Fastheld Population Benchmark

''It is impossible to make any accurate assessment of the population of 17th-century York, for parish registers and the hearth tax provide only incomplete figures, and estimates based on each source do not fully coincide. An estimate based on the registers for York and The Ainsty suggests that the population of the city alone was approximately 10,000 in 1600, had risen by 1630 to 12,000, and remained at about that figure for the remainder of the century, possibly reaching 12,400 by 1700. - 'The seventeenth century: Topography and population', A History of the County of York: the City of York (1961).''

I use 17th-century York as the bechmark for my "epic" city capacity estimate - a title held only by Light's Reach and the Market District (known as Trademeet for the time being) - and then go from there. So, 10,000 for the epic cities.

We assume that the next largest city - Hawk's Aerie - is half the size of Light's Reach/Trademeet, so we get a dirty estimate of 5000 for cities of that size.

From that point we get 2500 for Medium Townships, 1000 for Small Townships, and 500 for Tiny Town(e)ships. From that dirty fantasy estimate, we get the following for Fastheld's Urban Population:

Aegisport:             5000 Hawk's Aerie:          5000 Eastleg:               5000 Elkmont:               2500 Fanghill:              2500 Freehaven:             5000 Gatetown:               500 Hedgehem:              1000 Jade Gardens:          2500 Lightholder:            500 Light's Reach:       10,000 Lionsgate:             5000 Marble Grove:          1000 Nillu's Lode:          2500 Northreach:            2500 Road's End:             500 Silkfield:             2500 Southwatch:            1000 Sweetwater Fields:      500 The Fetters:           5000 Trademeet:           10,000 Wildling Reach:         500 ---                      66,000

If we then assume that the Imperial Watch are stationed in Forts and Garrisons (and upon the Aegis) rather than in urban areas, we get:

Imperial Watch:      20,000 Imperial Tribunal:      250 Imperial Cult:          100 ---                      20,350

Which brings us up to 86,350.

As outskirt villages and rural farmland around townships are counted in the overall "Urban" count for each township, we can attribute roughly 15,000 to citizens that live in the wilderness or along roads or in nameless little villages out in the middle of nowhere, and given a total Fastheld Population Estimate of about 100,000.

Of that 100,000, I once stated that around 10%% would probably be Shadow-Touched, and of those 10,000 we can further break that up into three divisions: Those who have taken the Mark, those who are currently Unmarked, and those who don't know that they're Shadow Touched yet.

I will state that some people can live their entire life as being Shadow Touched and never have it manifest, so we're going to split it like this:

Unmarked Shadow Touched:	7000 Marked Shadow Touched:		3000

This is assuming that the majority of those who are "Unmarked Shadow Touched" aren't deviants, but are people with a "spark" of power, shall we say. People with limited grasp of the Shadow who *know* they have the power, but don't want to speak about it.

The rest have slightly more power, but would rather not make it known for whatever reason, or are of the "clueless" kind who haven't had any manifestation take place, and don't know they're Shadow Touched at all.

This makes sense if we want to maintain that PCs are rare examples of powerful Mages, thus maintaining the importance of PCs vs. NPCs.

We set the Marked at 3000 to figure in that this is still new, but that only the boldest and/or the more powerful of Mages would actually bother with it to try and make something of this Brave New World.

Of those 3000, we can assume that at least 500 can be accounted for within the Imperial Watch. That leaves 2500 Marked Mages to date. (It's been less than a year since the Amnesty, remember, and the Church is still out there!)

So, 2500 Marked Mages for a Northreach Capacity of 2500. I didn't engineer the overall figures to work like that, for the record, this is just coincidence.

Now, if we're being realistic, we know for a fact that ALL of those 2500 wouldn't be able to all go north in a single week or even a single month. It'd take a while to track them all down and see where they are.

However, in the LONG TERM, Northreach is either going to have to expand, OR the situation will have be resolved, OR another option may have to be considered.

There's no "dire situation" at the moment, nor is there any overcrowding. But Northreach will most likely become very 'busy' in two or three months if the problem is ignored.

Caveat: Keep in mind that this is an "Upper Scale" estimate - the figures shown are the "Upper Scale" capacity, and most likely not an accurate population count, but rather a maximum potential population count.

I can't accurately give a census of fictional people that exist purely as text. Nor can I even try to count all the people who may be living in the homesteads and farmlands that aren't even coded.

On a thematic level, Fastheld is far larger than we percieve it to be in code and writing, so in actuality these figures could be far larger, though still to the scale I set forth in my estimate.