Karameikos - Vaults of Pandius

The Demography of Karameikoswith real-world Middle Age knownpopulation densities.Normally, tracing a comparison betweenhigh-fantasy, high-magic settings and the realworld would be tricky, because things likeclerical magic (with create food and waterspells and the like) and other supernaturalways to feed a large number of people couldalter the population figures and the urbanruralpopulation ratio quite a lot. However,Karameikos is quite a low-magic setting - aMedieval-style feudal country where magicdoes not seem to be a feature of everyday life;thus, real-world demography can indeed beused as inspiration and reference to solvesome of the issues to which Karameikanpopulation figures shown in officialsupplements give birth.average density of about 100, whileFlorence’s countryside even reached 240inhabitants per square mile (withoutcounting cities). The eastern and northernregions of Europe were much less populous:the Balkans had about 23 inhabitants persquare mile, while Scandinavia had 5.5 andRussia 7.3. Urbanization (cities with 10,000people or more) was very low: it went from18% in Italy and the Low Countries, to 12%of Spain, to 5% of France and the Balkans to0% of places like Scandinavia and Scotland.The urban-rural population ratio of 1:20 wasthus exceeded only in very rare cases andeven then only in countries (like the Italianpeninsula) with a stable and old urbantradition, and/or where cities had becomecenters of trade and politics.A LOOK AT MEDIEVALDEMOGRAPHYWhile not an exact science, real-worldMedieval demography has brought to lightsome estimates which help us understand thepopulation levels of Europe during theMiddle Ages. Without going into too muchdetail, and just for the sake of somecomparisons, let us consider some data. Inthe 15 th century, France, a country for whichmany historical sources are available, had anoverall density of 80 people per square mile,ranging from 150 in the area surroundingParis, to 100 in the most settled areas(Normandy, Picardy, Savoy, and Burgundy),to 60 in most of the average-populatedcountry (central France, Provence,Champagne), to less than 40 in scarcelypopulated areas (like the Pyrenees andGascony). Tuscany, in the same years, had anPOSSIBLE TAKES ONKARAMEIKANDEMOGRAPHYBack to our Grand Duchy; a frontier landlike Karameikos, with 300,000 people andan overall density of 7.6 inhabitants persquare mile, can hardly justify an urbanpopulation of 30% in a Medieval-stylesetting. This holds true even if the impact ofmagic in your campaign is considered; toactually justify the above number, the magictheme needs to be pushed well over thelimits of the low-magic description ofKarameikos given in GAZ1 – incurring therisk of altering too greatly the classic mannerof depicting the Grand Duchy. Of course, ahigh magic variant is possible, but the goalof this article is to provide two additional,different paths to solve these supposedinconsistencies.7THRESHOLD: The Mystara Magazine Issue #1