"Burn the cities, but leave the farms, and the cities will grow from the ashes. But burn the farms, and grass will grow through the cobbles on every city street."
- —Anonymous farmer[1a]
A farmer of the Old World
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture to sell the produce on a market, rather than just for their own and their family's subsistence like many peasants. This is a relatively new innovation in the economy of the Old World.[1a]
The old feudal order of the Empire is no longer what it once was, and a new enterprising "middle class" is bridging the gap between the poorest peasants and nobles. In cities, burghers who earn their wealth through control of craft, trade and commerce have begun to appear. Their equivalent in the countryside is an emerging class of landed gentry.[1a]
Land is often parcelled out to commoners as a reward for military service, or merchants invest their wealth by purchasing the estates of impoverished nobles. More rarely, tenant peasants save enough to buy the fields they till from their lord.[1a]
Land is inherited, but no farmer's claim yet spans more than a couple of generations. A farmer employs many hands to work the land, but they toil as hard as any of the poorer peasants, for the wealth that hard work brings provides a significant social standing in the rural community.[1a]
Farmers in the Old World[]
The Old World has many mouths to feed; grain provides the grist for mills and the base ingredient for spirits. But crops of any kind are hard to grow in the Old World. A hostile climate is but one obstacle, but there is also the constant footfall of armies trampling over any hard-won harvest. Yet lack of supply certainly doesn't create demand, and the grain that does make it to market is depressed in price as the population of many regions attaches more value to cold steel than food.[2d]
Farms large and small cross the Old World –- growing crops, especially grains, for the crowded towns and cities. To be a farmer is a trial as perilous as any soldier's career. The weather in the Old World is unpredictable and tainted by the whims of Chaos –- it may rain teeth as well as water. Then, often far from the relative safety of the towns and villages, there are bandits and other fell things like Beastmen to deal with.[2e]
Wherever the forest breaks, large swathes of land are given over to agriculture, most of which is owned by nobles. While the territories of Bretonnia and the Empire are vast, much of them lie under a dense forest canopy. Where the sun is allowed to touch the ground, agriculture is a priority. Landed estates are noble-owned farms of prodigious acreage, producing many tonnes of arable crops for the markets which make their owners ever-richer -– generally at the expense of those poor peasants who work the land.[2f]
Farmers in Bretonnia[]
The tools and agricultural techniques used by Bretonnian peasants are considered by many to be rather backwards compared to those used by the other nations of Men in the Old World. Occasionally, cost-effective solutions developed by their counterparts in the Empire are adopted, while others less so. The main problem is that good tools are hard to find in Bretonnia and hence, are much more expensive. This means that less affluent Bretonnian nobles will not often see good reason to provide their peasant workers with better equipment if it can be avoided -- to them, there is simply no reason to make a peasant's job easier at a greater cost to themselves.[2h]
Although water-pumping technology could be used to bring fresh water to the Bretonnian peasants, instead of the stagnant well water they are forced to drink, that is not considered important by the nobles whose land they work. As far as they are concerned, increasing produce yields is far more important than the needs of their workers, and so they are forbidden from using them for their own purposes. When more crops are grown than are needed to sustain the population, the excess can be used to trade with merchants for those essential luxuries –- wine, for instance. Any other considerations, such as the welfare of the peasant population, are irrelevant.[2j]
The ability of the knightly class to effectively defend Bretonnia from harm rests with the peasants, who work the land to provide their nobles with the sustenance needed to fight wars in their name. The sheer amount of arable land in the region means that the waterways feeding the crops must work efficiently, lest the yields produced not be high enough.[2i]
By digging irrigation ditches, water can be directed to man-made watering holes around the foothills, where the pastoral farmers graze their animals, and to the rolling fields where maize and other cereal crops are grown for their masters' tables. The peasants themselves, however, rarely benefit from the abundance of high quality meat and fresh vegetables produced, and must content themselves with the gruel and scraps that are the lot of their pathetic, near-worthless lives.[2i]
Bretonnian peasants are required to work the fields and provide for the realm, yet they do not do so entirely without aid. Great mills, built to grind grain for storage, can be powered by the back-breaking work of man or horse, but there is much greater efficiency to be found by harnessing the strength of wind and water. As grain is fundamental to the survival of both peasant and high-born alike, the mills of Bretonnia are crucial to the agricultural economy that keeps the realm alive.[2g]
Farmers in Sylvania[]
The low-born of Sylvania that have heartbeats must still make a living. Most do so in the cursed fields, tending to withering crops. The parts of Sylvania not covered by blackened moors or twisted forests have fields of withering crops. Nothing good can grow in Sylvania due to the ever-present necromantic taint of Dark Magic, yet the smallfolk must make a living as well as eat. They tend the cursed fields, growing stunted crops of pathetic yields and bare grazing for the skinny cattle to feed on.[2a]
Sylvanian peasants tend to wretched farms, continuing the pretence that the realm's nobles are kind and generous lords. The peasants have known for years that their landlords are Undead monsters, but to acknowledge it is to bring down ruination. As such, they continue to live under a pall of servitude and darkness, never being rich enough to move away. They collect what harvests they can, always knowing a von Carstein Vampire Lord or his minions may summon them to the castle at any time.[2b]
The black bread of Sylvania is an acquired taste. Its loaves are black and lumpen; the flour used in its baking sourced from the haunted mills by the blood-clotted streams, whose weed-swaddled water wheels turn at night to produce a course meal of grain mixed with ground bone. The bread tastes abominably sour. Nevertheless, the loaves are sold and voraciously consumed by the always-hungry Sylvanian populace.[2c]
Farmers in Kislev[]
"Those who scrape a living tending livestock on the steppes know the warning signs of an invading force, and can give fair warning to the authorities. "
- —Description of Kislev steppe shepherd in Total War: Warhammer III[3d]
The less transient ethnic Ungols of Kislev eke out a living on small farmsteads that dot the oblasts. When their farms grow, they will try to breed the prized steeds that are paramount for the tribal horse archers and scouts. The larger, more permanent farms are almost always owned -- but certainly not tended -- by the druzhina, the Kislevite lower nobility of Gospodar extraction.[3a][3b][3c]
Farmers in Lustria[]
Even when they have crossed the seas the diseases, beasts and storms of the jungles take a heavy toll on Old Worlder settlers in Lustria, but the land is rich, fertile, and bountiful, and the fields yield a plentiful harvest twice a year.[4a]
For the first Norscan settlers of Skeggi, adjustment to the radically different tropical environment of Lustria proved difficult at first: there were no whales to hunt or seals for skins. Jungle pigs were farmed and added to the Norscans' primarily seafood-based diet; skins were replaced with grass weaves. The strange tropical mead of Skeggi, made from honey taken from bees the size of dogs, is mildly hallucinogenic and sweeter than any other known beverage.[6a]
Agriculture is also not an alien concept to the Lizardmen, as they farm many breeds of insects, often in great domes that buzz with the sound of the swarms. Insects are a large part of the Lizardmen diet, which the jungles have in abundance. Additionally, jungle clearings and waterholes where prey gather are often protected as a form of husbandry for the Lizardmen, for many among them, especially Saurus, are meat-eaters, and so they breed many animals to slaughter and consume.[5a][5b][5c][5d]
The Lizardmen have tamed many of Lustria's creatures, and these are usually kept in corrals outside of temple-city limits. In these cultivated areas, Stegadon and Bastilodon are left free to graze. Meanwhile, Salamanders and Razordon are lured to patches of swamp with the promise of good nesting and plentiful food left by (and sometimes made of) Skink handlers. Alongside corrals, artificial caves replicate the Cold Ones' natural habitats. These are essentially stables for the Lizardmen's cavalry, their Saurus riders living close by in an attached barracks.[6b]
Those used to the agricultural practices of other cultures may see little to separate these spaces from the surrounding jungle, as the Lizardmen do not cut back the vegetation. They have no need to, for their creatures are perfectly adapted to Lustria's environment. Granaries and meat storage houses may also exist beyond the bounds of the temple-city, providing well-hidden supplies in case of attack or contamination. The Lizardmen have learned from their struggles with the Skaven of Clan Pestilens to keep a number of granaries independent of each other.[6b]
Sources[]
- 1: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Career Compendium (RPG)
- 1a: pg. 75
- 2: Total War: Warhammer (PC Game)
- 2a: Cursed Fields (building description)
- 2b: Wretched Farmstead (Building description)
- 2c: Haunted Mill (building description)
- 2d: Fields (building description)
- 2e: Farm (building description)
- 2f: Landed Estate (building description)
- 2g: Windmill (building description)
- 2h: Improved Agricultural Tools (technology description)
- 2i: Irrigation Ditches (technology description)
- 2j: Water Pumps (technology description)
- 3: Total War: Warhammer III (PC Game)
- 4: White Dwarf 204 (UK Edition)
- 4a: pg. 37
- 5: Total War: Warhammer II (PC Game)
- 6: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition: Lustria (RPG)