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Halkegenia Online Thread 7: "Arrun Noir"

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Mashadarof402 said:
Pfft, no. There's only what, 60,000 Fae? That's a tiny market. And what do the Fae bring to the table in terms of marketable goods? Rare materials working, mercenaries, and principally? Ideas.

And you can't keep a lid on ideas. Especially if they're simple. Once they're out, other people will copy them. Take the McCormick Reaper for example. It's not particularly complex, and nobody's making patents for royalties and sending teams of ninja lawyers to bust down pirated copies in this era.

Not being able to do business with the Fae will hurt opportunities, sure, but it's not like the existing market before that just vanished.
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60,000 people is a not-inconsiderable number of people in an early-modern context, although it's also not huge. It's a couple of decent sized cities' worth of people. More to the point, however, they're also the only people who really have a developed idea of a 'market' in the modern sense. The Halkeginians themselves don't actually have much of a market for anything other than food and pottery, because the only people that really have any money to consume things are the nobility and merchants. The commoners are only really going to be consuming food (which the Fae are importers of) and pottery, and the pots they use are cheap, basic and disposable things made locally and thrown out after one or two uses. Not the sort of things the Fae would produce.

As it is, the Fae are shaping up to be pretty wealthy, because they have a bunch of awesome craftsmen and, when they finally get things shaken out, an organisational and economic structure that leaves that of the Halkeginians in the dust. They'll probably end up as a significant chunk of Tristain's consumer base in the short term, just because that base is so small to start with. Over time, that's obviously going to change.
 
trung-t-rung said:
From the latest chapter, look like we got something between Klein and Leafa. Well, maybe we will got this in the future.

"You know, Papa. Uncle Klein just asked Aunt Leafa on a date."
Kirito spat his tea and went into BSOD for a minute before grabbed his swords and went out of the house.
"Yui-chan, tell your Mama we're going to have [<Salamander Sushi]> for dinner."
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Implying it won't be.

"You know, Papa. Uncle Klein just asked Aunt Leafa on a date."
Kirito spat his tea and went into BSOD for a minute before grabbed his swords and went out of the house.
"Yui-chan, tell Mama I have to save my friend from my yandere sister!."

Because the odds of Kirito acting like that are just the same as Leafa going yandere.
 
*reads chapter*

*plants Klein x Leafa flag*

Although a more modest Leafa? What kinda of bizarro world is this- *SHOT*
NecroMac said:
So thou I ask, do you permit me, your humble servant to share with you a few, fine pieces of art, found in the deepest parts of the great unknown land, known under the name of 'The Internet' ?
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By the Emperor's will, thou shall accomplish this noble and glorious deed!
 
'reads new snip'
The gnome sniffed, wiping at her eyes with the handkerchief that the Tristanian trader had lent her. "Rika. My name's Rika."
"That's a pretty name, Rika-chan." Leafa said as she crouched down beside Klein. "My name is Leafa, I'm with the city watch. Ah, Rika-chan, how old are you?"
Rika looked away, mulling over her reply. "I'm ten . . . next week."
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Wait a minute that sounds familiar:
The worst case Kirito had heard of was an eleven year old named Rika, her real name, who had been using her sister's account. She'd been found in the company of one particularly . . . unpleasant . . . Nobleman who had mistaken her inexperience for a mental defect and fully intended to take advantage of her before the authorities had become involved and wrestled the truth from the terrified girl.
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Looks like we have another omake immigrant into the story as a background character.
 
Triggerhappy said:
That really depends. It all comes down to whether RETCO gets blamed for this. Seeing as they probably can't find a causal link between the AMUsphere and . . . this . . . Well, it's going to be hard to determine just how RETCO is responsible and how it should pay reparations.

Though having an entire branch of you company pretty much vaporized is going to be a pretty serious blow.
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They might have a hard time explaining why 300 patients with mysterious comas, including an executives daughter, disappeared along with everyone logged in to their game.
 
jwolfe said:
'reads new snip'

Wait a minute that sound familiar:

Looks like we have another omake immigrant into the story as a background character.
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Oh yeah, she has made an appearance :eek:

I actually did find the scenario and name familiar, but didn't connect the dots till you pointed it out. There is an age discrepancy though (Rika is 11 in the omake, 10 here, yet the omake only takes place 6 months post-transition), but then again, omake. ^^;

On another matter, one of my beta-readers did tell me that "Caustic" doesn't mean what I think it does, but I kept it in anyway because it sounds cool. Klein's run in at least makes the Caustic Dragons live up to their name XD
 
On the note of how big a cosumer base 60.000 are... do we have any numbers on halkegenian population?

All i remember as hard numbers are 70.000 at saxe gotha, with an implication that thats a pretty big army, but i have no idea how army size would compare to absolute population in these times.

Becuase its gonna be adifference wether tristains population is 100.000 or 100.000.000 (unreasonable upper and lower bounds).
So do we know anything?
 
Mahrac said:
~glances at flag~

You two are kinda late to the party. I have the shirts.
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The thing with this pairing is that it will go nowhere unless one or two things happen.

1. Klein stops seeing Leafa as the 15 year old girl in an (very;)) adult body. This might occur over the weeks/months/years but who knows (except TH that is).
2. Leafa actually starts going after him, which doesn't seem to be very likely in the near future. At the moment she does not seem to be looking for any romance.
 
jwolfe said:
The thing with this pairing is that it will go nowhere unless one or two things happen.

1. Klein stops seeing Leafa as the 15 year old girl in an (very;)) adult body. This might occur over the weeks/months/years but who knows (except TH that is).
2. Leafa actually starts going after him, which doesn't seem to be very likely in the near future. At the moment she does not seem to be looking for any romance.
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Well, there are only two things stopping Klein at the moment:

1. Leafa becomes an actual adult age-wise, which'll be in 5 years.
2. Leafa being Kirito's sister.

The first is solved in time once Leafa reaches that age, but the second is gonna be trickier.

On Leafa's part, yes romance isn't really on her mind having been burned by her love for Kirito. But if Klein plays his cards right (unwittingly), who knows...
 
Mashadarof402 said:
Pfft, no. There's only what, 60,000 Fae? That's a tiny market. And what do the Fae bring to the table in terms of marketable goods? Rare materials working, mercenaries, and principally? Ideas.

And you can't keep a lid on ideas. Especially if they're simple. Once they're out, other people will copy them. Take the McCormick Reaper for example. It's not particularly complex, and nobody's making patents for royalties and sending teams of ninja lawyers to bust down pirated copies in this era.

Not being able to do business with the Fae will hurt opportunities, sure, but it's not like the existing market before that just vanished.
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You are applying a modern market mindset. As things stand the Commoners (the group that vastly outnumber the Fae) are not going to be buying anything. So as a market, the Fae are likely the largest single chunk of people with disposable income.

Then there's the fact that their products (as in direct work of Fae crafters) are entirely unique. Not to mention that if that treaty doesn't forbid harvest of Alfhiem materials without Fae involvement I will eat my own foot. Even ignoring all the reasons why the Fae would have pushed for that a great deal, their stuff is all horrendously dangerous and they're the only ones with any idea how to handle it.

Furthermore they are the ones with a vast amount of capital. The more modern banking system? That'll be lead by Fae banks. The alterations in trading systems? Led by Fae groups with fae money. New companies introducing and profiting off of these ideas and inventions? That'll be led by the Fae, with Fae money and investment.

Of course they'll be calling on the nobility plenty to get involved in all this as well, and such partners are likely to feel like people who bought Google stock just before it shot through the stratosphere...but not Sir Dickface.
 
Xexilf said:
On the note of how big a cosumer base 60.000 are... do we have any numbers on halkegenian population?

Becuase its gonna be adifference wether tristains population is 100.000 or 100.000.000 (unreasonable upper and lower bounds).
So do we know anything?
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Based on real life population of Netherlands and/or Belgium... and what we know of Tristain... between 2 and 10 millions for Tristain, 12-15% of that being middle and high class and another 10-20% being upper lower class. So between 400.000 and 3.500.000 of active participants... half of that actually as majority of Fae are of active age, while half of said 400k-3500k would be children and old people.
 
al103 said:
Based on real life population of Netherlands and/or Belgium... between 2 and 10 millions for Tristain, 12-15% of that being middle and high class and another 10-20% being upper lower class. So between 400.000 and 3.500.000 of active participants... half of that actually as majority of Fae are of active age, while half of said 400k-3500k would be children and old people.
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Would this be for modern population, or for early modern?
 
Xexilf said:
On the note of how big a cosumer base 60.000 are... do we have any numbers on halkegenian population?

All i remember as hard numbers are 70.000 at saxe gotha, with an implication that thats a pretty big army, but i have no idea how army size would compare to absolute population in these times.

Becuase its gonna be adifference wether tristains population is 100.000 or 100.000.000 (unreasonable upper and lower bounds).
So do we know anything?
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It's not that 60,000 people are a big consumer base because there are 60,000 of them. It's that there are 60,000 people with money. The concentration of wealth in the early modern period was insane, and would have made the robber barons of the Gilded Age start agitating for downwards wealth redistribution in the interests of fairness. In Halkeginia, it's unlikely to be much better. That means that the vast majority of the population more or less don't count when it comes to being a consumer base, because they have no money with which to consume. The only ones who count are the small minority who actually have disposable incomes, which is probably rather less than the '10% noble' figure, since the petty mages filling the role of village blacksmith or whatever probably don't have all that much money unless they're on a major trade route. The closest they probably get to a 'consumer class' is millers, but since there's only one or two millers per village and travel is difficult and slow, they still wouldn't fit the bill; maybe the miller has enough money to buy your wares, but he's probably the only one in the villiage who does, which means it's just not worth the effort.

This is why long distance trade in the early-modern period that wasn't shipping bulk goods or food by sea from city to city was usually in the form of small, incredibly valuable luxury cargoes like spices, tea, china and so on. All the day to day stuff was made locally and used/repaired for an incredibly long time compared to modern standards. Unless it was a pot, that is.
LGear said:
Would this be for modern population, or for early modern?
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My copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica suggests that the population of the Low countries in the late 1500s was about two million. That's Belgium/the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic combined, though. Additionally, Tristain distinctly and obviously lacks a number of the things that drove the population to be that high, including the world-leading economy and global trading network that made the Dutch so incredibly rich.

It doesn't really matter how large that population is, though, because most of them can't buy anything. It would be like expecting the peasants of Tsarist Russia to form the basis of your consumer market.
 
LGear said:
Would this be for modern population, or for early modern?
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About 1650 EACH of Netherlands and Belgium has around 2 mil. With much crappier agriculture and medicine in comparison to Tristain. So having anything less that 2 mil is... OK, not impossible, but veeeeery unlikely. Lowest number for high+middle+upper lower = number of mages = 10%, but actually would be higher, Tristain do not look like poor country and we see commoners in lower tiers of middle class.
 
In regards to trying to indenture a Fae into the service of a noble - yep, this is going to happen. As has been discussed at length (I think we still have the dead horse out back to beat) Fae are going to be valuable as a resource for a while.

The best, political solution is for the Fae Lords & Ladies to start filing counter-suit charges against anyone who tries a stunt like this. Defamation of character, giving false testimony, and a few other things can be tacked on. From the Fae perspective they are doing exactly what a modern "lord" (read: responsible head of a household, small business, or department of a larger business) should do to protect an orphaned child in their care. From the Tristainian point of view they are making the attempts both public and a spectacle. The nobles who are trying these things will see the value of their honor and given word plummet - assuming the Fae can prove anything before the Royal Court.

Remember - in the society of Tristain your personal honor and given word were very important. They didn't have the strong legal system that many countries enjoy today. There are no contract lawyers, for example.

In the long term, things like this can help set up the transition from their current "loose laws" system to a more "modern Japanese" system. The Fae will love that idea and it will suit the merchants & businesses they are dealing with quite well. It can also potentially hurt their enemies - the nobles who are trying to take advantage of them. If these nobles think this sort of behavior is acceptable or expected they will be doing it early and often. Once things start having more legal consequence it will be a very hard habit for them to break..

In regards to Bishop dropping meteors on someone's home.. that seems extreme. It would also likely be easily tracked back "to the Fae" and could result in mass hysteria. "Look! Look at what they've done! They just destroyed Bob's house. They claim they want peace, but look what they do to any who slight them!"
 
What you have to remember is that, early modern era, most of the peasants are self sufficient outside specialist services that can be hard to afford (blacksmith making new metal tools - many of the tools which peasants use in day to day affairs are still wood - cartmakers, new seeds)... most of the money peasants contribute into the economy are taxes, and of course food production, which may be sold for profit, though most individual peasants aren't producing enough surplus to see much useful profit - it'd be the nobles seeing it.

60 000 fae with enough money and skills to have some fairly serious purchasing power and an idea of the market economy - plus lacking the peasants self sufficiency in day to day household expenses...
Textiles and clothes are going to be probably the first new good to become available for peasants, though it'll take a while for prices to drop )and fairies to produce cheap enough clothes in the first place - their purchasing power is a lot higher than the average peasant - for peasants to be able to buy them for anything other than essentially festival clothes - once a year, for celebration, the nice clothes, nicer than the church clothes, even if they're meant for day to day work by the fae what made them.

Edit:
Also, note that of ~2million people, 1 in 10 are nobles. Gives about 200 000 nobles. Most of those are petty and poor nobility, but fairies are about in (or even just above) that income bracket... That's about a 20% increase on the parts of the economy that actually does more than just sustain itself.
 
Screwball said:
It doesn't really matter how large that population is, though, because most of them can't buy anything. It would be like expecting the peasants of Tsarist Russia to form the basis of your consumer market.
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It's funny how you mention something I have info on - 77.5% peasants, 45% serfs (58% of peasants) - the rest 55% participated in market exchange in some way. Even if only nobility-merchant-craftsmen-other taken with peasant excluded it still would be 22.5% of population. For much more poor country that Tristain.
 
al103 said:
It's funny how you mention something I have info on - 77.5% peasants, 45% serfs (58% of peasants) - the rest 55% participated in market exchange in some way. Even if only nobility-merchant-craftsmen-other taken with peasant excluded it still would be 22.5% of population. For much more poor country that Tristain.
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Would that participation be buying something from the local vendors, or having something imported from other cities? Because the fae are going to be affecting the latter more.
 
Does anyone want to play beta reader for my GaoGaiGar bits?

I've got a little of the next snip done, but I'm a little stuck.
 
Mahrac said:
Would that participation be buying something from the local vendors, or having something imported from other cities? Because the fae are going to be affecting the latter more.
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At the time there was not much difference between two actually except for most costly stuff - most areas were self-sufficient in everything, but import were still present nearly everywhere even if low quantities. And imports always competed with local production, even if they were not in the same niche.
 
al103 said:
It's funny how you mention something I have info on - 77.5% peasants, 45% serfs (58% of peasants) - the rest 55% participated in market exchange in some way. Even if only nobility-merchant-craftsmen-other taken with peasant excluded it still would be 22.5% of population. For much more poor country that Tristain.
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You're making the mistake of assuming that everybody who wasn't a serf meaningfully participated in the market. People who have serious concerns about even acquiring the food they need to survive are not participating in a significant manner in any market other than a local one. Dirt poor peasants aren't going to be buying china or glazed pottery, they're not going to be buying fine fabrics or expensive foodstuffs, they're not going to be buying spices and they're not going to be buying manufactured goods that can't be made inside their village, because they don't travel and they're too poor to attract anything other than the occasional tinker once or twice a year. Trade on any significant scale is something that happens between cities - because that's where the highest concentrations of people with money to spend are or have representatives - and the towns and villages along those trade routes. The one exception is the landed nobility gathering the foodstuffs produced by their lands as a tax and selling it to the cities, for money that they then mostly spend in cities unless they're building some sort of structure on their land, and in wealthier areas, peasants taking their own produce to larger market towns.

The latter, you will note, is still participating pretty much exclusively in the trade of food, and it's also by it's very nature a local thing, because a peasant lacks the capability to transport something as bulky as foodstuffs a great distance. Besides that, of course, food spoils. Wealthier areas had more imported stuff, but it would be vanishingly rare for a random peasant to have something that wasn't locally manufactured.
 
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