kårroť scratchpad (necroes still welcome)

[mèþru]

I have calculated that the average high tide is between 4-5 meters tall. As the humans of my conworld are somewhat shorter than the modern average human instead of being 16 foot giants, this is going to have to heavily figure in how coastal peoples live their lives.

[mèþru]

Spring tide is 8.9 meters, neap tide 0.3
In Faqeg, some beaches become plateaus during low tide!

[mèþru]

I guess also a lot of good fishing can be done between the extremes just by quickly carrying off the corpses and kelp deposited

[mèþru]

To be clear, these are the numbers for the open ocean, which is about 0.6 meters on Earth.

[mèþru]

It gets even worse, as the oceans on kårroť are much shallower than on Earth, so the average difference between the coasts' and open oceans' tides are several times greater, even though the oceans are smaller too!

[mèþru]

oh my this changes so much stuff I planned regarding the civilisations of sentient cephalopods: they can basically own most of the intertidal zones in their ocean, even once humans come
there can be cephalopod cities that spend part most of the day underwater but do metalworking when the tides are low

[mèþru]

and all human coastal cultures will be considered Crazy Awesome by their further inland neighbours; plus I can now justify having trade by sea limited to a small number of ethnic groups
having the people crazy enough to be willing to fight at sea as subjects would automatically grant you great power status

[mèþru]

Now, my semi-major axis number is definitely wrong (it is lower than the supposed mean distance of my planet to its star!), but it is close enough that it still gives a good idea of how crazy my tides are.

[mèþru]

I had a group of islands (well, large rocks TBH) that played a large role in history and were home to a kingdom of pirates. Now I sue that the islands are probably uninhabitable, being at least neck height underwater twice a day.
Which also makes the salt on the islands only minable when tech gets to da Vinci's scuba gear level
Salt is rarer than on Earth, so I wanted it te be a valuable yet unlivible archipelago. I didn't mean this level of unlivible though!
assuming that the shallower oceans make the tides 1.75 times stronger and that the average Earth high tide at the coast is 2.5 metres, that makes the average high tide about 21 times the height of the average karroch human
coasts are basically uninhabitable at 0 distance between land and sea at neutral tide
even worse, as there are two moons, the high tide varies heavily in how high it is and the time between high and low tide also varius heavily. There can even be two high tides in quick succession! I guess that kills my easy fishing idea

[mèþru]

when the moons are at 90 degrees, there is almost no tide at all, even at the coasts.

[mèþru]

Coinage in most countries comes in the shape of a rounded square. Forgers sometimes make circular coins. It is a well known trick: there are sayings and idioms about the unobservant idiots who get tricked by actual circular coins.

[mèþru]

There are fruits whose seeds are effective at temporarily reducing male fertility, but they only grow in places where the temperatures never dip below -2 C. The unripe fruit can also act as an abortifacient with something like 30% success rate.

I haven't decided on the social effects, but I'm sure that tropical nations will try to control all trade of the fruits with outsiders. When some nations begin making colonies from others across the ocean, the new colonies can grow them in bulk, ensuring cheaper prices.

[mèþru]

Going back to my fictional society where they have gender roles that are not based on sex
I'm trying to figure out how their sea trade works. This society highly values trade and merchants who go to other cultures are a religious position. But the sea is a great opportunity to defy the traditional roles and prohibition on romantic relations between the two main genders (members of the religious hierarchy are celibate and "genderless", like children)
This should degrade sailors as immoral, leading to a negative value on sea trade. How can I avert this?

[mèþru]

To be specific, only the merchants they are escorting are celibate, but the sailors are all the same gender - so sex between the sailors would be strictly taboo

[Xwtek]

Going back to my fictional society where they have gender roles that are not based on sex
I'm trying to figure out how their sea trade works. This society highly values trade and merchants who go to other cultures are a religious position. But the sea is a great opportunity to defy the traditional roles and prohibition on romantic relations between the two main genders (members of the religious hierarchy are celibate and "genderless", like children)
This should degrade sailors as immoral, leading to a negative value on sea trade. How can I avert this?

I don't understand why you don't make the sailor genderless too.

Also, there is a reason why Medieval societies are misogynist. Initially human and woman were about equal in hunter-gatherer society. The invention of farming made men had more free time. That free time was used for military, knowledge, etc. Men could use the time for prestigious things. Woman, having job of raising children, in contrast, didn't get her job easier. That's why women were expected to stay in the kitchen. In modern times, the invention of schooling, instant formula, baby sitter, along with decrease in the number of children (because of advances in medicine, and the knowledge that earth is crowded), makes the woman ability to take thing that previously only men could take.

You have to explain why women have a free time in your world.

[mèþru]

I have a solution: the oarsmen are all slaves from trade or other city-states. No one will care how slaves defile each other.

[Pedant]

One must wonder: what sort of things do the sailors trade? What's their medium of exchange? How are naval voyages financed (if at all)? How much of a hand does the government have in this--and what's the government like?

[mèþru]

There are two main institutions: direct democracy assemblies of free warriors and the temples. Merchants are part of the priesthood and therefore trade is, in theory, the purview of the city's high priest, but, in practice, the assemblies decide where the merchants go and fund the voyage. The temple then divies the resources among the families as it wishes. It gives to the rich families it wants to curry favour with or reward, or to the poor to gain the masses' support. If a family is given more than they need (which usually happens among the rich), they then sell it to the poor or middle class. Items needed for foreign trade are kept by the temple when requested by the assembly or if the temple decides to not let anyone know they have them.

The merchants carry a variety of currencies, but they do barter in most lands.

[mèþru]

I need to rework a lot of things because using some new equations I have determined that kårroť is not merely warm but an unlivable hellhole.

[mèþru]

I realised I just used the wrong number in an input somewhere. I don't need to rewrite everything after all!