Welcome one and all to another dose of Under The Yoke development!
Following on from the travelling system described in our last blog post it seemed logical to take a peak at where you’re going, the medieval town.
In History
There’s far too much history to cover medieval towns/cities in a single blog post, it also won’t do us much good since Under The Yoke is a medieval peasant life sim rather than a medieval townie sim (though that does sound interesting, doesn’t it?…).
Towns served as the economic centres of an area, people may have had to walk for several days to reach the town but when they did they would fine all sorts of goods not readily available in the villages such as foreign spices, textiles or pottery. Most medieval villages also didn’t have a blacksmith so save for travelling blacksmiths they would have had to travel into town for any metalwork.
Towns also served unique political functions, for instance a serf could flee to a charter town and providing they were not captured they would be considered free after a year and a day, walled towns may also have served as a way to keep the surrounding areas safe, though they may have been blocked off to prevent too many people from taxing the local infrastructure.
In Under The Yoke
Told you I’d keep the history section tight! Under The Yoke, as always, aims to keep things as close to history as possible. The town serves as the main trade hub for your characters. Their village existing some miles away from town, it may take multiple days for your characters to reach the town, depending on their method of travel, especially when laden with goods for market.
Serfs must get permission to leave the manor, something pretty freely given, whereas freemen may travel at their leisure. Players will also be able to acquire luxury goods from the town that they either cannot produce themselves or lack the ability to create presently, for instance metalwork tools such as ploughs.
Prices will fluctuate with time, periods of famine will see prices for food soar so be sure to keep your own larder stocked, whereas plague may have the inverse effect as there are less people to purchase the food, that is if they let you in the town at all.
Players may also engage in animal markets as a way to procure or sell their animals though this may slow their travel significantly, they may also take part in more complex negotiations such as mortgaging crops, a method of selling crops on a field prior to harvest.
This feature is subject to change as these blogs have caught up to development but as it stands these are how the town exists today.
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