DongShenYin said:
I've decided to place Bresnal (my campaign continent) in a subartic climate, characterized by a boreal forest biome. This is based on my basing the culture on northern europe during the iron age. (More like Norse and Celtic cultures through a historical fiction lense.) Anyway, I'm looking for ideas on how to mesh real-world ecology with fantasy ecology. (Aside from just putting a dragon on the top of the food chain, lol)
--Dora
Just off the top of my head:
The growing season is shorter, so agriculture would be less important, perhaps, than hunting or herding. In more northern latitudes, herders may concentrate on reindeer, like the Lapps in the real world.
Great herds of caribou... followed closely in the winter months by packs of wolves (or dire wolves, or winter wolves, or the odd polar bear...)
Seals, sea lions and walrus along the coasts, with the occasional selkie...
Cattle would be found in the more temperate areas, and aurochs were still around in recorded history...
Boar (or dire boar) hunts to provide for the feast...
Ice Age beasts would be more appropriate than Age of Dinosaur holdovers-- mammoths and smilodons rather than duckbills and tyranosaurs.
Many mammals would change their coats to white with the coming of winter, so perhaps there are not only snowshoe hares, but snowshoe hobgoblins as well...
Since gathering would still be an important subsistance tool, most villages would be located in what archaeologists call the "ecotones"-- places where different ecological systems meet (forest, plains and swamps all within a day's walk, perhaps)-- which puts your folk in a prime area coveted by the forest dwelling orcs or swamp dwelling goblins (it may be a mite cold for lizardmen)...
The best mead could be made from the honey of giant bees, found deep in the forests-- and getting that honey could be a job for only the bravest warriors...
For flavor, perhaps that dragon could be a linnorm?
