A town in the temperate conifer forest, on the coast

With what grows here (rye and maslin, oats, barley and dredge), this land can feed a town of about 14,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of York around 1377.

Build a town in the temperate conifer forest, on the coast

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 21 km around, 1 day by cart (comfortable). About 830 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 42 km around, 2 days by cart (strained). On the water, ships can bring part of the grain: for a city of 150,000, 95% of it keeps the haul within a day.

In history

On the coast of the Olympic Peninsula, the Makah lived in villages of western red cedar longhouses whose plank walls could be tilted or taken down for air and light. Cedar gave them bark for rainproof clothes, roots for baskets and whole trunks for the canoes from which they hunted seals and grey and humpback whales. At Ozette a mudslide, dated variously between about 1560 and 1750, buried part of a village; dug out from 1970, it yielded more than 55,000 objects. After a Russian ship was wrecked nearby in 1808, most of its crew ended up as willing slaves of the Makah until an American captain bought them.

Further north, the Russian-American Company built a fort at Sitka in 1799. Tlingit warriors destroyed it in June 1802. In 1804 Alexander Baranov returned with a warship, and after the Battle of Sitka the Russians founded New Archangel, which became the capital of Russian America. Its wealth was sea otter fur, hunted by Aleut and Alutiiq men forcibly conscripted for three-year terms. Its weakness was food: in the winter of 1805 settlers died and others fell sick with scurvy, and the company struggled for decades to feed its posts, sending ships as far as California for supplies.

How large a city?

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, dye plants, orchards and herbs, and buys iron. About 120 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 30% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 40%, fish 50%, gardens 10%. That is some 2,700 livestock units on 40 km² of pasture, and about 730 fishers in 180 boats. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

• On a wet, steep coast a hillside can slide onto the village and bury the houses where they stand.
• The forest gives everything but bread. A post that cannot grow its grain depends on supply ships, and a late ship means scurvy by spring.
• The people already there may not accept the newcomers: a fort built on their shore can be burned within three years.
• Gales throw ships onto the beach, and the survivors must come to terms with whoever lives there.
• Hunt the most valuable animal hard enough and the coast runs out of it: the furs, and the profits, fall within a generation.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 640 of the 2,200 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 3,400 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

Grain, Flax, Dye plants, Orchards, Herbs, Potato, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides, Cheese, Pigs and bacon, Goats, Honey and wax, Furs, Timber, Charcoal, Pitch and tar, Fish, Salt fish (at a cost), Whale oil, Shipyards

What it lives on

Rye and maslin, Oats, Barley and dredge

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, Black Bear Fat, Black Bear Hide, Black Bear Meat, Beeswax Block, Beetle Wing, Bilberry, Chamois Meat

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: Walking in a Forest (on Patreon, Guardian tier)

Temperate Conifer Forest in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the temperate conifer forest, A town in the temperate conifer forest, on a river

By city size

1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000

Sources

• Wikipedia contributors, Makah, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Ozette Indian Village Archeological Site, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Sitka, Alaska, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Russian-American Company, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org

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