Consider the Wrekinsets. A Dark Age Anglo-Saxon sub-kingdom within the kingdom of Mercia which was itself subdivided into sub-sub-kingdoms. You could quite easily walk up and down its length from north-south or east-west (assuming it roughly corresponds to modern Cheshire with some extras in Shropshire and Flintshire) in a couple of days if you meant it. And yet it was an entire kingdom of its own with further major political divisions within it.
Consider the Principality of Theodoro. A tiny Greek Orthodox statelet on the backside of the Crimean peninsula. The rump of the Empire of Trebizond, which was the rump of the Byzantine Empire, which was the rump of the Roman Empire. Look how teeny-tiny it was (it's the green bit):
My rough guess from squinting at scale maps of the Crimea is that the Principality of Theodoro was about 30 miles across, from east-west. Comfortably walkable in two days, if that. But with its own distinct political, social, legal systems; its own foreign policy; its own culture. (I love how wikipedia lists is population as comprising "Greeks, Crimean Goths, Alans, Bulgars, Cumans, Kipchaks, and other ethnic groups...." We like to imagine ourselves as living in diverse societies.)
Consider Wearside Jack. In the late 70s the West Yorkshire police were desperately searching for a serial killer (the "Yorkshire Ripper") when they received a series of letters and an audio message from somebody claiming to be the killer who later turned out to be a hoaxer. This man was clearly from Wearside (meaning the city of Sunderland and its environs) but dialectologists were able to place him far more precisely than that - as being from Castletown, an area within Sunderland which is little more than a few streets. In other words, the way he spoke was enough to place him in a geographical area of about a square mile or so.
Consider that Hilbre Island is only 11 acres in size but it has its own special sub-species of vole.
Glad you brought up Theodoro--a favored place of my imagination of late. An entire campaign could take place in this little patch in the corner of several major kingdoms of the period, with the sad fact of the eventual end of the Roman Empire hanging over everything, the frailness of kingdoms, the evanescence of culture.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree - that would be really cool. Somebody should do a GURPS or Pendragon sourcebook for it.
DeleteIt's a bit of an issue in fantasy worldbuilding: people tend, for various reasons, to create massive earth-sized (or bigger!) worlds with impossibly large and vast empires/cultures/religions. Presumably because of the 'bigger=more epic' mentality.
ReplyDeleteI think so. Like a lot of these things I suppose it stems from a desire to emulate Tolkien.
DeleteMy favourite example is the Free State and Republic of Gersau, a micro-state within the mess of micro-states that was the Swiss Confederation. Gersau is basically a valley overlooking Lake Luzerne, surrounded by tall mountains, and having no reliable land access until the mid-1800s (except a treacherous mountain pass). Gersau was annexed by Schwyz in 1817, very much against its wishes. It currently has an area of 14.4 square kilometres, and a population of 2,260, double the number in 1770.
ReplyDeleteThis idea - of micro-states, overlapping sovereignties and privileges, odd enclaves and exclaves - has fascinated me all my life, and over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the Swiss had it right, and this is how we as humans are really meant to live instead of an overcrowded metropolis.
In a sense, my RPG Helvéczia is a homage to Gersau and their kind (especially the tiny seats and polities of Transylvania, whose fate was ultimately much more tragic than Gersau's), and while Helvéczia's geography is fictional, Gersau has a clear counterpart there as Judenburg, an independent Jewish state; and as the New Rhaetian Confederation, a remainder of the Roman Empire living on in a bunch of small mountain valleys.
Fascinating. Thanks!
DeleteSwitzerland has a lot of things right. I've been there a few times and dated a Swiss girl for a while at university. It's a great place. I think in terms of political organisation they have it as near to perfect as exists anywhere.
Delete==This idea - of micro-states, overlapping sovereignties and privileges, odd enclaves and exclaves - has fascinated me all my life
DeleteI wish the western populace (including women) would encourage a return to durable enlightened adventurers carving out towns and realms for themselves (in the middle east) just as on the first crusade. There are so few of us with physiques worthy of being sculpted, with comicbook dash and vim, and with an outermost, ruinous contempt for humanity grounded in intelligence.
I just started reading Darwin Came to Town, a popular science book on evolution in urban environments and the author's first example is the Underground mosquito. For living in such a small area, the fact that it is fairly quickly becoming three new subspecies is amazing. But as there is so little interbreeding with each other or the surface population in London, it isn't surprising either.
ReplyDeleteAnd small areas for adventuring is how I like to run Gamma World/Mutant Future. There is no reason to leave the valley if it is constantly changing and providing new, and exotic, challenges for the characters.
That's interesting. I didn't even know there were mosquitos in the London Underground.
DeleteThey have their own Wikipedia page, which refutes some of the author's assertions. But there are still three populations that are separate from each other and the surface. That means three ecotypes (four with the surface dwellers) and that is still pretty damn cool from an evolutionary perspective. Not so much for their diet- the commuters.
DeleteThe *scale* of thing is really dependent on travel speed. A kingdom you can walk across in two days sounds small... but a lot of countries you can *drive* across in two days! The slower you move, the "bigger" a spot is. I ran a campaign in southern Anatolia, and 90% of it was within 3 days travel of the main city state (Zeugma) There was a lot of space withing those few hundred square km...
ReplyDeleteAncalagon
That's not what she said.
ReplyDelete