Karameikos - Vaults of Pandius

The Demography of KarameikosA first solution would be altering thecountry’s urban population; better said,bringing it back to the levels at which earliersupplements had put them – with no cities,Specularum set at 5,000 people, Threshold at500, and so on. This would solve all theproblems posed by the urban-ruralpopulation ratio, and will allow you to usethe canonical population figures of 300,000.However, towns and cities as described inGAZ1 would need to be shrunk (perhapscreating some inconsistencies with GAZ1’stown and city maps).A second solution, which this articleadvocates, is changing the population figures.This will leave intact most of the materialfeatured in GAZ1, but you will end up havinga Grand Duchy with a population increasedby about 100% in regard to canonical figures.This is not much of a problem as long as youlike GAZ1’s version of Karameikos – theGrand Duchy continues to be your favoritemonster-filled, mostly-wilderness land.Nevertheless, it will now be more in touchwith real-world, 15 th century Europe fromwhich the Known World is inspired.Anyway, in case you prefer to keep officialpopulation figures, the last section of thisarticle deals with this issue, suggesting waysto tweak the material presented here towardcanonical population figures.AN OVERALL LOOK ATTHE GRAND DUCHYAREA AND POPULATIONWith a surface area of 39,592 square miles,Karameikos is comparable in size to realworldcountries like Bulgaria, Hungary,Iceland, and South Korea, or to US stateslike Kentucky or Indiana. Most of thecountry (about 35%) is uninhabited byintelligent creatures like humans, demihumans,or humanoids, while the rest is - atvarious degrees of control – held by thoseraces. The human government effectivelycontrols about 39% of Karameikos’ landarea, the demi-human clans about 12%, andthe humanoid tribes another 14%.Overall populaton of the Grand Duchy isabout 621,400 people, including 537,800humans, 41,900 demi-humans, 36,050humanoids, and 5,650 other creatures(taking into account only the races who arerepresented by not less than 100 membersin the country). Average population densityTable 1: Land area controlled by each Racial GroupRacial group# of 8-milehexescontrolled% of totalcountrymileagecontrolledTotal racialpopulationAverage racialdensity (peopleper sq. mile)Humans 278 0.39 537,800 26Demihumans 80 12% 41,900 7.7Elves 74 11% 18,800 4.3Gnomes 6 1% 16,100 46.4Humanoids 99 14% 36,050 6.58THRESHOLD: The Mystara Magazine Issue #1