Most of the people in the Lunar Heartlands are directly involved with food production:
- 61% raising of grain (including rice) – main cults Seven Mothers, Lodril, Oria, Dendara, and Hon-eel.
- 11% animal husbandry – main cults Seven Mothers and Dendara.
- 6% river and marsh (fish and birds) main cults – Oslira, Surenslib.
Now wait – you might ask – the Seven Mothers really don’t provide squat in terms of agricultural magic. Correct! But they provide a path towards the Lunar Way, which many people consider far more important.
There’s actually a pretty dizzying diversity of cults worshiped by these agricultural producers, depending on social status, locality, etc.
Deezola? She provides Earth elementals, but not stuff like Bless Crops, etc.
In pre-industrial societies aren’t about 90% of the population is required to work in agriculture or animal husbandry? In truth, the number is anywhere from 60-90% depending on what you count. 78% is perfectly in the range.
As Glorantha is a magic rich world isn’t food production easier? Likely, but also that 90% number is not supported by a lot of archaeological field work. For example, Mesopotamia was far more urbanized than we give credit for – settlement surveys suggest that about half the population lived in cities and towns of over 2,000 people.
How does this contrast with other lands like Kethaela, Dragon Pass and Prax? Well with the Sartarites, we have a slightly lower percentage of society engaged in food production (remember a lot of food can be acquired from the nomads):
- 45% raising of grain – main cults Orlanth Thunderous, Ernalda, Yelmalio
- 5% fishing and birding – main cults Orlanth Thunderous and Ernalda
- 5% hunting – main cults Orlanth Adventurous
- 15% animal husbandry – main cults Orlanth Adventurous, Ernalda
There’s a lot of overlap between these occupations here.
Do neighbour Kingdoms/Empires send curses to undermine harvests of their rivals? There are a few ways to do that:
- Blast Earth – that’s a Maran Gor spell, which means we are talking about the major Ernalda-Maran Gor temple complexes (Shaker’s Temple, Ezel, Nochet, Rhigos, etc.).
- Cloud Call – that’s a very common Orlanthi spell. Have the weather suck and the harvest will suck.
- Rain – that’s a fairly common Orlanth Thunderous-Heler spell. See above.
- Cloud Clear – that’s a very common Yelm spell. Droughts suck for harvests.
In the Second Age, the EWF coordinated this on a huge scale and sent hurricanes to blast Slontos.
Given that Peloria has a maize and extensive irrigation, why they are slightly less efficient at agriculture than in Sartar? They aren’t less efficient. They produce far greater surpluses than Sartar. What they have is less direct cult support for agriculture.
Now that might well mean they don’t need it and many people engaged in agriculture are able to seek spiritual meaning beyond the agricultural cycle.