Tributary state model – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tributary_system_of_China

In the 1400s, Japan and Korea were paying tribute to China. In return, the Emperor recognised them as the legitimate rulers of their states.

It’s logical to say then the Aztec and the Inca would have become tributes in the same way.

I mean I already used the archive.org version for that reason but ok

A poorly fitted mouthguard increases the amount of times I say “sore gum”

bioreactors with edible yeast and precision fermentation are close to magic: grow kilograms of food in a barrel in your kitchen. Then there’s no logistical issues with food, spaceships can be self-sufficient.

I tend to agree.

Technically equally simple to change the routes of the existing voyages, but the decision in 1436 feels like such a decision, and therefore a crossroads-moment.

What I generally failed to consider (was posting at a very early stage of the process) was the diversity of island-types –

• With or without trees. Timber is important for fuel and ships, but it’s hard to grow trees here, especially on small islands. Big islands are likely to have trees in addition to other advantages.
• For geological reasons, the biggest islands are likely to have the deepest natural harbors, and therefore support foreign trade. Massive glaciers that left big deep fjords when they retreated.
• Treeless heath islands specialise in sheep (sheep eat plants, not trees)
• Islands with warm microclimates export vegetables (Summerisle in The Wicker Man… and for those of you who haven’t seen it it’s about a fictional Herbridean island with a warm microclimate and the economy specialises in apples and fruit&veg)
• ‘Productive rocks’ (skerries that accumulate seaweed) ship seaweeds to neighbouring islands/to market
• Islands with cliffs (as you said) export seabirds and eggs
• Islands with sea lochs give crab and oyster, horse mussel and brittlestar

Among these islands are generations-long trading partnerships formalized by marriage and gift-exchange.

Harsh winters or storms mean people migrate internally from the harshest parts. This could lead to rural depopulation.

I’m gonna worldbuild two islands with small cities (100-200k). Islands comparable in size to Zeeland or Bali. These cities have dry-stone warehouses, markets, taverns, fun. They have that snooty big-city-boy vibe where they invariably feel more sophisticated than more rural people.

If a fisher from another island is “poaching” your school, you’re likely to get mad

https://d-place.org/parameters/WNAI360

if some island discovers and introduces trawling, the entire island food economy could be put in jeopardy.

Fishing quotas are a major source of conflict in modern politics. And they’re very hard to enforce (cops at sea? an inspector on a vessel of hostile fishermen?)

the word “vegetables” is in the top post

skirret (sium sisarum) is one of the more interesting ones.

Lazy bed cultivation is relevant.

Then you’ve all your sea-vegetables, edible wracks and kelps and whatnot. A rock off the shore of your inhabited island might look useless, but it’s actually productive, growing vegetables at a good pace –

i agree with the other critiques in this thread re: wool and indigenous clothing

To be clear, I agree with Keld’s critique that my FaroeHebridesShetlandOrkneyIceland world diverges from precolonial Greenland (and, for that matter, from 4¾ century Borneo), but where I disagree with Keld is that Anglocentrism is the only solution. The reason for both these opinions is because of what I said in the bulk of the post, i.e. that it’s a FaroeHebridesShetlandOrkneyIceland world.

i enjoyed reading this, though it’s more world-expanding than worldbuilding, since there aren’t really any new elements added, just a “what if this thing was bigger”

This is a good criticism. I should work on that. I will have to think about the qualitative differences caused greater scale and less isolation. I have a bunch of heating technologies I can add, e.g. walipini and indoor compost heating (Jean Pain’s technology). I should add rope-bridges canonically like Inca ones or Carrick-a-Rede.

north germanic people living on cold humid windswept islands, living in turf houses and eating nothing but fermented puffin and massacred dolphins sounds very dystopian, and i would hate to live there.

People always hate cold places. The same thing in the tropics would sound so nice. If it helps, imagine being indoors by the fire in your turf home, with a blanket wrapped around you, your feet warming by the fire, and the storyteller starting up.

I throw almost everything in one .txt for easy searching.

If a really clear sub-category appears, they I create a second .txt file in the same folder. You can still search easily with grep

being in response to a post about Greenland

reading comprehension issue: the post is not about Greenland. The post is called “What if the Faroes+Hebrides+Shetlands+Orkneys+Iceland had the geography of Polynesia?”

Faroe Islands mean Far island islands.

No it means Sheep Islands Islands

Phillipa Chester Esther Benjamin Edwin Ezra Lucius Abram Lucretia Roderick Madeline Eleanor(a) Augustus Jeremiah Wyatt Ernest Louisa Josephine

What colonisation incident are you talking about? Of Greenland by Denmark?

Brendan in the 6th century called the Faroes an ‘Island of Sheep’, and sheep DNA was found there dating to the year 500.

Dicuil, writing around 825, so well before the 1380 colonisation of the Faroes, said it had innumerabilibus ovibus: “countless sheep”.

Sheep were so iconic of the early Faroes (a word meaning ‘sheep island’) that the stamp commemorating Brendan protrayed the island like this –

If you want to see what being a sheep based economy does to your clothes… look to England.

Bad idea, IMO. If you bypass the sheep islands that are the focus of my post, and instead look to England, you wind up with a totally different æsthetic, and a rather boring one. The standard fantasy setting does what you advocate – looks to England – and I think worldbuilders should remember that other cultures do in fact exist.

When thinking about politics, alleviate problems.

When creating fiction, make problems worse.

I agree the class-bias is “unsurprising” as you say.

thousands or millions of people get “involved”

like you said, it’s for “control of a kingdom”

most of them from the black world have black casts from what I have seen

Like I dont think there is a single fantasy or sci-fi show/movie with an entirely black cast at least that I know off.

Have you been reading books from Africa?

I’ll edit the post

and Tyler and Megan and Brad don’t work… gotta mash up that time-continuum

Look at these two users with the knowledge