea broke through the coastal defences, but immediately to its east begins a region that counts, at least locally, as hilly. No doubt that, in order to confuse silly foreigners, it is referred to as a "Down."
The presence of this upland probably explains why these towns and this road are so well-built. There is rock available for construction. The more heroic Fen Causeway leads from one "island" in the Fens to the next. Some of these look very small indeed, probably thorpes in origin. They aren't more than 5 miles apart, and I would suggest that there would be thorpes, perhaps no more than a rude mansion, a few houses and some kind of shrine, every 5 miles on the road from Seaton to Saltmarsh.

[azato]

Thanks all of you for posting to this point...the convention has thrown me off schedule and I will respond in a couple days....Great Stuff Guys!!!!

[Markdoc]

I also recall reading that riding a horse doesn't get you there any faster. Horses need rest, food, and water, and so you'll cover about 20 miles a day on horseback - it's just you'll be able to carry more and will probably be lest tired.

Over short periods, horses do get you there faster (for the British army, the march rate for horses was 6 1/2 MPH as opposed to 3 1/2 for the fastest light infantry). It's just that to maintain that rate horses need lots of food. Plus you still need food for the riders. Essentially for any trip of more than a few days, every army is tied to the speed of its supply train, which in pre-industrial times generally means 12-18 miles a day.

cheers, M ark

[Markdoc]

We walked an 11 mile trail in the Smokies. It killed my butt for days and I was shot afterward.

Try doing it in unpadded sandals with 4x the load ... :eg: That's what a legionnaire would sometimes have to do. There's a reason they spent ten times as much time on endurance training than tactics and weapons training added together.

cheers, Mark

[Susano]

Over short periods, horses do get you there faster (for the British army, the march rate for horses was 6 1/2 MPH as opposed to 3 1/2 for the fastest light infantry). It's just that to maintain that rate horses need lots of food. Plus you still need food for the riders. Essentially for any trip of more than a few days, every army is tied to the speed of its supply train, which in pre-industrial times generally means 12-18 miles a day.

cheers, M ark

There used to be a Poul Anderson short story collection titled simply Fantasy. In it was "On Thud And Blunder" which was all about this sort of thing. A great resource.

[Captain Obvious]

http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/

Fantasy is still well worth picking up, even though this essay is readily available. Lots of good stories in there.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Here's (http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.huntingdonshire.info/geography/images/great_fen.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.huntingdonshire.info/geography.asp&usg=__HdL2hZG3qrhDPraB44o2hEY8-Jg=&h=366&w=664&sz=23&hl=en&start=15&itbs=1&tbnid=2pOdXg0OGj5R_M:&tbnh=76&tbnw=138&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dflag%2Bfen%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26safe %3Doff) a great pair of maps centred on the town of Huntingdon near Cambridge and the Neolithic site of Flag Fens (http://www.flagfen.com/) (ugly website warning) that really captures the difference between the ancient undrained landscape of the Fens and the modern, drained landscape. And here's another interesting site just down the A145, Seahenge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seahenge).

[Markdoc]

The Fens are an interesting area - my wife's family is from Lincolnshire, on the coast and we've done a fair amount of traveling there. One of the striking things about the Fens in history is that although (to modern eyes) they are not very big, to the medieval eye, they were vast wasteland in which all kinds of things could hide - and which did in their time, serve as refuges to bandits and defeated people of various stripes. The difficulty of traveling through the fens (even though they were never as empty as popular myth made them) is attested to by the fact that pre-17th century, most people and most roads took the far longer route around them, rather than the direct route.

cheers, Mark

[Lawnmower Boy]

I still vividly remember reading, at what may or may not have been the climactic moment of Scott's Hereward the Wake (I was 9, and not quite the literary critic I am now), the hero's stunning revelation. His army could show up at (some town in East Anglia) and then at York without being detected because the Forest of [something or other near York] was the same as the forest of the Fens!*
It's like a secret passage that runs through a hundred miles of open country.


*It was, in fact, so hard to get by land from London to York in the old days that the standard itinerary was by river (the Trent or the Ouse?), not because river travel was faster, but because the rivers were actually passable.

[Markdoc]

I still vividly remember reading, at what may or may not have been the climactic moment of Scott's Hereward the Wake (I was 9, and not quite the literary critic I am now), the hero's stunning revelation. His army could show up at (some town in East Anglia) and then at York without being detected because the Forest of [something or other near York] was the same as the forest of the Fens!*
It's like a secret passage that runs through a hundred miles of open country.


*It was, in fact, so hard to get by land from London to York in the old days that the standard itinerary was by river (the Trent or the Ouse?), not because river travel was faster, but because the rivers were actually passable.

Not really: we know that the old roman road from York to London (Ermine Street) was in continuous use up to ... well, today really: the A15 follows mostly the same route. The name comes from the saxon "Earninga Straete" so it was certainly still in use in the 11th century, trade privileges are confirmed in documents by the 12th century and it was an important pilgrimage route as attested to by the 12-14th century pilgrims' lodgings all along the route (some of which are still there!) However, it doesn't go very close to the fens, passing through Lincoln. That may be because the country closer to the fens used to be heavily wooded, or because of impassibility (the medieval road made a diversion south of Lincoln, to avoid areas with the worst flooding in winter/spring). We know from acts of parliament in the 1500's that funds were being levied for the upkeep of the road and in the 1600's it became England's first turnpike. It was considered the busiest and most important road in England. It's always had travelers' inns too. The George at Stamford on the London York road only dates from the 1500's, but it was built on the site of a much older traveler's inn.

There is no "river route" from York to London (though people would certainly have used one if there was) - all of the rivers run west to east, draining into the North Sea. You could have gone to Nottingham, then northeast on the Trent, then into the estuary of the Humber, then up the Ouse to York - but then you would have had to tranship a couple of times (boats that could travel in the estuary, which was considered very dangerous for shipping, were too large for the Ouse or Trent) and also walked/ridden over half of the distance, anyway. Certainly almost all trade to or from York that came in by sea was transshipped at either Shelby or Hull for precisely this reason. The town council of York left us plenty of lawsuits regarding rights of passage and maintenance of bridges, roads and waterway, and levied tolls on both, indicating that the road was an important factor up until the decline of York at the end of the medieval period. You might have had difficulty getting a boat for such a trip, too: I'm not sure how much trade there was on the Trent (there must have been some, but it hasn't left the trove of records that travel on the Ouse or Ermine street has). Nottingham was a middle-sized town of no great import through the medieval period (the population in 1650 was about 3500, as opposed to about 3000 in 1400). Its rise to prominence starts after York's decline and is due to some of the same factors. If you wanted to travel by boat, your best bet would have been the coastal route - which could be faster, was arguably more comfortable, but also very unpredictable: onshore winds could strand you for days or even weeks.

The old-fashioned idea that overland travel was difficult and that people rarely travelled in medieval England, doesn't match up with the archeological and documentary evidence showing lively travel and trade up and down the major roads.

cheers, Mark

[Lawnmower Boy]

Just to be clear here, the point of Hereward's revelation in Scott's novel is that the route his army uses does not cross open, Norman-controlled country, because the two forests are contiguous, and no-one knows that except for some heroic Anglo-Saxon freedom fighters. It's a route for a guerilla army, not the high road.
As for the river route, I'm going on Rollason, D. W. (David W.) Northumbria 500-1100 : creation and destruction of a kingdom (2003) . I was quoting from memory on the mistaken assumption that I'd managed to return the book to the library, but the online catalogue says differently, and under a pile of papers and books, I find...
Okay, York is a major nexus of Roman roads. Two routes cross the (modest) upland spine of Britain from the Midlands (former Mercia), with another chokepoint at Manchester. Manchester having no direct old Roman connection south except through Derby, this route "points" at Gwynedd rather than London.
Derby, in the southern Midlands is on the road from London and near Nottingham, the traditional head of navigation of the Trent, a unique north-flowing English river that falls into the estuary of the Humber. From Derby the Roman road goes north to York. The problem is that near Hatfield Chase, it gets pinched between the estuarine swamps of the Humber and the water parting, and makes four major river crossings in twenty miles.
The other road from London (Ermine Street, I think) runs through Lincolnshire directly from London to Lincoln Huntingdon. North of Lincoln, it splits. One trunk heads west an hits the same "pinch" as the Derby road, which it joins, again near Hatfield Chase after crossing three rivers in 30 miles before it hits the Derby road with two crossings to go to York.
Finally, there is a direct route north from Lincoln to York --clear going except that it crosses the estuarine Humber (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/humber/4173118.stm)!

The takeway here is the perfect compromise. Both Markdoc and I are right -depending on the season. There's no way that any of these roads would be passable in a wet season. The wetlands of the Ouse (and here's the relevance to Azato's question) would be a vast, impassible muck, and the only overland route leads to Wales. By the same token, the Trent would be swollen, an easy, albeit perhaps too-easy descent, and the Ouse comparatively deep, with a tidal lift to carry you up to (near) York.
Now, the same wet would go to green pastures, and in dry seasons, all of these roads would be needed, and choked with drove herds of cattle and sheep for slaughter, horses for sale, and waggon trains loaded with cheese, woad, linen and wool.

I emphasise the wet season impassibility because --I think-- understanding how the Ouse boundary worked may get us to understanding of how the story of the "Anglo-Saxons" was first constructed and we got a mythopoeic story of England being founded by north German invaders, as opposed to it emerging from sub-Roman institutions in which Germanic languages were the default lingua franca along the east coast, and Celtic in the west.

It looks like the lower Ouse is still notoriously prone to flooding. Per Wikipedia:


The Ouse valley is a wide, flat plain; heavy rainfall in the river's catchment area (http://www.herogames.com/forums/wiki/Drainage_basin) can bring severe flooding to nearby settlements. In recent years both York (http://www.herogames.com/forums/wiki/York) and Selby (http://www.herogames.com/forums/wiki/Selby), and villages in between, have been very badly hit. The river has two weirs with locks, at Linton-on-Ouse (http://www.herogames.com/forums/wiki/Linton-on-Ouse) and Naburn (http://www.herogames.com/forums/wiki/Naburn), so that boats of 45.7 m length and 4.6 m beam can reach York. The Ouse is tidal up to Naburn Locks.

[Markdoc]

Heh. I've rambled across this country, so I know well what the Ouse and Trent are like. The lower reaches of both are considered "challenging" and are not recommended for inexperienced boatmen. Not because they are rapid, particularly, but because both have severe tidal bores and empty out in wide shallow rivermouths with shifting mudbanks. In theory (and rarely, in practice) you can also walk across the Humber estuary. However that's dangerous - though shallow, the tides race at high speed into the estuary and the banks are always shifting. But it was only last century the Humber got a bridge. Prior to that, Ermine street terminated in Barton upon Humber, where travellers took a ferry across to Kingston upon Hull. The ferry has been in operation for centuries - it was mentioned in the Domesday book and again Edward II's charter (still preserved) from 1351. It's rather hard to explain why a ferry important enough for a royal charter existed if travellers came principally by boat ... and also why it should be located on the road instead of the river mouth, many miles away ... where there is no town.

The road (Ermine street) was certainly used in wet weather as well as fine - in fact it has two alternate routes near the Humber: a dry weather one (direct to Barton, across to Hull by Ferry and then up across the hills to York) and the alternate one I noted above that swings more inland. This route remained passable even in wet weather - it's known as the Roman Ridge or Roman Rigg, because it runs along high ridgetops, well above any flooding. You can still walk parts of it today - near Selby it runs along a high limestone scarp giving you great views out over the river valleys and providing firm dry footing even in wet weather. It was along this road that Harold bought his army at great speed to defeat Hardraada - and indeed, in autumn, traditionally a rainy period. Harold was in a hurry - but he didn't go by boat. It was also along Ermine street - at the crossing of the Welland near the natural ford at Stamford - that Harold's and Hardraada's armies clashed. Hardraada's force had also been using the road, in preference to their ships (not surprising - dragging a ship upcurrent, up a narrow winding river is a lot of work). The Ouse itself is also pretty shallow - one of the reason we know so much about early trade on the Ouse is because of medieval lawsuits over blockages: peasants setting wicker fish traps across the river, blocking passage of even light boats was recurring problem. It is fast in a few of the parts above Selby (that's as far as the river was considered navigable by larger boats: Selby served York as a secondary port though the primary port was Kingston upon Hull, which had a direct road connection), but generally it's more placid - and in many places you can wade across without even getting your shorts wet. The locks of course are a post 16th century addition to solve this problem. However, when it comes to road transport, the Ouse is a bit of a red herring. Ermine street runs direct to York from Kingston upon Hull, rising swiftly up out of the estuary valley and climbing towards the Wolds. It doesn't follow the river valley at all - probably precisely because of the concern about flooding.

So, while I suspect strongly that people did use the rivers for transport, there's no question that the main artery for travel between London and York was Ermine street. We have much historical documentation of travel along it - compared with almost none for the Trent and a fair amount on the Ouse which nonetheless seems to be almost entirely about transport of goods from Selby and Hull. This also explains the pattern of settlement. If you look at England's east coast north of the Wash, one of the striking things is that towns did not spring up in numbers along the river valleys, but instead are primarily strung out along the lines of the old roads. That's quite different from (say) Holland or Northern Germany, or even south-east England where the pattern of settlement is much more clustered along the river bottoms.

We are (as usual :)) getting a little off-topic here, but it does mean that Saltmarsh can sit on a good road without seeming anachronistic. As a possibly relevant side note, excavations in Ermine street in Lincolnshire have revealed that the medieval road was more sophisticated than we might think. Although the excavated section runs across grey clay pans (very prone to flooding), the road had two ditches dug under the road, at its edge which were filled with gravel and then the whole lot edged with clay (giving a raised berm) and the gap between the berms filled in with sand. That gave a slightly raised sandy surface that would dry quickly and not form ridges and humps, and which would not collect water (it drained out rapidly into the gravel sumps and then onto the surrounding surface, which was lower than the road). Building and maintaining such a road is pretty labor intensive - you need to dig through heavy clay and haul sand in, but it gives you a good surface, suitable for wheeled traffic in both wet and dry weather.

As far as Walter Scott and Hereward's secret woodland passage, I would - to be polite - be sceptical. For a start Scott was more into "feeling" than historical accuracy and for a second as far as we know, Hereward never went to York (the De Gestis Herwardi, the near-contemporary record of his life and deeds, makes no such claim, though it discusses his other - possibly fictional - travels in detail. I suspect if he had taken an army north, people might have noticed) and for a third, between Ely and York you have to cross no less than 4 major roads, the high (and long treeless) chalk downs of the wold and the area between Boston and Peterborough, which was already densely settled by late saxon times (and prosperously farmed) as attested to by numerous 8th and 11th century finds - including plenty of imported continental ware.

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Oh - a second thought - if you're interested, "Middle Anglo-saxon Lincolnshire" covers this area (and this question) in some detail. The author discusses the sites where large founds have been made and writes "A glance at figure 6 allows some common characteristics of these ' productive ' sites to be recognized. First, and perhaps most notable, is their inland location, situated along the most important routes and lines of communication, such as the Rivers Humber , Trent and Witham, and prehistoric and Roman routes, especially Barton Street , High Street and the route along the Lincoln Cliff" . Later she writes "In general, the large amount of coinage recovered, only second to those of the great Middle Saxon emporia or wies, strongly suggests the active involvement of these 'productive' sites in some form of commerce. This also seems to be underlined by the strong element of foreign coin from these sites" In the figures, it is clear that most of the productive sites are actually on roads, as are the largest, although they most closely clustered where the roads and rivers converge - North of Flixbourough, for example where the Lincoln Cliff route, and the Trent come together. Flixborough isn't on a river, but it's only about an hour's walk from the Trent and two-three hours walk from the Humber - it's probably where shipped goods were assembled for the trip down the road to Lincoln, or where goods moving north were transhipped for passage up the Trent (thus avoiding the treacherous lower reaches of the river) or sent on to the Humber ferry at Winteringham by road. Torksey, on the other hand - a site as large as Flixborough - isn't anywhere near a river. But it does sit on a major north-south road where it crosses the old Foss Dyke. It probably served as a border town, monitoring traffic up and down the road and levying tolls on good passing through to Lincoln.

The archaeology makes it clear that it wasn't either/or roads or water but both. The north-south route tracks most closely with the road. The east-west routes, by way of contrast track most closely with the rivers.

Also (facepalm) I should have thought of this book before with regard to the original poster's question because it lists the products of the villages at the edge of the fenlands "Apart from animal stock, the natural resources of the fenland also included wildfowl, thatch, oysters and mussels from the sea, as well as fish, and it may have been these, or similar goods, that would have been exchanged for the querns or other products arriving with the Ipswich ware." She also discusses the fact that many of the old village sites have no manufactured goods but lots and lots of animal bones - suggesting that cattle were driven into the fens to feed in summer and then killed and the meat and hides preserved (probably with salt) for hauling out as winter approached. That certainly sounds like Saltmarsh: those animal products could be traded to the city for all the stuff like leatherware, fancy work and glassware. It also means the swamp probably has little villages dotted about its edges where the fishermen and thatchers live, and the herders come to spend their summers.

cheers, Mark

[azato]

Ok....next point of business. Lets suppose the "nation" to the south (Sea Princes) is very good a sailing, and has a higher caliber navy then does Keoland. Keoland has a some major towns and a city on the coast so trade and materials going through these ports is vital for them economically. Would the risk for Keoland be better mitigated if their ships did not sail far from shore (I mean a reasonable distance) where their navy could better protect and be protected?

[Susano]

Depends. Do the Sea Princess survive off of piracy? How well do Keoland navigate? If the risk of pirates it high and navigation poor, they may sail always in sight of land and come ashore every night. Of course, if pirates like to lurk along the shore that might drive them further out. And if things are that bad, then Keoland might sail in convoys with a few warships along for protection.

[Captain Obvious]

Ok....next point of business. Lets suppose the "nation" to the south (Sea Princes) is very good a sailing, and has a higher caliber navy then does Keoland. Keoland has a some major towns and a city on the coast so trade and materials going through these ports is vital for them economically. Would the risk for Keoland be better mitigated if their ships did not sail far from shore (I mean a reasonable distance) where their navy could better protect and be protected?

If these nations are at war, then the Keoland ships would probably stick close enough to shore that they can run in to where a coastal fortress can provide covering fire. They may even be built lighter so that they can run into shallower waters.

If they are not at war, and even to a lesser extent if they are, the Sea Princes probably have interests reaching farther out than just their neighbor. Throughout their tumultuous history, England has generally had a better quality navy than France, but they had to protect ports and shipping lanes all over the world. France at times had more ships, and sometimes had better ships, but their crews couldn't match the Brits...their primary strength lay in being less spread around. If England had been as concentrated into a few areas, they would not have had the trouble from France that they did.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is that, regardless of whether the Sea Princes have better sailors, better ships, or more ships, if 10% of their navy is all they can bring to bear against the entirety of Keoland's navy, due to 90% of the navy being tied up elsewhere, then Keoland isn't at any major disadvantage locally.

[azato]

Piracy is one avenue. While my knowledge of history is not the best, I imagine it is not unlike Spain, Portugal or England during various time periods. I have not given the princes their due as far as research and development. But here is how I think it goes....Their homeland provides a good deal deal of wealth on its own. THere may be some issues with sufficient population or perhaps natural barriers that may make commerce via road between regions within the country somewhat difficult.
Money made to maritime activities would probably be the following (from highest to lowest in generating cash).
1. Trade
2. "Protection" (they would "escort" the ships from other nations for their safety)
3. Smuggling
4. Piracy

[azato]

Thanks, Captain O...perfect.

[Susano]

Piracy is one avenue. While my knowledge of history is not the best, I imagine it is not unlike Spain, Portugal or England during various time periods. I have not given the princes their due as far as research and development. But here is how I think it goes....Their homeland provides a good deal deal of wealth on its own. THere may be some issues with sufficient population or perhaps natural barriers that may make commerce via road between regions within the country somewhat difficult.
Money made to maritime activities would probably be the following (from highest to lowest in generating cash).
1. Trade
2. "Protection" (they would "escort" the ships from other nations for their safety)
3. Smuggling
4. Piracy

Spain and Portugal became rich via exploiting colonies. England (and France) wanted to cripple Spain, hence the privateers. So, if the Sea Princes are that good, then trade, exploration, and the ability to open new markets will bring them far more wealth than extortion schemes, smuggling (why smuggle if you're the only guy who can get the stuff?), or stealing goods from people who don't have the cool stuff you do.

[Captain Obvious]

Spain and Portugal became rich via exploiting colonies. England (and France) wanted to cripple Spain, hence the privateers. So, if the Sea Princes are that good, then trade, exploration, and the ability to open new markets will bring them far more wealth than extortion schemes, smuggling (why smuggle if you're the only guy who can get the stuff?), or stealing goods from people who don't have the cool stuff you do.

Good points. For that matter, when England was on top, they were much more into trade and shutting down piracy than they had been when Spain was #1.

[Lawnmower Boy]

The problem with piracy is that it tends to be defined top down. The captain of a merchant ship coming back from Newfoundland with a load of cod who makes landfall at Gibraltar, who knows that the price of cod at Sallee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Sal%C3%A8) is high, and that the excise there is low will feel differently. It's your cod. Why not sell it where it will bring a good price?
Of course, once you get back to Bristol, you'll face difficult questions from the tax man. The obvious answer is that you didn't sell your cargo: the pirates took it. Sale, a fortified suburb of Rabat, is notorious as a "pirate republic." But calling it that was in the interests of many people. After all, the scheme relies on not bringing your profits home in a fat bag of gold that the taxman can find. So what if the next ship in from Sallee happens to offer you an incredibly sweet deal on its cargo? Wow. What a crazy coincidence.
If the government decides that in order to stamp out this kind of crap, it will obviously ban pirate ships from Sallee? That means that instead ships will come to port from Naples, or Villefranche, or Philadelphia, instead.
At one level, it is just a matter of putting a different name on the bow and flying a different flag, well, these things are easy to do at sea. The Romans, who tried to control the Mediterranean by taking over its entire shore, still were constantlly defeated by this sort of thing, and talked about a "corrupting sea."
Which is incredibly misleading. This is a racket that, to work well, requires collusion by the owners, persons on shore with the influence and means to avoid the surveillance of the state. The English couldn't control "piracy" from their shores because the Admirals who were supposed to control it always turned out to be pirate. It's not the sea that "corrupts" the soul, but the fact that the people who carry on trade from the ports of one nation to another just don't feel very patriotic once you start levying excise taxes on the waterfront.
William Penn's grandfather was a Bristol man with a reputation of being able to get good deals trading with Sallee. Henry Mainwaring (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mainwaring)was a notorious pirate who recruited pirates on the Newfoundland banks to take fishing boats and bring them into the various pirate ports. Then he got a pardon, took William Penn's son on board as a follower, and Daddy Penn ended up a distinguished British admiral and confidant to the King.* William used that influence to gain Pennsylvania, and, sure enough, pirates were soon finding refuge in Philadelphia, while the Barbary Coast was becoming the major source of horses and mules for the expansion of the Pennsylvanian economy. It's a multigenerational weave of families making their fortunes from the "corrupting sea," in opposition to the state.
So what does that mean in practice? First, control of the shore: here's how the Romans tried to deal with this problem along the coast of the Fens: The Saxon Shore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Shore). Of course, there are some who argue that the forts of the Saxon shore are a defence against invaders, rather than an attempt to control coastwise traffic. I'm unconvinced. If you asked the crews of the fishing boats and coastwise traders of Roman Britain who the "pirates" were, I suspect that they'd point to the Roman fort on the shore.
And here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin_sands) is where we reach the limits of this kind of control. (Also this (http://www.whitecliffscountry.org.uk/visitor_information/heritage_factsheets/the_treacherous_goodwins.aspx).) Once the tide suddenly puts a sandbank underneath your keel in a gathering storm, and the lifeboats are launched from the shore, all the kings and princes in the world can't put the tax return back together again.

Oh, and it was apparently Charles Kingsburgy, Hereward, Last of the English, not Scott.


* (Okay, I made up the part where there's a proven connection between Mainwaring and the Penns. It makes a better story, and draws in the connection via Morocco and Newfoundland.)

[Markdoc]

Ok....next point of business. Lets suppose the "nation" to the south (Sea Princes) is very good a sailing, and has a higher caliber navy then does Keoland. Keoland has a some major towns and a city on the coast so trade and materials going through these ports is vital for them economically. Would the risk for Keoland be better mitigated if their ships did not sail far from shore (I mean a reasonable distance) where their navy could better protect and be protected?

Depending on how "authentically medieval" you want to be, most cultures were not that good at open-water sailing, so trade routes tended to hug the coast. A few simple navigations spells could easily change that though. The reason that's important is that during the "golden age of piracy" pirates and privateers tended to hang about near the ports or known "choke points" like straits looking for prey. Finding a couple of ships in the vasty ocean blue without magic or technological help is damn near impossible. Even if you can find them, catching them is pretty hard when you both move at similar speed, if they are more than a few hours sail away - that already puts them over the horizon.

However .... look at the map. The coastline basically runs north-south. There are no choke points apart from one: the strait between Baymouth and Monmurg. And that's right next to the Sea Princes' capital. I'm guessing they own that stretch of water. They also own Torvin, so effectively they control trade into the Javan river. Borders are not marked, but I'm guessing the river and swamps are it. Anyway, if the Sea Princes have a better fleet, in this situation, I'm guessing they pwnz0r Keoland at sea, since the strategic situation favours them. That really leaves only two options, realistically:

1. Most of the merchants who trade with the southern towns are warranted by the Sea Princes, so the southerners dominate the trade. Trade in Keoland probably travels down that conveniently located major road and the towns and cities serve as meeting points where Keoland merchants meet and trade with Sea Princes ship captains. It means they are market towns. Keoland may not even have a big navy - but if that's the case, the coastal towns are probably well fortified and protected by small fleets of galleys or longships - which are more reliable along the coast and carry more men for their size than carracks or cogs, but which are not as suitable for long voyages or cargo. There's probably a line of beacons along the coast to warn of pirates or raiders and there's also probably a lively smuggling trade across the swamp and river by small merchants who want to avoid paying market fees to Keoland and shipping taxes to the Sea Princes. For Keoland, building a large navy and convoying ships to the Hold of the Sea Princes seems like a losing proposition. Not only are they outmatched at sea, but they have to sail directly to their rival's strongholds, making intercepting their ships trivial should it come to hostilities, and subjecting their ships to taxation. They might do it anyway: kings and nobles have traditionally hated being dependent on their neighbours, but economic pressures would probably push them towards the option above.

2. Keoland has lots of trees. The Hold of the Sea Princes does not. In terms of ship-building power, that gives Keoland an edge. If they exploit this, you might end up in a situation where Keoland has far more ships, but the Sea Princes have better ships. In that case Keoland would have a more even share of the trade - maybe even dominating it, but their ships probably sail in convoys and piracy likely becomes a major problem for ships in small numbers. In this situation, relationships between Keoland and the Sea Princes is likely to be tense, even hostile ("Why can't you do something about those damn pirates!" ) but the action in terms of the towns means that goods flow into the Keoland ports, are stored (that means big warehouse districts) until a trade fleet assembles to sail southwards. The biggest markets, in this scenario probably move largely to Monmurg, with agents from the hold living in Keoland to do business.

Last point - there's a town called Winward, in the Sea Princes' Hold, and its location, facing the coast suggests the prevailing wind is off the land. That means Winward - smack in the middle of a dangerous sailing coast, and to a lesser extent Baymouth and Seaton, both with dangerous windward stretches of coast nearby, are probably not ideal trade ports. Seaton's not too badly off, but Saltmarsh might serve Seaton as an alternate port when the winds are strong: goods are off-loaded there and trundled down the road to Seaton. That means hostelries and stables for the trade and probably also hostlers to service wagons and animals. Anyway you slice it Monmurg looks like the trade capital of the area and the place to go for adventurers seeking strange tales from foreign parts or a quick ship out of Dodge. I'm guessing a lot of trade actually goes straight up the coast to Sanduchar and Gradsul from Monmurg and vice versa.

I dunno what you have thought of as far as technology and culture goes, but I am looking at Keoland and the Hold and noticing some distinct contrasts. Keoland has major roads and lots of towns and villages. The hold has only minor roads and few towns and villages, but two cities, almost all on the coast. The middle of the country looks pretty empty. That suggests to me that that the hinterland of Keoland is more developed and more populated: that means farming, mining, lumber, manufactured goods, etc and also that internally, it's relatively well-organised: major roads don't survive if there's no trade and if there's no law and order you don't get trade. The Hold by contrast has a fairly concentrated population - and no major roads. If they survive on fishing, trade and piracy, you might want to consider what the people at Westkeep do for a living. The name suggests a fortified place, but there must be something there to make a city and to warrant one of the Hold's only two minor roads. If the marshes of Hool have that bayou feeling you suggest then I'm thinking the Hold is the Texas coast - scrubby pine woods, sandy soils, small families of independant small holders and nomadic herders, inland, fishermen on the coast. It suggests that economically trade is important to them too, but it looks like it all goes by sea. In that case Westkeep is the "inland capital" where local people come to trade for manufactured goods for fish and salt brought up from the coast, in return offering cheeses, meat, wool, wood products from the swamp, etc. It also serves the Princes as a military base to keep control of those damned independant smallholders and nomads. Last of all, I noted above that Keoland has plenty of forest. The Hold doesn't. If there's one thing that sea-faring nations need it's wood and lots of it. There's a useful trade good right there.

cheers, Mark

[azato]

You guys are awesome.

[Susano]

I'm pretty sure there's nothing Markdoc doesn't know.

[azato]

Either he started life with more character points or he spent them more wisely than the rest of us.


I'm pretty sure there's nothing Markdoc doesn't know.

[Old Man]

The former. Not only does he know everything, he had points left over to spend on Hero.

[Markdoc]

The former. Not only does he know everything, he had points left over to spend on Hero.

And we haven't even discussed the points I spent on wealth, getting to be a world-class scientist or highly decorated special forces veteran!*

Seriously, though, I have a couple of advantages over your average fantasy geek - living in Europe and having friends who are medieval history professors means that I get to do stuff that I used to dream about when I lived in the US or New Zealand. I've held some of our oldest copies of Icelandic sagas in my hands, have access to many original medieval manuscripts and gotten to do fun things like load and fire full size medieval siege engines, sail in medieval ships and visit medieval towns (I'm going to Syria next month and you can bet trips to Krak de Chevaliers, Saone, the citadel at Aleppo, the old souks, the dead cities, etc are on the agenda). One of the lawyers I work with is part of a crew that has sailed a recreated viking longship to Norway, Scotland and Ireland (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/7171577.stm) - and back: they're talking about a voyage to Iceland next year. I've learned a lot just talking with him. I've worked with a research team recreating early dark ages iron-smelting towers (at Lejre), and held/worn genuine medieval weapons and armor. And I work in some of the world's least developed countries where a lot of this stuff is done on a regular basis - I've watched a swordsmith making steel and swords (for use, not recreations) the old-fashioned way in Harrar, seen people who rely on oxen and home-made plows for their living, visited working medieval-style tanneries or medieval style markets where animals are butchered right in front of the stalls. I've seen sword-armed warriors collecting salt from salt pans the old fashioned way (with hands and sticks) and then transporting it to market by camel caravan. I've watched old ladies collecting firewood and then walking it huge distances on their backs to sell for a few pennies. I've watched witchdoctors treat patients (and had to clean up their messes - I hate those guys). All that gives you perspectives you can't get out of books - but at the same time, it lets you see stuff in books - especially contemporary accounts - that wouldn't necessarily be obvious: in many cases, they are not named because at the time it was assumed "Everybody knows that".

Also, as any player can tell you, you need to travel and get out where things are a bit rough if you want to earn some XP! :)

Anyway, thanks, guys - it's nice to be appreciated. :thumbup:

Cheers, Mark

*OK, I made that last bit up :)

[Vondy]

30 miles a day? In a swamp?

If they've built foot-bridges or raised roman style highways its possible.

Or if they've got good waterways like the bayous.

[Vondy]

Seriously, though, I have a couple of advantages over your average fantasy geek - living in Europe and having friends who are medieval history professors means that I get to do stuff that I used to dream about....

I feel the same way about living in Israel, though its more geared to classical and archeological history than medieval history. We do have great crusader fortresses, but are roman era and temple era ruins are astounding. I think this affects my gaming/writing endeavors. And Israeli culture is fairly egalitarian/friendly. If you have the barest of pretexts or acquaintance you can usu. call someone - be they a member of knesset or university professor - and get them talking about their subject. My job often gives me a fairly solid pretext. We have a show dedicated to history-archeology of Israel and the Levant. Its allowed me to meet people I can contact. Let alone the hosts, one of whom is a historian and one of whom is an archeologist. I've gotten to know several museum curators and professors as a result.

[Alcamtar]

What are your thoughts???
My overwhelming thought is... I love that map!!
Where'd it come from? Is it online somewhere, or from a published product?

[azato]

http://www.oerthjournal.com/webz/Southern%20Keoland.gif

If you think that map is cool, check out the others at
http://www.canonfire.com/cfnew//modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=4


http://ghmaps.net/



My overwhelming thought is... I love that map!!
Where'd it come from? Is it online somewhere, or from a published product?

[Hierax]

Saltmarsh Area Map:

35138

[Alcamtar]

thanks!