A town in the taiga, on a river
With what grows here (barley and dredge, rye and maslin), this land can feed a town of about 3,400 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls.
Build a town in the taiga, on a river
A town of 10,000 here
Its grain comes from 43 km around, 2 days by cart (strained). 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 40,000, 95% of it keeps the haul within a day.
In history
Novgorod stands on the Volkhov, six kilometres below Lake Ilmen. From 1136 to 1478 it was a merchant republic that controlled much of the Russian North. Its forests gave furs and beeswax, which drew the Hanseatic League: German merchants kept their easternmost trading house, the Peterhof, in the city, and about 200 of them lived there in the 1430s, some 1% of the population. Sable, ermine and fox went west with masses of squirrel pelts. Yet the city could not feed itself: in the 15th century it depended on grain from the Russian lands to the south-west, and in 1478 Ivan III of Moscow took it.
Far to the east, Cossacks under Pyotr Beketov built a fort on the Lena in 1632 with a garrison of 30 men. It survived a Yakut siege in 1634 and was moved to the site of today's Yakutsk in 1642 and 1643. The Yakuts of the middle Lena raised horses and hardy cattle, and paid the tsar's fur tribute, the yasak, counted by the cattle of each household, in sables, foxes, beavers and martens. Gifts came back in return: tobacco, flints, knives and axes. The town stands on permanently frozen ground.
How large a city?
| People | Grain from | By cart | Villages | Scholars | By ship to fit in a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 23 km around | 1 day (comfortable) | 420 | 12 | – |
| 10,000 | 43 km around | 2 days (strained) | 1,400 | 40 | 70% |
| 40,000 | 86 km around | 3.5 days (not by land alone) | 5,500 | 160 | 95% |
| 150,000 | 170 km around | 7 days (not by land alone) | 21,000 | 600 | more than ships can bring |
| 1,000,000 | 430 km around | 17.5 days (not by land alone) | 140,000 | 4,000 | more than ships can bring |
Living there
Its woods spare enough to burn: about 18,000 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops. Provisional figure.
Its market sells grain, flax, herbs, potato and wool, and buys iron and salt. About 250 market towns stand in its countryside.
About 45% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 33%, fish 35%, gardens 33%. That is some 3,200 livestock units on 49 km² of pasture, and about 770 fishers in 190 boats. Hearth estimate.
What makes it hard
- The river freezes. Boats run only in summer, so the year's goods must move in a few short months.
- A town rich in furs can still be short of bread. If its grain comes from a neighbour, that neighbour holds it by the throat.
- A fort of a few dozen soldiers collecting tribute from a larger people may face a siege in its first years.
- Wooden towns burn, and a single fire can take the town's records with it, tax rolls and all.
Hard years
About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 480 of the 1,600 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 7,100 km² of its fields idle.
What it can make
Grain (at a cost), Flax, Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Potato, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides, Cheese, Pigs and bacon, Goats, Honey and wax (at a cost), Furs, Timber, Charcoal, Pitch and tar, Fish, Shipyards
What it lives on
Barley and dredge, Rye and maslin
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): Activated Charcoal, American Bison Meat, Black Bear Fat, Black Bear Hide, Black Bear Meat, Beetle Wing, Bilberry, Juniper Wood
Hear it
- The town: Fantasy Medieval City (album RPG Ambiences Vol. 6)
- The market: Medieval Village Marketplace (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The quays: Cold Harbor (on Patreon, Raven tier)
- The countryside: Walking in a Lively Tundra (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
Taiga in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds
The same climate
A town in the taiga, A town in the taiga, on the coast
By city size
1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000
Sources
- Wikipedia contributors, Veliky Novgorod, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Birch bark manuscript, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Yakutsk, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Yasak, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Yakuts, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
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