Geographical and Population Scale

Note from the author: *I personally didn’t like the idea of strictly defining the size of distances or populations within Zol. I think it mostly comes from the fact that I as a person have a hard time wrapping my mind around these concepts. I wanted to leave it up to the user (Like a Dungeon Master running a game in D&D 5e deciding how many people live within an area, rather than me telling it strictly beforehand). I think that adjusting the population to better fit the story being told, rather than applying firm numbers is better.

Similarly for distance, I don’t like to think about how many days by train, horse, or foot it takes to get from A to B until it makes sense for the pacing of the story that is being told.

However, there are a few things I intended for these concepts which will help define relative numbers when storytelling in Zol.

Cities are meant to feel very populated, even small cities should feel like they are relatively dense in their population. A city, and its surrounding area should feel like province of its own. Cities are ancient and massive, overflowing with history and culture. This is because the wilderness is quite dangerous, and it has forced people to all flock to the safety of cities. Outer Villages should feel much less dense in their population.

The most populated city is Audran and the least populated city is Little Triumph.

Zol is meant to feel very large. The distances between cities are quite far, and travelling between them is dangerous when not done by train.

To give a baseline for distance, a trip from Rails to Tenzentak would take:

• 4 days travel on foot
• 3 days travel on horseback
• 24 hours via train