SD.Net goes Medieval

[Shroom Man 777]

LOL. Is that a joke? Because if it isn't, then the OP specifies all members teleporting into one village city.

EDIT:

You know what happens? I think I'll end up going nuts and murdering a whole lot of folks with the machineguns I'm bringing before another guy murders me and the whole lot of you go mad and murder each other. I think we'd all go insane.

What would you do in this situation? It's not like Survivor, no cameras, no vaccines, no food, no contests for prizes, it'll go to shit in a while and with four thousand other smelly sucky assholes crammed in one village, some of us with personality issues, others being confident dicks, others being spineless dorks, the whole lot of us with friends and families back in the present age, all trapped in Bizzaro World, what do you think would happen?

I'd curl up into a ball and cry for my mommy. Family folks like Wong and Nitram will miss their kids and wives and crack up. We'll be a society full of nervous breakdowns and neurosises. Damn right it'll be like Lord of the Flies. We're all gonna fuck up and die if no one takes charge the second we're in here, if no one formulates an instantaneous game plan and shit.

Now, if we had some more time to organize. The four thousand of us meet and prepare for our inevitable time-travel adventure. The four thousand of us meet up in the place where we'll teleport to in the past, the four thousand of us - under the tutelage of The Mess members - endure a grueling training regiment to root out those who can and can't survive and shit (I hope I flunk and get sent home), learn the local lingo, whatnot. And then we get teleported to the past, then maybe we might have a chance.

Otherwise, we're fucked.

[Exmoor Cat]

Defintely need some Latin speakers, I doubt anyone can speak Occitan any more?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

So here's the question - who's in charge?

I'd have to assume the military guys. One of them is in charge, the rest of them act as his enforcers to maintain order. A dictatorship would probably be the best kind of government you all could have.

Yes, it'd most likely be an ruthless dictatorship centered around the Mess, with a constabulary being composed of Mess members appointed as officers over those who already have fighting and drill experience. And it'd have to be ruthless since, in composition, it would be pretty similar to a 19th century mining town in the American Old West. Which is to say, the very first thing the ruling junta would build would be gallows. In the center of town.

[Rye]

I would proceed to beat Shroom Man 777 unconscious before he had the chance to go nuts and kill anyone else, steal his guns and then keep them to make sure I'm in a better bargaining situation should the need for bargaining arise. Then we should try and capture some locals and get them to teach us the language.

[Darth Servo]

Just to put this in perspective, even a modern farmer wouldn't know how to be a farmer in 750 AD. And our skill set is weighted heavily toward young computer experts; fat lot of good that'll do us.

On what basis? Apart from a reduced amount of crop types and quality, as well as a higher casualty rate in animals, most principles haven't changed, and with a better understanding of the biology involved, and some of the processes that won't involve mechanisation (e.g. understanding of crop rotation, fertilisation and mendelian genetics) improvements would occur.

Plus, I'm not writing off the skill set either, at least osme of us have had practical hands on food-growing experience.

Um, IIRC, in 750 AD, they didn't even have metal plows, while your modern day farmer is used to driving a tractor and using fertilizer. In 750 AD, the only fertilizer available doesn't exactly smell too good either. No pesticides. The crops were a lot less engineered to suit human needs. One could go blue in the face listing the problems a modern-day farmer would face being transported back 1250 years.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, I guess if it really DID happen, I wouldn't really go nuts and kill everyone. I'd still bring a shitload of guns though. Then I'd pass 'em around to folks who actually know how to use em (which is the whole point of the bringing of guns).

Then I'd sit down and do nothing. That or manual labor. And then I'd die of malnutrition or something, after breaking down psychologically from the horridness of all things.

Most of the members are teenagers like me. How the hell are you guys gonna get us to do things? Hell, even if we DO pull it off, most members (including you, Rye) will probably end up becoming subjugated by the Mess and the other leaders, who'll make us work by threatening us with death with the very firearms I'd bring to the timeline. We'd be slaves while they'd get all fat and then they'd sell us to the neighboring villages as sex objects or meat in exchange for more useful peasants. It's survival of the fittest and only a few have what it takes, the rest of us will get screwed over.

Crap.

[Coyote]

Coyote - the poo question was already dealt with - fertiliser.

Yeah, I reread that. Uusally, people forget where to put the poop. Nothing like the crestfallen realization on people's faces when they come to show off a new ship or village or some thingy and someone asks, "where do they go to the bathroom, and where does that empty out at?"

Even as fertilizer, hundreds of pounds of poop will still create a fetid mess that won't be healthy for our chosen harvester population.

Otherwise, my alternate plan is to ...start the long careful slog to Jerusalem....

By 750 AD the Jews had largely been dispersed. Jerusalem has a Jewish population, but they're certainly not in charge. That, and there are several large mountain ranges and water bodies between southern France and Palestine. Just something to consider.

Yeah, but a population of a few hundred I *can* communicate with that understand local needs is better than thousands I cannot communicate with... and 4000 I can communicate with, where we will mostly sit around and bitch about how we don't know how to get food or clothing.

Food-- we feel we have a plan for that. Let's give the benefit of the doubt as assume we can grow, hunt, fish or forage what we need. How about some new skivvies? I don't know how to turn wool or cotton into duds.

Again, it all narrows down to how quickly we can establish a trade relationship with other nearby towns. We know cool stuff but we'd have to convince the locals that what we know is cool, too. If they don't know what a metal plow is or how/why it's important, you'll have a hard time convincing some dude in sign language to part with his hard-earned gold.

And the plow is actually pretty easy-- a quick demonstration will show how useful it is. But explaining the need to clean water and pasteurize?

If we bring crossbows, we can show how useful they are. Maybe we can set up shop with local carpenters and/or smithys and become weapons dealers of the Medieval world.

[J]

May I sit this one out and remain in the comforts of the 21st century?

Women's rights weren't that great back then hence life would really, really, really suck for me.

[Coyote]

We'd be slaves while they'd get all fat and then they'd sell us to the neighboring villages as sex objects or meat in exchange for more useful peasants.

Meat! Fuck, yeah, I forgot! Thanks for reminding me. I'll have to bring one of my favorite books, "Contigency Cannibalism: Hardcore Survivalism's Dirty Little Secret".

It's got a few recipes.

[Shroom Man 777]

Silence, wench! Now sow a button on my diseased rag of a shirt.

EDIT:

That was jokingly aimed at J.

As for cannibalism, you guys can use my large skull as a mug after I die while commenting "gee, Shroomy sure had a large head"

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Otherwise, my alternate plan is to ...start the long careful slog to Jerusalem....

By 750 AD the Jews had largely been dispersed. Jerusalem has a Jewish population, but they're certainly not in charge. That, and there are several large mountain ranges and water bodies between southern France and Palestine. Just something to consider.

Yeah, but a population of a few hundred I *can* communicate with that understand local needs is better than thousands I cannot communicate with... and 4000 I can communicate with, where we will mostly sit around and bitch about how we don't know how to get food or clothing.

Jerusalem in 750 AD was under control of the Baghdad Caliphate. It was actually a pretty prosperous place, and non-Muslims only needed to pay a tax to stick around. Hebrew is good to know, but Latin and Greek would be better, since the Muslims inherited the scientific knowledge of the Greco-Roman Byzantine world, and all of that was written in Greek. And you'd be dead of old age long before it all goes to shit.

Again, it all narrows down to how quickly we can establish a trade relationship with other nearby towns. We know cool stuff but we'd have to convince the locals that what we know is cool, too. If they don't know what a metal plow is or how/why it's important, you'll have a hard time convincing some dude in sign language to part with his hard-earned gold.

Well, they did have wood plows, and it's not as if a metal plow would be hard for them to construct. Especially if you brought back a 15th to 18th century iron plow design that they could understand.

If we bring crossbows, we can show how useful they are. Maybe we can set up shop with local carpenters and/or smithys and become weapons dealers of the Medieval world.

They already knew how useful crossbows could be. After all, the Romans used them. In fact, the only thing really stopping them from widely adopting it until the 12th century were the cost and support requirements, compared with a longbow. Though we could speed it up a bit by introducing push-lever and ratchet drawing mechanisms to make them easier to use.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

I'm assuming that I'll be vastly unsuited to the living adjustment and among the first to die regardless of what happens, so I'd pack some translation guides for whatever languages they might be speaking, then go around and try preaching concepts of heliocentrism and a round earth until the Church has me whacked.

[Lagmonster]

So here who knows where to farm, how to get some efficency for a colony of 4000+ people? I want a some show of hands of anyone who has the knowledge to know how to harvest without any shiny machines, on a level beyond backyard gardening.

That would be me, then, and I ain't here to meet your challenge. And while we have an old plow shed on the farm that's filled with rusted equipment dating back to horse and plow days, I never sat on or used anything other than an old tractor.

Supposing we had enough nice things to trade to local populations and some reliable basic metal tools that we could keep safe from the locals, I might be able to turn out food for, I dunno, 50 people. If I and thirty people worked around the clock and we could survive on a highly limited diet, and if I had a year in advance (or could trade for arable land). And I'm throwing all good sense out the window and estimating at least a 60% crop failure on any major harvest, (which would probably be beans, although rice would be a nice edge, or an exotic spice garden to give amazing value in local trading markets, meaning we'd need clear plastic tarps for makeshift greenhouses), which means that we're flat out wasting or losing most of the crop we plant to vermin, theives, pests, and the elements. And at 60%, that means that anyone beyond my little group is eating half-rotten food, half-grown food, or food which other animals have taken nibbles at first.

Meat would almost certainly be from trapping or poaching, and I wouldn't get involved with that unless I could get local support, although we might get lucky and get a source of eggs and a decent fishing spot, but I'm sure as hell not capping off a day of exhaustive agriculture with tending to lower-yield foods like beef cattle and pigs. I could handle chickens by hand if I had help, but it wouldn't be pretty and I wouldn't go into a primitive chicken coop without at least a biohazard suit.

Our community had better have a year's worth of reliable supplies to survive the first winter by, and the locals had better be friendly, open to trade, AND willing to mind their own business on a massive scale.

[Spin Echo]

If I knew Icelandic, I'd probably head up north. However, modern Norwegian is too far removed from Old Norse (I knew I should have taken that Old Norse course instead of Swedish!) to allow any sort of effective communication.

As it stands, I'd brush up on my Latin and try to pass myself off as a rich widow. If I could get married into a decent family, my life might only suck instead of the life of ordinary women, which really sucked.

One of the major issues with me would be my eyesight. I'd need to have a lifetime supply of contacts to get by. At 20/800, I'm helpless without some sort of correction. Glasses weren't invented until the start of the next millenia, so I'd need to wear contacts to avoid scrutiny.

[Ghost Rider]

So here who knows where to farm, how to get some efficency for a colony of 4000+ people? I want a some show of hands of anyone who has the knowledge to know how to harvest without any shiny machines, on a level beyond backyard gardening.

That would be me, then, and I ain't here to meet your challenge. And while we have an old plow shed on the farm that's filled with rusted equipment dating back to horse and plow days, I never sat on or used anything other than an old tractor.

Supposing we had enough nice things to trade to local populations and some reliable basic metal tools that we could keep safe from the locals, I might be able to turn out food for, I dunno, 50 people. If I and thirty people worked around the clock and we could survive on a highly limited diet, and if I had a year in advance (or could trade for arable land). And I'm throwing all good sense out the window and estimating at least a 60% crop failure on any major harvest, (which would probably be beans, although rice would be a nice edge, or an exotic spice garden to give amazing value in local trading markets, meaning we'd need clear plastic tarps for makeshift greenhouses), which means that we're flat out wasting or losing most of the crop we plant to vermin, theives, pests, and the elements. And at 60%, that means that anyone beyond my little group is eating half-rotten food, half-grown food, or food which other animals have taken nibbles at first.

Meat would almost certainly be from trapping or poaching, and I wouldn't get involved with that unless I could get local support, although we might get lucky and get a source of eggs and a decent fishing spot, but I'm sure as hell not capping off a day of exhaustive agriculture with tending to lower-yield foods like beef cattle and pigs. I could handle chickens by hand if I had help, but it wouldn't be pretty and I wouldn't go into a primitive chicken coop without at least a biohazard suit.

Our community had better have a year's worth of reliable supplies to survive the first winter by, and the locals had better be friendly, open to trade, AND willing to mind their own business on a massive scale.

Which is likely more experience then most of us have in agricultural endevours.

And those percentages really are ugly, and this is to be one of the few things we must have.

To really say, I'd likely take what bizarre trinkets of actual chain mail and bastard sword I have and go off and sell my services as either a bandit or some idjit in some random warlord's army. Really the more one thinks of it, it really is crappiest end of the shit stick one can get to.

[Exmoor Cat]

@ Coyote - re poo, actually, having worked for local government I'm genned up on this and have an A to Z on poo management......

[Darth Wong]

Realistically, since my wife and kids are not board members and would presumably be exempt from this prolonged death sentence, I'd probably spend my last days putting my worldly affairs in order. That means tying up loose ends at work, making sure my wife and kids are set up, saying goodbye to everyone I know and thanking them for being part of my life, etc.

Then (assuming I know with absolute certainty that this thing is going to happen), I'd have to give serious consideration to doing myself in. The fact is that I'm well past the two year exclusionary period for suicide on my life insurance policy. If it's a choice between me disappearing and dying in a verifiable manner, my wife and kids would be better off if I died. The life insurance is worth a sizable sum of money. I would also try to take out as many loans as possible and buy life insurance company annuities with them (such annuities are immune to creditors and are owned by the beneficiary rather than the purchaser). I don't know exactly what would happen to Rebecca once I'm gone, but I'm pretty sure that a millionaire widow would have an easier life than a regular widow.

[Exmoor Cat]

@lagmonster - A better way is for all the population to break down to smaller units and manage their food growing within that community, rather than the core of 30-40 people from farming communities/know about growing. What they would be doing is running the equivalent of a teaching farm, as well as visiting and directing the food growing in the communes.

Similarly, the building/engineering would be conducted as directing/assisting each commune in their ocnstruction, whilst being responsible as a team themselves in constructing the key buildings. On day one, they ought to be coralling the 4000 into building theequivalent of a legion marching camp. Those were built in 3-4 hours EACH night when a legion was on a march - and then demolished in the morning before marching again.

Someone should co-ordinate the entire water management/sanitation management process - once a system is in, it will functino fairly well.

I would also be looking for woodsmen/carpenters, potters and anyone with textile experience.

There ought to be no compunction about introducing glasses and other innovations early, e.g. printing and papermaking.

[Exmoor Cat]

Well, if it was about 300 years later and in the Balkans, I'd want to take my wife, who speaks Old Church Slavonic.....

[LadyTevar]

See, this is why the motto of the SCA is "The Medieval Ages as they Should have Been" and "The Best of the Medieval Ages, without the Plague and Bad Stuff"

[Zor]

Bows=Bad option for weapons for this type of force save for a small group of dedicated archers, remember that it takes a very long time for people to become good enough with a bow (including the long variety which is what we need to get through armor). Crossbows are far more useful in the short run (especially if someone gets Fanbelts or something comprable), they have plenty of leathality for the period and we can manufacture them. Potatos, corn and other such crops will be useful as well. Musket making would take some more time, but is ultimatly doable. Still, above all we need to get our hands on some goddamned serfs. If we have serfs we don't have to do as much farming or dirt shoveling and this is the only thing that comes close to machines that we can get. Its unfortuane, but its the truth that we need to get them in order to not become them.

Zor

[Ghost Rider]

See, this is why the motto of the SCA is "The Medieval Ages as they Should have Been" and "The Best of the Medieval Ages, without the Plague and Bad Stuff"

Oh I completely agree with it to. I've been to a few Ren Faires, and actually one large SCA meet. Lots of fun things, cool drinks, and interesting food...with a bunch of people having fun.

Definite good times.

I would love to live in SCA's version of Dark Ages versus what reality was .

[Exmoor Cat]

Lazy git :p

[Exmoor Cat]

I've occasionally pondered why Renn faires are not so big over here, then again, the re-enactment scene is diverse and well tied in with local heritage stuff.

[LadyTevar]

See, this is why the motto of the SCA is "The Medieval Ages as they Should have Been" and "The Best of the Medieval Ages, without the Plague and Bad Stuff"

Oh I completely agree with it to. I've been to a few Ren Faires, and actually one large SCA meet. Lots of fun things, cool drinks, and interesting food...with a bunch of people having fun.

Definite good times.

I would love to live in SCA's version of Dark Ages versus what reality was .

If you're free the last week of April, you can come to Blackstone Raids and visit with Nitram and I.