Questions tagged [medieval]
For questions about the medieval era (500-1500AD o.e.) as a whole, regardless of the location.
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My Medieval kingdom has birth control, why is the population so high?
My world is roughly the same as the middle ages but has a natural form of birth control in the form of a root that can be grown and consumed to prevent pregnancy.
Because of this root, opportunities ...
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Could you achieve a crude bessemer converter with late medieval technology
Planning to write a story. I was wondering if it was plausible that (with a decent understanding of how the thing works), if you could build a crude Bessemer converter using only technology available ...
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How detailed would these medieval era reports be?
I have no idea how to start researching this, so I'm going to here, where there are people who are much smarter than me. So I'm writing a story set in the medieval time period. In my story, there is a ...
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To what extent would bad conditions slow down medieval travel?
I'm writing a story set in the medieval era, and it wouldn't be a real medieval story without dealing with the nightmare of the logistics of medieval travel, nor would it be a medieval story without ...
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How much space do I need to fit 1 million people in an isolated city?
Imagine an isolated circle-shaped city in a medieval setting. Within this circle is another circle, where the Highborn are living (around 100k people). Common folk (around 900k people) lives on the ...
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What would a Medieval-Tech "super-metal" look like?
Edit: I am not looking for a specifically scientifically supportable answer. Rather, I am curious as to what characteristics of weapon metal lead to making them harder, and better at penetrating/...
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How fast will information travel through my chain of command?
In the story I'm writing, there is a lot of medieval warfare. I want to know how well information and commands would be able to travel through my armies (clarification: by how well, I mean stuff like ...
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How long will it take for my medieval army to travel?
This question is complicated, so hang on. A medieval army made up mostly of foot soldiers wearing plate armor (although there are cavalry, they're going at the speed of the foot soldiers) with enough ...
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How long do Brown Bear coats/pelts last?
I have a character who intends to wear the pelt of a Brown Bear at a particular point in time. That doesn't come about for a decade. I was wondering how badly degraded, or preserved will the coat be ...
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How to use and abuse a transformable metal [closed]
My dm has given my character a metal that can:
"Be as flexible as linen or more rigid than tungsten. Properties that can be adjusted: tensile strength, torque strength, rigidity, density."
...
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How would better access to medication affect a medieval society's medical knowledge? [closed]
Edit: As this is an open-ended question, and might become closed, there is now a chat room for it.
In a medieval setting, people find medication much easier to come by.
Medicines have a lot more ...
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How much would a population be able to recover after half of them being killed? [closed]
In a medieval setting, a kingdom had about 50% percent of its population killed (this includes all ages). About 50% of infrastructure was in need of repair, and a separate 25% of infrastructure needed ...
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What are good reasons to create a city/nation in which a government wouldn't let you leave [closed]
I am building a city that the main character will be prohibited to leave from and yet their intentions of entering the city are to save the world form an extra-planer threat. So they have to go in. ...
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What are the concerns with residents building lean-to's up against city fortifications? [closed]
In historical illustrations of cities with defensive walls, I have noticed that it is very rare for a non-defensive structure to be built directly adjacent to the inside face of the wall. A building ...
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Would a character who got burned as a baby, with a third degree burn in one arm lose mobility in that arm?
The story would be set in a sort of medieval period, and the character in present day would be about 16 years old.
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If mediæval people knew about copper IUDs, could they make them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_IUD
Copper IUDs seem very simple. There's no pharmaceutical chemistry required to make them.
If I traveled back in time to 1500, and said to someone, "Hey all ...
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Is the way avians are used in warfare in my setting realistic?
In my medieval setting, bird people are about half the height of a human, have hollow bones, and have hands at the end of their wings.
In warfare, there are 3 types of avian units:
Scouts give the ...
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Good reasons the powerful good guys don't fight the powerful bad guys
It's a typical trope in stories, but why don't the powerful good guys fight the powerful bad guys? Usually a group of nobodies need to grow in power to the point that they're able to face the powerful ...
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Why would people colonize a ring of desert islands?
The Question
I am setting up a world for a D&D campaign. Magic and technology are as usual for D&D worlds.
This world consists of a ring of hundreds of islands, in which there is one lush ...
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How would medieval people defend themselves from Simswines?
If you’ve seen any of my previous questions on Algennon’s fantastic and deadly ecosystem, you might know the drill: first a monster gets designed, then strategies to defend against it. But we’ve moved ...
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How many customers per day would a medieval-era tavern serve on average in a big city? [closed]
Additionally, how many meals and/or drinks would they serve per day on average?
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How can medieval people defend their societies from Vanilla Puddings?
Puddings are a common strain of monsters that run amok on my fantasy world of Algernon. These slug-like creatures are about the size of a human head. Each species of pudding has a vibrant colour and ...
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Conditions to help Paganism survive until a Revival Movement
In my world, the Northern Kingdoms are the equivalent to Europe. Like Europe, in the Middle Ages, their version of Christianity began replacing old Pagan religions and gods.
However, in my world, ...
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What items can a time traveler trade in medieval England to quickly acquire wealth? [duplicate]
I'm writing a story about a man from modern-day Liverpool, UK, who can travel 800 years in the past with a machine. He wants to become a nobleman in the past before going on adventures. He wants to ...
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Gravity-powered cannonballs for mountain dwellers
My mountain dwellers have endless patience. They spend their spare time fashioning spherical rock cannonballs of approximately equal size. This is in case of attack by enemies. Around their mountain ...
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Removing slaves' digit to prevent uprising
What digit, if removed, would hamper a human from fighting using medieval weaponry? (I'm toying with both thumbs but this may be too limiting in the work that the slaves can do or both little fingers ...
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Effects of industrialisation via runic magic in a Fantasy Economy
So, how would industrialisation via runecraft affect the economies involved in a high fantasy world?
I have some worldbuilding down below that you can use if you want, but you can also just use this ...
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What sort of strategies would a medieval military use against a fantasy giant?
This is in regards to a story I'm writing, where the two main characters are a human girl and her giant companion. They're both outlaws with the giant being seen as an outright monster by the vast ...
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Weapon damage assessment, or What hell have I unleashed?
In Weaponizing the return-energy channel of a one-way portal, I describe the function of a hermes portal, which are magical devices that, when activated by some command, create a connection to a ...
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What conditions could help the Roman Catholic Papacy revive Paganism successfully to reduce Protestantism?
In this alternate history, the Papacy becomes worried when those such as Martin Luther began complaining about the Church's practices. At this point, Luther breaks away, beginning Lutheranism. Fear of ...
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Slings for giant
What are giants
Giants are close cousin of humans, with only a few distinguishing features: first and foremost, their size. All of them are above 3 meters tall, with some nearing 4 meters - and with a ...
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Asymmetric Newton's Cradle as a 'rapidly' firing medieval weapon - Is it practical [closed]
I wish to project an iron or steel 'cannonball' at a fortification. I construct a Newton's Cradle but there is a very large ball at one end and a relatively small cannonball at the other.
NOTE - I use ...
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How can medieval people defend their settlements against Licorice Puddings?
I’m back with a question about the monsters of Algennon, a fantasy setting full of magic and danger. This question is about a member of the Pudding family (sluglike creatures that vary greatly in ...
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Amazon drones controlled by magic, how to control as many as possible with your brain given low technology level but runic alternative to coding [closed]
My research:
In the real world the technology to read and interpret the human brain has been arround for almost a century now and the idea of controlling devices with your brain has been around for ...
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Right of Conquest and Patrilineage [closed]
If I had a king who sits the throne by right of conquest. He has no natural born sons, but he does have a living father and a living younger brother. This is obviously throwing a wrench in my story ...
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How do you motivate people to post flyers around town?
This one feels a bit trivial, but I am genuinely stumped on how best to word a job specification that one of my characters is posting in a fantasy world.
The basic idea is I have a dwarf who is in a ...
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How can medieval people defend their settlements from Peasoupers (giant acid slugs)?
Yet another question about the world of Algennon and its many monsters, this one concerning Peasoupers. Basically, they are bright green slime-covered slugs the size of a human head. They have two ...
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What are the odds medieval individuals will recognize our time traveler's description of penicillin [closed]
Follow up on an old question/idea.
My 'time traveler' (actually more of a dimension hopper) got thrown into a roughly medieval feudal society, very closely modeled off of, but not the same as, ...
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What disease affects only the non-peasants?
Imagine a roughly medieval world with a feudal government.
I want a new disease to show up and spread rapidly which affects the nobility and leaders, but not the peasantry, setting up a situation for ...
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How can medieval peope defeat an army of volleyball-sized, armored, fire-breathing crabs? [closed]
In the world of Algennon humans are at a worldwide societal level equivalent to the Middle Ages. Humans also are divided into two subspecies: the Bellators (homo sapiens bellator) and the Plebeians (...
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What kind of arrow would knock someone over?
Tods Workshop on youtube did a video showing that real arrows would not knock someone off their feet.
Imagine a knight in armor is charging on foot at an archer. He wears a breastplate sufficient to ...
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How to make stealthier armor?
In my setting a colonial power at a late medieval level of technology has gifted its native allies with mail armor. The natives are quite happy to receive it, but are simultaneously frustrated. The ...
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Can a medieval fantasy world have a world war?
So I basically have a medieval fantasy world, where there are several empires on an Earthlike planet. These empires originated from early Bronze Age civilizations, and have stood the test of time in ...
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Would Tungsten be a useful material for medieval armor and weapons?
Tungsten is a very dense and robust metal that has the highest melting point and boiling point of any metal. This makes it very resilient in certain situations but also makes it hard to craft stuff ...
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What would people living on rocky terrain with access to a river use as building materials?
I'm looking for architectural inspiration for a city I'm designing, and I wonder what kind of building material would be used by the inhabitants.
They live at the foot of a mountain, relatively close ...
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Could a merchant city survive not having an military?
Picture a city set in the renaissance times (circa 1350, for example), a city surrounded by vast rich soil at the lip of a large bay. Given the city's close proximity to larger ally kingdoms (kingdoms ...
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What is the timeframe for this abandoned space colony revert to a medieval society?
An outpost on a 2G (gravity) water planet (95% of the world's surface covered by oceans) becomes stranded / abandoned by the Galaxy Government, probably forever. The warp gate in orbit broke, nobody ...
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Can the princess escape using shoddy craftsmanship in a one-sided lock?
In my story, the princess escapes her prison through the window. The window has a lock on it, made by a legendary locksmith, that's said to be unpickable. But either due to the locksmith not being ...
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If people in Iron Age times had access to uranium, would it be used over iron?
Let's say that in 1,200 BC, aliens secretly come to Earth and turn all of the uranium oxides into pure uranium.The aliens then leave and humans discover this new metal.
Uranium has a lower melting ...
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Is there a paternity test method given medieval level technology with low false positive rate?
Determining genetic fatherhood is very important in my worldbuilding experiment for lots of reasons, one being succession, but regardless it's the genetic component that's important But it's possible ...
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