Re: ranch vs farm
David Argall said:
"can we change Ranch to Farm - the idea of Ranchers is just to America specific for my mind to tolerate"
Cattle do call for rather large amouts of fairly flat land, and we have been talking about mountains and mining, so we have some conflict here. Maybe goats would work better.
However, wild west stories are only American because they had the publicity. The Americans learned nearly everything about cowboys from Mexicans, and Argentina has a lot of cattle too. Not to mention more ancient cultures.
David...
That's why I proposed the Argali sheep. While there may be a few cows in the area, they most certainly would have been imported.
Argali sheep, in D&D terms, would be considered dire sheep. In the real world, Argali sheep can grow up to 5 feet tall. They live in the mountains of central asia (kirgyzstan to tibet). They can be domesticated, but the majority live in the wild. They can produce meat, milk (similar to goat's milk), wool (low quality), and the male's have magnificent horns.
As I posted in another thread... I never imagined that there would be large ranches of these animals. That just doesn't make sense. The majority of the food in the medieval diet should be vegetable not meat.
Here is what we have identified so far for local food sources...
Meat:
Argali Sheep
Fish (most abundant meat)
small amounts of other common barnyard animals (chicken, pig, cow, etc.)
Vegetable/Grain:
Lake Kelp (tastes like spinach, and fairly abundant)
Swamp Pickles (very sweet, but hard to find)
Wheat farms just north of the city
Several small farms throughout Enheim
Assuming that the population of Enheim is about 30,000... They can support the city of 10,000 as long as the food supply is constant... and the land is sometimes aided by magic.
That could provide an interesting plot hook.
--sam
