Advent 2019:Calendar/7

So I'm afraid that I was indisposed for the last few days and so I couldn't complete this on time but I love economics and politics (today's topic) so I am not just going to skip ahead to day 8 (though I hope to be able to publish that later today). More specifically we are going to be dividing out worlds into people who are short of certain resources and those who have loads. But first a short story. I grew up in a hamlet miles from anywhere in an ancient house (we believed that it was close to a thousand years old (though obviously it had been renovated since then). And as a result it was made from copious quantities of wood. We also travelled a lot to south France where the houses were also really old but they were made of stone. So what gives?

Well Suffolk (my birth place) is generally very flat and doesn't have any great cliffs. On the other hand south France was very cliff heavy (case in point Rockamador). Hence people in Suffolk built stuff out of wood and people in France built stuff out of stone. So what does that tell us? People try to use the resources available to them.

Now there are some resources that everyone needs and wants without any close substitutes. Wood can be used in houses but castle walls are another issue entirely. Hence Achthal has more castles than even Leon! More important are resources that are relatively scarce. Low levels of farming land have often been the driving force keeping the confederation together or indeed causing it to fall apart. As I talked about before, the relative abundance of food in Leon lead to less politics and trade and technological development because there's nothing to sharpen minds like the thought of a rumbling stomach. A lack of gold and other metals helps keeps down trade in æthelron. You can also see from this chart that culture plays a role as well. Usherway has plenty of wood and yet it is merely - (self sufficient). The North doesn't raise many more cows than Awegon but it doesn't import any meat either because it eats less meet

So what does Kanhosen make?
Good question. Kanhosen imports basically everything so what does it sell to pay for it. And the answer is: nothing! Kanhosen is a small scale service economy meaning that its main exports are various forms of art, logistics solutions,

Elements
Now it is worth noting elements exist on Gaia in a different way to in the real world and as such it is entirely possible to make iron (also known as TransMetal) out of fire and earth it is impractical to find earth that is pure enough or indeed enough fire. Never the less I have provided a list of combinations for metals for the readers curiosity. (as an extra note, Bronze and Brass can both be forged as metals (once made) tend to stay separate).


 * Iron + Earth = Lead
 * Iron + Air = Rust
 * Iron + Water = Silver
 * Iron + Fire = Zinc
 * Iron + Firelight = Copper
 * Iron + Moonlight = Tin
 * Iron + Sunlight = Gold
 * Iron + Starlight = Platinum
 * Iron + Ash = Steel
 * Tin + Copper = Bronze
 * Copper + Zinc = Brass

Side note: 'light' here requires vast quantities of the substance in such a way that it can only be made through magic bottling inside silver containers.

Note to self: Silver isn't used for money