Folk

Every village, town, castle and manor is lived in.

Households

Each house, farmhouse, alehouse and inn has a household: a man and a woman, a third grown one three times in ten, an elder about one time in three, and none to three children. A forester’s lodge has two grown folk, and an almshouse four elders. A castle’s, manor’s or inn’s own servants, grooms and clerks sleep in its keep or hall.

Half the folk are women. Every grown woman works a trade like a man.

Trades

Every grown man and woman works at one of the place’s buildings: the mill, bakehouse, smithy, a stall, the tannery, a workshop, the inn, the temple, a woodcutters’ camp, a quarry or a fish weir. The heads (reeve, mayor, knight, castellan and lord) mind their hall’s door. In a village or manor the rest farm, about one in six herding. In a town they labour about the market and storehouses.

A town’s workers whose workplace stood idle for want of goods spend the day about the square or at their door, and more go to the alehouse.

The day

Time	What they do
An hour before sunrise	Wake; some fetch water at the well
Sunrise	Work begins
Noon to one	Break
Half an hour before sunset	Work ends (at sunset in winter)
Evening	Some go to the alehouse
Three and a half hours after sunset	Asleep indoors

Children play on the green, if it is within 250 m of home, or by their door. Elders sit at their door, now and then on the green.

The year

When	Work
1st of spring	The priest blesses the fields
3rd to 6th of summer	Half the farmers and every herder mow the hay meadows
1st to 8th of autumn	Everyone, children too, reaps the corn
Winter	Threshing in the barns

The heads, the miller, the smith, the priest and the alewife do not reap.

Market, rest and feasts

On Discday, twice as many townsfolk go to the square at noon, and three in ten of the grown folk of a village within 1.2 km of a town walk in to buy until 13:00. On Sunday and the feasts they go to the temple in the morning and rest after, and more go to the alehouse. On the Greening, Midsummer and Harvest Home they gather on the green, or the square in a town. On the Goddess’s Night they pray in the temple at dusk and every grown one drinks in the alehouse. See Calendar.

Alarm

When an army hostile to the place’s kingdom, or out raiding, comes within 1.5 km and is not routed, or in the six hours after a raid, everyone sprints indoors: home, or in a village the temple if it is much nearer. The gates shut, and drawbridges rise.

A village risen for the old way keeps its holy days on the green. When its lord’s men come near, its grown folk stand sullen at their doors while the rest hide.

Struck down

Your sword, with no soldier in reach, cuts down the nearest grown man or woman it reaches. Children are never struck. One blow kills, and the dead lie where they fell while you are near.

Each death counts against the place. Its share of living grown folk falls, the killer’s lord loses renown, a village loses goodwill, and the minstrels sing of it. A raid on the map kills a twentieth of a village’s grown folk. The dead are made up slowly, from none to full in a year, and a raided village has fewer people about.

Heads

The heads of places are people with names, faces, skills and records. A head away with an army, held captive or dead is not at home. See Diplomacy.