Q&A about details of the time and the location

Story & Setting
#1

For the location and time of the game:

(Edit: I have added some answers of the forum members.)

  1. Who was allowed to have Weapons? A: everyone
  2. What was the currency? A: Prague Groschen
  3. How does the position of Henry compare to a serf and to a artisan in a city?
  4. Was the „Mordhau“ common?
  5. There is a mill but the crop isn’t grown yet. Where was the corn stored? A: granary
  6. Did they have apples in july?
  7. Henry is reading in one minigame. Was that common in his position? A: no
  8. Which language should Henry speak? A: Czech, Bohemian tongue
  9. Henry can hunt a pig but has no fridge. What would he actually do with so much food? A: drie, salt, sun, smoke
  10. Where did the iron of the lokal blacksmiths come from? A: imported
  11. How does the price of a yellow dyed textile compares to blue dyed textile?
  12. Did they have much cows and pigs? Was production of milk and cheese common? A: yes
  13. How expensive was salt? And was honey the only sweet thing?
  14. The people will drink much beer. Where will it come from? A: was cooked everywhere(?) in Bohemia
  15. How long could you store beer back then, before it was going to be bad?
  16. How expansive was a bread, a sword, a horse, a simple house?
  17. How long did it take to build a simple house (normally)?
  18. How does the number of free peasants compares to the serf peasants?
  19. How does the number of peasants, artisans, nobiles and cleriks compares to each other?
  20. Was it safe to drink water out of streams? A: no

Feel free to add more small answers about the time and location of the game. I would suggest to continue counting (21., 22., …). Would be great if some people have answers. Maybe qoute the question and write the answer below or just write for example: 17= one year.

Update 1:
21. Who owns the granary?
22. Is everybody able to smoke/drie/salt meat? (Im thinking about the movie „Into the wild“)
23. Is there a special building to preserve meat?
24. Will there be something like caravans for the huge amount of beer?
25. Do shoes have leather and does it come from hunting or farming?
26. Is hunting a privelege of nobiles?
27. Did everybody get a small piece of bread in church on Sunday? (like today)
28. Where was cheese stored? (I think he needs a special place)
29. Are clothes more made out of wool or from linnen(flax)?
30. How many trees will be cut on the map in one week?
31. What was more common: wearing sword on the body or put it on the horse?
32. Fields for crop, hop, flax and gras (cows, sheeps). Anything more?
33. What was used as bed? / What is a bed in this time?
34. Did they have pots and pans? How did they cook?
35. Did every peasant family eat alone in their house (normally)?
36. How far could a peasant count?
37. Did people use the duodecimal system and did they count with fingers?
38. What did peasants do when it was to rainy or to dark for working outside?
39. How many percent of the people will be ill/invalid normally?
40. Should there be homeless people?

2 Likes
#2

1 everyone
2 Prague Groschen
5 granary
7 no
8 Czech
9 dried meat - salt and sun
10 mostly imported
12 production of milk and cheese was common, even horse milk
13 honey and fruits
14 beer was cooking in Bohemia since 993
15 longer than today without pasterisation, more expensive beer was denser. It was called (and still is) "liquid bread"
20 no, to quench thirst and not to expose themselves to bowel disease people drink just beer, even children (not kidding)

#3

Smoking, salting, drying to preserve the meat.

As they had no real fertilizers and pesticides seeping from the fields into the streams, it must have been quite safe to drink that water.

#4

Actually, no, it wasn’t that safe to drink water, especially not in towns or cities. People in medieval drank a lot of beer (or wine for the upper classes) mixed with water. Not just because it tasted better than water but also because the alcohol killed the microorganisms in the water… :wink:

#5

Bohemian tongue, a medieval version of Czech

If he is able to read and write he probably is able to speak a medieval version of German as well.

#6

I know, but i thought, as the story will be settled in the countryside, there won’t be much sewage to pollute the streams. At least the water of some nearby springs should be clean.

#7

@Dekssan good answers. Could you repair the numbers in your post?
.
21. Who owns the granary?
22. Is everybody able to smoke/drie/salt meat? (Im thinking about the movie „Into the wild“)
23. Is there a special building to preserve meat?
24. Will there be something like caravans for the huge amount of beer?
25. Do shoes have leather and does it come from hunting or farming?
26. Is hunting a privelege of nobiles?
27. Did everybody get a small piece of bread in church on Sunday? (like today)
28. Where was cheese stored? (I think he needs a special place)
29. Are clothes more made out of wool or from linnen(flax)?
30. How many trees will be cut on the map in one week?
31. What was more common: wearing sword on the body or put it on the horse?
32. Fields for crop, hop, flax and gras (cows, sheeps). Anything more?
33. What was used as bed? / What is a bed in this time?
34. Did they have pots and pans? How did they cook?
35. Did every peasant family eat alone in their house (normally)?
36. How far could a peasant count?
37. Did people use the duodecimal system and did they count with fingers?
38. What did peasants do when it was to rainy or to dark for working outside?
39. How many percent of the people will be ill/invalid normally?
40. Should there be homeless people?

#8

I tried, but that stupid forum formatting keeps “repairing” it into this …

#9

ad 11. I touched this topic few weeks ago. Not sure about the price, but Görlitz was a local (~150 km to north) center for making dyes, blue color included. Blue dye was made predominantly from the plant Isatis tinctoria which is native to the lands.

ad 13. I have this written somewhere. Main source of salt for the lands was Austria (Saltzburg, unsurprisingly). There was a special craft called Materialist who, among other materials like lime, handled distribution of salt.

ad 14. any fermented bewerage was basically healthier than water (unless there was a fresh source of water, still risky though) so it was very common to drink beer and similar stuff. Breweries were very common and quite profitable therefore they were mostly owned by the lords. Home breweries were very common although illegal.

ad 22. Depends on local laws proclaimed by lords. Mostly the crafts and quilds (more craftsmen united) had guarantied monopolies on production of certain stuff. Sometimes whole cities had monopolies over others. Clashes between crafts were very common. How do you differ a knife and a shortsword and who can decorate their grips (different crafts - armourer and cutler) for example? The situation with meat is as follows: butcher had monopoly on selling fresh meat. Others could sell only preserved (salted, smoked) meat. Therefore anybody could dry meat it seems.

ad 25. Again depends on domain. Furrier had the right for hunting (mostly) and to sell unprocessed furs (common black market with fresh meat outside city walls BTW). He sold it to a tanner. Tanner had monopoly on processing and selling procesed leather. This then went to shoemakers.

ad 26. Therefore yes. Everything in the woods was in posession of the lord. you had to have special rights.

ad 33. Common people slept on hay or on a wooden bench. Only nobles or rich citizens (townsman?) had proper beds. Nobles with canopy mostly.

ad 40. Yes.

3 Likes
#10

That beer was drunk because it was healthier than water is a myth and it is worrying to see a team member perpetuate it. Wells and springs were perfectly acceptable and abundant sources of good drinking water, people were adept at recognizing fresh and spoiled water as well as preventing human waste from contaminating it, even in cities. Both Oxford’s Food in Medieval England, and Daily Living in the Twelfth Century by Holmes go into some detail on this.

Yes.

#11

@MadSmejki Thank you for all this interesting answers. Hm … now I would like to ask wich of these interesting facts are represented in the game, but I am not sure if this would be a kind of overstressing…

Looks like hunting wouldnt be so easy then… I mean, we are not allowed to hunt without special rights. Even if we hunt a boar (for ex.) then we can not simply sell the meat… etc.

Will all this profession be in the game? (Matterialist, brewer, cutler, butcher, furrier, tanner, shoemakers, … and much more) Will there be guilds/“Zünfte”? Is Henry (as blacksmith) from the beginning in such a guild? Therfore: Is he a (serf) peasant or a home-, city- and guildless craftsman? A craftsman “outside city walls”?

BTW: I have seen that Görlitz had the “staple right” for woad (isatis tinctoria). The woad itself came from Erfurt (~ 300km to west). Therefore I assume that blue was expensive…

#12

And they are both about different time or place aren’t they?

That’s nice. But you don’t have springs in cities. Water in wells propably wasn’t that safe, even when people did their best to keep it clean.
Fermented (or even boiled) water is always safer than water brougth from weil.

#13

Both contain research applicable to the setting of the game. Which is medieval countryside. And yes, boiled water is safer. Who said it isn’t?

#14

The importent question is not: “was the water ok?”. The importent question is: “Did the people think that the water is ok?” (at least for the design of the game)
And if you read what (for ex.) Hildegard of Bingen wrote about water, then it seems like, that many people didnt trust in water.

#15

One woman. Who also suggested people drink flavored spring water to improve their health, and to add water when drinking wine.

#16

Yep spring water is definitely something different. Even I do drink spring water when there’s a chance. But springs weren’t in cities. (and today they’re pretty rare :frowning: at least safe ones)

#17

Ok, to be fair…

[quote=“MadSmejki, post:9, topic:13893”]
any fermented bewerage was basically healthier than water (unless there was a fresh source of water, still risky though) so it was very common to drink beer and similar stuff.[/quote]

[quote=“TOUGHGUY, post:10, topic:13893”]
That beer was drunk because it was healthier than water is a myth and it is worrying to see a team member perpetuate it.[/quote]
He did not say that beer was healthier than any water. He did only say that beer was healthier than unfresh water and that beer was less risky then water. (You never know…)

And when we talk about tannerys and stuff like that, then I wouldnt think that the river near Ratay had safe water for drinking.

2 Likes
#18

MadSmejki said that it was common to drink beer because fermented beverages were healthier than water, and that fresh water was still risky. That’s just not true, boiled water being less hazardous is a correct premise, but beer being drunk in the middle ages because of that is a wrong conclusion. Dekssan was even worse in the perpetuation of this myth, simply stating that people “just drank beer”. Lord​Crash also fell for this unrtuth when he mentioned drinking alcoholic beverages because of microorganisms, citing mixing wine or beer with water – and ignoring two fairly obvious points: both of these would not have had the alcohol content to “kill the microorganisms,” and ironically enough you would be actually polluting your drink with this dangerous water if it was this bad in the first place. It wasn’t.

#19

I’m afraid that’s just true. Warhorse aren’t quoting wikipedia. They have proper research (according to first video update). You haven’t posted single contradictory argument.

But you are propably rigth about rest of it.
And yes everyone drinks beer because it’s soo good! Nobody can argue that. :smiley:

#20

beer was healthier than water out of river = true
fresh water was still risky = true (there are many storys about people who throw things in a well)
You say: beer wasnt the ongly solution, they could also drink boiled water
I would say: Thats true, but beer was the better solution and therefore it was common to drink beer.
Why beer was the better solution: They hadnt much sterile stuff in that time and therefore beer stayed longer time in good condition after the cool down. How should this work for boiled water? Boil 100 litres of water and then fill it into wooden barrels? It will begin to smell very fast!

Therefore I think that the conclusion is ok. It was no option to boil everytime a small portion of water (and wait until it is cool) if you want to drink. At least it was no option for all the people who need to drink.

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