Assuming that you are encouraging settlers to Farshore, by offering land, just how big is the island and Farshore is on and are there any native settlements on it?
The Homestead Act gave land rights in lots of 160 acres, but in medieval times it was estimated 10-12 acres was what was needed to support a family. So I was figuring 30 to 50 acres would be an attractive offer to most settlers, some would obviously sell their land rights to set up a business in Farshore itself.
I'm just wondering how big the island Farshore is on and how many 30 acre plots could be marked out.
Assuming that you are encouraging settlers to Farshore, by offering land, just how big is the island and Farshore is on and are there any native settlements on it?
The Homestead Act gave land rights in lots of 160 acres, but in medieval times it was estimated 10-12 acres was what was needed to support a family. So I was figuring 30 to 50 acres would be an attractive offer to most settlers, some would obviously sell their land rights to set up a business in Farshore itself.
I'm just wondering how big the island Farshore is on and how many 30 acre plots could be marked out.
If I recall correctly- it's about 20 squre miles
Hmm that's only 12800 acres of land (and a lot of that isn't going to be arable due to the rocky terrain). What is the appeal of this colony on a tiny island, surrounded by dangerous waters, and savage (not the template) creatures?
Well it's got access to very rare resources, so perhaps they pool a bit of their efforts and pool some of the rewards from trading. Sort of a communal effort, or at least small groups.
There's more to offer at Farshore than just land. Also available in travel, wealth and some adventure. The average commoner barely makes a gold piece to two in a day, the chance to travel thousands of miles, escape creditors, begin a new life, etc. could be tempting enough.
~ Bryon ~
But then the average commoner with sizable debts is probably not the sort of settler you'd want to come along. Or would even be able to by passage there. I'm expecting Lavinia to be charging for passage, to cover cost of crew, supplies, etc. It's not exactly cheap and so there must be something worthwhile at the end of it, I'm not thinking of the players here but NPCs.
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Actually, I think Lavinia offers free passage because she wants the outpost to prosper and in return reap the rewards of all the exotic materials that are available for trade. She is providing herself with a sort-of monopoly on certain trade goods available on the isles and aquiring them at a significant discount which would allow her to increase here familial wealth greatly, and also provide low-level experts, warriors, and commoners with a lifestyle that, whilst dangerous, is probably paying them 5-10 times what they normally make. In real life, people take the risk of getting "black lung" and suffering cave-ins, to work in the mining industry to make 2-3times what other people in their areas are making, while knowing that the mortality rate is especially high. Merchant Seamen, same thing.
I see the people who are populating Farshore as risk-takers who enjoy the thrill of discovery and danger, or as people who hope to get in with a 5 year plan to get out and make enough dough to live comfortably for the rest of their lives or use the money made to start a new business venture, like opening a shop.
Ask someone why they would work in a real life job with a high mortality rate and the answers will be: money, love of the work, money, likes the risks, money, and money.
Lavinia and her parents ate the cost of shipping these individuals out to Farshore in return for the potential of turning a fat profit. They are a merchant family afterall.
FH
Right but if Lavinia is intending to regulate the trade and skim profits off it, again it falls down to what's in it for the risk taker? Even if she provides free passage (which seems foolish to me), what's to tempt people to Farshore? How does she "advertise" the trip?
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Right but if Lavinia is intending to regulate the trade and skim profits off it, again it falls down to what's in it for the risk taker? Even if she provides free passage (which seems foolish to me), what's to tempt people to Farshore? How does she "advertise" the trip?
The same way they used to advertise for people to go to "the new world!" when they were trying to populate America. People had dangerous "savages", an abundance of dangerous wildlife, limited outside resources, and the very real threat of contacting deadly diseases to contend with, but with the promise of leaving behind a stymied life in a harsh city or the hard life of being a farmer for a life of new possibilities and the potential to become more than what they currently are, many took the chance.
Alot of the women who took the risk were prostitutes and whores who were looking to get away from the syphillus infested streets and move on to a new and exciting environment where they could either ply their trade with less risk of a deadly STD or to find some brave risk-taker to marry and be made into a respectable lady. Don't underestimate the power of being able to wipe all thoughts of a seedy past away. A petty thief in London who is living in the streets and a hairsbreadth away from being pinched could go to The New World and become Mr. Johnston: Sheep Farmer and make a name for himself as a legitamate businessman. You need to think of the people living in a place where their existance is almost futile, people stuck in lower-class due to a caste system or who can't pull themselves out of the gutters due to lack of education or no opportunity. These are the people who are in the majority in Farshore. You probably have a fair amount of experts also but they were probably offered a good deal more than the riff-raff to sign on even though the Blacksmith was probably nothing more than a glorified horseshoe-making apprentice before arriving.As for what's in it for the Risk-taker, a dude cutting down trees for the lumbermill is a scrub worker in Sasserine barely making a living while slowly destroying his body from the physical strain of his livelyhood. In Farshore he can do the same job, make 5-10X the wages, have a plot of land HE OWNS, and get away from any "demons" that are in his past. The difference is in the exotic materials that are being harvested. Wood=cheap. Darkwood=$$$.
If I told you could make 5-10X what you make now to do the same thing, but in a bit more dangerous setting, you might jump at the chance.
Incidentally, I wish I could find a copy or rendition of the recruitment posters that they used to advertise for the job of "Populating the New World". Hopefully someone knows of some and can provide a link to an image, it would be cool to see a feww posted around Sasserine.
FH
The New World's biggest selling point was the vast tracks of land, that no one really owned (at least in the opinion of the settlers, Native Americans had good reason to disagree), so you could stake a claim. As I mentioned originally the Homestead Act granted land rights in 160 acre properties.
Farshore is a pretty tiny island, if you gave out land in 160 acre chunks then there would only be room for 80 settlers. Which is probably about equal to the compliment of the Blue Nixie and Sea Wyvern combined, forgetting all the people already there, natives or any future expansion.
Which is why I'm thinking 20 acres, since in medieval times 10 acres was about enough to support a family of five. A family would get 40 acres. Obviously some folks are going to sell their land and set-up shop in Farshore itself. Some land will end up being farm land others prospectors will probably have more interest in. Fishermen will probably sell their land to finance boat building, etc. So in the end you'll have some significant land owners and other workers.
I'm trying to think of what sort of settlers will be on the boats, what the demand for passage will be in Sasserine, etc. The PCs will be in charge of getting passengers for one boat at least and I want them to get involved in deciding if folks get to go or not. The settlers will definitely have to pay their passage to the new world, although in some cases I'm planning, it can be worked off on arrival if they are skilled craftsmen needed by a new colony, Carpenters, Ironworkers, etc.
Farshore doesn't seem to have as much appeal as the old west, because it is such a tiny island, so it can't offer huge tracks of land. But the number of spaces on the boats is limited, so there could still be a decent demand for a small incentive. Also while a person might want to go to 'escape his past' I think Lavinia and perhaps the players are likely to do some at least minor background checks, as they will probably be able to pick and choose who to take to a certain extent. Especially if the people wanting to go can't offer much incentive to take them.
have a plot of land HE OWNS, and get away from any "demons" that are in his past
and instead meet real demons... LOL
DMaple, check out the Farshore article in Dungeon 143, specifically the details about Lord Meravanchi's plans to acquire land from the surrounding Olman natives. You're on the right track as far as what would motivate him to do that.
As far as the rest goes... Temute is a relatively safe locale from which to launch expeditions to the main cash cow known as the Isle of Dread. While Temute has a few marketable resources all its own, it isn't what the colonists sailed all that way to cash in on.
It's easy to foresee the colonists outgrowing their little island eventually and seeking chunks of Olman controlled land. Such is the way. For now, though, that's just a pipe dream.
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Also I believe it was mentioned that some of the Island is marshland and that lizardfolk tribe(s) inhabit it and have attacked some of the lumberjacks in the woods.
The actual mechanics behind the whys that people would want to go is not exactly the same as the reason for the pilgrims and pioneers to come to America, I was only giving examples as to why people in the past have done it. I am sure that the reason in the instance of Farshore is the huge potential for great wealth and a chance to be on the groundfloor of a potentially hugely wealthy merchant city, if expeditions to the Isle start happening and turning good profits from artifacts, resources, strange spell components, ect. then even a minor shopowner like a leather shop could have the potential to make huge profits off of the adventurous, the curious, and the stupid, and have some wild leather products to ship to the mainland (dinosaur skin pouches and handbags could become all the rage for the social-elite up in Cauldron or even as far away as Greyhawk city.). The shop owner could offer adventurers a lot of dough for a lousy little Stegosaurus hide, and the hunt for the albino T-rex that has been sited on the northeast side of the isle could be a major adventure and worth quite a huge amount of money. Exotic animals and skins, exotic plants with strange properties, ancient and mystical artifacts and object of art, the fine art objects that Farshore can trade for from the Olman tribes, all would be reasons to go and start-up in Farshore.
FH
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and instead meet real demons... LOL
but I am sure that the recruitment people wouldn't know that and would downplay the danger factor to potential recruits. It's not like the trapper living on the outskirts of Sasserine or the Fisherfolk at the docks would know anything about Farshore except what the people who want to recruit them would be willing to disclose. "Sure, its fairly safe. Hardest part is the gettin' there. Sign on and you could earn 10 times what you make now!" Sign me up.
I wouldn't tell them "We only lost 14 lumberjacks this year to lizardfolk, and the shipment of supplies a couple years back never made it."
FH
Daughter of 3 years, soaked my Dungeon issue 125# I need the Supplement of Age of Worms Adventure "PDF, or scanned what ever" my D&D community can do running the Adventure re ordered the issues on back order and can not get it in .... party is meeting tomorrow night if someone out there can help please let me know
Daughter of 3 years, soaked my Dungeon issue 125# I need the Supplement of Age of Worms Adventure "PDF, or scanned what ever" my D&D community can do running the Adventure re ordered the issues on back order and can not get it in .... party is meeting tomorrow night if someone out there can help please let me know
Not really the right thread for this, Vega Moonshine. I've relocated you here
Ah why leave town eh?
Lots of reasons.
Lets lookat the island. You keep talking about so much land supporting a family in medieval or modern times. You are quoting, I suspect, land use for North America/Europe. Farshore is not located in a temperate or even mediterranian climate. It is tropical. Tropical lands are very different than more polar latitudes. For instance the Bamiléké of Cameroon had family farms that averaged 3 Hectares or roughly 7 1/2 acres. And that is circa 1987. Two friends of mine bought 1 acre of land in the highlands of Honduras and have managed to pay the bills working just that 1 acre of land. They may live leanly (in fact it turns out when you farm 1 acre of land in honduras, you live like the guy next to you farming 1 acre of land, that is you are starving a little) but 2 or 3 acres would do them very well.
That is becasue of growing seasons. In North America if you plant corn in a field you will get 1 crop of corn that year. Maybe you will plant a winter crop in the field, and get some yield from that,but more liekly you let the field go fallow for a year or two and then plant it again. Traditional farming that is. The crop rotation method.
In the tropics, there are various means of farming, but especially good farmland, like that found in Costa Rica, can be planted and harvested upwards of four or five times a year. That is because there is no winter there. And dependant on rain patterns, you can grow rainy season crops and dry season crops. This vasty increases your yield per acre of land, and allows for the increased production of cash crops.
That brings us to the more important point, cash crops. You are not going to be growing wheat to compete with other wheat growers, once set to market in Sasserine or beyond. In Farshore you are going to be growing rare spices. How rare and how much do/did these spices cost? Lets look at 14th century costs for spices in Europe.
Saffron 1lb cost 12 shillings-15shillings
Pepper 1lb cost 4 shillings
And here are wages for a 14th century Thatcher and his mate.
1 days work = 3 pence for a Thatcher
1 days work = 1 pence for a Thatcher's mate
1 shilling = 12 pence (d)
So a Master Thatcher (which was a good skilled job back in the 14th century) would have to work 16 days to buy 1 lb of pepper. The same Thatcher would have to work 48 days to buy 1lb of Saffron (a rather large amount of said spice, but still).
And just incase you were wondering about earlier times:
In Diocletian's day 3rd Century CE or AD) a pound of ginger cost 5,000 days wages (18.5 years, with 270 workdays per year); but in 1875, only 1.4 days' pay.
So the net result is that spices, because of their rarity, were an excellent way to make a small farm make big bucks. In Sumatra your average pepper plant yields 12lbs of pepper a year. Figure you have an Acre of said plants. Each plant needs a tree to be grafted upon (to grow it in Indian fashion). Figure 100 trees per acre. That means that you are producing 1,200lbs of pepper a year. Or in other words, you are producing wealth equal to the yearly labor of roughly 71 Master Thatchers or 210 Thatcher Mates. Thats a dang good cash crop. Now you will not be getting all of that wealth of course. You will get some, some will be reinvested into your farm, some will go to pay local taxes, a lot will be taken by the merchant who transports the spices to market, and a bit will be taken by the spice trader or spice seller in the market town. But still, even if you only get 10% profit, you are still making 7 times the living off of 1 acre of land that the average Skilled Tradesman is making back in Sasserine or Greyhawk city.
And to top it all Pepper plants are grown along stide other crops. In Sumatra the ground is cleared, ploughed, and sown with rice, and cuttings of the vine are planted in September, 5 ft. apart each way, together with a sapling of quick growth and rough bark. In India they use trees with rough bark, perhaps such as fruit trees or nut trees, thus doubling the use of the land, getting both personal use food stuffs and a cash crop off of the same acre.
Lastly, the thing to consider is other island populations. You are using examples of people coming to big continents like the US or Australia. People came to the US to set up small family farms in the Northeast, similar to the lands in Europe (which by the way they could not afford to buy, as all the lands were already claimed, and problem were occuring due to fencing in of lands in England). People go to islands for different reasons. People went to the Orkney's to get away from it all, and to scrape out a living far from the eyes of the law. People went to the West Indies to get rich not to build small family farms. Thats why slaves were imported for labor. Huge plantations (compared to the amount of land needed to support a family) were set up and slave labor worked them to make one family very, very, very rich.
In this case, Lavinia is not interested in slave labor (although if the players pick the evil tract, maybe that is somethign they should look into, getting folks drunk and loading them unto their ships, taking them to Farshore to work the plantations till they die....hmm....). Instead she is going to sell the lands, and make money off of transporting the goods. She will probably also run a large plantation on the island, but her main interest it seems is in shipping not farming. But she needs folks to farm the land if that is going to be the case.
As you said there are about 12,800 Acres of land avaliable on the island. Lets say that only 1/3 of that is good arable land for spices, the other 1/3 left for timber, and the last 1/3 for pasture lands and sustenance crops. That means that the island could support 1,400, small, 3 acre farms, each raising 1 acre of spices and 2 acres of food stuffs, leaving 4,200 acres for a grazing commons. Now in the prairie west of the US, you want 15 acres per cow or 4 acres per sheep, meaning only 285 cows or 1,060 sheep could be grazed. Chickens on the other hand, according to modern “Free-Range” constraints are to be limited to 300-400 per acre, although this means using feed. But even if one were to limit it to 3 chickens an acre, that would still mean between 9-18 chickens per colonist family, more than enough to keep them in eggs and meat. But considering this is the tropics and there is a longer growing season and more productive land, one would probably be safe double or even quadrupling the number of animals that could be put on the pasture lands, meaning enough animals for the colony to not need to import leather, meat, and cheeses. And that would still leave 4,200 acres of timber that can be harvested for fuel, building materials, export, and medicines (natural remedies and what not).
And all of these numbers do not reflect the trade possibilities with native olmans, harvesting timber and spices from other non-inhabited islands, or even the more aggressive prospect of taking over the Olman lands.
All in all I think that the prospects are good for the farshore colony. And I also believe that there are great reasons for folks wanting to leave Sasserine or the bitter North and come down South to start a new life and make a great profit, in the colony of Farshore.