Dragon-blooded population

[wordman]

I derailed an earlier thread into a population discussion. To avoid derailing to further, I'm picking it up here. For those who were not following along (meaning "those of you with any sense") some canonical raw numbers:

1. "The 761 Realm Census placed the number of Dynastic Dragon-blooded (included lost eggs adopted to the great houses) near 10,000. This might be as many as half the entire world's population of Terrestrial Exalted, and the world knows that it's there." (exdb.288)
   
2. "The average number of births [per mother] is eight per century, or about one every 12 years. A Dragon-Blooded pregnancy lasts a full 15-month year." (exdb.22)
   
3. "Although the average life span of a Dynast is around 300 years, there are those who have lived to nearly 500 without even using sorcery." (exdb.22)
   
4. "At the height of the Shogunate, the Dragon-Blooded host numbered nearly a million. At the dawn of the Scarlet Empire, only 10,000 or so survived." (exlu.31)

Taken together, fact #1 and #4 mean that the population of dragon-blooded in all of Creation has a doubling time of around 761 years. Assuming a constant population growth rate of r, that doubling time would need r to be something like 0.08%. This would, for example, mean that during whatever year the population was 15,000, by the time the year ended, only 12 more dragon-blooded were born than died.


I think most involved with the discussion ultimately agree that, as Safim said, "the numbers are odd and something is wrong". All of these "facts" cannot be simultaneously true. I take the approach that fact #1 is in error. Safim and others take the approach that  fact #1 is true and the others are off. I consider either of these approaches to be equally valid.


If you take fact #1 to be true, I think the main other "fact" that you need to alter in your campaign is #3, with #2 as a distant second. For the type of attrition that would be necessary to give a 0.08% rate, lifespan really can't average 300 years. The other option, reducing the birth rate, is equally valid mathematically, but less desirable if your goal is to keep the storyline canonical, as it would mean that DB's are largely sterile for long periods. Altering fact #4 is also possible, but only if you adjust the starting population downwards (by several multiples of 2). This would mean that the Fair Folk nearly wiped out the terrestrials, which is kind of neat, but also means that the time of the "seven tigers" would have involved, at most, dozens of terrestrials.


I prefer to alter fact #1. In addition to my points in the other thread (roughly, that I want terrestrials in my campaign to have taken more advantage of the fact that they are the only exalts that can breed new exalts), I think that a 0.08% growth rate doesn't really make sense in the current story. The type of attrition needed to achieve that number simply requires to many deaths, in my opinion. Even with the legions being sent all over and political backstabbing, it isn't enough for families that have so many children (a social custom which I like to have in my game). Maybe if the Houses were actually actively engaged in active war with each other, the level of attrition needed would realistic. Or maybe if they were constantly in full on conflict with Lookshy all of the time. Or maybe if the Great Contaigion came around again a few times during the reign of the Empress and wiped out huge swaths of terrestrials. A 0.08% rate requires a population not willing to reproduce much (like modern day Germany, where the rate is nearly 0, or Japan, where it is negative) or else a real meatgrinder. Creation is violent, yes, but I just don't see such a meatgrinder in the storyline.

 

[wordman]

Some other food for thought. If the dragon-blooded population of just the Empire was 10,000 in year 761, and the rate of 0.08% holds, by the start of year 764, the population would be around 10,024.


Then the Tepet legions get destroyed.


According to the canon, the loss of legions was a serious military defeat for the Empire, and many are concerned with an invasion of the Blessed Isle itself. In the DB book, House Tepet is "a third of is previous numbers" and seriously waning. The other houses, however, seem much more concerned with imperial succession than the Bull of the North, seeing the destruction of the Tepet legions more as a circumstance they can take advantage of and unfortunate, but not catastrophic, for the Empire.


Here comes the math.


According the Blessed Isle book, a fighting legion contains 271 dragonblooded (1 general, 10 colonels, 20 majors, 40 captains and 200 lieutenants). In the Tepet section of the DB book, it mentions that from four to five legions were destroyed by the Bull of the North. Taking the smaller number, for the sake of the argument, thats 4*271 = 1084 dragonblooded killed.


Given a popultation of 10,024 at the time, this means that the Bull of the North killed 10.1% of the entire imperial gene pool.


That is more than just a military defeat. That's close to genocide. As a comparison, if the USA lost 10.1% of its gene pool, that would be around 30 million dead. That wouldn't be an "unfortunate", "concerning" or "worrysome"; it would be the single greatest threat the country had ever seen, especially if the force that caused it was still out there. (By comparison, civilian and military German losses in WWII by the time it was defeated and basically unable to function at all were also about 10% of population.) Yet that isn't how the Houses act in the books. They're concerned, but not enough to break up their status quo that much, and even then only to vie for the throne.


If you divide the 10,024 dragonblooded evenly over the houses, this averages to just over 911 per great house. (Obviously, this assumes all db's in the Empire are in one of the houses and that the houses are equally distributed, neither of which is probably true.) Thus, the 1084 dragon-blooded killed by the Bull is actually greater than the "expected" size of the Tepet family.


Yet, the DB's in house Tepet is "were reduced to just over a third of their previous numbers" (exdb.47), so either Tepet was larger than average or a good fraction of their legions' dragonblooded were not part of the Tepet family, or both. (If only the former, 1084 is two thirds of 1626, which is 16.2% of 10,024, meaning House Tepet would have needed to have made up almost a sixth of the dragon-blooded host prior to the defeat.)


In any case, this aspect of the canonical storyline makes way more sense to me if the impact of the Tepet defeat is less than 10% (i.e. the DB population is higher than 10,024 at the time it happened). Even a number like 50,000 (which is still pretty low for their breeding rate) would make this more believable.

 

[FluffySquirrel]

Well.. a few points I'd probly point out...


Average 300 years will probably be the length a db lives naturally, not counting sudden orichalcum daiklaves bursting out from your chest


The birth rates are irrelevant, as they're not factoring in how many of those kids exalt.. quite a few usually don't, the blood is very diluted these days.

 

[wordman]

Average 300 years will probably be the length a db lives naturally, not counting sudden orichalcum daiklaves bursting out from your chest

Then it wouldn't be an "average". An "average lifespan" typically takes into account all factors: infant mortality, spontaneous combustion, pointy bits into the chest, etc.

The birth rates are irrelevant, as they're not factoring in how many of those kids exalt.. quite a few usually don't, the blood is very diluted these days.

You do need the exaltation rate, but that doesn't make the birth rate irrelevant. There are overly-detailed mechanics of having dragon-blooded children that probably contain the exaltation rate.

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Hmm, had never thought of it that way. And I always figured the numbers were painfully low anyhow. Especially after glimpsing Usurpation numbers.

 

[Persell]

Average lifespan is different than average life expectancy.


If they say "lifespan" it means specifically that, under standard living conditions, the natural lifespan for a DB ends at 300 years.

 

[Persell]

According the Blessed Isle book, a fighting legion contains 271 dragonblooded (1 general, 10 colonels, 20 majors, 40 captains and 200 lieutenants). In the Tepet section of the DB book, it mentions that from four to five legions were destroyed by the Bull of the North. Taking the smaller number, for the sake of the argument, thats 4*271 = 1084 dragonblooded killed.

In the base book it states that they have had problems always keeping a full stock of Dragon blooded officers for each legion and that only the Dragonlords and above were assured to be dragon blooded (so 11 per legion).  With the rest being Dragon blooded or heroic mortals or half castes (the backbone of the realm) It also says that the most a legion will usually see is around 60 Dragon blooded (and that is unusual) So I would say the dragon blooded host to be around 30 per legion which would give house Tepet around 180 Dragon blooded for the House, which is small for what was once one of the three most powerful houses (hey what do you know, White wolf doesn't do math)


Now the breeding is more of a problem.  Checking 1st ed breeding rules and assuming  most dragon blooded of the realm have a 3 or less breeding only about 1 out of 5 is going to exalt (the rate goes up with two breeing 5 (or 6) dragon blooded but never is assured)  This rate still gives you a population doubling every 200 year (a little more but I'm trying to keep the math to a minimum so that this post is readable).  So that give the Dragon blooded population at the end of the Scarlet Empress reign around 50K.


This problem can be resolved if you assume that White Wolf meant that 300 years of age to be the natural age of death (which if you read the section more it leans that way).  Of which only 1/3 make it to that age.  So that would reduce the number to closer to the 10K that the book states.


Summary


I think that White wolf need a better editing staff and that the realms 10k Dragon should be ignored as fluff in the books.


Edited for clarity Ha

 

[Flagg]

I don't ever trust WW to be as technically minded in their choice of vocabulary as our own wordman is. They simply fail at it time and time again. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that by "average life span" they mean "average natural life expectancy", especially if it helps sort out inconsistencies in the setting.

 

[Kremlin KOA]

factors to consider


Outcasteing of individuals


the population drop caused by the outcasteing of house iselsi


immaculate full time monks being non breeders

 

[Charon]

Given the lower breeding level of modern exalt, if you assume that about 1/5th of their children exalt, then it means a female DB needs on average to have 10 children to produce 2 DB kid.  Which is the bare minimum to replace the parents.  They of course need more kid than that to account for the hight fatality rate.


Even with the 1 kid every 12 year figure, it means most female DB will be hard pressed to produce 4 young DB in her life time (It'd take her 240 years).


Factor in the high fatality rate,  which not only kill young male, but also young female who don't get to reach their "quota", and no wonder the population is barely growing.


The real wonder in all this isn't the number of DB, it's the fact that the DB society didn't become seriously patriarchal.  Historically, no culture worried about keeping its numbers up would have their women in the army!   That's the real fantasy in all this breeding discussion.

 

[Persell]

May haps the low breeding rate is the reason the Empress choose to create house V'neef.  Its safe to assume breeding 5 (or 6) for V'neef herself.  And with a high breeding mate that could give then a 70% exaltation rate.  (80% with a certain manse).  Maybe all the Empresses eugenic programs were working towards restoring the high breeding among the Dragon blooded because she saw the slow climb in population and realized that it would only take another Great disaster (like disease or large scale war) to wipe out the Dragon blooded completely.  

The real wonder in all this isn't the number of DB, it's the fact that the DB society didn't become seriously patriarchal.  Historically, no culture worried about keeping its numbers up would have their women in the army!   That's the real fantasy in all this breeding discussion.

The reason I can think of is the Scarlet Empress.  She liked having a big army and being a Soldier herself was not about to let other Dragon blooded women just sit around a produce babies.  Of course she also engineered the pressure for Dragon blooded to produce lots of kids (each parent is to produce two kids, which works if you get a high breeding)

 

[Persell]

I don't think the tepet legions contained a thousand dragon blooded each. The book says usually only winglords and above are dragon blooded, because there are simply not enough of them around.


Furthermore if you really want to go the route of using 10000 divided by eleven as hard numbers for the houses, then you have to take into account a few things.


- House V'neef contains V'neef, her cynis husband and six children of which 5 have exalted so far. So that leaves another 900 dragons to be divided under the great houses


- House Nellens is equally ruled by mortals and dragon blooded. For something like this to happen, the mortals have to outnumber the dragonblooded a lot. I suppose there are no more than 100 nellens dragons.


The books mention really high losses several times, which are the main factor for me thinking that 10000 is the number the authors want to be true, i.e. the number which is their intention.


Furthermore I think the high birth rate is just bull as the book also says that:


- schools are extremely expensive and can stress the income of a house


- society sees the chiled bearing duty as done after two children


So, all in all why should an ambitious young couple, she a trader in the merchant army and he a senator, spend all that money and their precious time on children when just two will do. Most of the dragon blooded do whatever to fullfill society expectations and afterwards follow their own agendas. I personally think that is a lot easier to adjust than the hard number of 10000 dragons.


I will probably reduce the number of dragons at the begin of the empress rule to 6000, one legion for her, one for the seventh. Thematically pleasing, low birth rate because of attrition and still not every second dragon has to die for it to be true.

 

[wordman]

I don't think the tepet legions contained a thousand dragon blooded each. The book says usually only winglords and above are dragon blooded, because there are simply not enough of them around.

Just to clarify, the "thousand" number was for multiple legions. Each legion contains 271 officers, which I assumed to all be dragon blooded. This assumption comes from a line in the Blessed Isle book describing a scale, that says something like 'the sole dragon-blooded in a scale is its commanding officer' (a lieutenant).


Certainly reducing the percentage of officers that are dragon-blooded solves my "10% problem". If you assume that, say, half the lieutenants are mortal that cuts down the impact of the slaughter by a lot.


Also, it may be that exaltation rate that Charon mentions might very well act as the missing "meatgrinder" I mentioned in the first post, if it is low enough. This makes the math a lot more scary, because you can no longer just track dragonblooded. Since their mortal offspring might give birth to someone that exalts, a real model would need to account for that. The rate of this happening would be pretty low, of course, but there are a lot more mortals running around. Probably wouldn't amount to much.

 

[Arthur]

Even though I think this whole discussion is preety useless for the roleplaying, and only serves as a flaming arena, I'll have to coment this:

Average 300 years will probably be the length a db lives naturally, not counting sudden orichalcum daiklaves bursting out from your chest

Then it wouldn't be an "average". An "average lifespan" typically takes into account all factors: infant mortality, spontaneous combustion, pointy bits into the chest, etc.

In p. 23 of the Manual of Exalted Power: The Dragon-blooded, there is the following sentence:

Due to the constant combat, the endless assassination attempts and the myriad of fangers of the Second Age, only about a third of Dragon-Blooded dynasts die of natural causes.

As the lifespan of a DB is 300 years, and if you understand "lifespan" means the time variation betwen natural birth and natural death of a mortal creature (and that's what lifespan is. You won't hear that the lifespan of the average brazilian is 50-60 years, because it's about the same as the american's lifespan, the japanese lifespan of the bosnian lifespan, 50-60 years is only the avarage age someone will get considering illnesses, assassination, etc.), only about one third of the DB live about 3 centuries. The others die earlier from unnatural causes.

 

[Zaramis]

V'neef isn't just that little group of people.


V'neef have adopted many other small minor DB houses into wearing their name. She's also "adopted" older DB's who were outcastes or minor DB's themselves, like V'neef Jegan ( 300 years old ) in Harborhead.


Examples are the V'neef Odessa family, among others. I count with V'neef numbering between 70 and 100 with all their minor families.


Also, V'neef has 6 children, but those children have already birthed children of their own. Aliset is the oldest GRANDchild of V'neef. Which means there are a bunch who are younger than Aliset, so that makes the main tree at least 12-15 strong, with many in the young school ages.


My chronicle is strongly centered around  House V'neef so I've made a lot of work fleshing that house out, but that's less interesting for you, I suppose

 

[Charon]

The real wonder in all this isn't the number of DB, it's the fact that the DB society didn't become seriously patriarchal.  Historically, no culture worried about keeping its numbers up would have their women in the army!   That's the real fantasy in all this breeding discussion.

The reason I can think of is the Scarlet Empress.  She liked having a big army and being a Soldier herself was not about to let other Dragon blooded women just sit around a produce babies.  Of course she also engineered the pressure for Dragon blooded to produce lots of kids (each parent is to produce two kids, which works if you get a high breeding)

Nah, it's just because the game wouldn't be as attractive to part of the market if most female characters were expected to focus on child rearing.  Kick ass female character are part of the genre.


Realistically, Keeping women of the front for the past 700 years alone probably would have been enough to increase the DB population twofold.  We're talking about thousands of women over those centuries that died before producing their "quota" of children, half of whom would have been female with kids of their own.  It's exponential.


There's a reason why in the real world true feminism reform didn't occur until the agricultural production and medical knowledge reached a sufficient level.  In the middle age, a population where women go to war instead of producing tons of children is a population that will soon be extinct.  But wowadays, if women still had on average 6 or 10 children, our population would grow too fast and our production capacity too slowly.  Our death rate is too low to cope with a super high birth rate.  Our GNP per capita would drop precipitously.  We need women to work more and breed less or there would be all kind of economic mayhem.  In a pre-industrial context, it's the other way around.  Manpower is at a premium and is required to keep the farm working or maintain the empire's border.


But that's just not the kind of consideration that hold any weight compared to the coolness factor of Exalted.

 

[Jukashi]

I'm sure the fact that they can rain fire from the sky had an equal impact on their military usefulness.

 

[Charon]

I'm sure the fact that they can rain fire from the sky had an equal impact on their military usefulness.

Not compensated by the fact that every female DB that stay safe at home instead of getting killed in battle can spawn several children and grand children who will rain fire from the sky instead.


There's no real way to argue this point ; Lots of Female DB on the battlefield is a (necessary) concession to the fact that this is a game and not a socio-economical simulation.

 

[Jukashi]

I can argue anything!!


Thing is, Exalted... particularly the Blessed Isle... isn't exactly the same as a pre-industrial state in the real world. The Scarlet Empire has far superior food production and medicine then their level of mundane technology suggests.


And the goal isn't to have lots of any old mortal babies; you want Dragon-Blooded babies. So why keep the women back, when they can only have one every 5 years? Much better to keep the men back, and turn out dozens every year.


This may account for wy the Realm is mildly matriarchical.

 

[Charon]

Your best bet for DB babies as far as I know is to get two dragon blooded to reproduce.  Which means the more women DB you have, the more DB babies you'll get.  


It's the same as royalty, in a way.  Sure you can get a Prince to screw a farmer's daughter, but that produces a bastard, almost never an heir.  You need him to mate with a princess.  Now if your princesses are out fighting, you ain't gonna get as many legitimate heir as you otherwise would.

 

[Flagg]

While the DBs may want to maximize population, the reality is that they also have a world to keep together, which they're somewhat under-equipped for.


It may not be practical for them to keep all of the Exalted women barefoot and pregnant at home. They need people out in the field, kicking ass for the sake of civilization.

 

[Charon]

While the DBs may want to maximize population, the reality is that they also have a world to keep together, which they're somewhat under-equipped for.
It may not be practical for them to keep all of the Exalted women barefoot and pregnant at home. They need people out in the field, kicking ass for the sake of civilization.

The answer is culture.  Culture is like the survival instinct of a population.  Under normal cicrumstances (meaning this isn't a game but a real realm that needs to prosper), the culture of the Isle would have put strong pressure on the male DB to become warriors while the women, beside rearing child, take care of administrative task.  Arts, "common wisdom", policies... all would have conspired toward that goal, glorifying the man who dies in battle and the woman who work toward the prosperity of her household (or ministry).


Somewhat like the Vikings, for example, where a very large proportion of the able bodied men were raider, warriors and merchants (usually all three at once) while women had greater autonomy than in other cultures to keep the the villages running smoothly while so many men were away.  


Basically, culture would have caused a shift in the allocation of ressources and men who otherwise wouldn't have been warrior would have felt pressured to do so.  A Vallhalla type of myths would have raised in importance.  As a result on the blessed Isle, there would have been (virtually) no women in the army but much fewer men in the thousand scales.  Female magistrate would have been a concession to those women who just have to go against culture.


And as a result their population would have grown.

 

[Jukashi]

Your best bet for DB babies as far as I know is to get two dragon blooded to reproduce.  Which means the more women DB you have, the more DB babies you'll get.  
It's the same as royalty, in a way.  Sure you can get a Prince to screw a farmer's daughter, but that produces a bastard, almost never an heir.  You need him to mate with a princess.  Now if your princesses are out fighting, you ain't gonna get as many legitimate heir as you otherwise would.

Not really true. Getting two DBs together is how you get a high-quality DB (i.e. high Breeding), but if what you're going for is quantity - and quantity is what they need- a single Terrestrial man can get himself a harem of mortal woman (preferably patricians, but not necessary) - and start churning them out. Assuming a harem of 5 women, and an exaltation rate of 1 in 10 children (the minimum for the spawn of a single, low-breeding DB and a purely mortal woman), you'll have 5 kids a year and one Exalted kid every 2 years.


With just a pair of DBs, you'll only maybe get one Terrestrial kid every 5 years. Remeber; Dragon-Blooded women can only have one kid every five years, or they suffer health problems and die prematurely. They can't just squeeze 'em out like rabbits.


But in any case, it's a bad idea to tell anyone with the power of the Dragons in their blood that they have to do something. If a DB woman wants to fight - and these are people designed to be the supersoldiers of the gods - then she will.

 

[Zaramis]

They -are- keeping the females home in the time of crisis. The females are more important than men, they are the heads of administration and generally regarded as slightly superior to the men. The men are more suited for being sent out to wage war and forge marriage alliances.


It's reality in the Exalted world. When times aren't in a crisis, women were able to go out there and do what they want because of a long history of a more gender-equal society, in turn that is due to the short period where women are actually hampered by their pregnancy among DB's. They never developed a society where women were vulnerable while pregnant, and so the gender roles developed as they did.


But now, at a time of crisis, the great houses are sure to be much more careful with their daughters than with their sons, because they need to ensure that they have children and so on. Before, the dragon blooded ruled the world. It didn't matter if a few died here and there, they still made up their good part of the quota and maintained control over the world. That's what's happening in my campaign at least. But -it doesn't have to mean that women are in any way less powerful-. Rather the contrary.


So it wouldn't really have happened the way some of you suggest, until now. And maybe during the Shogunate too, or other times of crisis. While in the First Age, I'm sure there was no need to have women at home, cause DB's weren't so important anyway.. or that's what the solars thought


I can't really write an essay here about the progress of civilization and gender roles, aka. the patriarchal world we have in real life, but it's a viable scenario you have in Exalted, better than most other "equal" worlds that have been created during the years.


( For the record, I'm a historian specialized in the history of gender, with a focus on medieval and ancient times, so I've studied it extensively. Exalted is, of course, not perfect and doesn't strive to be, but it makes a pretty good try. )

 

[FluffySquirrel]

For a start, all this talk of quantity over quantity isn't right.. the realm isn't lookshy, and it's breeding program -does- work towards high breeding, even if there might be fewer in the end. Lookshy is the one if you want to argue about working for quantity.


Next up.. the talk about societal decisions and stuff.. ... what societal decisions? ^^ remember, the realm was hardly a democracy, it was pretty much a dictatorship (with some veneer of various other states) ..but still, it did whatever the hell the empress wanted generally. If she doesn't want women sitting at home breeding (and being a fighting woman herself... ) then they didn't.