LIFE AND TIME OF AN RL PEASANT
A.K.A.
ARTHRITIS, BUT I'M ONLY 38!
On the average, a man can expect to live 70 years nowdays, and a woman
80. We take it for granted, and many act as if it has always been that
way, but it hasn't, so why should we hold todays standards to a Gothic realm.
Mortality is truly fearsome, if the players suddenly see thier life expectancy
slashed a Ghost becomes a fearsome creature indeed.
In Ravenloft, a man is a greybeard if he made it past 40, and truly
wizened at 60, usually long dead by then. Woman make it to maybe 50,
if they don't die during childbirth (8 out of ten women do). Infants
live past the age of 5 just over half the time (3 out of five make it to
teens), and a teenage girl is wedded and pregnant while a modern girl is
still in junior high school.
Too many people will want to argue, having gotten their medieval age
theories from Disney. Bell in Beuaty in the Beast should have squeezed
out her second kid by 18, or been dead, her father was maybe 40, and Gaston
was a premo catch. Sure, he was a jerkoff, but at least she wouldn't
starve or be cold.
Ravenloft Babies: First
of all, these kids are born at home, sometimes with a midwife, but in the
outlying or isolated cases, just other closeby females in attendance.
A woman has a 60% chance of dying, either through exhaustion coupled with
the malnutrition that is an everyday part of life, or from the bleeding that
is caused by vaginal tearing when the baby comes out. A baby that comes
out sideways or backwards ends up dead or deformed, and in Ravenloft, deformed
means dead. A malformed baby may or may not be named before they are
left out to die, or smothered, or drowned. The baby sleeps in the same
bed as the mother, and is breast fed usually until age 2 at night, and eats
solids as soon as they begin grabbing them off the mothers plate.
Ravenloft Children (2-6):
Children of both sexes wear dresses, with a woven reed or metal band around
the bottom and in the middle, making it easier for the baby to learn to walk.
A baby who falls in a tabask never hits the floor, but instead leans
far forward and is then gently pushed back by the band. (Tidbit: This
was an actually piece of clothing in the 16 & 17 hundreds, and had been
around for centuries!) The child usually was encouraged to help with
small labours. Girls and boys were often seperated slightly, to see
what would become their peer group work. Children were to be seen not
heard, and learned early to be quiet. Child abuse was knocking out
one of thier teeth, or drawing blood. A hard ass beating or a thump
on the head was frowned on in public, but often went on in private.
Once they could walk well, the tabask was removed, and the child learned to
do small chores and help.
Children Aged 6-10: Went
to school if there was one. At night, the father read to them, or told
them stories that would teach morals and values in thier slow, subtle way,
and gave warnings not to go out after dark, not to trust strangers, and to
stay on the paths. (Grim Faerie Tales had a purpose beside entertainment)
Boys:11-15 Work in the fields
with thier fathers, uncles, brothers, ect, putting in a full workday of dawn
till dusk. At dusk these young men carry in wood and water before nightfall,
and are charged with gaurding the women and children if anything happens
while the men handle it. They are dominant over the women and the parents
will be hoping the boy shows some aptitude for the family business, or something
he might be able to be apprenticed to.
Girls 11-13: Are taught
sewing, household duties, and when they turn 13, are given advice for controlling
the man through sex and food. A girl of this age eagerly awaits her
First Blood, the sign that she is truly a woman and can now go out and look
for a mate. Although some girls may begin menstrating as early as 9,
she still must begin to grow breasts before getting married.
All right, time out real quick here.
Before I get hate mail saying I'm a pedophile or some other shit like that,
I want you to understand something right off. Women in the middle ages
who were 18 and unmarried were ugly or spinsters. I don't condone this,
or wish it was like that now, I'm just listing facts here, so don't jump
my case if you're offended. If you're that badly offended, invent a
damn time machine and take it up with the people who actually did it, or
do something usefull instead of ranting and raving at me. Personally,
I don't think some 30 year olds are mature enough to have kids, and some 20
years olds I know need to be sterilized before they breed and pollute the
gene pool, but hey, that's my opinion. If your a teen, and think that
this little article excuses sex, grow up and go somewhere else for excuses.
For those of you reading this as info, yes, I got on the average, three letters
a week calling me a pervert the last time I posted this, so I do have a reason
to be a bit nasty.
Boys (15+) are considered men. They
will be looking for wives, getting thier houses built or moving out, getting
jobs or becoming apprenticed, or joining whatever local military or law enforcement
they can. If they stay on the farm, they still take orders from thier
father, but are considered full grown adults.
Girls (13+) Any of these girls
who are beginning to show breasts and starting their menstrual cycle are
now considered women, and will be active in seeking a husband. By fifteen,
most of them will be married and have one child, some of them will be dead
in child birth, and others will still be looking.
Men (40+) These men have arthritis
and have grandkids now. They are definately toward the ass end of middle
age and are well aware of thier own mortality. Thier joints ache in
cold weather, and are considered an older man.
Women (35+) Hey,
they're still alive, pretty good. . By now, they are barren from uterine
scarring (good thing for them, another kid at this age WILL kill them), and
spend time caring for the house and the grandchildren. Hair is beginning
to grey, and wrinkles are definately making an appearance.
Men (50+) What the hell are you
doing still alive? You should have worked yourself to death by now,
you lazy bastard. Lucky you, retire onto the front porch and tell stories,
you'll be dead within a few years anyway. Say, don't those swollen
joints hurt, and isn't a little hard to eat with only three teeth?
Women(45+) WITCH!!!! BURN
HER!!! Maybe, most women are dead, and the rest are considered oma's
or grandmothers, often with great grandchildren. Some women are considered
wise women, or village elders, others were merely lucky and still live on
the farm. The farm women have nothing to lose, and are considered the
most expendable, so if the family needs wood in the middle of the night,
guess who gets to go get it. They can no longer produce children, have
trouble getting around, get chilled and sick easy, and don't make much contribution.
In some places, men above mid-forties and women in thier late thirties
will walk out into the woods to die of exposure or be eaten by a passing
Loup-Garou, or killed by trigger happy adventurers. Some take poison
tea or crumpets, and some will themselves to die in their sleep. All
of these rituals are very sacred to the people that make up that society,
and great respect is given to those who have the courage and wisdom to seek
their end at the proper time (No, this is not a plug for Euthenasia) The
worst thing a player character could do is climb on top of a pole held mat
to check out a travios with a body on it. They will have desecrated
the resting place of a sacred ancestor of someone, incurred the wrath of the
spirit, and in general, just fucked themselves.
The nobility and social elite get to add 10 to 15 years to this,
but hey, as little as that seems to us, that's another third of a lifetime
for them. The equivelant of getting an extra 25 years to us. Hmmm,
seems like quite a bit now, don't it? All those servants who dropped
dead caring for them kind of added to thier life span in a strange, parasitic
kind of way. Your typical noble woman also did not get married until
her late teens. By her mid twenties, her beuaty had faded, and she
was stuck as a spinster, unless she could pony up a good doury.
The day of a typical Ravenloft peasant? It goes something
like this.
1 hour before dawn
the chicken in the a cage in the kitchen begins crowing. The men get
up and dress while the women begin getting the fire going and the breakfast
cooked.
The men go and feed and milk the animals, and
the females finish breakfast.
The children are woken up, and the family eats.
The men go out to tend the animals, work the
fields, or what ever work they do.
The women clean the house, make blankets, preserve
food, fix clothing, ect....
Before noon, a cold lunch is made and two of
the small boys (5-6) are sent with a bucket of beer and the cold lunch to
the men.
Late evening, the older men go to the tavern,
sometimes taking their wives. The younger men return to bring in firewood,
milk and night feed the animals, ect..
The women make and serve dinner, then wash the
pots and dishes.
Before dark, everyone better be back, because
the doors are barred, and no one gets in.
The oldest male tells stories, and the children
are put to bed. Adults (15 and older men, breasted and bleeding women)
stay up and discuss the day, or the future, or just tell stories. Some
read from religous books.
Repeat after sleeping until dead
Boy, wish I could do that every day. No wonder the poor bastards
died so quick. Very few holidays, usually the summer and winter solstices,
and maybe a religous holiday or two. Remember also, in Ravenloft, about
ten or twelve per month, per domain are scarfed up by some wandering lycanthrope,
or had thier soul sucked out accidently by some wraith who floated by.
Ravenloft makes up for this by sucking in some peasant farmstead from another
world and altering memories all the way around. It also takes slightly
evil farmsteads, PC's who eventually retire, or builds villagers, townsmen
and farmsteads from scratch.
"The Ludendorf's, oh sure, they've always been there."-phrase
heard when the party questioned a villager about a farm that suddenly appeared
between one night and the next. Subscequent research found tax records,
marriage, death, birth and church records. According to the people's
memories and town records, the Ludendorf's had always been there.
And in Ravenloft, they had.
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