I got thinking about the relative military strength of the various nations of Avistan, which got me wondering about their populations, which in turn got me wondering about their land areas. So I downloaded the following map from the wiki: https://pathfinderwiki.com/mediawiki/images/a/a1/Inner_Sea_region_map.jpg

Then I used some image editing tools to work out the area, in square miles, of each marked region in the Avistani part of the map (maybe at some point in the future I'll do Garund). Here are my results, in every case rounded to three significant figures:

* Absalom: 11,300
* Andoran: 136,000
* Brevoy: 67,700
* Cheliax: 375,000
* Druma: 60,400
* Five Kings Mountains: 31,700
* Galt: 114,000
* Hold of Belkzen: 68,700
* Irrisen: 84,500
* Isger: 46,600
* Kyonin: 33,300
* Lands of the Linnorm Kings: 120,000
* Lastwall: 41,000
* Mendev: 57,100
* Molthune: 74,600
* Nidal: 90,300
* Nirtmathaas: 53,600
* Numeria: 106,000
* Razmiran: 21,800
* Realm of the Mammoth Lords: 110,000
* River Kingdoms: 217,000
* Taldor: 256,000
* Ustalav: 98,200
* Varisia: 289,000
* Worldwound: 161,000

But what about population? Looking at the populations for the largest cities in the various regions, primarily capitals, it reminded me of figures I'd seen for historical cities in medieval Europe. I looked up the details in the widely-cited article Medieval Demographics Made Easy (Google it) and tried the math for Cheliax. In most cases, I found the sizes of the largest cities were consistent with what you could generate using Medieval Demographics Made Easy. In a few cases, such as Taldor, the largest city was 5-10% larger than it "should" have been, but I honestly wondered if Paizo had used the article's guidelines straight, and I had merely made a slight mis-estimate of land area.

There were also a few more extreme outliers, which seem to have been intentional—Absalom, of course, is explicitly an island port that relies on food imports to survive. Iadara (capital of the elven nation of Kyonin) may have been made intentionally on the large side, especially for a city in the middle of a forest, because Elves Are Just Better. And we're likely meant to understand that Nerosyan (capital of Mendev) relies on a steady flow of crusaders from the south to maintain its large population.

If Paizo really used Medieval Demographics Made Easy when planning out Avistan, this means most if not all of the regions above should have a population density between 30 and 120 people per square mile. The exact population density within this range will depend on terrain and climate. The Realm of the Mammoth Lords is likely near the bottom of this range, while Andoran and Taldor are likely near the top. Most nations will be somewhere int he middle.

One odd case is Karlsgard, largest city in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. Its canonical population of 72,080 wouldn't be out of place in southern Avistan—but it's way up north in the setting's Scandanavia stand-in, in an area explicitly stated to be terrible for farming to boot. The explanation seems to be that it's positioned at one end of the land route between Avistan and Tian Xia. Possibly it imports food in much the same way Absalom does.

Chris Hallquist wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Chris Hallquist wrote:

What are typical tactics when two devout, Chelish Asmodeans get into a political knife fight? What are the "gotchas" they can throw at an opponent who's staunchly Lawful and not guilty of any obvious heresies? (E.g. nothing blatant enough to cause a divine spell caster to lose her spell-casting ability.)

They'd vary, but it would likely fall into pedantry, strawman traps, baiting, and citing of old written works by both sides.

Kind of like a fiery internet argument. :-P

I'm having a hard time imagining how this works in detail, though. Especially if we're talking not about weaseling out of trouble, but ruining a political opponent? A lot of Pathfinder sourcebooks seem to give an impression of Asmodean law as oddly permissive—Empire of Devils even says "everything which is not forbidden is allowed", which is made to sound like this insidious thing but it's actually a totally normal legal principle in the real world (in common-law countries, anyway).

So are the Asmodean Disciplines full of totally random stuff like the prohibition on mint from Hell's Rebels? A fractally complicated tax code that makes everyone guilty of tax "fraud"? Convoluted official definitions of "disparaging the Church"?

Check out Hell's Rebels, Hell's Vengeance, and the Cheliax book, I suppose, for several in-world examples. But basically, the idea of Asmodeans is that they're icons of law and evil, and in such they LOVE overly complex laws with countless loopholes and variables that allow for rules-lawyering to the extreme degree.

Hell's Vengeance spoiler:

Chris Hallquist wrote:

What are typical tactics when two devout, Chelish Asmodeans get into a political knife fight? What are the "gotchas" they can throw at an opponent who's staunchly Lawful and not guilty of any obvious heresies? (E.g. nothing blatant enough to cause a divine spell caster to lose her spell-casting ability.)

They'd vary, but it would likely fall into pedantry, strawman traps, baiting, and citing of old written works by both sides.

Kind of like a fiery internet argument. :-P

I'm having a hard time imagining how this works in detail, though. Especially if we're talking not about weaseling out of trouble, but ruining a political opponent? A lot of Pathfinder sourcebooks seem to give an impression of Asmodean law as oddly permissive—Empire of Devils even says "everything which is not forbidden is allowed", which is made to sound like this insidious thing but it's actually a totally normal legal principle in the real world (in common-law countries, anyway).

So are the Asmodean Disciplines full of totally random stuff like the prohibition on mint from Hell's Rebels? A fractally complicated tax code that makes everyone guilty of tax "fraud"? Convoluted official definitions of "disparaging the Church"?

What are typical tactics when two devout, Chelish Asmodeans get into a political knife fight? What are the "gotchas" they can throw at an opponent who's staunchly Lawful and not guilty of any obvious heresies? (E.g. nothing blatant enough to cause a divine spell caster to lose her spell-casting ability.)