Day eight, economics and politics.
Just as you examined your timeline for events and pressures, now examine your map for resources and deficits. For five minutes, make a few notes on the map to mark places that have more of a type of resource, and jot down anywhere that has a definite deficit of something needed. Also check your timeline; some of your pressure-point conflicts in the last 100 years may have resulted from an unexpected increase or decrease in the resources of one area or another. When you’re done with the resources, take another ten minutes and identify which major groups in your civilizations care about which resources.
We’re getting in deeper, here…but the question still moves the focus away from where this story is going. I do need to know the culture of areas, though, and those tend to form around what people have and what they don’t, and what they really want. So…
Okay, I’ve spent all night poking at this and not made much progress. I know there’s gold in the desert, but (rather obviously) not much water. Once they could live well enough to care about the gold, but not anymore.
I put some plains in the middle of the biggest continent. Those are occupied by nomadic bands who, when times are bad and food is short (or they just feel like being jerks), come out to attack the farmlands around them.
North of the desert there, some farmers grow cotton, and there’s a lord that’s invested in looms and such things. Actually–make that a woman. She’s building a fine tax base for her land. On the peninsula far to the west, they grow rice in terraces. I’ll probably make the connection to the mainland narrower, and maybe move that a bit more out to sea, and they’ll have a shortage of arable land. Rice, some veggies, and tall houses perched on mountainsides so as not to take up too much growing land.
The people in the mountains around the desert are spiritual people, mostly, but the ones in the southernmost arm are downright vicious with outsiders. They may or may not be protecting something. *shifty look* They grow…um, mountain foods? I’m thinking…what, sweet potatoes and other tubers? And they weave clothes of alpaca wool. They also work intricate embroidery.
All right. I’m calling that enough for tonight. I may or may not post tomorrow (later today) because I am going to the fair, and I don’t know how tired I’ll come home. 😀