Random Worldbuilding Questions (Biology, Geography, Society, etc.)

[Spiryt]

I think discussion could use some clarification:

- What metal has to be 'black' for?

- Is it supposed to be black as a whole? Or is black surface sufficient?

- Should black color be very persistent, or would soot from furnace be just sufficient?

And so on.

A lot of iron and steel straight from the anvil would tend to be of rather 'heavy', dull, almost black grey, anyway.

[Crazyfailure13]

the color is simply for aesthetics and is apart of a setting idea I have.

it can be black as a whole or just surface as long as the blade looks black.

persistance is looked for, no one would really keep something for the Aesthetic if it had to be renewed all the time.

and for the moment the weapon of choice are daggers and swords.

[Yora]

The only way to get real world metals black is on the surface. And sharpening a blade removes the surface. No way around that.

[hamishspence]

How about metal alloys? Also, a patina might protect the weapon from further corrosion- with the edge still sharp enough to be useful.

[Yora]

That works, but it needs to be renewed after each sharpening.

[hamishspence]

A few hours (days?) after each sharpening, the edge would be noticeably darker.

[hymer]

Anyone have any notion how long it takes to build a good, Roman sort of road with technology and techniques of that time available? Obviously it's gonna vary with plenty of factors, work force not being the least. Anyone have any kind of clue about this?

[Yora]

It depends on how many workers you have and how many carts to transport the stone from the quarries.
If you have one team of 20 workers build the entire road it will take forever. If you have a hundred teams each building a segment at the same time, it will be a hundred times faster.

It depends mostly on how much money you want to pour into the project. If money is no concern, I think a road of almost any length could be done within a year?

[awa]

If i recall correctly organization is more important then technology for this. (roads).

also terrain is going to be a huge factor

[hymer]

Thanks both. I just wish I had some sort of manhour numbers to work from.

Edit: At least, if nobody really has any idea how long it ought to take, nobody can say for sure I'm doing it wrong, though.

[Zeful]

persistance is looked for, no one would really keep something for the Aesthetic if it had to be renewed all the time.

That really depends a lot on the culture. I mean if you had a culture that held a type of geography where guerrilla warfare is effective, lacked quality steel in high enough quantities to make good armor and swords, a strong martial tradition, and a general that made use of his spear wielding populace in a guerrilla war and won against a more wealthy or equipped force; it could be considered part of weapon maintenance to reapply a blackening patina after you sharpen them.

[awa]

you would be surprised how much effort people put into Aesthetic if you think about it.

do you think a suite and tie is the most efficient business attire?
Its fairly expensive, time consuming to put on and uncomfortable to wear when compared to sweat pants and a t shirt. But one of those is fairly standard business attire for many professions while the other is not.

[Yanagi]

I was looking for an actual black metal, using some sort of science or smithing etc.

Pure black I've never encountered where is wasn't a patina rather than the metal itself.

The closest you might get would be some variety of bronze. Hepatizon, for example, was described as dark and purple-brown (kind of like the color of liver, where the name comes from). The recipe isn't know--the description is only known from Pliny--but supposedly it was a copper alloy with smaller incorporations of silver and gold.

Tungsten carbide, perhaps? I'm not sure if it's would be durable enough, but its black-grey.

Not sure if that's helpful, but it's about all I've got.

[fusilier]

Pure black I've never encountered where is wasn't a patina rather than the metal itself.

The closest you might get would be some variety of bronze. Hepatizon, for example, was described as dark and purple-brown (kind of like the color of liver, where the name comes from). The recipe isn't know--the description is only known from Pliny--but supposedly it was a copper alloy with smaller incorporations of silver and gold.

Tungsten carbide, perhaps? I'm not sure if it's would be durable enough, but its black-grey.

Not sure if that's helpful, but it's about all I've got.

Uranium quickly oxidizes to black (had to check that up, the only uranium I've seen in photos was black, but it's actually a silver-gray). Likewise silver tarnishes, and bronze can go through a dark brown phase. Not sure if any of that is terribly useful for a sword (outside of bronze, but it doesn't really turn black, and it will eventually become green). You might be able to finish a steel sword with some metal that is/turns black, if it will hold a sufficient cutting edge. I was surprised when I saw a 19th century surgical kit that was coated with nickel, even the scalpels, as I didn't expect nickel to hold a sufficiently sharp edge, but apparently it does. Although sword use would probably require the edge to be refinished.

Outside of that, perhaps an unusual alloy with carbon, or a ceramic blade of some sort.

[fusilier]

Thanks both. I just wish I had some sort of manhour numbers to work from.

Edit: At least, if nobody really has any idea how long it ought to take, nobody can say for sure I'm doing it wrong, though.

I don't think technology started to make a big impact on road building until the second-half of the nineteenth century, and not really until the twentieth century. So if you can find the man-hours it took to make a section of road up until then, it's probably pretty close to how long the Romans took. Improvements in tools did occur, but the changes weren't drastic. However, the problem is that there are a lot of factors involved -- the nature of the terrain (sandy, rocky, marshy, etc.), how steep it is, etc. That's not mentioning the condition or experience of the workers.

I have seen some manuals from the nineteenth century that give rough guidelines for how much earth a man can excavate in so many hours -- with adjustments for the nature of the ground. The context was digging trenches, but there may exist some road building manuals from roughly the same time period that might give some similar indication.

[hymer]

Thanks to you too.

[Zeful]

How would a Kingdom have it's lands divided for the individual fiefdoms under the King? Would waning or waxing prestige be linked to a corresponding decrease or increase in lands, or would it be the other way around? Or both as situation warrants? What about towns or farms that find themselves crossing borders as a result of the above or does stuff like that not happen?

[fusilier]

How would a Kingdom have it's lands divided for the individual fiefdoms under the King? Would waning or waxing prestige be linked to a corresponding decrease or increase in lands, or would it be the other way around? Or both as situation warrants? What about towns or farms that find themselves crossing borders as a result of the above or does stuff like that not happen?

Revoking lands from a feudal lord could cause war. There may be other benefices that could be granted and revoked, right to collect tolls, operate a market in a particular town, run salt mines, etc. But I think for the most part, once something was granted it typically became hereditary and expected. Revoking it could be very dangerous, certainly when it came to land. Although if a monarch really wanted to he could instigate a rebellion, use that as an excuse to quash the lord, then redistribute those lands as he saw fit.

Towns and farms would not cross borders -- although I suppose it's possible for a particular farmer to own lands in multiple provinces. Towns would typically be assigned to one province or the other, although it's possible that they were free towns. Anything on a border may be liable to switch, and border disputes were pretty common.

[Zeful]

Revoking lands from a feudal lord could cause war. There may be other benefices that could be granted and revoked, right to collect tolls, operate a market in a particular town, run salt mines, etc. But I think for the most part, once something was granted it typically became hereditary and expected. Revoking it could be very dangerous, certainly when it came to land. Although if a monarch really wanted to he could instigate a rebellion, use that as an excuse to quash the lord, then redistribute those lands as he saw fit.

Towns and farms would not cross borders -- although I suppose it's possible for a particular farmer to own lands in multiple provinces. Towns would typically be assigned to one province or the other, although it's possible that they were free towns. Anything on a border may be liable to switch, and border disputes were pretty common.

A pretty common fantasy trope is either the deeding or gambling of lands, so I wasn't really referring to revocation of land, but things like idiot princes gambling it away or betting it against a clearly superior PC in a duel or something or a baron gifting it or selling it to the PCs for whatever reason. Though I did consider it, though it was the pretty extreme "stripping you of all your titles and lands because you're probably getting executed for screwing up very, very badly."

Though you didn't really answer the first question, "How would a kingdom's lands be divided for the individual fiefdoms under the king?" Think Skyrim's holds (if you've played it).

[Xuc Xac]

For most of the middle ages, it wasn't really set up that way at all. If you imagine a kingdom as being a big country with duchies inside it (and counties, baronies, etc. inside them), then that's more "federal" than "feudal". The king of France was the king of France because he controlled the fief made up of the Isle de France, a relatively small territory. He doesn't own Bretagne and give it to one of his vassals and say "Hey, run this land for me. You're a duke now". The king of France controls Bretagne because the duke of Bretagne swears homage to him and serves as his vassal. The people of Bretagne aren't considered French or subjects of the king of France; they're Bretons and they are vassals or serfs of the Duke of Bretagne. In Feudalism, everyone swears loyalty to the lord above them. It's a big pyramid scheme with monarchs (with various titles) on the tops of the pyramids.

You could conquer any territory that you were strong enough to claim and you could have any title you wanted as long as other nobles let you get away with it. If you claimed a small fief and said "I'm the king of this hill", then more powerful people would come and thump you and say "Like hell you are!" because "king" was a prestigious title associated with a few key places. If you claimed to be a duke but your territory is fairly weak, other dukes might come beat you down for diluting the prestige of the name. People generally claimed as big a title as they could get away with. Over time, the titles and the fiefs that went with them became traditional. When the Duke of Burgundy becomes more powerful than the King of France, he doesn't change his title to King because he doesn't control Isle de France. He controls Burgundy, which is a duchy. However, there's nothing wrong with pimping your title out with some fancy prefixes to show you're better than the other dukes: hence titles like Grand Duke and Archduke.

Over time, the pyramids of vassalage stopped shifting around and they solidified into traditional arrangements. At this point, France stops being a small central fief with a king who controls vast tracts of surrounding land because their lords are his vassals. It becomes the Kingdom of France and Bretagne and the people of the other territories around the Isle de France that pay homage to the King of France become subjects of the king directly. This is entering the Modern period and the end of feudalism. Peasants are subjects of the king instead of property of the noble who owns their farm. Nobles are no longer a professional military class and become the wealthy aristocracy who own land just because it's been in their family for as long as anyone can remember. The territories are wherever they were when the boundaries became traditional. There may be a lot of unclaimed territory in between the important sites where the manor houses and castles were, so there is still room to invent new titles and found new villages.

If the king needs to grant someone a new title for something, he can give them a chunk of his territory and give it a name and title and assign it to him. For example, the king might say "Job well done, Sir Hero. Here's a nice little hamlet called Wyeham. I think they grow apples or something, lot of orchards anyway. It's on the River Wye, very scenic, good fishing. From now on, it shall be Wyeham County and I hereby confer upon you the title of Sir John Hero, Count Wyeham." Every fief comes with its own title (the title and the land are a single unit), so a noble with many lands will have many titles and they can pass them out to their children or personal retainers if they want. That why the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland always gets to be Prince of Wales while they wait to inherit the crown.

tl;dr version: It can work however you want, really. The whole feudal system was basically a mafia-style protection racket that solidified and became respectable after several centuries of people not knowing any better. People didn't try to organize it until it had been mixed up for a thousand years, so it's pretty complicated. Do what you think is cool.

[HeadlessMermaid]

@Xuc Xac: That was a great post. If it were up to me, I would pin it to the "Worldbuilding" subforum, for all to read.

[Chilingsworth]

This is misguided on two levels.

First of all, gold and silver have plenty of value outside of their use as conductors: Decorative uses. This is probably the original reason why gold and silver became valued commodities in the first place before they started being used for trade, people just like shiny things.

You can argue that decorative uses aren't "real value" but this brings us to the second problem: There's no such thing as "real value." The value of everything, not just aesthetic items, is whatever we say it is.

If you're looking for alternative currencies then there's 3 easy guidelines to judge whether something is viable:

1. It needs to have a value high enough such that you can easily trade with it. Pennies alone make a crap currency because if you wanted to buy your groceries for the week you'd need to lug around a massive amount of them.

2. It needs to be common enough such that people who want it can more or less easily get their hands on it. If something costs in the millions of dollars an ounce, then only very few people could ever get any of it, and thus it won't have sufficient penetration to be widely accepted.

3. It needs to be stable in its value. If its prevailing price shoots up and down every day, then it's something good for speculating in but not for keeping your long-term savings in. Furthermore if its value could very quickly (and permanently) go down, it's not good for keeping as savings unless you intend to spend it relatively quickly. Eggs would make a crap currency because they go rotten in a few days, and they break easily (after which no one wants them).

One other requirement: a currency has to be resistant to counterfiting. For example: Gold's use a currency really took off after discovery of the touchstone. Before this, it was next to impossible to determine the purity of gold in a mercantile setting. Therefore, it was not trusted as a currency.

[avr]

One other requirement: a currency has to be resistant to counterfiting. For example: Gold's use a currency really took off after discovery of the touchstone. Before this, it was next to impossible to determine the purity of gold in a mercantile setting. Therefore, it was not trusted as a currency.

How on earth would you know? The article you linked to suggested that touchstones were in use in prehistorical times.

[Chilingsworth]

How on earth would you know? The article you linked to suggested that touchstones were in use in prehistorical times.

No. Ancient times. Ancient =/= prehistoric.

[avr]

3500 BC in the Indus valley is, in fact, prior to written history.

[Craft (Cheese)]

One other requirement: a currency has to be resistant to counterfiting. For example: Gold's use a currency really took off after discovery of the touchstone. Before this, it was next to impossible to determine the purity of gold in a mercantile setting. Therefore, it was not trusted as a currency.

You're quite right: This is something important that I forgot to mention. Thank you!

[fusilier]

However, there's nothing wrong with pimping your title out with some fancy prefixes to show you're better than the other dukes: hence titles like Grand Duke and Archduke.

Yet, at some point, did lords mess about with the titles that their vassals had (or could claim to have)?

Certainly, the pope did this. The Republic of Florence, became the Duchy of Florence, when Clement VII appointed Alessandro de'Medici duke. It then became the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, when Pope Pius V declared Cosimo I Grand Duke. This title was greater than all those in Italy (barring Naples/Sicily).

Popes certainly crowned emperors, and while it's not as simple as the Pope picks somebody, there is the sense that there existed an authority which could define, or perhaps approve, titles.

[fusilier]

A pretty common fantasy trope is either the deeding or gambling of lands, so I wasn't really referring to revocation of land, but things like idiot princes gambling it away or betting it against a clearly superior PC in a duel or something or a baron gifting it or selling it to the PCs for whatever reason. Though I did consider it, though it was the pretty extreme "stripping you of all your titles and lands because you're probably getting executed for screwing up very, very badly."

Though you didn't really answer the first question, "How would a kingdom's lands be divided for the individual fiefdoms under the king?" Think Skyrim's holds (if you've played it).

Ah, I see what you are saying now. I thought that your first question set the context for the second.

I'm not terribly sure if land was gambled away (at least not frequently), however, it could be traded. It could be lost during warfare, or even subsumed by other entities simply exerting control over it (if the original lord couldn't maintain control). That's probably where a lot of disputes over the ownership of lands comes from: a lord with a historical claim on some land, that fell under some other entity because that lord's ancestors didn't maintain effective control.

Prestige is a multi-faceted thing and it would not be merely tied to land-ownership. [Unless by prestige you merely mean formal title?] However, the more powerful the region, then probably the more powerful its lord, and the more influence he would have. But personality could play a part, as could things like military prowess and personal wealth, which could come from resources of the land, mines, towns, tolls, taxes, etc., and not just the amount of land that somebody owns. Someone who has powerful friends could also have a greater level of prestige. Obviously the more people who have sworn fealty to a lord the greater the prestige, so personal ownership of lands isn't necessarily. Take for example what Xuc Xac said about the King of France, usually didn't directly control much land, but potentially had many powerful vassals.

How would a Kingdom have it's lands divided for the individual fiefdoms under the King?

Now, I'm not certain I've interpreted this question correctly either. I'm guessing you mean how the borders/relationships of/between provinces came to be the way they were, and not what the administrative organization was?

The distribution of lands developed in different ways. A lord could increase his holdings through warfare, but without a more comprehensive bureaucracy the ability to manage the estates would probably provide a limit on land holdings. A conqueror had the right to distribute lands that he had conquered, and would often give conquered lands as rewards for service.

The Norman conquest of Sicily may provide an interesting example:
Robert Guiscard, duke of Calabrian and Apulia, enlisted the aid of Roger of Hauteville in his conquest of Sicily. For his aid he titled Roger "Count of Sicily", and granted Roger part of the island. Upon Roger's death, his title passed briefly to his eldest son, Count Simon, and upon his death, to the next son in line, Roger II.

Roger II gained Calabria and the rest of Sicily from the Duke of Apulia, in exchange for subjugating one of the Duke's vassals. Upon the death of the Duke of Apulia, Roger II claimed all of those lands, and took the title Duke of Apulia and Calabria (to which he probably retained the title "Count of Sicily", but you refer to a lord by his "best" title).

After securing his lands from some other claimants, and supporting a new pope, Roger II was declared "King of Sicily", by the said pope. He was now King Roger II of Sicily. I don't know why he retained the "second" and not the "first".

Titles and names were weird things. Sicily would eventually be handed off to the Angevins, which controlled both Sicily and Naples, and referred to the whole as "The Kingdom of Sicily". When the Angevins lost control of Sicily (but not Naples) to the Aragonese, the eventual peace treaty stated that the Angevins still had the right to the name "Kingdom of Sicily" (and therefore the title, "King of Sicily"), and the Aragonese had to refer to Sicily as "Trinacria" the old Greek term for the island! Just weird. In practice nobody referred to them that way, but those were their official names for a while. Eventually, the two kingdoms would be ruled by the same person again, and after several name changes and reorganizations came to be known as the "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies"!

[Xuc Xac]

A republic becoming a feudal fief because the Pope says so would fall under the category of "conquering a territory", but in this case the conquest is by papal decree instead of force of arms (the threat of excommunication was actually a greater form of coercion than simply threatening to put the city to the torch and sword).

A duchy composed of one small province becoming a grand duchy composed of a whole region around that province isn't too unusual. Consolidating smaller territories or annexing smaller neighbors is how the bigger territories were created. In the lands that are now modern Germany, territories split up and rejoined and got mixed up so much that the map looked like a Jackson Pollack painting. Tuscany was kind of odd because the Medici ruled for a long time without a title (it was like "We don't have a lord, because we're a free republic, but... uh... nothing happens without a Medici's say so"). In the case of Tuscany, it was "I don't want to be Duke of Florence, Prince of Arrezzo, Major General of Pisa, and Count of Siena. Everyone in my fiefs speaks Toscano so let's just say Tuscany is one big fief. Florence is a duchy, so let's just tack all these lesser fiefs onto the province of Florence and call it a big duchy or a Grand Duchy. My buddy the Pope says it's cool. If you want to get in on this Renaissance thing and avoid being damned to hell, you'll say it's cool too."

[fusilier]

A republic becoming a feudal fief because the Pope says so would fall under the category of "conquering a territory", but in this case the conquest is by papal decree instead of force of arms (the threat of excommunication was actually a greater form of coercion than simply threatening to put the city to the torch and sword).

A duchy composed of one small province becoming a grand duchy composed of a whole region around that province isn't too unusual. Consolidating smaller territories or annexing smaller neighbors is how the bigger territories were created. In the lands that are now modern Germany, territories split up and rejoined and got mixed up so much that the map looked like a Jackson Pollack painting. Tuscany was kind of odd because the Medici ruled for a long time without a title (it was like "We don't have a lord, because we're a free republic, but... uh... nothing happens without a Medici's say so"). In the case of Tuscany, it was "I don't want to be Duke of Florence, Prince of Arrezzo, Major General of Pisa, and Count of Siena. Everyone in my fiefs speaks Toscano so let's just say Tuscany is one big fief. Florence is a duchy, so let's just tack all these lesser fiefs onto the province of Florence and call it a big duchy or a Grand Duchy. My buddy the Pope says it's cool. If you want to get in on this Renaissance thing and avoid being damned to hell, you'll say it's cool too."

:-) My main point was the Pope was considered an authority that could grant/elevate titles. The difference between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchy of Florence was really one of titles, not of practical control. Same thing with the eventual "King of Sicily" I mentioned.

I know the Normans would only pass lands onto the oldest son, which prevented severe fracturing of the lands, but meant there were a bunch of landless, and often restless, nobles about. I'm guessing that wasn't typical among German nobility, which would grant all the sons some portion of the land on the death of the father? Which could lead to fractured, small, and often weak, provinces that competed with each other, could switch fealty, or fall prey to someone who managed to put-together a larger province -- until that province itself fractured?