Welcome to the Dark Ages!

Welcome to the Dark Ages! As you all know, our game is set in a medieval fantasy environment. It is our experience that 21st century players can have some difficulty adjusting to a 14th century mindset. This is why we made this guide to medieval society. Hopefully it will help you understand some of the basic underlying assumptions of the people and the kingdom of Saphriel.

What this guide is (and what it is not) This is guide is just that: a series of explanations and guidelines. It is meant to explain how people generally view the world – and this means the NPC population specifically. It is not a set of rules to be strictly followed by every player character. Your character may of course have their own beliefs and opinions, and those might deviate from those of the general populace. But you should be aware when that is the case, because your character would certainly know. This guide is meant to explain what their (NPC) peers would think, why they respond to your character’s views as they do, and to help you determine a mode of thinking that is appropriate to the period and setting in those cases where you find yourself struggling. In short: this is all background information that is meant to be helpful, not imperative. Also, please note that this guide is a work in progress. It was created in response to issues people had in the past, and may be expanded at later points to address new ones. If you have a question about it, or you would like to see a particular matter elucidated in this guide, please feel free to contact staff. Disclaimer We are aware that the mindset described below is still a stereotype and a generalization that cannot be considered fully accurate to any specific date or location in real life medieval society. If you care to read academic research on the subject you will naturally find a much more nuanced and thorough description. We are settling for generalizations because this is ultimately a (fantasy) game and not an attempt to faithfully recreate the later middle ages in any given part of the world. General reference The general reference for Saphriel is 14th century western Europe (England, France), with obvious fantasy elements.

The population The population of the Kingdom comprises all of the known races. Officially the elves are citizens of the Elven Kingdom, but this matters little with regard to these guidelines. Although it is thoroughly self-evident, we want to stress that the population of the Kingdom comprises far more than just the player characters. The streets of Falkvard and Barkamsted are teeming with NPCs going about their daily lives; there are people working on the docks, shopping in the markets, and children playing in the parks. Sadly we do not have the processing power (or the staff) needed to fill the world with tons of villagers, so we must ask that you use some imagination here.

Medieval society: structure Odds are that you, the player, were lucky enough to be born into the 20th or 21st century free world. Although naturally this is not completely true, generally you have every opportunity to do and become anything you wish – a newspaper boy could become a multi-millionaire. Life in the middle ages did not provide you with that much freedom. Typically a person was born into a certain class, which dictated who they were, what they would do for a living, and that was the end of that. If you were born a peasant, tough luck. There was precious little social mobility in the middle ages; people generally accepted their place. This changed a little after the Black Death swept through Europe in the middle of the 14th century, a cataclysmic event that was, in some way, not entirely unlike the Pact War in Saphriel in the fact that it decimated the population. This created a labor market that favored the workers, so that peasants started to get some wriggle room to demand higher wages and physical mobility (it was effectively the end to serfdom, which tied people to specific patches of land). In Saphriel, the rigid medieval society that existed before the Pact War will still be firmly set in most people’s minds, but like post-Black Death Europe, there are some new opportunities for social changes. Most of the population are still keenly aware of their station in life, while also tentatively experimenting with improving their lot in life within existing class structures. Peasants versus nobility Class-based society is (or we generally feel: should be) a thing of the past in the 21st century. It is still felt, but we now know – we have enshrined in our legal system and our shared culture – that all men are created equal. That thought is nigh unthinkable to the average medieval mind. It is a well-known fact in Saphriel that peasants are not simply the social inferiors to the nobility, they are the physical, intellectual and moral inferiors as well. Nobles are simply better people; why else would they be in charge? The idea that nobles are conceited, lazy, spoiled and useless is not only unthinkable, but also reflects an extremely poor understanding of the realities of Saphriel society: it was the nobles who led the fight against the Pact and the nobles who created the safe haven for people at Barkamsted. When the going gets tough, the lower classes look to the higher for leadership and protection. While most if not all of the old human and dwarven nobility perished in the fight, these truths still apply to those who replaced them. And naturally it applies to the surviving lords of the elves, who sustained heavy losses and are well-known for their harsh upbringing to meet the high demands of their station. Calling any of these people pampered will see you considered a fool at best by the general populace, and may actually incite hostility at worst. Human rights Human whats? The idea that a person has intrinsic rights simply because they are human seems natural to us, but it was not actually wide-spread until the revolutionary era of the late 18th century. Rights in medieval society were a novel thing and typically linked to your station as a noble or a citizen of a certain city (and an adult male with a certain level of income at that). In Saphriel, intrinsic rights are non-existent and if you claim them, you will not be understood, let alone that your presumed rights would be respected. This does not mean that you are without protections, just that people will give you blank looks if you think you are entitled to them just because you are a person. Rule of law One of the core concepts of the modern legal system is the rule of law: the idea that the government and all of its agencies are bound by the law that they uphold. This includes the concept that if a certain action is not prohibited by an existing law, it is not a crime and you may not be punished for it. It also includes the idea that the King is bound to follow the laws just the same as everyone else. Sorry, none of this was remotely true in the middle ages and the rule of law equally does not exist in Saphriel. If the guard tell you that it is illegal to have bunny-related orgies in your house, that’s how it is, and it is no use arguing that the law book says nothing about it. Discrimination If the notions of class society and the lack of human rights did not make this evident, let us be very explicit: discrimination is common, accepted, and not an issue in any way in Saphriel. You will find that you will not be allowed to do certain things, take certain professions or go certain places simply because you are a peasant, or a woman, or a certain race. Most people find this perfectly normal, and this includes those who are being discriminated against. It goes without saying that this applies to Pact races in particular. While the people of Falkvard are a little more open to them (those in Barkamsted generally still hold deep suspicions), Pact races are lucky that they can walk around the Kingdom unscathed. You have to remember that they caused the near annihilation of the known world and almost every person, NPC or PC, has lost family and friends to the war, so it is no wonder that Pact races are treated differently. But, as said, the same applies to gender and class. Sexuality There are so many modern concepts involved with the way we see sexuality today, it is hard to know where to even start. Let’s first look at the notion that sexuality is part of your identity. You ‘are’ heterosexual or homosexual. This is not something that would have been understood by someone in the 14th century. Sexuality refers to something you do, not something you are, just as we do not differentiate people by whether they prefer apples or pears. This explains why homosexual acts were penalized: you cannot very well criminalize an identity, but it is very easy to criminalize an action. This is exactly what happens in Saphriel, especially among people who desperately need population boosts (the elves in particular) because they have a very real stake in the production of children. The notion that homosexuality is okay is one that is only now, in the 21st century, starting to become marginally accepted, so it should come as no surprise whatsoever that the population of Saphriel considers it aberrant and wrong. Just to note explicitly: this is not a view any of our staff endorse out of character. It is the way the medieval people of Saphriel see things. On a related note, free sexuality is a notion born from the 1960s hippy culture. While people in the medieval era were not completely uptight about sexual propriety (that was a Victorian development), things like openly sleeping around, keeping multiple partners around and having one-night stands are all heavily frowned upon. You can usually expect social backlash for these things, especially if you happen to be female. Faith It is incorrect to assume that everyone in the middle ages spent every waking moment praying to God. However, faith did play a huge role in people’s everyday lives, and the idea of a separation of church and state was unheard of (like human rights this is an Enlightenment idea). So it is in Saphriel. While most of the old, official ways of worshiping the pantheon of gods have been lost in the fires of the Pact War, the people at large still worship these gods, though some obviously more devoutly than others. It is rare in the extreme to find someone who will openly admit to not worshiping at all, and such a statement would be met with suspicion. The worship of Behmos, patron of the Pact, is not only illegal under Kingdom law, but will also be treated with extreme hostility by the common people. Atheism, more specifically the denial that the gods even exist, is nonexistent in Saphriel for the obvious reason that the gods are known to be real; it would be akin to not believing in magic. Or in cows. Old age (and family composition) The 20th and 21st century have a youth-based culture. We are used to thinking of youth as hip, with it, young is the thing to be. We think of old people are either adorable, or stodgy sticks-in-the-mud, but either way we tend not to take them as seriously. In the 14th century, average life expectancy was thirty for women and fifty for men. While these numbers are affected by high infant mortality, reaching a ripe old age was still far more rare than it is today, and, perhaps as a result, old people were treated very differently. Those who reach old age were treated with respect; they were considered wise and knowledgeable, and took the central place in families reserved these days for children, who were considered immature whippersnappers, expected to shut up and learn. This is no different in Saphriel, where it is rare to meet truly old people. In addition to the usual nasty mortality rates, the war obviously took a huge toll on the population. As a result, families will consist of large numbers of children (less than half of whom are expected to survive to adulthood), and be lucky to have any surviving grandparents. This family composition is less common to the elves, where old age does not soon bring the type of frailty and ailments that make you an easier prey in battle, and where breeding rates prevent large numbers of offspring. Mobility The medieval world was a dangerous one. Roads were poor and means of travel extremely expensive. Forests and mountainous regions were hard to patrol and resources for this were often lacking, exposing travelers to risks of bandits and wild animals alike. Thus it is in Saphriel. While the ferry service between Barkamsted and Falkvard is relatively safe, the country roads are not well maintained and not safe. Guard presence focuses on the cities. Traveling the ocean is a perilous undertaking – ships are rickety, expensive, and most people can’t swim too well. As a result, physical mobility of the general populace is extremely limited. Only merchants tend to travel. Most people only ever took to the road when the Pact forced them out of their homes. Literacy Literacy was reserved only to nobles and scholars back in the day – and some nobles did not much bother with it either. This is a little different in Saphriel, as owing to the medium in which we play most player characters must be able to read. You can expect that most of the higher-class NPCs know how to read and write. When it comes to the lower classes, however, this is not necessarily the case. While literacy is more wide-spread than it would be in 14th century Europe, don’t be surprised if the average dock worker doesn’t answer your letters.