Size Ain't All

For the past few days I've been in Paris, Bayeux, and Mont-Saint-Michel. My idea of the relative size of a medieval town, village, or village has been utterly revised. Though I've been in Florence and Rome, I considered them to be somewhat anomalous in terms of size. It was a mistake to think that way. Rome is eminently navigable on foot. Paris is the same. Bayeux is about a stone's throw across. The sizes of medieval cities hold an entirely new dimension in my mind.

Rome was an urban behemoth in its day, and even it was walkable. I never really considered this in light of making fantasy cities, towns, and villages, but really by the modern American standard they are quite small. Walkability is critical to every settlement during this period; horse-travel within cities was virtually unknown due their cost, the danger of running down a pedestrian, and the difficulty of getting from place to place in a crowded street with such a large animal. Horse and carriage travel was actually banned in Rome during the daylight hours, requiring ox drays and carts to supply the city to operate in the late night or early morning hours.

Medieval cities were much smaller and much more compact than the cities that we're used to. Every district of a city should be within reach by, at most, a fifteen or twenty minute walk. Of course, we'd have to cut out the suburbs of the modern cities that we're used to—they didn't exist, or if they did they existed as smaller ringing towns that were not contiguous. These made up the hinterlands of the city, sending products in.

Breaking and bulking was (and still is, in many senses) an important function of major urban centers. Goods travel to the largest urban center within distance where they're turned into bulk units and then shipped to another center. When that bulk arrives at another city, it is broken down and sold back to the city hinterlands. This process happens to a lesser extent at smaller regional markets, which send their bulked products to the urban center.

The medieval hinterland can't support extremely large city centers, nor can they support cities that are too close together.

Just some thoughts from Paris.

Reading and the Notice Board

I've witnessed this become a fantasy trope since I was younger. I'm not sure why its blossomed the way it has, but the first time I noticed it was in the Forgotten Realms boxed set. There's a notice board in downtown Shadowvale where the locals place advertisements for need and adventure. Now, the Forgotten Realms is a fantasy setting and it postulates the widespread literacy of its inhabitants. However, this has unthinkingly developed into an almost automatic trope: everyone in fantasy settings is generally presumed to be literate. Why is this?

The most likely reason is that this is the way our world works and fantasy is inherently parasitic, where undifferentiated drawing on the real world that we experience every day. I don't know if it grew out of the Forgotten Realms use, but I've seen it now spreading across media. It made an appearance in Dragon Age, and has recently been added through a mod to Skyrim. I don't understand this (unless its just laziness in attempting to fashion a realistic regime, or lack of desire to do so), but I think I can take it as an opportunity to launch into a discussion on literacy in the Middle Ages and, in a broader sense, in fantasy as a whole.

Literacy was common amongst the upper class of the Roman Republic and Empire; indeed, writing and the written word was key to the ability of the Empire to persist over the time that it did. Administration was undertaken by an entire class of functionaries in the later empire, much of whose existence was taken up with magisterial duties that required the ability to read and write. However, the superstructure to support this kind of learning (primarily the rhetors and grammaticians who traveled from family to family teaching their children) collapsed and so did the learning.

The art of reading and writing was not one that was commonly known after the collapse of the Roman educational system. Male nobles commonly were not literate, though there's a caveat there that has to do with the administrative systems of Charlemagne's short-lived empire. The most common literates were priests and women.

Clerics often acted as secretarii to nobility, reading and writing for them. Indeed, this may be where the Song of Ice and Fire maester comes from. Almost all manors and keeps would posses at least one confessor or chaplain for their lord who may or may not have doubled as the village priest. This cleric generally wrote and read for the lord. It was also possible, as the middle ages wore on, to find secular clerics (canons, mostly) who would fulfill these tasks.

Bishops, monks, abbots, canons, deacons, these types of figures would commonly be trained in the Latin tradition. For everyone else, writing was unnecessary, extraneous, and something that would likely be scorned. Who has time to ruin their eyes in the dark rooms of a monastery or the glum grimness of an incense-perfumed church when they need to be training to fight and win on the field of battle? Yes, the wisdom of the ages lies in books, but books were rare and hard to come by.

This brings up another interesting side-effect of the generally illiterate culture (or perhaps a precipitator), and that is the lack of reading material. The most well-read men of the middle ages traveled from place to place or requested, in no uncertain terms, copies of books be sent to them. Books were fabulously expensive, requiring the killing of numerous animals to produce, as well as hours and hours of preparation for material and further laborious man-hours in copying out.

It is strange, then, to imagine medieval peasants wandering up to notice boards and leaving their pleas for adventurers. Adventurers, unless they were formerly priests, would be unlikely to have the knowledge to read such pleas (and the farmers would be unlike to have the knowledge to write them). Of course, this all changes as the middle ages wears on toward the pre-modern era, but most fantasy settings take place before (or without) the invention of the printing press.

Once again, I'm certain there will be angry folk who sneer and remark "This is fantasy, not history," but if your fantasy is no deeper than a bunch things you thought were cool all welded together without any thought, logic, or consideration behind them, perhaps you'd be better off remarking "this is trash, not history." So certainly, reject the literacy/illiteracy debate, but reject it in an informed manner. If people are literate, why are they literate? How? How does this affect the rest of society?

Or just do whatever you were going to do anyway, I suppose. It's not like I can stop you.

Misnomers

I've probably talked about this before, but I wanted to address it again. I'm not sure where the folk-terms for armor and weapons that pervade dungeons and dragons (and some fantasy stories from the early 20th century) arose from. But they are flat out wrong, and make a general muddle of a topic that could be much simpler.

Further, the great swathes of armor listed in the AD&D 2e PHB were never historically used alongside one another, making it strange to imagine acquiring a chain byrnie alongside a fellow wearing a full suit of plate armor.

Anyway, here are two of my least favorite misnomers:

Longsword
Greatsword
There is no such thing as a greatsword. The word longsword probably emerged from the 17th century German lang schwert which referred to two-handed blades like Renaissance Zweihanders. The thing that fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons insists on calling a longsword is an arming blade. This is the one-handed, generally cruciform, sword used by your average knight.

Chain Mail
Plate Mail
Banded Mail
Splint Mail
X Mail
Mail means chain armor. There are a lot of alternative ways to refer to chain armor: a hauberk (short shirt of mail), haubergon (long tunic of mail), byrnie (long tunic of mail), etc. There are mail chausses (the leggings), mail gloves, and the aventail (mail hood). But there is no such thing as plate mail. There is, however, plate armor. Plate armor was universally worn with mail beneath or interstitially, leading to the term plate-and-mail, which is perhaps where the confusing origin of all these different types of "mail" spring from.

But if you're talking about mail, you're talking about chain links. Saying chain mail is redundant. It is either chain armor or simply mail.

So there.

Weather and Geopolitics

The weather, which we tend to think of generally as that thing which we can't predict that may sometimes annoy us, has had a profound effect on the great questions of history. While we may not yet be able to tell if we live in a deterministic universe, the effects of weather on the plans of mankind appear to comprise a stochastic system and, at least to premodern eyes, represent an arbitrary (and powerful) enough occurrence that we may can nominate it as the candidate for most likely to be seen as random.

Here are some events that were unduly influenced by the weather, to the point where the weather itself determined the outcome of major historical crossroads. Upon considering these, one should keep in mind the sheer magnitude of weather's scale in a pre-modern world.

1) The Wreckage of the White Ship. The White Ship, a vessel bearing the only male heir of Henry I of England, son of William the Conqueror, sank out of Calais one fateful night. This would result in the eventual outbreak of the Anarchy and the contest between Henry's nephew Stephen and his daughter, the Empress Matilda, over the English crown.

2) The Destruction of the Spanish Armada. The greatest fleet ever assembled in Europe. The mightiest army to be picked up from recent conquests in the Flemish countryside. The Protestant Wind. The Spanish Armada, a fleet nearly invulnerable to the miserable long cannon of the English, was poised to deposit an overwhelming army on England's shores... until a storm smashed most of the fleet and drove the rest off course.

3) Napoleon and Russia. You know this one.

4) Themistocles and the Persians. And if you don't know this one, the Greeks turned the tides and winds of a narrow channel against the vast and overwhelming numbers of the Persian fleet.

There are countless times that weather has influenced the outcome of events in pre-modern warfare. Mud and rain have spelled the death of many knights charging over ground they thought solid. Fog has led them into marshes, where their horses drowned, and mail-clad knights with them.

The weather is a force to be reckoned with. Do not discount it's power.

Getting Paid: The Problem with Money in Medieval Fantasy

This is a theme I harp upon, but one that I now want to address in the full. Throughout human history, money has meant different things. There were, for example, complex credit markets in the ancient Akkadian empire but no credit in medieval Europe until the development of the crusading banks. Rome had a firm numismatic base throughout its history, as did the Mediterranean world. However, that frequency and use of currency collapsed with the severing of the great Roman tax-spines that brought wealth from the provinces to the administrative centers. Christopher Wickham has posited two major tax-spines: East-West from Iberia to the middle-eastern provinces and North-South from the upper reaches of Germania down to North Africa.

The transfer of money was mostly facilitated under a dual scheme, namely that created by the imperial administration and the shadow-schema of the great pagan families of late mid- and late-Rome who owned properties throughout the Empire, establishing vast networks of wealth. However, when the administrative systems broke down (mostly thanks to Vandals in North Africa spinning off into a successor-kingdom based on the Roman model and the various wars in Ilyria and the Balkans), this transfer of funds dried up. The great numismatic arteries of Rome were severed and the economy bled out, fundamentally changing the nature of exchange throughout the remnants of the Empire.

When we talk about the medieval milieux being in some senses post-apocalyptic, this is one of the things we mean. The resurgence of universally accepted coinage, duties in money rather than service, and complicated credit markets would not recur until the late 14th century. Thus, it is my contention that the absence of an overarching moneyed economy is something that is particularly important about the medieval world. The inaccessibility of money helped define the middle ages in very deep and important ways. Inter-personal relationships, always important in Rome, took on heightened meaning as they tended to be the only markers of status where income was no longer a sign of institutional power simply because it did not flow freely enough to make much difference.

Gold mines in Iberia and the middle east shut down. The common currency of Europe was an exchange medium of silver. Gold was so rare that gold coins were generally called Bezants, after Byzantium, since only the remnants of Rome and the new Middle-Eastern kingdoms (with functioning gold mines in Armenia and the Near East) could mint coins in it.

So part of the medieval worldview is a place where coinage is not the primary method of transaction. This clashes quite a bit with what we've been led to believe about Dungeons and Dragons in particular and fantasy in general. We're used to societies that are structured more or less like ours, with merchants and intermediary levels that we can comprehend. We're used to people treating coins (usually gold) in fantasy the way we treat credit. Perhaps we cop to the quaintness of their "medieval" livelihoods by not having exchange rates, or have them fail to understand currency liquidity. But that's not a truly medieval worldview.

Medieval thought requires an exchange of fidelity, or at least of services. When someone pays a sage in D&D, this should more properly be the grant of lands or incomes (or books, or parchment, or food) to a powerful foundation. Individual scholars never garnered money. When someone in a fantasy novel pays another person with gold coins for lodgings, this would be more properly represented by doing some work around that person's house.

I'm thinking about ways to incorporate this truth into my games. I'm not there yet, but when I am, I will work up an article or two about the best ways to approach it.

Bastardy

Bastardy in Rome and the Middle Ages

I recently read an interesting article concerning the status of bastards, particularly high-ranking ones, in the medieval world. There were a number of words that could be applied to those born out of wedlock, from bastardus, to mamzer, to nothus or spurious. William the Conqueror was a Bastardus in his time, born to a concubine of the Duke of Normandy. What did this mean for inheritance? Well, answering that question requires an examination of different periods.

Classical Roman Bastardy

This is where the Third Empire of Miles falls in the 10^th Age. In classical Roman tradition, the paterfamilias had absolute authority on who was a member of his family, who was his heir, etc. The recognition of bastards was a common practice, and once recognized they were essentially legitimized. Divorce was common in late Republican Rome, and Augustus had something approaching a mania about the extinction of ancient noble lines, requiring everyone in Rome to have as many children as possible.

Indeed, there was a long tradition of replenishing the population by relaxed heritance laws going all the way back to Greece where there were certain procedures installed in some city-states to completely nullify marriage laws for certain periods in order to bring the fighting population back to full strength.

Early Medieval Bastardy

This is intimately tied to notions of nobility and character. Legitimacy in the early middle ages was less of a disqualifier than it would be later. Part of this be traced to the Roman tradition, but (and this is without a great deal of research, so take this with a grain of salt) I believe a much larger portion stems from the polygamous marriages of Germanic kings. “Wedlock” was a much looser term throughout the period, with wives easily being put away and extra concubines being taken on. While there would generally be an official Queen named as wife, it was very common for rulers of, say, Frankia, to have a number of concubines producing children as well.

This is where William comes in. According to Sara McDougall’s “How do you say ‘bastard’ in Medieval Latin?,” William was taunted not for being born of someone other than his father’s wife, but rather for his mother’s low birth. The special bastard terms seem to deride someone born of a union that was illegitimate not because the couple weren’t married, but because one member of the couple was servile.

A brief foray into nobility

Roman nobility counted on tracing back one’s ancestry to the original great patrician families. Nobility could technically be granted through adoption, which happened at least once or twice that we know of. Pompeii Magnus and Marcus Tullius Cicero were both new men (novi homini) who rose from the common class. However, nobility generally was not imagined as transferrable. It was a combination of breeding and behavior that marked out patricians as morally superior. Even those non-nobles who made their way into the patrician class could find their humble origins used as political tools against them.

Nobility in early medieval Europe was much more permeable. Before the calcification of the concept in the 16^th-18^th centuries, one did not have to trace their lineage back to some progenitor to prove nobility. Indeed, nobility was as much a quality of character as it was a result of the blood. Thus lies the entire concept of partible title; being knighted, granted a barony, raised to the rank of comte (companion), made an ealdorman, etc. all display a certain meritocratic virtue. Being noble was as much a result of behavior as it was of station; those who could prove they had never owed servile duties were considered free men by communal courts of Frankish law, for example.

Why, then, does low station imply the birth of a noble man? Because the traits that made up nobilis itself were generally considered heritable. While it was always possible for a common man to show exemplary behavior and be, for example, knighted on the field of battle, as time went on and the appointed nobility of early medieval England and the Frankish empire entrenched themselves as semi-hereditary, the source of being a noble man was, more and more often, considered to be in both the upbringing and the blood.

Thus, deriding someone as a bastard (specifically one with low or servile origins on one side) could indicate a serious character flaw. Hated classes of people, such as tanners (who had to work with urine), actors (who were absolutely despised), or the servile and unfree, were considered especially prone to produce cowards, liars, and cheats. This notion, interestingly, did not rely on a permanent heritability of servility, but rather on an underlying idea of plasticity. Throughout one’s lifetime, traits were considered malleable and plastic, but the choices made would be inherited and set guiding boundaries or signposts for one’s children.

What does this mean?

Bastardy is a social construct, like any other relationship. However, to assume that medieval bastardy (or ancient/classical bastardy) is in any way comparable to the modern construction is to misunderstand the tensions of those worlds. There was no fear of an undermining of the institution of marriage; in the Roman world, marriage made room for bastardy and divorce easily, while in the medieval world the institution itself was weak and anemic for a very long period, mostly something people did voluntarily and, until the middle 12^th and early 13^th century something that was more or less unregulated by the Church. In fact, as an aside, the involvement of Rome in marriage seemed to be rather a good thing from the perspective of wives since it gave tools by which to annul marriages conducted without the wife’s consent, a tiny smidgen of protection for wives who would be put aside, etc.

The Art of Rebellion

So let's talk about all the various types of rebellion that occurred in the medieval world.

We've already examined the types of popular revolution that happen when food prices are shaken, but there are other forms of rebellion and replacement of the political order than merely the overhauling revolution.

There are several things that lead to rebellion, a laundry list of factors as it were. These include but are not limited to:

(a) A sizable intelligentsia unable to access political efficacy.
(b) Insecurity in food supply or income.
(c) In the medieval context of polities that are reliant on personal charisma, personal disagreements or other forms of friction between individuals.
(d) Growing pains after an attempt (successful or not) at centralization.

Several of these can be consolidated into a single element, mainly: weakness of the central authority. The reason for this is, of course, that someone in the kingdom always has a better idea at how things should be run, or a more legitimate claim to the title, or just more ruthlessness. Rebellion and insurrection are in fact native forces that simply wait for the center to fail. They are the entropic principle of a kingdom (or, in modern terms, a state). As wood rots and the arrow of time flies ever forward, the death of the kingdom is already contained within it, waiting for release.

The most common types of rebellion in medieval polities are, of course, those that focus on one of the following issues:
(i) inheritance grievance
(ii) centralization grievance
(iii) religious grievance
(iv) interpersonal tension

All of these issues require an alternative pole to the king to coalesce and take form. This can be the king's paternal uncle, for example, or a brother or son. Paternal uncles were particularly dangerous in the very early middle ages, often killing their brothers' sons in order to take over. Brothers can be equally treacherous—take, for example, the unification of Frankia that relied upon Charles packing his son off to the monastery and fortuitously watching Carloman die.

We can take an archetypical rebellion as a pattern, namely the infamous Anarchy that occurred during the realm of King Stephen. Now, this analysis isn't quite as rigorous as, say, a historical book on the subject. I may miss some of the root causes of the rebellion, but I can at least give the outline.

King Henry, who succeeded William Rufus, who succeeded William the Conqueror, had a son named Henry and a daughter named Matilda (or Maude). Maude was married to the Holy Roman Emperor, who later died, and then remarried to Geoffrey of Anjou. When Henry Adelin, King Henry's son, died in the sinking of the White Ship, King Henry demanded oaths of all his barons that they would crown the so-called Empress Matilda queen after his death.

However, he died fighting in Normandy and his cousin, Stephen of Blois, announced that on his deathbed Henry had named him the heir, following in a long tradition of truths as told by his ancestors, like William the Bastard (that's sarcasm, kid).

Anyway, he rushed to London and got himself proclaimed king. However, Maude still had a number of followers among the barons who grudgingly accepted his kingship. Her half-brother, Robert Earl of Gloucester (also Henry's bastard), began sowing the seeds of rebellion early in Stephen's rule and drawing her loyal followers to him.

When the time was right, Robert went into open revolt, and David, King of Scotland (a perennial thorn in Stephen's side) aided him by invading. David had already invaded once, as he was Matilda's uncle (and was probably using that chance to make a political grab of land in the north of England). Notice this theme: Matilda, the pole of legitimizing succession, gives David a claim to invade. Whether or not he really wanted Matilda to succeed her father is open to debate; though, that would also be wise, as it would create a loyal ally to his south.

Stephen was having troubles with Wales and his coffers were emptied out when Robert rebelled. Whether it was the chance Robert needed or whether Stephen appeared weak and ineffectual, thus driving more lords into Robert's arms, is uncertain. Whatever the reason, as soon as the center was weak enough, the revolt began.

Matilda was its figurehead, but Robert was its heart. He could never be king—his illegitimacy prevented it. Matilda, however, was a convenient figure to rally around.

In the unfolding of the Anarchy, we can see at play the interpersonal relationships of powerful medieval figures leading the road to war. This is a problem of (i) and (iv), triggered by a general weakness in the central polity due to raiding and expenditure of silver.

Paying the Penalty

Medieval crime and punishment is different in many ways from modern crime and punishment. I've talked about medieval law before, but this is the first time I've ever set out to catalogue how it could affect your idea of a fantasy society in any kind of definite way.

The most important thing to note is that there were no penalties of imprisonment in the early and high middle ages. You might be reduced to slavery or forced to pay a fine or even executed, but you'd never become a prisoner as a result of lawbreaking—excepting, of course, the period where you were waiting for your trial. Even then, you'd likely just be kept in the undercroft of a local manor, not a special-built jail or prison or even (gasp) dungeon.

The Anglo-Saxon Dooms
Taking a look at the laws of King Alfred, it becomes apparent that there are essentially two types of punishment: paying the geld (or value) of the crime, or death. In some cases the value of the crime was determined by the value of the thing destroyed or stolen. This is descended from the wergeld, or man-value, of early Saxon times, which was a price you paid the family of someone you killed (based on their social status) to legally prevent a feud from developing.

If you're truly seeking to simulate a medieval society, what you should do is draw up a short sample of fines and then determine what constitutes a capital crime. Capital punishment in the English system (the only one I'm really aware of in great detail at the moment, having not refreshed myself on the customs of Frankia in a long time) can only be dealt out by the king. In his absence, it was the job of the royal assizes to roam the countryside and give trial to those being held for capital crimes (usually, as above, being held in the croft of a manner until the time came for the assizes to try them).

The Process of Trial
The old germanic continental custom of trial was for the families of the accused to gather together in a central place. The accused would swear that he didn't commit the crime and his family would swear also. This would prevent "justice" from being done unless the accused's family didn't back him up—which could be the case, if they knew the accused was a dick and he was constantly making life harder for them by, for example, getting involved in court cases.

In England, the situation was similar though not as clearly one-sided. The accused would be asked to assemble oath-takers from amongst the townsfolk where he was charged. If he could assemble five or twelve of them (I don't remember the circumstances surrounding how many were needed and don't feel like looking it up: if anyone is really interested, leave a comment and I'll go back to the books and get you an answer). Essentially, these oath-takers would swear that the man did not commit the crime. If enough could be produced, he would go free. This clearly favors the social fabric above individual justice, but what is the point of justice if not to knit together the social fabric?

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis

HERESY. A common word on the internet these days, mostly because its fun to say, and partially because its used commonly in the Warhammer 40k universe. But what exactly are heretics? Do they necessarily even exist in fantasy worlds? How can we better understand the way heretical movements functioned, what made them heretical, and why there were no heretics in diffuse religions? Well, we can examine the topics of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

Orthodoxy — Right Belief.
This is a central tenant of the Catholic Church which was pushed to the fore by the co-opting of the previously underground church infrastructure by the Roman Empire. Orthodoxy reflects a necessity that everyone believes the same thing. Heresy (from the Greek root "to choose") cannot exist without a strong strain of ortho doxos, straight (or right, or true) belief. Thus, the presence of an orthodoxy inevitably hereticizes all other forms of belief. While this need not be universal and all-encompassing (There is only the One True God vs. When you worship this god, you must do it with this belief) but it tends to be.

Thus, one of the key elements to forming heresies is orthodoxic requirement in the faith. But orthodoxy requires other things to prop it up and promulgate it. They are (I) Centralized Authority, (II) Systems of Dissemination, and (III) An Orthodox Canon.

(I) Centralized Authority. In order to determine what qualifies as part of the orthodox canon and to administer the faith, some form of central authority is required. If a faith has no governing body, it cannot enforce orthodoxy. This can be a non-permanent assembly of all temple-leaders (such as a synod, convened to discusses matters of canon law and determine what does and does not fall under the rubric of the orthodoxy), a permanent position (such as the one held by the Roman Emperor, who could convene and threaten synods), or a permanent council (such as the rabbinical and Levitical councils which dominated Jewish faith). In any case, the central authority must pick and choose what belongs in the faith and what constitutes "right thought." If a faith is massively decentralized and has no overarching authority, it will be subject to many more permutations and local changes.

(II) Systems of Dissemination. Cathedral Schools, Rabbinical Schools, training centers, and public masses serve as systems of dissemination to the masses and the priesthood. Most pagan ceremonies of the ancient world took place in private, hidden from the regular laity, and training of priests was a secretive task that was performed in the sanctum sanctorum. But for a strict orthodoxy of correct beliefs to thrive, these training methods must be made open to scrutiny so they can be corrected. These channels are also required to transmit the central authorities version of the faith so they can be reproduced in the lower orders.

(III) A Canon. This isn't as strict a requirement as the others (though it is possible any or all of the three could be circumvented by processes I'm not thinking of at the moment) but it serves to cement orthodox practice. The canon doesn't just include holy writings or teachings, but also usually many crusted-on exegetical practices and treatises which help explain the original holy work. The Catholic example of this is the writing of the Church Fathers like Origen, Augustine, and Jerome, which explicates biblical writing and cemented it as a single strain of orthodoxy in the Late Antique Church, which chose certain interpretations over others.

Orthopraxy — Right Action.
Polytheistic Classical Antique religions are much more likely to be interested not in what their worshippers believe (because who cares?) but rather what they do. If you burn an offering to a god because you want something, you are participating in an exchange. The god may literally "eat" the incense and smoke of the offering as a form of sustenance (perhaps why more prayers make gods stronger) or it may be symbolic. However, the control of belief is much less important than the control of actions. Temples want sacrifices, they want loyal worshippers who will make the right choices, and they rarely care if someone believes something outside their faith. You think Mars can fix your house? Fine, we don't think so and we won't make the sacrifice to him on your behalf, but that's your business.

Thus, it is clear that without the trappings of Orthodoxy, heresy cannot exist. Extremely variant views may be relatable to heresy within even an orthopratical view (for example, eating the dead in honor of Mars would be disgusting, unthinkable, and awful and a practice to stamp out) but even then, it's not so much the errant belief that is responsible as it is the errant action.

So look carefully over your setting and ask yourself again: can heretics exist?

Thinking Through Outlaws, the Second Part

Now that we've sufficiently established outlaws as something other than bandits, and really begun to dig into their character, there are some other things we can do with outlaws. For example, outlawry makes a fine character background for adventurers (though be wary lest it be overused) and outlaw camps can be generated without resorting to combat scenarios with bandits.

The Outlaw Kit
This isn't really even a kit, just a skin that can be put on top of any class. The likelihood of a wizard being an outlaw is extremely low, but always possible.

Wizards
Wizards in general form a legal class all of their own that generally means "don't fuck with me," so while a wizard's tower in the wild is technically outside the legal jurisdiction of the law and you can technically waltz in there and kill him, this type of wizard doesn't really fit under the "outlaw" heading because they have a lot of interactions with the respectable members of society and because they are, above all, very wealthy, which generally precludes them from living the same kind of hand-to-mouth life as the classical outlaw. However, a wizard who lives in a cave or a hovel in the wild and has very few resources might train an outlaw-mage apprentice using this kit.

The Alterations
Outlaws begin play with substantially reduced resources. No outlaw character can buy armor better than studded leather at character creation. Weapons that incorporate steel in them cost double for outlaws, but bows cost one half their listed cost. Outlaws begin play with a -2 reaction penalty from townsfolk that live nearby and a +2 reaction bonus amongst intelligent forest dwellers of all kinds. These reaction bonuses will fade if the outlaw changes their lifestyle considerably or moves away from their home region.

Furthermore, outlaws may only keep 1d6 silver pieces after character creation—all other unspent gold should be used, because otherwise it will be wasted.

Outlaws may, with the permission of the DM, have a "home camp" where they are well-liked and may receive shelter and food for free (though they will be expected to perform some basic camp labors). These home camp folk will also be likely to tell the outlaw PC of any rumors they've heard and may offer to hire on as hirelings.

Randomly Generated Outlaw Camps
Terrain (d8)
If the roll is even, the site is graced with a river or lake to provide water.
1-4. Forest
5-6. Meadow
7-8. Caves

Number of Outlaws
For sites with watercourses, add +2d6. For every 4 outlaws, presume one complete family. For every ten people, assume one 1st level character is present.
1-3. 1d6
4-5. 2d6
6-7. 3d6
8-9. 3d6+2
10. 4d6

Band Leadership
1. Charismatic single character (any class, of level 1d4+1)
2-3. General consensus
4-6. No leader

Number of Bandits
This is the percentage of the outlaw camp that regularly engages in typical bandit activity.
1-2. 0%
3-4. 10%
5. 50%
6. 100%

Type of Defenses
1-3. None
4. Palisade
5. Moat
6. Moat & Palisade

Relationship with the nearby town
1. Very Poor
2. Poor
3-5. Average
6. Great (alms are frequently given)

The Charcoal Burners and Other Outlaws

The task thought of as most unpleasant and unclean in all the Middle Ages was undeniably charcoal burning. Charfolk were a people unto themselves, and they often lived in the woods and dells in much the same state as outlaws. This brings me to another point about outlaws: they were the equivalent of the homeless population of today, rather than generic bandits. Bandits, being a specific type of outlaw, were usually former military men who'd fought in campaigns, perhaps as levied peasants or even as knights of this or that lord.

Outlaws, however, established societies that tended to reject the town life that prevailed in the rest of Europe. Robin Hood's Merry Men are a good example of outlaw folk—not necessarily inimical, but simply living out of the normal sphere of public justice and decency. There were entire communities as well as small individual families (or even just individuals!) living outside the fabric of medieval society. So the next time you roll up some outlaws or bandits, consider...

The Unique Forest Encounter Table
1. A family (1d4+1 members) of outlaws chasing a boar through the underbrush for dinner.
2. Three drunken charmen tending a massive buried fire for making charcoal that is threatening to get out of control.
3. A gruesome grove of bandits, all hanged high from the branches of ash and oak trees. 1-in-4 chance there are ghouls prowling the site, gnawing at their dangling feet.
4. A small colony of wood-dwelling lepers, unkindly disposed towards travelers.
5. A little community of forest gnomes who want nothing more than to trade stories and share beer.
6. A defrocked priest or priestess dwelling in a cave nearby a little stream and a garden.
7. Two halflings who are selling fake treasure maps for a pair of silver pieces. Most of them lead to various lethal obstacles, such as trackless mires or dangerous pits.
8. A young level 1 bard playing an instrument or singing. If the PCs bother him (or her) they'll be in for tales about their idiocy and misdeeds to be spreading in their wake.
9. A young person who appears to be a level 1 bard, but is in actuality a leprechaun or pixie waiting to play a nasty prank on the next travelers he spots.
10. A spring where a number of outlaw families (1d12+1) are washing their clothes. If it's winter, they are also breaking the scum of ice and drawing water.
11. Four mercenaries who've decided to turn their hand to filching rather than fighting. They are of levels 1d4-1 (though the third might be 1d4+1 if he's a good leader). They wear mail and carry long killing axes and knives. If the PCs look dangerous they may instead choose to offer a game of dice or stories.
12. Three women of various ages cutting down their children or husbands from hanging ropes.
13. A knight, his squire, and 2d4 militia folk in leather armor flushing a number (1d6+2 families) of outlaws out of the forest with loud shouts and stout wooden rods.
14. Dungburners (1d4) and their families (a wife or husband and 1d8-1 children) tending to several large dung fires for creating charcoal.
15. A wandering master mason and his smith companion alongside three pilgrims.
16. Three young outlaws in a running sling battle with a platoon of goblins combing the forest for them.
17. A lord hunting with his party (1d4 other lords, each with their own knights, handmaids, beaters, etc.) riding through the forest.
18. Two outlaws leading a train of stolen pigs from the nearest town into the wild.
19. A furnished cave who's outlaw occupants are currently gone.
20. A black magician who's been forced to live in the wild by the local townsfolk. He (or she!) may be willing to trade stories or magic for food and information.
21. A community of heretics worshipping at an open air altar.
22. A small battlefield being picked over by outlaws for coins, daggers, and rings.
23. A falconer out in the wild looking for nests.
24. A caravan of 1d6+1 wagons (each with 1d4 crossbowmen and 1d6 guards) under attack by a number of bandits (2d6 per wagon) who are making good use of trees and bows.
25. A graveyard for the forest folk with wooden or roughly hewn stone markers.
26. A gathering of hastily abandoned woodsmen's tools by a half-cut tree.
27. Five woodsmen hauling away logs for their lord.
28. A small hunting party shouting at poachers who they've discovered have downed one of the local stags.
29. A stag. 10% chance this is actually a white hart, and shooting it (and killing it) will grant the offending PC either a curse (roll twice on every saving throw or skill check and take the lowest roll, unless remove curse is cast) or a wish. (DM's discretion)
30. A faerie noble set up in a tent in a mede in the forest.
31. Six wood elves dancing through the trees and leaving silken ties behind them, strung up on the boughs. If they see any cut wood amongst the PCs they will be enraged and possibly attack. Deadwood is fine.
32. A rock gnome sitting alone on a stone, memorizing a particularly long epic saga.
33. Eight dwarves returning from a lead mine with their haul. Not keen to talk or let PCs know what's in their wagons.
34. Eight dwarves returning from a secret vault with 10,000gp in their wagon. Not keen to talk or let the PCs see their haul.
35. A shepherd desperately trying to keep up with his flock as they trundle through the undergrowth.
36. Several unsavory men steaming wood in a rush-filled trench covered with sod.
37. An herbalist wandering amongst the forest, looking for specific plants.
38. A small family exercising their copice rights, cutting wood for repairs on their home.
39. A young maid who's run off with a brave outlaw lad.
40. A young lad who's run off with a brave outlaw lass.
41. A patch of delicious forest mushrooms.
42. A patch of extremely deadly forest mushrooms.
43. 2d6 bandits charging tolls for crossing a river, perchance squatting on a bridge which they've blocked with a barricade.
44. A dwarven smith who lives by himself in the wood and may be willing to make weapons or armor for the PCs.
45. The font of a natural sulfur spring bubbling up out of a mossy rock.
46. A man wanted by the assizes or the local lord for murder, hiding out in a makeshift home in the wood.
47. The home of a local cunning woman who knows how to make simple abortifacients as well as healing salves. She may also have the ability (at the DMs discretion) of casting spells as a level 1-5 wizard or priest.
48. A halfling family living in a hill-side house who are having trouble fighting off wolves.
49. A halfling family living in a hill-side house who are feigning having trouble fighting off goblins but who actually kill travelers and take their belongings.
50. Eight halfling swineherds tending their flocks in the underbrush.
51. A secretive halfling village full of friendly folk who will be eager to offer their aid, beer, strawberries, or whatever else they have available.
52. Several young women running water through buckets of ash to make ammonia.
53. A number of dangerous looking fellows stoking clay smelters for melting bog iron.
54. A group of local villagers beating the yearly bounds.
55. Some brickmakers by a riverside baking clay bricks in a kiln.
56. Lead miners constructing a hand-made tower of wood and white charcoal (very dry oak made in a separate furnace) in order to melt down a lump of lead ore.
57. A bog of drowned dead, killed by some mysterious magic. They may be ghouls waiting to grab passing PCs at the DM's discretion.
58. A deadfall that has the appearance of a bandit trap but which is actually a goblin or bugbear trick. There are a number of trees nearly chopped all the way through and ready to drop. The PCs are highly likely to be attacked by the bugbears or goblins if they appear to be easy bait. Otherwise, they'll be permitted to pass.
59. A knight on a religious vigil, determined to protect the sacred fingerbone he's been given. He is level 5 and assumes anyone (including PCs) is attempting to get near him for the purpose of stealing the relic.
60. A rancid sack of barley that's been cast aside some time in the past few months. It's filled with mice, and picking it up will expose the PC to 1d8 mouse bites which, themselves, cause no damage, but must be cleaned or they will become infected.
61. A priory of hermits living in separate cells and worshipping some obscure god.
62. Nine bandits living high on the hog, laughing and eating, some quite drunk. They have just raided a monastery, and have a haul of silver holy icons and books totaling a value of some 1d10x200 gold pieces.
63. A mysterious bonfire being tended by some 40 people in a strange religious ceremony. Holly is being added to the fire every so often, and much dancing and consumption of wine is going on apace.
64. An old druid clearing brambles from the road.
65. An abandoned wagon off to the side of the road or track with a broken axel. There is a 10% chance it contains some kinds of goods left within it.
66. An old chapel in the woods, dedicated to some beneficent god but currently untended. As it is still consecrated, it would make a good place to rest for good-aligned PCs.
67. A wedding ceremony between two nobles of the nearby area performed by a priest (or priestess) of the harvest in an open glade.
68. An angry dao, doomed to wander the world disguised as a farmer until he grants three wishes, fuming on the side of the road. He has 1d3 wishes left. He may only grant one wish per group, and the fewer he has to grant the more he'll want to grant them. However, any PC can piss him off to the point where he'd rather stymie them than grant the wish—of course, he may also attempt to pervert it for his own amusement.
69. A vile privy demon that follows the PCs around and waits until they're relieving themselves to throw curses and other nasty magic.
70. A priest proselytizing to a group of outlaws in a field.
71. A mad wandering philosopher, with many gems of wisdom to impart and long-winded speeches to deliver. He is being followed by three gnomish scribes; one is more or less ambivalent to the philosopher, while the other two take up complimentary and antagonistic viewpoints, variously.
72. A bacchanal composed of formerly well-ordered townsfolk now driven to sacred stupor on wine. They may attack the PCs if the spirits urge them.
73. 1d6 folks squatting around a lime kiln that's slowly burning the remains of a giant (turned to stone with age) into lime ash.
74. A gravedigger and his apprentice, en route to a new town for reasons both mysterious and unknown to the PCs.
75. Several cotters, full drunk from working on a harvest field recently.
76. An elvish market beneath a hall of towering ash and beech trees where all manner of strange (and sometimes intangible) goods are being sold.
77. Three gnomish laborers looking for work on the road.
78. A miller who has been driven out of his village for cheating the farmers. He will rant and rail, and eventually may ask the PCs for their help getting retribution.
79. A small outlaw camp being attended to by wandering cobblers and tinkers. They may repair the pots and shoes of the PCs for a small fee.
80. A silver-tongued nun who has decided to live in the wild to be free of the temptations of the world.
81. A heterochromatic man who can smell gems and gold naturally. He is wanted in several counties, but will accompany the PCs if he thinks they can protect him.
82. A family severely afflicted with dysentery—they are on the verge of death, lying by the roadside in the brush. No one will help them.
83. A family who are on the verge of starving. Desperate, they may attack the PCs even if they think they can't get food.
84. A traveling band of forest dwelling pain-worshippers. They flagellate themselves and groan in pleasure as they send their devotions to their lord. They will be led by a level 1d4+1 priest of their faith as well as 2d6 level 1 acolytes (all fighters with no armor and staves or clubs). The flagellants themselves fight as level 0 bandits if trouble should arise.
85. Merry men and their anarchist leader, who may hold up the PCs if they look wealthy enough. Everyone in the band is at least level 1d4+1, while their cocksure headman is level 2d4+1.
86. A camp of non-hostile goblin outlaws who will be willing to (grudgingly) share food or stories with the PCs. Look out though, because if they think they can get away with murder, they will.
87. A platoon of hobgoblin knights with their minotaur lizards. They will converse and eat with the PCs, but will not share rations willingly.
88. A mercenary company that's been without pay for months. They have taken to banditry, but will not hold up well-armed foes like the PCs. They may enlist the PCs to help extract their pay from their former employers.
89. A bandit ambush conducted by 3d10 former peasant leveemen, broken by the hard road of fighting for their lord, and now with nothing left to lose.
90. An old one-eyed man who whispers useless wisdoms.
91. A lone ogre who, for whatever strange reason, appears to enjoy assisting travelers. Gives good, concise, and clear directions and has a cauldron of stew back at his camp if anyone wants to share. Doesn't even eat human meat! (Probably)
92. A cluster of kobold scavengers (2d8) picking over the murdered remains of an outlaw camp and chewing on the ends of bones, ripped untimely from the fallen.
93. A leering magician teaching his impish familiar new tricks on a stump.
94. A devil itching to have a contest with some mortal in exchange for their soul.
95. A blind seer who lives in a cave, but can divine much of the future.
96. A cavern which actually leads to the underworld.
97. A massive enraged boar, several times the size of a man, which has become a maneater and will almost immediately become enraged and dangerous.
98. 2d6 swineherds from the nearby village feeding their pigs acorns. One of the pigs has been possessed by a devil and can speak, which is making all the lads and lasses uneasy. They will probably ask the PCs for help.
99. A lover's tree, carved with the names of all those who trysted beneath it. If the PCs sit under its boughs for any length of time, they can hear the whispers of true love lost spoken by all those who have died there.
100. An outlaw camp made within and around the bleached bones of a dead dragon.

Making It At Home

The biggest thing that's been phased out of real medieval life when it comes to D&D is just how much was done in the household. That is, we as moderns are used to stores, restaurants, pubs, taverns, bars, hotels, etc. I've harped on this subject time and again in the past on this blog, but I think the time has come to bring it up anew. Purchasing, for example, beer was rarely done in large quantities in the middle ages because you made your own. Taverns for the most part didn't exist—when you were finished with a big batch of beer or ale you'd invite the town in (hence, a public house) to buy your wife's wares and drink with you for that night, or on the succeeding nights. Most towns and villages wouldn't have a dedicated place for travelers to stay when they were coming through. Rather, you'd be well-served if you could find a local farmhouse (rather a large affair) and pay in labor (perhaps splitting wood, singing if you sing, mending pots if you mend, etc.) in exchange for a place to sleep, whether on the ground by the fire, in the loft in the byre, or out in the stables.

"Brands" of ale, wine, and beer didn't exist. You would drink the damn stuff that was made locally—and that's that. Large foundations such as abbeys might be able to sell it on the marketplace, but you'd never know where it was from for the most part. Things were identified by the region from whence they came. As part of the effort to grittify and medievalify D&D a little bit, here are some charts and other such things.


The Farm
Open hall buildings were pretty much the standard for medieval farm-houses. The hall is the heart of the farmhouse, since its warmed by the hearth and that is where all the cooking is done. The lofts on either side could store grain or fruit gathered in the harvest. The pantry and buttery were more likely only present in very fine farms or townhouses—most farmer's houses would instead have been undivided, making a single great hall. In many cases, animals could have (and would have) been stabled here as well.

You'd also have laborer's cottages on a large or wealthy farm, though the laborers would eat in the farmhouse with the family. This example is a timber-framed house with wattle and daub, but some farms may have been of stone. Wattle and daub were extremely common in urbanized settlements.

Approximation of a centrally located cooking hearth (12th century)

This town has no inn. Where can I sleep?

1. Local lord is willing to put you up in his hall. He may do this in exchange for a story, for work (probably adventuring work), or for some silver.
2-3. There's a local abbey nearby that will house the PCs for free.

4-11. A moderately wealthy farmer and his family and servants. They'll want everyone to pitch in: someone chops wood, someone else stokes the fire, etc.

12-15. A shepherd is willing to share his hovel with the PCs and has some beer laid by to pass around.
An artisan, such as a blacksmith, or a goldsmith. They'll want to be paid. 

16-17. One of the houses in the village is a public house tonight, and if the PCs agree to assist in selling the ale they'll be given places to sleep.

18-19. A local temple will allow the PCs to sleep on their property for a handful of silver or the promise of chores.

20. There's nowhere to sleep indoors in this town! The farmers are all abed or unwilling to trust the dangerous-looking PCs and they are left to fend for themselves as though in the wild. 5% chance that someone attempts to pilfer from their camp in the night.

I just arrived at a local domicile. What's it like?

1. Smallhold farmer, very narrow house, no servants. The farmer has a wife and 1d8 living children that assist him.

2. Wealthy farmer, whether free or servile. Large hall. He has a wife, 2d4 children, and 2d6 servants living on his land with him. Servants may have separate lodgings.

3. Miller. Wife and 1d6-1 children. Wealthy, but untrusted by the town. Knows all the news, since everyone comes to grind their grain at his mill.

4. Whitesmith. Wealthy, probably a little standoffish. Very wary of allowing adventurers into his house, since it contains a fair amount of precious metal.

5. Blacksmith. House attached to a workshop with at least one joining wall of stone to prevent the spread of fires.

6. Priest's house. Adjoins a temple, most likely. The priest has 2d4+1 servants to work his land. Probably willing to chat and share a meal.

Tales from the Green Valley

What the hell do people get up to for most their days in the Middle Ages? Well, if you're a farmer, your every day life is busy constantly. Repairing buildings, constructing new ones, sewing, reaping, ploughing, turning, slaughtering, cooking, weaving, making clothing, brewing, enclosing pastureland, making furniture, preserving meat. These tasks go on and on forever until you're buried.

While it is admittedly a 17th Century Stuart/Tudor recreation, you can still take a lot of great inspiration for farm life from the BBC show Tales from the Green Valley in which a group of historians and archaeologists attempt to live for one year precisely as a Tudor farming family would have. Finnicky things like how hard it was to create wattle and daub, how many hazel rods it takes to affix a section of wall, how long it takes to slaughter and process a single pig (2-3 days), and other little details can be found here. Most of the techniques in use would have been very similar in the Early and High Middle Ages, though you wouldn't have had cookbooks (printed or written) and many of the tools (for example, the ploughs) would have looked somewhat different and been more difficult to use. Indeed, there would have been a deal less metal and more wood in all construction as well; Saxon halls were known for mortise and tenon construction which more or less alleviated the need for metal nails.

It's a great show, and I strongly recommend it for a sense of place and time, as well as for insight into the everyday routine.

Playing Servants, Part the Third: The Levyman

Levyman
Thief Kit OR Fighter Kit
Description: The levyman is in actuality a form of farmer; however, for the purposes of this kit, it is assumed that this farmer has actually experienced some combat at the guidance of his lord. Levies are called up from among the common farm folk: freeholders and tenant-holders alike are required to serve in the lord's levy. Levymen may have recieved some training in the local castle bailey and may even have been required to serve as guards on the castle walls. They are primarily agriculturalists, but it is many a man who has gone off to war only to return to the discovery that some rival baron has burnt down his farm.

Fighter levymen generally represent either more veteran or better-trained forces. These have probably served on at least one campaign, or have just been outfitted to do so and well-drilled by the castellan or master at arms. Thief levymen are poorer at combat, having been either badly trained or quite green. Service as a levyman can sometimes lead to mercenary work or even outlawry when that service is over, particularly if the place the levyman called home no longer exists.

Weapon Proficiencies: All levymen, thieves and fighters both, can choose from the following weapons for their starting proficiencies: spear, pike, staff, club, knife, dagger, throwing knives, hand axe, throwing axe, sickle, short bow, long bow (hunting bow). After their first level, levymen may learn any weapon they please. Fighter levymen may also become proficient in the crossbow if they were outfitted as bowmen by their lord.

NWPs: All levymen must pick one of the following proficiencies to represent their background as common folk: hunting, fishing, farming, animal training (any), animal handling. Other likely NWPs include: firebuilding, dancing, cooking, singing, instrument (any), craft (any).

Equipment: Levymen are equipped at the expense of their lords. Fighters may choose to begin the game with either a leather jack (leather armor) and a round shield (medium shield) and then be given normal starting funds, or with one of their chosen weapons, a shirt of mail, and a medium shield and then only be permitted 1d10gp to spend on other incidentals (including clothing). Thieves may only start with the first option.

Special Benefits: The benefits to being a former levyman are that the lord probably has great respect for you. You can begin play with a farm and all its attendant trappings. Roll a d100 to determine your tenancy status:

1-50. Tenancy
61-80. Freeholding
81-00. Serfdom

The only difference between these three states is the way in which ownership of land is transferred and whether or not you can strike out on your own. In any case, transfer of land from the PC to another character would require a fee paid to the lord as well as his consulting rights on the new purchaser. Being a serf requires certain more intense duties to the lord as well.

To determine the value of your farm, roll on the table below. This is the number of hides of land you own. Without a family, it will be impossible to work all this land without recourse to hiring laborers. Land income per hide is generally measured by the yield of its ground and the type of crops planted. Depending on how granular you want to be, an entire system follows.

How much land do I own?
1-50. Half Virgater (1/8th hide)
51-80. Virgater (1/4th hide)
81-90. Great Farm (1/2 hide)
91-95. Landlord (1 hides)
96-00. Village Rich Man (1d4 hides)

One hide is roughly 120 acres. Thus, a half-virgater has 15 acres while a virgater has 30. The yields of various crops are listed below, with the per-bushel price as well. Format is for a poor/average/good year.

How much can I get of... from...
Rye (winter) - 6/18/21 bushels per acre from 4 bushels of seed, valued at 1sp per bushel
Wheat (winter) - 5/9/14 bushels per acre from 2 bushels of seed, valued at 2sp per bushel
Oats (spring) - 12/18/29 bushels per acre from 4.5 bushels of seed, valued at 13cp per bushel
Peas (spring) - 5/9/14 bushels per acre from 3.5 bushels of seed, valued at 4cp per bushel

The average income of each level of farmer, then (assuming peas and wheat each year, though the fields should be rotated), is...

Half-virgate: 200sp from winter wheat, 20sp from spring peas
Virgater: 400sp from winter wheat, 40sp from spring peas
Great Farmer: 800sp from winter wheat, 80sp from spring peas
Landlord: 1600sp from winter wheat, 160sp from spring peas
Village Rich Man: anywhere from landlord to 6400sp per annum

Special Hinderances: Owing 2-3 days of land service to your lord if you retain your farm. Paying fees on transference or death (hereot and selling fees) and being called into service for 40 days each year to fight or serve as a castle warden.

Races: Any race may be a levyman, though gnomes, halflings, and humans are by far the most common.

Servile Duties and Servants

Having spoken at some length previously on the playing of characters in non-adventurer roles, and having my own example in the Knights of Miles and the Imperial Schola, I think it is safe to say that most non-adventurer style positions that still manage to participate in the sort of activities common to adventurers tend, at least in a truly medieval setting, to have the requirements of obedience and the following of strict rules. We can discount, for the purposes of this post, normal servants found in urban households as well as artisans, as these do not generally make good player characters without DM intervention (ie, manipulation of the story on a meta-level agreed to by all present players in order to extricate those characters from their social setting, at which point what even is the purpose?)

SO, the thing we really need to look at, then, is the profusion of servants in the Middle Ages that might well provide players with an idea for a PC. Additionally, those PCs who are socially integrated (whether at the beginning of the game or, as is much more normal, once they reach name level) should avail themselves of many of these types of servants.

Servitude is a major part of Medieval life. Even the nobility must be servants in their youth, albeit to those of greater rank, saving only those at the very top of the chain. Even counts and dukes served as cupbearers to the king. Simply knowing the vast number of servile types (and which were appropriate for promotion to more adventuresome careers) would go a long way to making an AD&D game richer and more interesting—and, as a side-effect, more strongly medieval.

There are any number of duties that we do for ourselves throughout the day that would be taken up by the activities of servants, particularly in a noble household.

Pages & Military Servants

As a category, these are very likely to entail some kind of adventure-related activity. Many of these servant types could also be the children of nobility, making the option to play a noble more viable since one would have to go through a period of servitude first, thereby "earning" increased status and "balancing" increased income against the social services one is bound to provide. They include:

The Page. Noble boys, beginning at age 8, would leave their parents and serve as a page (an apprentice squire) in a household. Pages served a more general role than squires—running around, bearing messages, cleaning armor, etc. Around 13-14, a page would be expected to become a full-fledged squire, having learned how to ride, hawk, hunt, etc. A knight or lord might have any number of pages apprenticed to him. These servants make great all-purpose hirelings.

The Squire. Older than a page, beginning around 14, squires serve as apprentice knights. Squires generally bore armor and weapons (a particular type of page or squire would be the sword-bearer, who carries his lord's weapon in its ceremonial sheath), banners, and other such things for their lords. They also fought alongside their masters in battle. Once again, a perfect hireling type OR a perfect starter for a noble character. Squires usually come in groups, serving a single knight, who could be an NPC.

Knights. Knights generally served a lord and thus would make up the elite fighting force of lordly PCs. PCs probably shouldn't start play as full fledged knights, as this grants too many resources at the beginning of the game, however I suppose it could be done—they'd have a small cluster of squires and a flock of pages of their own, which could serve as a mighty retinue of hirelings.

It's important to note that pages and squires don't get an income beyond their clothing, food, and board (which can tally to a pretty penny). Regardless of what the AD&D 2e DMG says, most feudal servants do not receive pay as long as they have been asked to serve for longer than their 40-day summons.

Fighting Men or Men-at-Arms. Though the term man-at-arms refers almost exclusively to Renaissance knights, this term has come to be applied (at least somewhat casually) to the peasantry who were drafted for temporary military service at local castles. They may also include mercenary garrisons at heavily defended and garrisoned castles (which would indeed have to be paid). These fighting men perform a generally servile role in that they would be commanded by a castellan, gateward, or other such fellow, but might serve as a good beginning for a whole group of PCs.

Household Servants

While the great majority of servants in a medieval household were of a military function, there were some who did other things as well. These are almost universally unsuitable to be player characters due to their lack of involvement with or skill in combat. IF, however, players are looking for a particularly difficult level 0 challenge OR are willing to play such characters as thieves or fighters of low level, there COULD be a great deal of non-traditional roleplaying opportunities to be garnered from so doing.

Kitchen Servants. The chief cook, undercooks, butler (head of the buttery, ie. larder and wine room), scullery maids, and kitchen boys constitute a whole rank of servants in themselves. These would best be represented by level 0 folks or thieves.

Hawkers, Hunters, and Gamekeepers. Hawkers and Falconers are dedicated to training and maintaining a lord's falcons; hunters and gamewards/keepers assist the lords in their hunts by managing hounds, beating the brush to flush out game, and to keep certain forests stocked with huntable animals like stag and boar. These servants would be interesting fighter-classed people (even if they started at level 0, though there's not necessarily a reason why they would).

Ladies in Waiting. These are for the reigning lady of the house and her children, particularly the girls. They have almost no input in the day to day life of a medieval household. They might be interesting as sorceresses or thieves. They're mostly maidens who spend their days reading, sewing, and philosophizing.

Miscellaneous Servants. These are what we think of when we think of "servants." Even so-called middle class households would have at least one servant to fetch water, start fires, etc. Good hireling material. Difficult as hell to conceive of as material for a PC.

Administrative Servants. These are things like Seneschals, Chamberlains, Stewards, Maior Domos, etc. Being mostly jobs concerned with resource management, tax collection, etc. These are not very well suited to PC positions, but for the ease of managing vast estates and many servants they make great hirelings and henchmen.

Stay tuned for ideas on PLAYING servants and people who begin in a servile role.

A Note on Roads and Cities

Roadways and tracks swell around cities, they proliferate and spread like a thousand veins feeding lifeblood into its gates. Lots of fantasy presents cities as this sort of isolated environment, springing mushroom-like from the plain. The existence of subsidiary towns and tributary villages that surround cities in a network of roads and lanes is a well known and well studied effect; this area is often called the cities' hinterland and is even recognized in medieval law sources as a verity. Communes, that is cities that have been granted special charters making them semi-autonomous rather than the private holdings of an individual nobleman, generally include within their jurisdiction a belt of towns a few miles wide in every direction. These towns feed the city, they bolster its industry, and they provide it with all kinds of goods not available in an urban environment. I can't think of the book off the top of my head, but there's a great economic history of the middle ages that has a series of interesting hexes and algorithms used to predict (and describe) the size and distribution of towns and villages, middling sized cities, and large cities. This system uses as its basis the idea of "breaking and bulking," an economic feature of market centers.

When you stand outside the walls of a medieval city, you are standing on a track that runs all around them, from gate to gate. Sometimes the gate you want to enter is closed or busy or has a tariff on it. This means you'll travel to another one of the many gates, and enough people do this over time that even were it not part of the design feature of the city, this track would be created by the simple action over time of merchants with caravans attempting to find the optimal entry-point.

Spreading out from this ring-shaped track are farms and pasturage, intertwined by tracks and roads that link them together and to the city from which they receive their rights. Much like a fortress, these are the places that will be raided and burned if the city invokes the ire of an enemy or the extension of royal policy calls for war on that particular commune (the War of the Lombard League comes to mind). Beyond these will be found a number of satellite villages that serve the city in much the same way and may be subject to the same types of reprisals by invading armies.

Furthermore, cities grow up on trade routes where major roads cross (or trade crosses from roadway to riverine, or oceanic, or riverine to oceanic, or however it may be). It is rare indeed for a city to be located 'nowhere,' ie, not on the conflux of other trade lines. The algorithm for computing city locations must always be manually bent to take into account the location of the major trade routes—big cities serve as anchor points, and the small villages and medium market towns spread out like pockmarks from this central location, naturally springing up.

To overcome this economic certainty would require major intervention by fantasy factors. The existence of widespread flying trade on the backs of carpets or pegasi, for instance, might justify the presence of a city in a remote mountainside or a historical factor such as the removal of an entire people to a protected mountain-fastness (Machu Picchu, for instance) would provide a less fantastic reasoning. Still, understanding the basic distribution of cities and markets is important so that when you break that reasoning, at least you know why.

Telescoping the Middle Ages

STOP. Don't haphazardly combine things from 500 to 1500 into a single setting or story or image. It's been done, and it isn't pretty. We have a tendency to compress time periods that are farther away from us, rolling them all together. We would never dream of mixing the 40s and the 70s because those decades are so distinct to us. Because of their distance, the 1100s and the 1300s might appear to be interchangeable in terms of philosophies, modes of dress, architecture, you name it. But they aren't. If you're going to start combining things from various periods, at least be aware of what you're doing.

Here's a good place to start. That's the wikipedia category for medieval costume, where you can look at a period (usually lumped into a hundred-year group, so we still have to do some telescoping) and get a feel for its clothing. You'll notice that the changes are actually rather marked. A tunic is not a tunic is not a tunic, as it were. There is detail there to explore and mashing together different periods without really being aware of what you're doing sacrifices that detail for no real reason (and makes those people who know the difference cringe curiously).

For that matter, stop depicting shields of any type as being solid metal plates. At best they were covered in a thin layer of metal but were 90% simply wood with leather over them and a metal boss and rim. No one ever used a solid metal shield. No one. Don't do it. The only reason to depict a shield that way is ignorance and now you can't even lay claim to that defense anymore because I just told you.

And if you're thinking that because you're doing fantasy it doesn't matter, maybe you shouldn't be doing fantasy anymore. Or else stick to pulp stuff. Because honestly, how serious can you be if you don't care?