Social Order
Feudalism
The feudal order is a highly stratified and immobile political order in which all wealth and power is tied to the land.
Within a single political entity—for instance, a kingdom—all the land is divided among the nobility and vassalage.
In theory, the monarch rightfully rules over the land and in exchange for a certain piece of it, the nobility and vassalage serve the monarch.
Each noble and vassal who serves the monarch is entitled to use his or her land for agricultural production, timber, mining, manufacturing, or any other endeavor to maintain his or her own wealth, status, and household.
In turn, when the monarch requires military service—either to defend the realm, attack another land, or to enforce the rule of law—the nobles and vassals are required to fulfill the feudal bargain and serve the monarch in such a time of need.
Noble titles are usually hereditary, meaning that the land and the rights to it will pass to the noble or vassal’s heir (often the eldest son) and that heir will then be bound to the monarch (also a hereditary position).
In a feudal society, the nobility make up about 1 to 2% of the human population.
Another 3 to 5% are comprised of yeoman, or freemen, who serve as artisans and members of guilds. These freemen live in towns and cities, or travel from manor to manor in service of the nobility for money wages.
The remaining 93 to 96% of the populace are serfs.
Serfs are bound to the land. But unlike the nobility, they have no title over it.
The feudal bargain between noble and serf is that serfs will work the land—farming, timbering, mining, etc.—in exchange for a portion of the produce (usually 20 to 25%) for themselves. The rest is turned over to the noble for his or her personal use and distribution.
Serfs may also be called into service by the nobility in times of war or local unrest.
Serfs are not permitted to leave the land they are bound to without permission from the noble that owns the land.
Imperialism
Imperial political orders differ greatly from feudal ones in one key respect: political power is not tied to the land, per se.
While royalty and nobility exist in imperial orders, the fount of political control does not come from the land itself but rather from the belief in the supremacy of the monarch (often called an “emperor” or “empress”).
This supremacy is often tied to religious beliefs, and imperial political orders usually support an ancient, vast, and complex religious apparatus that supports and promotes the imperial political order.
Unlike feudal political orders, imperial ones are concerned not with stability, but with expansion.
They tend to be more aggressive toward neighbors and may seek to absorb them completely into their larger political system or integrate them remotely through a system of tribute.
The latter method allows the absorbed political entity to remain independent within its own territory, but the absorbed entity pays money tribute or tribute in kind (sending its citizens or subjects to labor on imperial lands for a specified period of weeks or months each year) to serve the empire.
This client-patron state dynamic most accurately characterizes imperial political orders.
Imperial states become highly stratified within themselves, supporting a broad patchwork of separate constituent states that make up a larger whole.
The imperial seat represents the many member states in matters of war and diplomacy and creates such laws and maintains courts that enforce order among these states.
In turn, each state maintains law, order, and custom within its own boundaries, owing fealty the imperial throne in times of need.
In this way, imperial orders can act as a sort of feudalism between states: there grows a hierarchy of member states whereby the client states serve the patron (imperial) state.
Imperial political orders tend to lead to higher levels of social and economic development closest to the seat of imperial power. The settlement where the emperor or empress resides tends to grow large in population and attracts travelers, merchandise, and artisans from around the known world in one place.
Republicanism
Perhaps the rarest of political orders in a fantasy setting, republican societies are those that are ruled by proxy.
Republics have representatives that cast votes for major political decisions. The number and name of these representatives vary from republic to republic, as do the methods of appointment.
Very rarely to republics allow the populace to elect these representatives, and if they do, usually only citizens of a certain status (guild artisans, persons with a certain level of wealth) are permitted to vote in elections. Likewise, elected officials must usually conform to these restrictions and themselves must be part of the elite to hold office.
Republics tend to be small and are most likely free towns or cities that maintain their form of government only within their boundaries.
The simplest republican government may consist of 10 to 20 elected officials that serve as part of a council to rule the town or city. They might serve limited terms of 4 to 10 years each. When laws must be made or altered, these councilmen cast votes and the vote will carry the day regarding the law or proposed changes.
Republics give many names of these legislative bodies and to special posts within the government.
These societies tend to have a head executive often called a “lord (or lady) governor,” “chancellor,” or “president.”
There is usually an “exchequer” or “treasurer,” a “solicitor” (lead attorney for the state), and a “lord (or lady) ambassador” (chief diplomat).
Republics may maintain their own courts of law, or if part of a feudal or imperial political order, may defer to those more powerful states’ laws and courts.
Tribalism
Tribal societies often exist on the fringes of feudal and imperial territories.
These political orders are as loose as they are varied.
Tribes tend to range in size from 50 to 500 members who share kin ties. There may be perhaps 5 to 10 families within each tribe, and tribes often seek to swap young men and women with each other to keep their stock varied for childbearing.
Tribal may keep permanent settlements—generally small fishing villages on rivers or the seaside—but just as often may lead a nomadic lifestyle foraging and hunting with the seasons.
Each tribe has its own religious and political customs. Tribal peoples tend to be highly egalitarian and recognize their political (often called “chieftains”) and religious (often called “shamans”) leaders are mothers or fathers of the tribe rather than feared kings and pontiffs.
Settlements
Farms and Villages
Most people (90% or so) either live on single family farms or small villages.
Farms are usually part of a feudal network. A noble owns a large parcel of land that is divided among tenant farmers who each maintain their portions.
Where nobles have other economically viable options for land use—mines, forests, or fisheries—villages crop up. These settlements may support between 50 and 500 people.
Manors
Nobles live in manor houses surrounded by their land and worked by their serfs.
Manor houses might range from 10 rooms on the low end to as many as 50 for very wealthy nobles.
They are usually equipped with a dining hall, kitchen, bedrooms, a study, and a chapel.
Detached from the main house are usually stables, workshops, and storehouses.
Manor workers include both serfs and freemen who work for the noble family.
These settlements are often protected by defensive walls, and much like villages, support between 50 and 500 people.
Towns and Cities
Towns and cities are not just settlements of a certain size, but unique political entities.
Towns and cities both exist under a special charter—often granted by a monarch—that allows the settlement to operate separately.
The urban charter outlines the term (typically 100 years or more), which laws will be respected (usually the kingdom or empire’s laws), how the town or city’s government will be formed (often by both appointment from the monarch and/or votes from wealthy urbanites), and numerous other legal items.
Towns typically have a lord mayor who is either appointed by the monarch directly (and in the event that he or she dies or is removed from office, the monarch appoints each successive lord mayor) or is elected by the citizens (with final approval from the monarch).
Cities may have more complex structures with both lord mayors and city councils.
Because they are independent, towns and cities will erect defensive walls around their territory.
Urbanites are highly dependent on food from outside the settlement’s walls and subside on food grown in the countryside and sold in open air markets within the settlement.
The bargain between the urban settlement and the monarch that grants the charter is this: the town or city will operate freely within its own walls, allowing the citizens to practice whatever trade they desire and allowing peasants to travel to the settlement on a limited basis to sell their wares for coin; in exchange, the urban settlement pays the monarch taxes (usually a head tax on every citizen or a fixed payment specified in the charter).
Towns range in size from 500 to 5,000 people while cities can reach populations up to 50,000.
Castles
The most powerful nobles build castles to oversee their feudal possessions and to inspire fear in those who see them.
Castles are vast complexes of rooms and chambers contained within thick stone walls and often one or two outer defensive walls.
Villages invariably spring up around a castle where both serfs and freemen gather to provide the castle and noble family with its many needs.
Humble castles, and the settlements around them, may support as many as 100 people while the very largest castles as many as 500 people.
Castles are rare. They take between 10 and 50 years to complete construction and cost the equivalent of between 30 and 150 million silver pieces (between 57 and 284 tons of silver).
People and Lifestyle
Dwellings
Most people in the countryside live in small, crude hovels or small cottages. Nearby these dwellings are pens, stables, and barns for animals, and storage sheds and small workshops for tools and farm work.
In towns and cities, the poorer citizens live in shanties and shabby tenements, often as many as six to eight people to a single room.
Wealthier townsfolk own two-story buildings: the lower level serves as workshop and storefront for the family’s trade and the upper level as living quarters.
The elite citizens own and rent several smaller buildings and live in large townhouses themselves.
Vassals and nobles have manor houses, and the wealthiest noblemen own castles.
These manors may have stone walls surrounding the manor house, detached kitchen and latrines, and the various storehouses, granaries, and workshops that serve the owner and the household’s various functionaries.
Food
People largely subside on a diet of grain.
Wheat, oats, barely, rye, millet, and spelt form the staple in everyone’s household. Legumes such as lentils, peas, and various beans are also common.
For peasants and poor city dwellers, these grains comprise as much as 80% of daily caloric energy. The poor may supplement their diet with some herbs, salt, turnips, carrots, and very rarely dairy, meat, or fish.
Grains are prepared either as bread or as pottage.
Wealthier people enjoy dairy, meat, and fish much more frequently, and can often afford luxuries such as olive oil, lard, butter, and exotic spices from distant lands.
For the poorer folk, simple meals of bread, pottage, and steamed vegetables is all that is on offer.
Richer people have the means to enjoy food prepared by professional cooks who concoct fancy recipes such as stews, pies, and cakes.
Clothing
Like most else, there is a clear demarcation in the style of dress between rich and poor.
Peasants and poor townsfolk make do with linen tunics and trousers or leggings. They also wear woven straw hats when working in the fields and well-worn, faded linen or wool mantles to protect against the elements.
Wealthier people wear clothing made of cotton, wool, or sometimes silk. These materials are fashioned into tunics, leggings, robes, dresses, mantles, capes, cloaks, and fine hats.
High-quality garments are dyed in rich colors and embroidered with lace and other fancy trims.
The poor rarely, if even, have any adornments other than simple bracelets or necklaces made from wooden or clay beads. A lucky peasant may own a bronze ring.
The rich enjoy the luxuries of silver, gold, and gemstones made into necklaces, bracelets, rings, belts, and earrings.
Entertainment and Leisure
Poor folk rarely have time for much entertainment or leisure.
Peasants work from sunrise until midday, after which time they return home to prepare the main meal of the day before sunset.
As dusk, the poor enjoy a few simple pleasures: song, dance, and telling stories.
Wealthier people, who can afford interior lighting, tend to enjoy such past times as reading, drawing, painting, or parlor games.
Rich and poor alike enjoy gambling and drinking.
During the daylight hours, noblemen enjoy hunting (restricted to only the landed elite) and fishing, riding expeditions, target shooting, fencing, and professionally produced plays and musical compositions.
Disease and Death
Disease is perhaps the one thing that both rich and poor share.
Bouts of plague, cholera, pox, fever, dysentery, and other contagious diseases afflict all people without regard to status or wealth.
Disease seems to hit various communities randomly.
In mild years, between 1 to 2% of people die from such illnesses. In the worst years, between 10 and 20% do.
Besides these, infections, tooth decay, violence, starvation, and fatal accidents all claim many victims.
Lifespan
Most people die during childhood from a contagious disease or from malnutrition.
Three of five people born will die before age five. One in five will die before age 15.
Those who live to see their fifteenth birthday stand a good chance of living to a mature age.
Poor people who live into young adulthood might expect to reach 50 or so years of age.
Rich people who live as long might expect to reach 60.
Professions
Unskilled Work
Most people (90% or more) work in unskilled professions.
These professions require little training to master and offer little, if any, hope for advancement beyond the entry level.
Common unskilled professions include:
| Beggar | Ostler |
| Charcoaler | Porter |
| Cook | Prostitute |
| Day laborer | Scribe |
| Farmhand | Servant |
| Fisherman | Teamster |
| Herdsman | Thatcher |
| Miner |
These professions pay little, averaging from ½ to 1½ silver pennies a day.
Only people who live in towns and cities are paid money wages.
Peasants and freeholders in the countryside are either paid in kind (they are given a certain ration of life’s necessities) or keep what they produce and barter for what they need and want.
Skilled Work
Skilled professions require years of study and practice.
These professions are usually passed down from parent to child. In a child’s early years, he or she will be taught the parents’ profession with the expectation that the child, once matured, will take over the family business.
There are some skilled workers in the countryside (usually either freeholders or employee of a vassal or noble). Most skilled workers are found in towns and cities.
Common skilled professions include:
| Bureaucrat | Miller |
| Chandler | Musician |
| Clothworker | Potter |
| Cooper | Priest |
| Dyer | Scribe |
| Fletcher | Trapper |
| Huntsman | Tutor |
| Mercenary | Weaver |
These professions pay substantially more than unskilled ones, averaging from 2 to 4 silver pennies a day for the best workers.
Artisans
Artisans are the highest skilled and best paid workers.
Their professions are tightly regulated by law and custom, and in almost all places artisans are required to have advanced through trade guild membership.
The years of study and practice required for artisanal professions is so great that no one who hasn’t advanced through guild membership could possibly perform in these lines of work.
Common artisanal professions include:
| Apothecary | Locksmith |
| Armorer | Mason |
| Barber surgeon | Merchant |
| Blacksmith | Navigator |
| Bowyer | Painter |
| Brewer | Pilot |
| Carpenter | Scrivener |
| Cartographer | Shipwright |
| Glassworker | Vintner |
| Jeweler | Weaponsmith |
| Leatherworker | Wool worker |
Pay in these professions varies by the level of the artisan.
Apprentices are paid between 1 and 2 silver pennies a day; journeymen between 4 and 6, and masters may earn 8 silver pennies or more for one day’s work.
Guilds
Overview
Guilds are professional associations of artisans that share a common trade.
These organizations are protected by law and are represented across wide geographic distributions (across many towns and cities and serving many vassals and nobles directly).
The laws protect guilds in several ways.
Firstly, the law will prohibit any non-guild member from practicing the profession that a guild represents. Violators will face fines and imprisonment—and if the secrets of a guild’s trade as disclosed to the public—or possibly execution.
Second, the law permits the guild to set prices for goods and services that the guild provides across the land. This also extends to the price posted by guild members for bond and for the compensation paid to apprentices and journeymen, and the rates charged by masters of the trade.
In exchange for these special privileges, the guild pays the political authority an annual tax. The guild, in turn, collect dues from its members to pay for this tax.
Guilds are highly secretive and have many internal positions within their membership to help administer their control over their trade.
Guilds have presidents, treasurers, secretaries, clerks, and often ambassadors and guardsmen.
A guild acts as governing body over the trade, setting prices, wages, and enforcing the rules and bylaws of the profession.
Members who violate the rules of the guild may face trial before its membership, and if convicted of a heinous act, may face fines or expulsion from the trade for a set period (months or years). A serious enough crime may have a member expelled forever.
Career Path
All guilds have a layered system of learning.
There are three levels to guild membership: apprentice, journeyman, and master.
All members of a guild must progress through the same path to become full members.
Only masters of a trade are considered members of the guild and maintain full voting rights and privileges, including the right to set up shop for themselves and earn their own wages.
Apprentices must serve under a single master for a proscribed period and are paid a small wage.
Journeymen may serve under any master, and spend a period travelling from place to place to do so; they are likewise paid by a master, albeit at a higher rate.
Apprentices
Apprentices are the entry level to any guild profession.
An apprentice must pass an entry level examination (usually by demonstrating, before a panel of masters, his or her aptitude in the basic levels of the trade), swear an oath to keep the secrets of the trade to guild members only, and post a bond (ranging from 100sp to as much as 500sp depending on the profession and guild).
Guilds typically do not accept an apprentice without a sponsor. The sponsor must be a master of the trade and is usually a child of the sponsor.
The sponsor is usually not permitted to train the apprentice himself or herself, as this is believed to represent a conflict of interest (a sponsor could easily introduce a subpar apprentice and pass him or her through easily).
Sponsors are held to account for the apprentices they recommend for induction: if an apprentice fails to meet his or her obligations, fails miserably, or commits a crime or breaks a guild rule, the sponsor will face the same punishment as the apprentice.
During apprenticeship, the fledgling artisan is paid a pittance (sometimes just pocket change on a weekly basis), though his or her room and board and meals are provided for by the master and his or her family.
Journeymen
A journeyman (or journeywoman) has been given permission to practice his or her profession freely under other masters.
To become a journeyman, an apprentice must first serve for a proscribed period under a single master (usually five to seven years) and be in good standing with the guild. When the time has been served, if the master believes the apprentice is ready, he or she will recommend the apprentice to the guild.
Guild members will administer a practical test under which the apprentice will demonstrate the skills he or she has learned as an apprentice and then the guild masters will vote on whether or not the apprentice is ready to be granted the title of journeyman.
Many guilds have limits on the number of times a journeyman’s test may be taken (usually three to five times) and may place a probationary period between tests (six months to a year).
If the apprentice passes the test, he or she is given the title of journeyman and is permitted to practice freely under any master and is entitled to a journeyman’s wage.
Masters
A master artisan is the highest level of any guild profession.
After becoming a journeyman, the artisan must serve for another proscribed period and be in good standing with the guild (often another five to seven years). When the time has been served, the journeyman may request to be inducted into the guild’s membership as a master.
The journeyman must take another, more difficult test laid out by the current guild membership, and if he or she passes the vote of the current guild masters he or she will post another bond (ranging from 200 to 1,000sp) and be given the title of master.
A master artisan may set up his or her own shop anywhere the guild is represented, take on apprentices and journeymen, and votes on guild matters as a full member.
Guild Rights and Duties
A master artisan enjoys and the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that come with full guild membership.
His or her rights and privileges include:
- Right to set up his or her own workshop in any town or city, on his or her own land, or to serve at the request of any free person or the nobility.
- Right to take in journeymen and have these artisans work under his or her care and to pay these artisans a journeyman’s wage.
- Right to take in an apprentice sponsored by another master; the apprentice will work for and serve him or her exclusively until he or she passes examination to become a journeyman or fails to do so and is expelled by the guild.
- Right to charge the full guild rate for goods and services of the trade.
- Right to vote on guild matters such as the appointment of guild officers and on regulatory matters and rulings.
His or her responsibilities include:
- Duty, if appointed, to adjudicate disputes between members and act on a guild tribunals to try guild offenses.
- Duty to abide by all codes of conduct, rules, and laws governing the guild and its trade.
- Duty to pay annual guild dues: these fees range from 50 silver pieces to as much as 250 silver pieces per member per annum.
Guild members can be expelled from the guild permanently for very heinous offenses (for example training someone in the trade that has not undergone to proper sponsorship and bonding to become an apprentice).
More typically, if a guild master is found to have broken some rule of the guild or committed an offensive act that brings shame on the organization, he or she will be disbarred from practice (for several months or up to a year or more) and may pay a fine to the guild (ranging from 10 to 1,000 silver pieces, depending on the severity).
Guilds try offenses before a tribunal of masters drawn at random from the membership. Tribunals might consist of just one judge or as many as seven. In most guilds, there is an odd number of judges on a tribunal to avoid ties in rulings (some guilds, however, do allow for an even number of judges to allow for ties, and thus, easy acquittals).
Once a member, a master artisan is not permitted by guild rules to retire his or her trade. This means that a master is required to serve the guild responsibilities including the ping of dues for the rest of his or her life.
Masters have, on rare occasion, retired or abandoned a guild with little or no retaliation. This act, however, is considered highly disreputable in the eyes of the public and usually leads to difficult prospects for future work.
All guilds prohibit their members from belonging to another guild. They also prohibit apprentices and journeymen from studying other trades and often have many rules governing how (of if) they may associate with members of other professions.
Commerce
Trade
In most areas, there is little trade.
Communities are built on the concept of self-sufficiency.
Serfs grow their own produce and turn over a portion to the local lord. Small villages crop up where there are highly fertile fields or near good fishing spots or heavy timberland.
Town and cities, however, rely on trade with other places to feed themselves and provide building materials and other necessities.
Food is brought into towns and cities and sold on market days (usually two days a week or several specified days monthly). In these open-air markets, travelers come to hawk their wares in exchange for money from townspeople.
Merchants bringing wares to be sold to townsfolk can also find other merchandise from each other to take to another settlement or back home for use by their own communities or families.
Trade is highly regulated.
Merchants must usually possess permits to sell their wares within a town or city’s walls or must post a bond or be a member of a merchant guild with a presence in that town or city.
Towns and cities collect fees from the issuance of permits or taxes from guilds to support their operations.
Barter
Among common people, barter is the preferred (and often only) means of trade.
In the countryside, peasants trade produce, hand tools, animals, and favors for service to one another to fulfill their needs and wants.
Trade of this kind occurs also between peasant and vassal or noble, or between vassals and nobles for smaller sums.
Ninety percent or more of all exchange—as measured by money value—is conducted via barter.
Common people away from towns and cities have little use for coins. Many have never seen or uses gold or silver in their lives.
Money
Money is a tool that greatly facilitates trade.
While coins and gold and silver bullion allow for smooth transactions convertible to a commonly valued good, money’s real value comes from its status as a unit of account and store of value.
Crops rot and head of cattle die. Coins and bullion last forever. This makes money a superior means to store wealth over time.
Common people, of course, have little wealth, and so much of the gold and silver is held by wealthy craftsmen, guild masters, and the nobility.
Money allows all goods and services to be appraised under a common method. Prices can be reckoned on a single scale, even if money isn’t used for a transaction.
For instance, if two farmers wish to trade chickens for wheat, they can make a simple calculation as to the money price of each good and then make the exchange (chicken for wheat) based on money as a unit of account. No coins will change hands.
Coins come in many shapes and sizes with different weights, purities, and names.
The common coin used throughout this book is the silver penny.
There are approximately 240 silver pennies to a pound of fine silver.
Silver pennies are also commonly called “silver pieces.”
Letters of Credit
Large transactions are rarely settled in coin.
Trade involving bushels of grain, head of cattle, acres of land, or highly valued services are typically paid for by a letter of credit.
These documents note the issuer of the letter (the “guarantor”), as well as the party of use (the “payor”) and the party of receipt (the “payee”).
The payor will ask the guarantor (usually a merchant house or guild) to write a letter authorizing a payment. The guarantor will draft the document signed and sealed by both guarantor and payor, and then the payor will use the letter of credit to pay the payee in exchange for the payee’s goods or services.
The payee may then claim the “face value” (written amount on the letter of credit) by exchanging the document for the specified payment with the guarantor.
| Example: Grismé the merchant agrees to buy 55 head of cattle for the equivalent of 15,000 silver pieces from Holfar the herdsman.
Grismé meets with a representative of the Merchant’s Guild of Alna and requests a letter of credit for 15,000 silver pieces (or 62½ pounds of fine silver). The Merchant’s Guild writes a letter of credit authorizing payment of 62½ pounds of fine silver. The guild representative signs as the guarantor and Grismé signs as the payor. The letter lists Holfar as the payee. The Merchant’s Guild charges Grismé a 375sp fee for the letter (2.5% of the letter’s face value). Grismé turns the letter over the Holfar who instructs his farmhands to transport the 55 head of cattle to Grismé’s pens. Holfar later meets with the Merchant’s Guild and turns in the letter of credit. The guild representative completes the transaction by ordering guild apprentices to deliver 62½ pounds of fine silver to Holfar’s farm). |
Some letters of credit are “open ended.”
These documents will be signed and sealed by the guarantor and the payor, but the payee will either not be listed or will be recorded as “bearer of this note.”
This allows any person holding the letter of credit to exchange it for its face value with the guarantor.
Guarantors charge fees to issue (and thus guarantee) letters of credit. These fees range from 2 to 5% of a letter’s face value.
Both payor and payee benefit from the use of letters of credit for large transactions because it is safer and more convenient than bartering for huge sums of goods or using hordes of coin or bullion.
In large towns and cities, some merchants “factor” open ended letters of credit. These merchants will purchase letters of credit at a discount from the bearer. The discount ranges from 5 to 30% depending on how creditworthy the guarantor of the letter is believed to be and how far the nearest representative of the guarantor can be located to make payment.
These factor merchants provided a convenience at a fee: money in hand in exchange for a cut of the face value.