Pirates of Drinax - GMs thread

[J. L. Brown]

Really? 17 live births out of 1,000 humans and you compare that to a culture that takes multiple wives and has children with all of them, including more than one wife pregnant at one time? Your statistics are for humans that practice monogamy, not polygamy.

Human rulers with harems often had several hundred children. The only real limit seems to be economic. If they can afford that many children, they have them. Why would Aslan be any different?

Why would I do this? Because we are not told anything much about Aslan fertility -- I am not sure there is even a canonical source on whether they usually have 'single birth' or a 'litter' -- although it seems like the fiction treats them as approximately human. Nor is there anything about 'Every Aslan female will bear a child every seventeen minutes for the hundred years in which she if fertile' -- but it seems likely that the 'actual' number will be somewhat less than that. Kings with hundreds of wives are hardly 'average', and are already counted.

We can come at this from the other direction. though -- an average human woman will give birth to 2.2 children in her lifetime; and that rate is dropping in areas with better technology. A group of ten human women will give birth to about 22 children, about 50% of each gender. That same group as Aslan females -- including the non-negligible fraction of females who decide to never take a husband -- would be producing five or six males, and sixteen or seventeen females.

The 'average male' Aslan does NOT have hundreds of wives; it would seem to be closer to three. We need to account for males who die, or fail to win enough territory or standing to take a wife at all (those make the number of females available to be wives greater) and females who go into a clan business and never marry (which makes the number of females available to be wives smaller). I am not sure how Aslan society handles unwed mothers, so I am neglecting that fraction.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Why would I do this? Because we are not told anything much about Aslan fertility -- I am not sure there is even a canonical source on whether they usually have 'single birth' or a 'litter' -- although it seems like the fiction treats them as approximately human. Nor is there anything about 'Every Aslan female will bear a child every seventeen minutes for the hundred years in which she if fertile' -- but it seems likely that the 'actual' number will be somewhat less than that. Kings with hundreds of wives are hardly 'average', and are already counted.

I used your numbers and just multiplied by years and number of wives. So basically, I made the polygamous humans as far as their birthrate is concerned. I am pretty sure that Canon says that they do not have litters and that even twins are a rarity, but I do not remember the source.

We can come at this from the other direction. though -- an average human woman will give birth to 2.2 children in her lifetime; and that rate is dropping in areas with better technology. A group of ten human women will give birth to about 22 children, about 50% of each gender. That same group as Aslan females -- including the non-negligible fraction of females who decide to never take a husband -- would be producing five or six males, and sixteen or seventeen females.

Pay particular note to Sub-Saharan Africa. Polygamy is more common as if living with extended family members. This would seem to more closely approximate an Aslan family. They are over double the birth rates of European women. You may be better going with a number like 4.4 children per female as opposed to 2.2.

The 'average male' Aslan does NOT have hundreds of wives; it would seem to be closer to three. We need to account for males who die, or fail to win enough territory or standing to take a wife at all (those make the number of females available to be wives greater) and females who go into a clan business and never marry (which makes the number of females available to be wives smaller). I am not sure how Aslan society handles unwed mothers, so I am neglecting that fraction.

Best I have been able to find is that poor Aslan males often do not have wives. Below middle-class often has only one. Middle-class often have 2, and upper-class Aslan often have between 3 to 5 depending on the ability to support that many wives. I expanded on the idea as I think the only thing the book said was that higher class Aslan often had more than on wife.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I finally got the wiki to cooperate. There are 7,090,741 (millions). That is 7 trillion Aslan within the Heirate. If only 1/10th of 1% of those are Ihatei, you still have 7 billion ihatei. It is my belief that 0.1% is way too low a percentage for 2nd sons, but I used this low percentage to illustrate just how huge the number of 2nd sons really is.

 

[J. L. Brown]

I finally got the wiki to cooperate. There are 7,090,741 (millions). That is 7 trillion Aslan within the Heirate. If only 1/10th of 1% of those are Ihatei, you still have 7 billion ihatei. It is my belief that 0.1% is way too low a percentage for 2nd sons, but I used this low percentage to illustrate just how huge the number of 2nd sons really is.

Ihatei that have to transit the Riftspan Reaches J-5 route are probably a non-factor for the Trojan Reach, though. Ihatei will probably seek opportunities as close by as feasible -- less expense than a longer transit, and being closer to the home-clan means better odds of support. I do not care to guess what the typical 'Distance from home' is for an Ihatei band, but distance is a factor.

7 billion Ihatei amongst all Aslan worlds comes out as a somewhat less impressive number; the Aslan have (at least a minor) presence in 31 different sectors. Hot Aslan-on-Aslan Ihatei action is probably very frequent.

The Aslan have better education and technology than sub-Sahara Africa; so a lower fertility rate is not unreasonable. More recent than 2018 data:

Fertility Rate

Explore changing patterns in fertility worldwide, from birth rates to parental ages, twinning rates, reproductive technologies, and more.

ourworldindata.org

 

[MasterGwydion]

Ihatei that have to transit the Riftspan Reaches J-5 route are probably a non-factor for the Trojan Reach, though. Ihatei will probably seek opportunities as close by as feasible -- less expense than a longer transit, and being closer to the home-clan means better odds of support. I do not care to guess what the typical 'Distance from home' is for an Ihatei band, but distance is a factor.

Agreed and I would have no idea where to start for guessing about typical distance from home either. I do know that many clans have territory on both sides of the Rift.

7 billion Ihatei amongst all Aslan worlds comes out as a somewhat less impressive number; the Aslan have (at least a minor) presence in 31 different sectors. Hot Aslan-on-Aslan Ihatei action is probably very frequent.

Remember, 7 billion is using 0.1% of all Aslan being Ihetai. The actual number is likely an order of magnitude of more higher. Even at 7 billion Ihetai over 31 Sectors is an average of 225 million Ihetai per sector. That is easily enough troops to take a whole subsector. Everyone else is just lucky that most Ihatei are poor and do not have much in the way of warships. Remember that this number only includes the Ihatei, not any of the female technicians, merchants, and ship officers that follow them.

Why would Ihatei on Ihatei action be frequent? Combat between Ihatei gains them nothing.

Edit - Just finished reading the link you shared. It does have more recent data, but the data still says that birth rates in Kenya are double those in the US, so my using a number double the average still seems to make sense when trying to understand Aslan.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I found this too. Not sure of its accuracy though. We need to be looking at how many children an average man fathers in his life as opposed to how many babies women have in their lives.

 

[Uqbarian]

Garnfellow gives some numbers in the 'Clans of the Aslan - has just arrived!' thread, based on calculations at their blog. They get 10.852 million ihatei out of a clan of 186 million (or 5.83%). (Going by their figures, I think 27.8% of these are from landed families? Also, Garnfellow notes these calculations are based on CT figures.) [EDIT: I tried to post links to that thread but the forum won't let me, maybe because I'm too new.]

Garnfellow assumes 25% are adopted into heirless landed families and 90% of the remainder find gainful employment (within the clan or as mercenaries etc.), leaving about 808 600 who are going out doing the traditional roving ihatei thing (0.04% of the clan population).

Garnfellow assumes 10% of landless htatei join them (another 829 400), so this clan has 1.682 million 'ihatei' (0.9%) in the broader sense -- landless male Aslan on the move. (I get 1.638 million on that basis because I've rounded differently, close enough.)

That's from a snapshot of a clan's population all at once. Geir, in a later post in the 'Clans of the Aslan' thread, suggests that if an average 'ihatei' goes on one expedition lasting 1 year out of 30 potential active years, the proportion of active 'ihatei' in a clan population in a given year could be 0.03% (about 300 per million). Also, an expedition probably has a similar number of female Aslan coming along.

If we apply that to Tyokh in Tlaiowaha, where there are about 20 billion Aslan, we might expect roughly 6 million 'ihatei' on the move each year, accompanied by 6 million females. (That's just from Tyokh; Tlaiowaha has another 4 billion, but let's ignore that for convenience.)

If we say, for argument's sake, 90% of those are looking for trouble inside the Heirate or heading into the Glorious Empire meatgrinder, we're left with roughly 1.2 million ('ihatei' + females) coming out of Tyokh and crossing the border each year. Say we spread those out over twenty target worlds, that's maybe 60 000 'ihatei' and females per target world per year.

If we instead assume more like 99% of non-adopted actual ihatei and landless htatei find gainful employment and only 1% go a-roving, and then 99% of those look for trouble inside the Heirate or in the Glorious Empire, we'd have slightly under 60 000 Aslan ('ihatei' and females) coming over the border from Tyokh each year. Again, those are going to head for a bunch of different targets, so if we say twenty groups, that's 3000 Aslan ('ihatei' + females) per target world per year.

The 'Ihatei!' adventure in Drinax Book 2 suggests there are (very roughly) 5000 Aslan warriors at the camp on Kteiroa (mostly males). So that could represent one or two of our twenty groups for that year.

Or we could go back and challenge more of the previous assumptions!

[EDIT 2: I also wouldn't rule out the chance I made an error somewhere.]

 

[J. L. Brown]

Why would Ihatei on Ihatei action be frequent? Combat between Ihatei gains them nothing.

Not Ihatei on Ihatei -- Aslan on Aslan. Every clan has at least one border with another Aslan clan; not all of them have access to unclaimed space or neighboring powers.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Garnfellow gives some numbers in the 'Clans of the Aslan - has just arrived!' thread, based on calculations at their blog. They get 10.852 million ihatei out of a clan of 186 million (or 5.83%). (Going by their figures, I think 27.8% of these are from landed families? Also, Garnfellow notes these calculations are based on CT figures.) [EDIT: I tried to post links to that thread but the forum won't let me, maybe because I'm too new.]

Garnfellow assumes 25% are adopted into heirless landed families and 90% of the remainder find gainful employment (within the clan or as mercenaries etc.), leaving about 808 600 who are going out doing the traditional roving ihatei thing (0.04% of the clan population).

Garnfellow assumes 10% of landless htatei join them (another 829 400), so this clan has 1.682 million 'ihatei' (0.9%) in the broader sense -- landless male Aslan on the move. (I get 1.638 million on that basis because I've rounded differently, close enough.)

That's from a snapshot of a clan's population all at once. Geir, in a later post in the 'Clans of the Aslan' thread, suggests that if an average 'ihatei' goes on one expedition lasting 1 year out of 30 potential active years, the proportion of active 'ihatei' in a clan population in a given year could be 0.03% (about 300 per million). Also, an expedition probably has a similar number of female Aslan coming along.

If we apply that to Tyokh in Tlaiowaha, where there are about 20 billion Aslan, we might expect roughly 6 million 'ihatei' on the move each year, accompanied by 6 million females. (That's just from Tyokh; Tlaiowaha has another 4 billion, but let's ignore that for convenience.)

If we say, for argument's sake, 90% of those are looking for trouble inside the Heirate or heading into the Glorious Empire meatgrinder, we're left with roughly 1.2 million ('ihatei' + females) coming out of Tyokh and crossing the border each year. Say we spread those out over twenty target worlds, that's maybe 60 000 'ihatei' and females per target world per year.

If we instead assume more like 99% of non-adopted actual ihatei and landless htatei find gainful employment and only 1% go a-roving, and then 99% of those look for trouble inside the Heirate or in the Glorious Empire, we'd have slightly under 60 000 Aslan ('ihatei' and females) coming over the border from Tyokh each year. Again, those are going to head for a bunch of different targets, so if we say twenty groups, that's 3000 Aslan ('ihatei' + females) per target world per year.

The 'Ihatei!' adventure in Drinax Book 2 suggests there are 5000 Aslan warriors at the camp on Kteiroa (mostly males). So that could represent one or two of our twenty groups for that year.

Or we could go back and challenge more of the previous assumptions!

Nice! You did a way better job than me at finding info!

 

[J. L. Brown]

That's from a snapshot of a clan's population all at once. Geir, in a later post in the 'Clans of the Aslan' thread, suggests that if an average 'ihatei' goes on one expedition lasting 1 year out of 30 potential active years, the proportion of active 'ihatei' in a clan population in a given year could be 0.03% (about 300 per million). Also, an expedition probably has a similar number of female Aslan coming along.

Much less than 1% -- but still a very large and troubling number. No wonder the folks in the Dustbelt are so edgy.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Much less than 1% -- but still a very large and troubling number. No wonder the folks in the Dustbelt are so edgy.

Agreed, but also because the average Aslan TL is higher than the average Non-Aligned human TL in the Trojan Reach.

 

[Vormaerin]

You can set the numbers however you want. Just be aware that 60, 000 reavers being launched into the Reach from that one planet alone makes a mockery of any idea that there is a peace treaty governing the region or that there is any kind of stability or trade going on, not just in the Trojan Reach but also Reaver's Deep & the Dark Nebula. That would be an intolerable level of aggression from a human perspective. So that should be reflected in the setting.

The setting implies that the Star Knights are kind of whacko fanatics risking everyone's lives with their anti-Aslan beliefs, but if there's a non stop wave of thousands of ihatei coming annually, they aren't. They are dead right and everyone else is wrong.

However, Charted Space actually considers the Aslan to be rational beings who can sustain peace treaties, engage in trade, and generally be neighbors. And that requires that the ihatei are not coming into human space in those kinds of quantities. So either there aren't that many ihatei or the clans can actually control what they are up to, to a significant degree.

 

[Uqbarian]

You can set the numbers however you want. Just be aware that 60, 000 reavers being launched into the Reach from that one planet alone makes a mockery of any idea that there is a peace treaty governing the region or that there is any kind of stability or trade going on, not just in the Trojan Reach but also Reaver's Deep & the Dark Nebula. That would be an intolerable level of aggression from a human perspective. So that should be reflected in the setting.

The setting implies that the Star Knights are kind of whacko fanatics risking everyone's lives with their anti-Aslan beliefs, but if there's a non stop wave of thousands of ihatei coming annually, they aren't. They are dead right and everyone else is wrong.

However, Charted Space actually considers the Aslan to be rational beings who can sustain peace treaties, engage in trade, and generally be neighbors. And that requires that the ihatei are not coming into human space in those kinds of quantities. So either there aren't that many ihatei or the clans can actually control what they are up to, to a significant degree.

That's all fair. I just like to work things out from known numbers where I can before I start altering things in the campaign.

 

[MasterGwydion]

You can set the numbers however you want. Just be aware that 60, 000 reavers being launched into the Reach from that one planet alone makes a mockery of any idea that there is a peace treaty governing the region or that there is any kind of stability or trade going on, not just in the Trojan Reach but also Reaver's Deep & the Dark Nebula. That would be an intolerable level of aggression from a human perspective. So that should be reflected in the setting.

The setting implies that the Star Knights are kind of whacko fanatics risking everyone's lives with their anti-Aslan beliefs, but if there's a non stop wave of thousands of ihatei coming annually, they aren't. They are dead right and everyone else is wrong.

However, Charted Space actually considers the Aslan to be rational beings who can sustain peace treaties, engage in trade, and generally be neighbors. And that requires that the ihatei are not coming into human space in those kinds of quantities. So either there aren't that many ihatei or the clans can actually control what they are up to, to a significant degree.

Could be if that number is by planetary population, that number is per generation and not per year. That would mean 4,000 per year from that one planet. Much more reasonable given how the setting is described. It is still a lot once you add up every planet in the Heirate.

 

[MasterGwydion]

What does that math work out to for 7 trillion total Aslan?

 

[Vormaerin]

Sure. I'm not particularly concerned with how other people run things. Or necessarily what the numbers turn out to be in any future Aslan books.
But I do want the descriptions on both sides of the equation to make sense. If the ihatei are normally a very minor issue that causes occasional problems that need to be worked out, great. If the ihatei are a tide of destruction, fine.

But the human response and the context of the borderland sectors needs to match the descriptions of how the ihatei function in Aslan society.

Though I'll be honest here, I'm not sure how anything resembling traditional Aslan society could sustain 20 billion people on a planet, so that's part of the problem.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Sure. I'm not particularly concerned with how other people run things. Or necessarily what the numbers turn out to be in any future Aslan books.
But I do want the descriptions on both sides of the equation to make sense. If the ihatei are normally a very minor issue that causes occasional problems that need to be worked out, great. If the ihatei are a tide of destruction, fine.

But the human response and the context of the borderland sectors needs to match the descriptions of how the ihatei function in Aslan society.

Though I'll be honest here, I'm not sure how anything resembling traditional Aslan society could sustain 20 billion people on a planet, so that's part of the problem.

20 billion sophonts on a planet is chump change to a TL-10 civilization. A good (if long -- turn on the captions, and grab a snack; I watch at x1.25 speed) video on this topic:

 

[MasterGwydion]

20 billion sophonts on a planet is chump change to a TL-10 civilization. A good (if long -- turn on the captions, and grab a snack; I watch at x1.25 speed) video on this topic:

Remember, Aslan need something like 4 times the amount of open spaces as the equivalent human city. Aslan are big on green spaces.

 

[Vormaerin]

What part of "ecumenopolis" sounds anything like how Aslan live?

 

[J. L. Brown]

Remember, Aslan need something like 4 times the amount of open spaces as the equivalent human city. Aslan are big on green spaces.

Did you watch the video? The amount of 'floor space' is not the limiting factor.

Put a trillion humans on Terra with 100 floor-tall arcologies, and you have covered less than 2% of the planet's surface. Build a 100 layer 'shell-world' with a trillion inhabitants and they could all have more than 500000 square feet (152400 square meters; 15.24 hectares) to themselves.

No listed Aslan world actually has a trillion inhabitants though -- and more than 100 layers of 'shell world' is certainly possible. With 20 billion inhabitants, everyone has 762 hectares; so an Aslan male (assuming just one wife) will have 15.24 square kilometers. That is plenty of elbow room.