dragonlady7 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dragonlady7) wrote2020-07-08 12:27 pm
dragonlady7) wrote2020-07-08 12:27 pm
You seem the right person to ask this. How do you think KM functioned at its peak? Assuming the boys
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Oh, that’s a good question! and gah, Tumblr keeps glitching and losing my progress on this, so it won’t be as comprehensive as I want.
So anyway. I don’t really know, and I’m only an amateur historian and avid reader, and all this is fictional so everyone should do what they want, but all that said, I’m going to ramble on about what I think is possible or likely or just plain fun to imagine.
I don’t know if canon gives us much information on what the population was like, how many would be there at once, during the peak of operations of the… facility, for want of a better word. I have the impression that there’s a nearby-ish village that Vesemir has some kind of standing relationship with during his solo time there (but IDK if that impression is canon or fanon or what, I’m terrible at recollecting my sources); likely at its peak there was more of a population nearby, and possibly there could have been a fairly close relationship with that population– i.e., trading with the nearby civilians for supplies, and possibly having some crossover of population, maybe even people willing to do work at/for the keep. It wouldn’t have to be a self-sustaining compound, is my point there.
Which is good, because while having a kitchen garden kind of thing, to grow some of the more perishable stuff the population would want to eat– and the more specialty stuff, herbs and the like– would be feasible, but the thought of attempting to somehow have enough of a labor force to clear, maintain, and work large fields of land to directly support a mountainside castle seems prohibitive. The people who lived there were specialists, not laborers, so it makes a great deal more sense for them to buy in the large stores of grain and other supplies they would need to eat.
So, yes, I’d imagine they’d have things like a flock of chickens for meat and eggs, and some small amounts of livestock, and a few patches of vegetables and herbs, maybe a bit of orchard around, but it wouldn’t be enough to subsist on, only to supplement– and it would probably be largely focused on the specialty stuff, for distilling and making potions, that they’d prefer to directly produce so that it meets their particular specialty standards. So they’d likely buy in provisions, for the most part– which also, incidentally, could be a good way of explaining the Witchers’ canonical insistence on being paid in coin. If they produce nothing concrete to trade, then coin is important.
I think the logistics of having individual returning Witchers be collectively responsible for provisioning the keep is also difficult– if people don’t come back consistently every year, it’d be hard to work that out. Like… you could say if you come back bring enough provisions to keep yourself over the winter, but it almost makes more sense to just buy that in bulk, especially if there’s already a standing population. And there’d always be someone coming home injured or having been unable to provide well for themselves, and you’d just be at risk of not having good stocks of everything you needed and maybe having too much of some things and not enough of others. So probably, the Keep had a quartermaster, and probably, the Witchers who were on the Path would contribute financially, that just makes the most sense to me. (I mean, of course they’d also bring stuff they wanted, but that’s more like, the extras and luxuries and specialty stuff they prefer, rather than trying to haul home a barrel of flour or whatever.)
It just makes sense that when the Keep was populated, so was the surrounding area, and there’d’ve been regular supply runs managed by the full-time residents.
Of course, when there’s only the four of them left, you probably would figure on bringing provisions back with you individually to support yourself; it’s a lot less annoying, as the person in charge of cooking, to be dealing with four different sets of provisions than to be trying to scrape together food for 300 people out of 100 different people’s ideas of what to shop for.
IDK if that was what you were looking for, but that’s my thought! I bet there are some books out that would talk about the nuts and bolts of how a, say, medieval keep was provisioned, that would offer a lot more concrete inspiration– might be worth looking into institutions like abbeys as well. There’s a rich vein of inspiration there.
Oh, that’s a good question! and gah, Tumblr keeps glitching and losing my progress on this, so it won’t be as comprehensive as I want.
So anyway. I don’t really know, and I’m only an amateur historian and avid reader, and all this is fictional so everyone should do what they want, but all that said, I’m going to ramble on about what I think is possible or likely or just plain fun to imagine.
I don’t know if canon gives us much information on what the population was like, how many would be there at once, during the peak of operations of the… facility, for want of a better word. I have the impression that there’s a nearby-ish village that Vesemir has some kind of standing relationship with during his solo time there (but IDK if that impression is canon or fanon or what, I’m terrible at recollecting my sources); likely at its peak there was more of a population nearby, and possibly there could have been a fairly close relationship with that population– i.e., trading with the nearby civilians for supplies, and possibly having some crossover of population, maybe even people willing to do work at/for the keep. It wouldn’t have to be a self-sustaining compound, is my point there.
Which is good, because while having a kitchen garden kind of thing, to grow some of the more perishable stuff the population would want to eat– and the more specialty stuff, herbs and the like– would be feasible, but the thought of attempting to somehow have enough of a labor force to clear, maintain, and work large fields of land to directly support a mountainside castle seems prohibitive. The people who lived there were specialists, not laborers, so it makes a great deal more sense for them to buy in the large stores of grain and other supplies they would need to eat.
So, yes, I’d imagine they’d have things like a flock of chickens for meat and eggs, and some small amounts of livestock, and a few patches of vegetables and herbs, maybe a bit of orchard around, but it wouldn’t be enough to subsist on, only to supplement– and it would probably be largely focused on the specialty stuff, for distilling and making potions, that they’d prefer to directly produce so that it meets their particular specialty standards. So they’d likely buy in provisions, for the most part– which also, incidentally, could be a good way of explaining the Witchers’ canonical insistence on being paid in coin. If they produce nothing concrete to trade, then coin is important.
I think the logistics of having individual returning Witchers be collectively responsible for provisioning the keep is also difficult– if people don’t come back consistently every year, it’d be hard to work that out. Like… you could say if you come back bring enough provisions to keep yourself over the winter, but it almost makes more sense to just buy that in bulk, especially if there’s already a standing population. And there’d always be someone coming home injured or having been unable to provide well for themselves, and you’d just be at risk of not having good stocks of everything you needed and maybe having too much of some things and not enough of others. So probably, the Keep had a quartermaster, and probably, the Witchers who were on the Path would contribute financially, that just makes the most sense to me. (I mean, of course they’d also bring stuff they wanted, but that’s more like, the extras and luxuries and specialty stuff they prefer, rather than trying to haul home a barrel of flour or whatever.)
It just makes sense that when the Keep was populated, so was the surrounding area, and there’d’ve been regular supply runs managed by the full-time residents.
Of course, when there’s only the four of them left, you probably would figure on bringing provisions back with you individually to support yourself; it’s a lot less annoying, as the person in charge of cooking, to be dealing with four different sets of provisions than to be trying to scrape together food for 300 people out of 100 different people’s ideas of what to shop for.
IDK if that was what you were looking for, but that’s my thought! I bet there are some books out that would talk about the nuts and bolts of how a, say, medieval keep was provisioned, that would offer a lot more concrete inspiration– might be worth looking into institutions like abbeys as well. There’s a rich vein of inspiration there.