My campaign's gotten to an interesting point. The dwarven empire, who controls the plains associated areas of (using an actual land mass for a map) central and south eastern china, have unwittingly freed the vast majority of the Mule (half dwarves, think humans that are slightly tougher than dwarves and have ant haul permanantly cast on them) slave population.
So, the mules, who did the vast majority of the heavy labor and farming, are getting out while the getting's good and have been "given" an area where the dwarves agreed not to bother them in. This area is mainly the himalayas and tibetan plateau, with some mountainous areas northeast of sichuan province.
So, they're going to be going into and establishing a capitol city already scouted out, which is a rather nice valley with streams and a small lake, but getting there is going to be a problem. I've expanded distances out a bit, so they're going to be traveling through 900 miles (if a straight line) or about 1500 miles of mountainous terrain, much of it high elevation and previously untravelled.
So, with that back ground, the the people realizing what they're facing, what do you think they'd be bringing with them? How would what the families bring be different than the families that ventured forth on the oregon trail? I've already determined that each family will have access for a few thousand gold pieces either worth of equipment already or able to spend.
One other tip here is that much of them know foraging won't work well for them necessarily unless they're one of the first few out, as we're looking at a mass migration of around 12 to 15 million over the course of a year, most of them in the first few months. Many of them will be going to the would be capitol settling around there, but the rest will obviously settle in other areas.
So any advice on how this would play out for families and travelers, and what they'd bring in comparison to real world settler, with minor magic mixed in, would be appreciated.
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In 1898 there was the Yukon gold rush that required every prospector to carry a year's worth of supplies. Here's a website that was distributed by the Northern Pacific Railroad http://www.arcticwebsite.com/goldrushsupplies1898.html
I would imagine this would be a good place to start. If they could afford it, things like bags of holding might go a long way towards safe storage of supplies.
This website http://www.kidcyber.com.au/topics/firstfleet.htm covers the first fleet to Australia and this link (from the above mentioned site) http://home.vicnet.net.au/~firstff/list.htm lists the stuff that they carried with them on the first fleet.
That might be a good place to start.
Though for the actual list of stuff I would imagine that seeds and tools would be most important.