A town in the barrens, on a river
With what grows here (barley and dredge), this land can feed a town of about 1,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls.
Build a town in the barrens, on a river
A town of 10,000 here
Its grain comes from 79 km around, 3.5 days by cart (not by land alone). About 1,400 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. On the water, ships can bring part of the grain: for a city of 10,000, 90% of it keeps the haul within a day.
In history
Gartok, in western Tibet, stands at 4,460 m on the bank of the Gartang, a headwater of the Indus. After Lhasa took the region from Ladakh in 1684, it made Gartok the seat of its governors, the Garpöns. It was a camp more than a town: they spent nine months a year at Gar Gunsa, a second camp forty miles downstream, and came up to Gartok only from August to October. Then at least 500 nomads and merchants gathered there, and the shepherds of the Changtang sold pashmina wool to buyers from Ladakh and Bashahr. William Moorcroft described it as little more than an encampment of blanket tents and a few houses of sun-dried brick. He came in 1812; the Garpön let him trade, and Lhasa punished him for it with three years in prison.
On the Changtang of Tibet, at about 4,980 m, the goldfield of Thok Jalung was the highest in the world. A small stream ran through it, and its water washed the gold out of the soil. When the Indian surveyor Nain Singh, mapping Tibet in secret, reached it on 26 August 1867, he found miners living in yak-hair tents pitched in pits two metres or more deep. He called it the coldest place he had ever been, and saw a nugget of about 0.9 kg.
How large a city?
| People | Grain from | By cart | Villages | Scholars | By ship to fit in a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 43 km around | 2 days (strained) | 420 | 12 | 70% |
| 10,000 | 79 km around | 3.5 days (not by land alone) | 1,400 | 40 | 90% |
| 40,000 | 160 km around | 6.5 days (not by land alone) | 5,500 | 160 | more than ships can bring |
| 150,000 | 310 km around | 12.5 days (not by land alone) | 21,000 | 600 | more than ships can bring |
| 1,000,000 | 790 km around | 32 days (not by land alone) | 140,000 | 4,000 | more than ships can bring |
Living there
There are no woods to spare here. The town needs about 18,000 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops: it burns straw (about 11,000 tonnes a year), dung and brush, and buys the rest. Provisional figure.
Its market sells grain, herbs, maize, wool and cheese, and buys timber, iron and salt. About 830 market towns stand in its countryside.
About 40% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 59%, fish 35%, gardens 6%. That is some 5,200 livestock units on 78 km² of pasture, and about 680 fishers in 170 boats. Hearth estimate.
What makes it hard
- The plateau empties in winter: Gartok's governors spent nine months a year at a lower camp downstream, and a British party passing in 1904 found only a few dozen people in winter quarters on a bare plain.
- Trade follows treaties, not the market: under the treaty of 1684 only Ladakhis could buy the pashmina wool sold at Gartok, and others had to get it through allies.
- Strangers bring trouble to whoever lets them in: the Garpön who allowed William Moorcroft to trade in 1812 was punished by Lhasa with three years in prison.
- Cold beyond comfort: at Thok Jalung the miners lived in tents sunk in pits below ground level.
- The stream is the workshop: the camp washes its ore where the water runs, and lives there too.
Hard years
About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 560 of the 1,900 tonnes of grain its land gives it, and the water lets it bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 24,000 km² of its fields idle.
What it can make
Grain (at a cost), Flax (at a cost), Dye plants (at a cost), Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides (at a cost), Cheese, Pigs and bacon (at a cost), Goats, Honey and wax, Fish, Shipyards (at a cost)
What its land cannot give, a town here must buy: timber.
What it lives on
Underground
What a city digs depends on the rock under it: Granite, Volcanic rock, Ultramafic rock (peridotite, serpentinite), Schist and gneiss, Marble, Limestone and chalk, Sandstone, shale and clay, Salt beds, River gravels and sands
Found here
Gathered (Rerum): Arctic Hare Fur, Arctic Hare Meat, Beetle Wing, Chamois Meat, Iceland Moss, Moss Campion Root, Mountain Sorrel Leaves, Mycelium
Hear it
- The town: Fantasy Medieval City (album RPG Ambiences Vol. 6)
- The market: Medieval Village Marketplace (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The quays: Medieval Harbor District (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The countryside: Farmyard with People and Animals (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
Barrens in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds
The same climate
A town in the barrens, A town in the barrens, on the coast
By city size
1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000
Sources
- Wikipedia contributors, Thok Jalung, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Gartok, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
Open the city builder — MGS Toolbox