Building A Skyrim Style ACK Setting - Part 4: The Kingdom of Somerset

Somerset is treated as a singular kingdom in the campaign, but is actually composed of nine semi-independent earldoms.  They are bound together by culture, tradition, trade, and mutual defense. The office of High King is filled by an election held by the Earls, but the title is not hereditary. The High King leads the other Earls in times of war and mediates disputes between them during peace time. They are the face and voice of the kingdom and when other nations send diplomatic envoys, it is the High King’s Court that they go to.

Originally I tried to create the kingdom from the top down, but I was having issues doing that. I later realized it was an issue with nomenclature and how I want the kingdom to be set-up. What I realized is that I needed to treat each hold as a separate realm. This made life so much easier.

Realm Size and Political Divisions

There is a couple of ways to go about sizing up your realms. Per the Book

“If the Judge is developing the realms for a setting of his own devising, he will have to construct the realms based on the maps he has created and his own imagination. Using the recommended two maps, the large-scale 24-mile hex campaign map should encompass a huge empire or several kingdoms, while the smaller scale 6-mile hex regional map should constitute a robust principality of about 18,000 square miles (600 hexes), leaving 50% of the map available as unsettled, wild land. (Macris, 2011)”

In one of the examples in the book, the person drew the boundaries of his realm, counted how many hexes it filled and then used that for his base line.

Counting all of the Civilized and Borderlands, the kingdom is 136 24-mile hexes big.

I went with a population density of 4,000 families per 24 mile hex, or 250 families per 6 mile hex. 136 Hexes * 4,000 families = 544,000 families or a population of roughly 2.7 million humans! This is way higher than I wanted.

I was thinking there are maybe around 1 million humans in total or 200,000 families. 200,000 families divided by 136 24-mile hexes gives me a population density of about 1,470 families per 24 mile hex (91 families per 6 mile hex). Which is roughly 3 families (15 people) per square mile.

Ironically that is the same population density of modern day Norway.

I finally decided on a realm population density of 2,000 families per 24-mi. hex (126 per 6-mi. hex). That gives me a realm population of 272,000 families and a density of 19 people per square mile.  272,000 families fall within the range for a Principality (87K–322K), not a Kingdom (364K–2,000K). Mechanical we will treat each earldom as what it actually is. In role-playing the kingdom however, we would treat it as a kingdom.

There are Nine Earldoms (Duchy) in the Kingdom, if the population was evenly divided, that would mean 30,222 families per Earldom which is the range of a Duchy (20,000–52,000). However I don’t want all of my duchies to be the exact same. Some will be larger or smaller depending on location.

Earldom	Type	Realm Population (families)	Realm Domains	Realm Size (mi.2)	Realm Size (6-mi. hex)	Realm Size (24-mi. hex)
Silverfeld	Duchy	50,000	217	12,704	397	25
Ostenstrand	Duchy	48,000	187	12,192	381	24
Westbrerd	Duchy	37,000	156	9,408	294	19
Bretenanmere	Duchy	25,400	106	6,464	202	13
Eisenburg	Duchy	24,600	85	6,272	196	12
Drachenfeld	Duchy	23,500	85	5,984	187	12
Wulf Dúnland	Duchy	22,000	85	5,600	175	11
Isenhelm	Duchy	21,500	85	5,472	171	11
Stánhold	Duchy	20,000	85	5,088	159	10
Total		272,000	1091	69,184	2,162	137

I think until I figured this out, this was my biggest stumbling block.  Since I now know how big each Earldom is I can update my campaign map.

 

 

Kingdom of Somerset Map – Earldom Boundaries

Instead of having the kingdom growing geometrically, I tried to establish a pattern of settlement based on how the early settlers would have built. The oldest settlement is actually Fýrdracaheald (Fire Dragon Hold), it is where the Sælíðenda (wave-riders) first landed and where the first settlement was built. Over time they explored down the coast. They would have discovered the fjords and natural bays and begun setting up settlements. From there they would have begun exploring the interior of the land via the rivers. Over time settlements would have been established along the rivers and lakes.

Earldom	Silverfeld	Ostenstrand	Westbrerd	Bretenanmere	Wulf Dúnland	Eisenburg	Drachenfeld	Isenhelm	Stánhold	Total
Earldom	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	9
Shire	6	6	5	5	4	4	4	4	4	42
March	30	30	25	20	16	16	16	16	16	185
Herred	180	150	125	80	64	64	64	64	64	855
Total	217	187	156	106	85	85	85	85	85	1091

The above tables are the political breakdown of each earldom showing how many Shire (counties), marches, and baronies are in each Earldom (Duchy). In the smaller ones I may change some numbers as they 5 smallest all have the same number and look identical.

The next two posts I am going to be focusing the settlements and commerce in the Earldoms.

Woohoo!!! More Spreadsheets!!!