(TFT) Orcs on Easter Island

["Jay Carlisle" <Jay_Carlisle@charter.net>]

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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