Lookshy

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Lookshy is the home of the Seventh Legion, located where the Yanaze River spills into the Inland Sea. It is the military backbone of the Scavenger Lands, and a formidable rival of the Realm. It's detailed in Books/Exalted on p. 62, Scavenger Sons, pp. 74-78, and in Outcaste, pp. 8-69.

Mail and Steel Notes

The Redoubts

Demographic Speculation

If Lookshy has about 300,000 people in the walls at any given moment, and assuming that it has the technology and magic to support 210 people per square mile of agriculture (as the Romans could at their height, and the Riverlands are a fine place to grow stuff), that would create the need for approximately 1500 sq.mi. of land (adding a bit for Lookshy's intense stockpiling efforts, and to round the number up nicely). If you zoom into Stephenls's fine map, and fill the little Lookshy peninsula with this area, you will have the Great Lookshy Wall at about 55 miles out, radiating from the City's main gates. This puts it outside the Mourning Field, which I believe Abyssals says is a mile out past the Great Lookshy Wall.

If you do some rough geometry on the provided map (Outcaste p.11), you can guess that the city covers about 14 sq. miles. If there's an average of 175,000 people in the city itself (150,000-200,000 depending on the season, not counting slaves and the indentured), that makes for a population density of over 11,000-14,500 people per sq. mile. That average is around the pop.density of the Czech's entire Prague (12,635 peeps/sq.mile in '95) or Japan's entire Kitakyushu (12,222 peeps/sq.mi in '00). Or parts of Pittsburgh, USA (over 13,000 in some areas). Less towers than I may have thought originally.

Two-thirds of the people in the total city-state population, including in the actual city, are citizens or helots, the rest metics, slaves, and indentured servants. -UncleChu

Manse Census

If we assume that Lookshy has the hearthstone resources to power all of its First Age artifacts as described in Wonders of the Lost Age and Outcastes (and having such resources would be a prime operational goal of the Legion for the same reason modern military powers are so interested in the Middle East), then these are the absolute minimum numbers of Manses under Seventh Legion control: ||Manse Level||Minimum Number|| ||1||35|| ||2||566|| ||3||232|| ||4||0|| ||5||0|| This is probably significantly lower than the actual total, as I picked the lowest possible (or lowest reasonable, in the case of phrases like "several dozen" (I picked 4 dozen)) number for each category. In a few cases, I skipped adding some in entirely due to lack of hard numbers, and I deliberately avoiding adding any extra for personal use or artifact weaponry that had the option of being fueled by personal Essence regularly rather than hearthstones (like lightning ballistae). It's likely that the Seventh Legion and its gentes control over a thousand Manses scattered through the River Province, and that Lookshy's local geography has been as thoroughly Essence-sculpted as the Realm's is. - Hapushet

Adding to this count, I would also claim that Lookshy's geography is more Essence-sculpted than the Realm. With not only a slightly smaller area to worry about, but also a much more organized construction and maintainance force, Lookshy has the people and the skills necessary for large-scale geomancy. More to the point, the Realm has been paralyzed for some time regarding its geomancy, as any real changes to a single dragon-line might disrupt other down-stream manses - and when those manses are controlled by other houses, some of which who are idiots, enemies, and allies, it's exceedingly difficult to get permission to modify anything. Lookshy, with it's rigidly controlled heirarchy, and (I'm guessing) organized bureaucratic allocation of hearthstones, is far more able to have a committee kindly explain to you that your hearthstone is going to break and stay broken, as they re-direct a dragon-line, but that due to your high rank and needs, you will be allocated a new hearthstone, from a different manse, and that that's that. Much more efficient to have large-scale government control of such things, rather than personal ownership. In addition, Lookshy has more magitech per square mile than nearly anywhere else in Creation, so it would make sense that they've more fully exploited their ability to power them as well. -- GreenLantern

Wikizens' Lookshies

Blaque dirties things up a bit and provides some characters.
Hapushet shows us an incredibly detailed report on the important people of Lookshy and the Field Forces.
Thus_Spake_Zarataylor has tons of near-canon elaborations on Lookshy.
UncleChu goes nuts with details on population, weather, and immediate neighboring lands.

Comments

Lookshy's agricultural production is supposed to be higher than normal due to intensive thaumaturgy, First Age argicultural equipment and at least Shogunate-era agri-science. I don't have figures - what's the production of, say, a modern North American farm? That's probably closer. That said, I have no issue with the Wall being ~50 miles out - that feels about right for the "city-state" Lookshy is supposed to be. Good work.

And I love First Age skyscrapers. They're all over my Lookshy. - Hapushet

Since we're talking demographics then, and dealing with population density and agriculture, there's also something else implied here - transportation. Moving food into that dense of a population center, and moving the people to and from their jobs, requires a significant transportation framework. Without tractor-trailers and cars, our modern world's transportation is right out. Do we picture giant Yeddim-pulled trains, with one Yeddim per car, and hundreds of cars long? Do we picture an essence-fueled subway system? What's keeping this city moving? -- GregLink

Honestly, I think it runs primarily on the footpower of its inhabitants. Especially given the severely quarantined nature of Lookshy's layout, I don't think most inhabitants live very far at all from their workplaces, assuming they don't simply live where they work, which I would assume is the usual case. And a modern transportation system is not required by the population density at all; according to one study I found, the average population density of Beijing during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 CE) was over 47,000 people/sq. mile. I suspect military and foodstuff transport uses a higher-grade of infrastructure (there are essence trolleys in my Lookshy, for example), but the average Lookshy citizen doesn't go very far and so it on his or her own two feet... - Hapushet

Did some research, found that modern agriculture allows .12 hectare to feed 1 typical human being. Americans and Europeans eat at .5 hectares per person. In sq. miles? 1 square mile can feed 520 Westerners or 2158 world citizens (I'd wager yer average Bengali eats more like a Second Ager than a New Yorker). Romans could do 210 people per square mile. So perhaps (even definitely) a place like Lookshy can produce way way more food than the Romans could within its borders, but I'd hesitate to equate modern farming techniques to anything in the Age of Sorrows. Perhaps Lookshy stockpiles more of its food than we could even imagine, or has an impressive export rate to justify the satisfying 1500 sq. mile estimate.

As for transportation, I like all the thoughts brought up so far. I'd personally imagine the 7th Legion would cut corners where it could in terms of Artifact usage, saving them for emergencies, and opt for reliable but mundane transportation within its walls... beast-pulled wagons for longer distances on well-maintained roads and laborer-pushed wheelbarrows for shorter. 50 miles is a lot of ground to cover on a daily basis for cargo transport, so they must have carriages simply as a matter of convenience. Of course, I like running slightly grittier games. --UncleChu

Some things to consider in terms of Lookshy's agriculture (other than military professionals being very interested in maintaining their logistics, and so may have put an emphasis on farming and food transportation artifacts) is Wood Charms and Godbullying. I'd imagine though, while not particularly sexy, you could apply Wood Medicine or Survival essence to the growing of crops. Given how important farming has always been, especially in the River Province, I'd say that it's quite possible that the necessary charms would at least be known. Another possibility is Immaculate-style godbullying to force efficiency and production out of the fields. Either factor might decrease significantly the hectares of land reqired to feed Lookshy. -- IsawaBrian
There is one other thing at work as well - location. Lookshy is distinctly closer to the elemental pole of Wood than, say, the Imperial City. To me, the climate of the Realm is the most like the 'temperate' zones most people on this Wiki are probably familiar with, while areas closer to the poles have differing climes. Having said that, while Rome had a great agricultural system, are we taking into account the fact that Lookshy is a river-fed area with possibly many similarities to the Nile, the Amazon, etc? Much as my earlier question wasn't to imply that there needs to be Essence-fueled transportation (and I agree foot traffic is probably the primary system), should we worry about a much more tropical feel, or perhaps even a flood-plain feel to the agriculture? A flooding based system would definitely call for the kind of stockpiled agriculture that both the Egyptians and Lookshy citizens are known for. -- GregLink
As I recall, the Yanaze floods Nexus yearly, so it probably floods the area around Lookshy as well. (It doesn't flood Lookshy itself, of course, because the city is on an artificial promontory.) But I would imagine that the silt-flooding at the base of the longest and largest river in Creation would be very fertile indeed. That should also help with the food production. It might also provide some interesting seasonal travel issues - or perhaps Lookshy sohei have cut deals with river and road gods to keep the flooding away from the transit arteries. -- Hapushet
One last thing to keep in mind, Creation has a much longer growing season in proportion the the length of the year. Two whole seasons out of five are full summer. I recall reading somewhere that the Incarnae(or was it the Exalts?) decreed the seasons thus to increase productivity. With even simple farming techniques, like irrigation and crop rotation, the farmers of the river provinces could feasibly get 4 or 5 crops in in a growing season (who knows, maybe more), While modern farming techniques yield only 2 maybe 3 crops in a growing season. Anyway, just something to think about. -- RedThursday

Ugh, made a population density mistake. Outcastes says that that the number of people in Lookshy proper is a ton less than my original numbers. The city area is the same, so I must reduce population density examples to smaller cities. And it leaves 100,000 people outside the city, in the surrounding rural area. Basically nothing fits so nicely together anymore, and I feel sad about that. But my goal is canon accuracy for a public page. --UncleChu

Thanks for the Hearthstone count, Hapushet! Since there are over 13,000 demesnes in the 200,000 sq. miles outside of Lookshy, they probably don't have any problem securing Hearthstones to power their goods. And they can build up to Lv3 Manses with little effort. Excellent, excellent. --UncleChu

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