Tales from Irminar 4
ACKS Settlements and Strongholds
We’ve seen how monsters and other foes are encountered. Now we turn our attention back to the realms—specifically how and where their people gather.
The key features tying the realms to other mechanical systems are settlements and strongholds. Settlements are obvious; it’s where people have clustered to live and work. Strongholds are key to this, providing the domain with sovereignty in a very real sense—whoever can guard the land owns it. Since we need to place a combination of these in Irminar, let’s take a closer look at their features.
Settlements in Detail
On pages 229, 230, and 231, we have a few relevant tables.
Consider Dinnlund, a (small) Principality in the northeast of Irminar. It is the largest realm at 125k (families worth of) population. According to Political Divisions of Realms, it should have 4-6 Duchies of vassal realms (realms subservient to the Principality and its ruler).
Let’s say Dinnlund has 5 vassal Duchies. What are their populations? Well, first, we know that the ruler’s personal domain (for a Principality) is 7.5k families. The distinction here is that vassals swear fealty to Dinnlund’s ruler, but he does not personally own or manage their lands and affairs. Subtracting the ruler’s 7.5k personal domain from the realm’s 125k, we have 117.5k left. Let’s keep things simple and divide that by 5 for 23.5k per vassal Duchy.
But Duchies also expect to have 4-6 vassal Counties—we’ll choose 4. Rulers over a Duchy have personal domains of 1.5k. We do 23.5k - 1.5k and divide by 4 Counties to see 5.5k per County.
Counties further subdivide into Marches—and Marches into Baronies. But before we carry on that far, let’s get back to the question of settlements. The Villages, Towns, and Cities Placement table tells us, among other things, the Largest Settlement for a given population. We can take a domain’s population and divide by 10—that gives us the expected Urban Population (10%). Dividing this Urban Population by 5 gives us the size of the Largest Settlement in that domain (20% of urban population).
Thus, dividing a domain’s population by 50 tells us the size of its largest settlement.
In Summary
For Dinnlund’s situation we have:
Village (111) per County (5.5k)
× 4 Counties (per Duchy)
× 5 Duchies (per Principality)
= 20 villages in the Principality of Dinnlund
Small town (470) per Duchy (23.5k)
× 5 Duchies (per Principality)
= 5 small towns in the Principality of Dinnlund
1 City (2,500) per Principality (125k)
That’s 26 settlements for a single realm, and we didn’t even include strongholds. Clearly, we are not intended to carefully place every single settlement right away. The majority of them will be unimportant/untouched at the outset, regardless. When in doubt, do less prep work rather than more. As the campaign unfolds, we will see what is going to become important and what is to be ignored or minimized.
By taking the largest of these domain divisions, we can get a very good idea of the depth and breadth of urbanization. Dinnlund has a City (2500 families) in its capital, and each of its 5 vassal Duchies has a Small Town (470 families) in their capitals, and so on.
The key point is that all of this information is discoverable as soon as we specify the population of a realm.
Strongholds in Detail
Strongholds are castles, keeps, or other defensive outposts that guard the sovereignty of a domain. Again, we have the freedom to place things however makes sense, but the rulebook provides the opportunity to uncover detailed expectations about strongholds.
In the Revenue by Realm Type table (pg. 230), we can see a listing of Ruler’s Stronghold Value. Dinnlund, a Principality, would have the ruler’s stronghold valued at 360,000gp. His 4 Duchies would each have strongholds valued at 115,000gp.
Consider this stronghold design for the ruler of a Principality (360,000gp): Barbican (38,000gp) + Keep (75,000gp) + 3 Large Towers (90,000gp) + 700 feet of (40' high) stone walls (87,500gp) = 290,500gp, with 69,500gp left for additional interior buildings and/or defensive extras.
Now, what can we do with a budget of 115,000gp for the rulers of the Duchies? If we had a Barbican, Large Tower, and 400 feet of (30' high) stone walls, that is a total of 98,000gp leaving 17,000gp for interior structures (which we will need because we don’t have a keep).
These illustrative examples are slightly simplistic, but they capture the basic ideas. Putting together strongholds is a simple task. We should only really be concerned about how exactly a stronghold is put together if events in the game world cause it to come under attack, but making a few examples is a good exercise to give an understanding of what is involved and what could be at stake.
Placement
Since these are rulers’ strongholds, it will make the most sense (and be the default expectation) that the stronghold will be a part of the domain’s largest settlement. It makes perfect sense for settlements to develop within and around strongholds (safety, security, stability).
If that happens to be ahistorical in some instances, it makes just as much sense for a stronghold to be built within or nearby an existing large settlement (protect and secure the most valuable and desirable land as easily as possible).
This means that placing a domain’s largest settlement is doing double work for us. Wherever that domain’s largest settlement is placed, it’s a safe assumption that the ruler’s stronghold is also there or at least nearby enough that we can mark them as one.
Closing In
We’ve already seen how to create a region, dynamic and static encounters, and settlements and strongholds. Armed with these tools, we’re fully ready to begin our travel-scale map and flesh out a starting city for new PCs to arrive.