TWENTY PRETTY CITIES ON MY MAPBefore I had gotten very far with the writing and playing of my world, I arbitrarily put twenty cities on the first continental map. Actually, that name is somewhat misleading. First, the entire Imperial Continent isn't even on that map. The western peninsula, which contains The Alodarian Empire, The Nahechaian Dynasty, and The Mostoli north of the Scale Mountain rang is there. The Alderami is further west on that map, sitting in the Imperial Sea on four major heavily forested islands and dozens of little ones. To the northwest is a group of islands containing another society, The Larns Archipelago, which I am currently writing and playing with a group of players. I know the people in the archipelago live on the sea and make their living from it, as well as from trade on the sea. I've also made them a mixed race of men and women who are darkly complexioned, close to a milk chocolate color (50%), and the typical Caucasian variety (50%) and they all speak the common language with a Scottish accent. Why, no particular reason, other than a bit of color. (And I don't mean skin color). It may be nice to know the islands from the Alderami in the south to the Larns Archipelago in the north are all part of the same under sea mountain range, the tops of the mountains rising up from the Imperial Sea to create a string of islands. The major portion of the Imperial Continent, as it is called, isn't even indicated on my original map. Still, that didn't stop me from drawing a map and dotting it with pretty cities. I gave them population statistics, areas of land, and estimated the number of adventurers who were somehow permanently tied to each city. For example, Alodar had a population of 750,000 "people." They lived in a walled city about 689 square miles in area that, if actually shaped as a square, would be about 26.25 x 26.25 miles of actual land. It was estimated to contain 33,000 people, from all ages, who have had some adventuring experience. 1/10th of these, 3,300, could still rightly be considered active adventurers. A further 1/5th of those, 660, were estimated to be over 7th level. Of those 660 active adventurers over 7th level, 360 were fighters, 100 were clerics, 100 were thieves of a sort, 50 were magic users, 20 were illusionist or magic user specialist, 10 were nearby druids, 6 were visiting rangers in the lands close by, 4 were paladins, 4 were monks, 2 were assassins, and 4 were bards from Alodar. If that wasn't bad enough, I went ahead and did that for each of the other nineteen cities. I didn't know then and I still don't know now if these numbers are anything close to realistic. I don't consider those numbers carved in stone. And even if they were, I have a stone shape spell. I did, however, decide to deeply carve the population numbers in stone. Those were actually important to the writing of a variety of scenarios. As such, here they are in descending order of population. 20 Cities And Their Populations
Since all of these cities are on the original map and are therefore relatively near The Net; in Alodar, it is assumed they all do business through The Net to one degree or another. By getting essential trade goods, sometimes available only through The Net, all of these cities flourish. That is, their population densities are higher here than anywhere else on Orlantia. Furthermore, if a city has a population above 6,000 or so, you can bet it must be the capital city of that particular society. No supporting city anywhere else on Orlantia has a population higher than 6,000. As a last note about the population of Orlantia, I calculated the ratio of Earth's surface area to Orlantia's surface area. It's about 315 to 1, which means if Orlantia has the same land to sea ratio it could realistically hold at least 1/315th of 5.5 billion, or about 20,000,000. Since there is a higher land to sea ratio, and since I'm using magic to enhance production of food, and since I'm importing food and other necessities, I currently estimate Orlantia's maximum population to be about 50 million individuals. This gives The Alodarian Empire about 1/10th the planet's total population. © January of 1999 |