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(TFT) Orcs on Easter Island



Okay, Ibm gonna make some judgment calls here for my Easter Island stuff.
All of this is VERY loosely taken from speculations about the locations history. This is not striving for historical accuracy but rather points the players to the ideas Ibm using from the reference material to model the play environment and provide background. In other words Ibm making past conditions jibe with the starting situation I want for my examples and have chosen numbers, theories, and time-periods that roughly match what Ibm trying to create for a play environment, even when some of those btheoriesb are a bit bonkers.

For background history Ibm gonna go with settlement coming from Rapa Iti (Oparo about halfway between Aotearoa and Rapa Nui) in small groups of bnativesb (Rapan speaking Orcs led by chief Hotu Matua) totaling roughly 100 souls, arriving between 1100 to 1200 CE and eventually overrunning the original population of hanau ebepe (bstout raceb or Goblins). Hotu Matua followed fishermenbs rumors of lands to the east and arrived at Rapa Nui after a ciguatera outbreak created significant food shortages during a peak period of tribal warfare on Rapa Iti and he could no longer reliably hold on to his fortified hilltop positions.

Counting Generations in units of 20 years and starting the Timeline for play at 1460 allows somewhere around 13 to 18ish generations of inhabitants, enough to grow a few small groups to a fairly large population for the area involved. At a birth rate of 3 surviving children per fertile couple this time-span allows roughly 50 couples to reach a population of roughly 30,000 souls in about 14 to 16 generations from the original 100. This is at the extreme limits (ridiculous really) of maximum historical population estimates for the island and is likely to set up situations like those speculated on by Jared Diamond, but at start of play the society can be considered to be at its peak.

Ibll break the total population into 3 groups, or tribes, of about 10,000 souls each centered around the major fresh-water sources. Each tribe will also share similar bculturalb traits at the start of play; therebs no Athens on one side of the island and Sparta on the otherb& at least to begin with.

Of the roughly 10,000 souls per tribe about half are females and half are males. Of the roughly 5000 males about half are bworking agedb adults (~2500), with about four fifths of the remainder composed of children (~2000) and the other fifth of the remainder being elderly (~500). As some early European reports of the island remark on its fertility Ibll only require about 80% of the total population to be fulltime farmers rather than the normal 90% for pre-industrial agriculture. That means about 2000 working aged males are farmers leaving around 500 working aged males per tribe to be divided among other work.

Now 500 men is only a tad over one and a half percent of the population as a whole, so before I start breaking down bspecialistb occupations I want to take a closer look at whatbs involved in bfarmingb.

In pre-industrial societies farms are mostly self-sufficient with the family (or a small group of families a.k.a hamlet, etc.) possessing most of the Talents required to produce or meet the daily needs of the farm/s. The actual daily needs of the farm are going to vary according to the resource footprint required for each individual in the society. A base resource footprint consists of the materials needed to provide food, clothing and shelter for the individual in the society. Different societies meet these needs in different ways, primarily according to their access to various resources, therefore what constitutes a self-sufficient farm can vary greatly from society to society.
So letbs see how the basics were met on Te pito o te henua.

Food
Polynesian settlers brought sweet potato, bananas, taro, sugarcane, paper mulberry, and chickens as staple crops.
This certainly isnbt European agriculture webre talking about.
The oddest of these plants is the taro, or what I used to call belephant earsb. `Unprepared both leaves and tubers are toxic, although they do have some medicinal purposes, but cooked or otherwise treated both greens and roots are edible. Of note here is that on the third point of the Polynesian triangle, Hawaii (with New Zeeland and Easter Island), only males were allowed to raise and pound taro, although in other cultures taro preparation was a womanbs task.

Clothing
Tapa cloth is really more of a paper than a cloth made from certain barks, mainly that of the paper mulberry tree. Each farm has a cluster or two of paper mulberry growing in some corner or another (as a farm using wattle and daub construction will have an area or two of coppiced trees like ash or hazel and a mud-pond on the property). When cloth is to be made the first step is to cut stems and place them in the sun for several days until they are about half-dry. The bark is then removed in strips roughly 3 inches wide and from 4 to 6 feet in length. Next the outer bark is separated from the inner bark or bast, and then the bast is dried in the sun and afterwards soaked in water. The macerated strips are then pounded with wooden blocks and mallets until, after about a half hours beating, they become about three times wider as the fibers are flattened out and thinned. The edges are then trimmed and squared and resulting sections are laid two or more layers thick with their fibers running perpendicular to each other and plant starches used as a glue to produce a single piece about a yard wide and 20 to 25 yards in length from about 80 stems. This is then either paint or print dyed, with more starch glue mixed with the dye for additional strength. This gluing method allows for very large sheets to be produced, some over 10 feet wide by 100 feet long used to mark special occasions or as tribute. So far, the references Ibve found suggest that tapa production was a womanbs task.

Shelter
The most common type of construction were bboat housesb (hare paenga) with the roof structure resembling an overturned boat. To construct one the ground was first leveled and dressed stones with post holes for wooden beams were laid in a lenticular shape as foundations. A composite ridgepole ran the length of the structure and was highest in the middle, curving downward at either end to a foot or two off the ground. The ridgepole was supported by ridgeposts running along the principal axis of the building, 2 posts on either end for smaller structures and more for larger buildings (hare nui). Rafters arched from the foundation stones to the ridgepole and then horizontal purlins were lashed to the rafters. The wooden framework was then covered with a layer of totora reed, followed by a layer of woven sugarcane leaves, and then a layer of woven grass. A very small doorway, or sometimes a short tunnel that was crawled through, was placed in the center of one side with hare nui often having entrances on both sides. Sizes ranged from 10 to 40 meters long, 1.5 to 4 meters at the widest axis, and were between 1.5 to 3 meters high at the central high point.
Construction and maintenance seems to be a predominantly male task.

Now because Ibm using bfarmb as a kind of base Unit for a culture and have required them to function more or less autonomously as fundamental sources of production this creates a kind of odd dynamic not present in the secondary production jobs. Where production times for many craftsmen are measured in relativity short periods of time, self-sufficient farms must provide both primary and secondary production for the basics of food, clothing, and shelter. In other words, although it only takes about a half-hour to pound out a sheet of tapa from mulberry bask the bfarmerb must also grow and care for the paper mulberry coppiced trees, a process that takes several years to grow branches to sufficient length. The point of all of this is that the peons can be added to something like a military force if the bkingb so chooses, but that decision can have long term effects in the long run on the production and maintenance of the societies basic needs if he keeps them from their work long enough.

The autonomous nature of these bfarmsb allows a bkingb to kind of put a large segment of the population on bautopilotb so to speak, but it also means that the Leader does not have full control over this group. Just because a bkingb decrees something doesnbt mean it will be practiced by the bmassesb, even if itbs in the overall populationbs general interests. For example, taro (often called dasheen in the states) has been encouraged as a viable agricultural product for swampy, or bmuckb fields in the southern u.s. for many years but has not bcaught onb culturally. There are numerous examples of a bkingb attempting to introduce a new food or practice to bthe massesb without success. I figure that trying to get the plebs to change to maize that had previously been fed to the livestock would be a bNew Followerb roll with some heavy negative mods owing mainly to lack of precedent. On the other hand, bsweet peasb caught on so well that for a few years in some locations they were worth more than their weight in silverb& even leading a monk named George to consider how wrinkled ones could be separated out of the crop.

Next up is some stuff on how having the plebs "practice longbow every Sunday after church" helps to get to armys of large numbers and how meeting Joe Average's Fame, Fortune, and Happiness ratios helps prevent unrest and revolt in the overall society.

Then we'll pair down the craftsmen and specialist jobs that don't support themselves... like a "king".
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