Life of a Ravenloft Peasant

LIFE AND TIME OF A RAVENLOFT PEASANT

ARTHRITIS, BUT I'M ONLY 38!

On the average, a man can expect to live 70 years nowadays, and a woman 80. We take it for granted, and many act as if it has always been that way, but it hasn't, so why should we hold today's standards to a Gothic realm. Mortality is truly fearsome, if the players suddenly see their life expectancy slashed just due to natural causes, a Ghost becomes a fearsome creature indeed.

In Ravenloft, a man is a greybeard if he made it past 40, and truly wizened at 60, usually long dead by then. Woman make it to maybe 50, if they don't die during childbirth (8 out of ten women do).

Infants live past the age of 5 just over half the time (3 out of five make it to teens), and a teenage girl is wedded and pregnant while a modern girl is still in high school or junior college.

• Ravenloft Babies: First of all, these kids are born at home, sometimes with a midwife, but in the outlying or isolated cases, just other closeby females in attendance. A woman has a 60% chance of dying, either through exhaustion coupled with the malnutrition that is an everyday part of life, or from the bleeding that is caused by vaginal tearing when the baby comes out. A baby that comes out sideways or backwards ends up dead or deformed, and in Ravenloft, deformed means dead. A malformed baby may or may not be named before they are left out to die, or smothered, or drowned. The baby sleeps in the same bed as the mother, and is breast fed usually until age 2 at night, and eats solids as soon as they begin grabbing them off the mothers plate.
• Ravenloft Children (2-6): Children of both sexes wear dresses, with a woven reed or metal band around the bottom and in the middle, making it easier for the baby to learn to walk. A baby who falls in a tabask never hits the floor, but instead leans far forward and is then gently pushed back by the band. (Tidbit: This was an actually piece of clothing in the 16 & 17 hundreds, and had been around for centuries!) The child usually was encouraged to help with small labors. Girls and boys were often separated slightly, to see what would become their peer group work. Children were to be seen not heard, and learned early to be quiet. Child abuse was knocking out one of their teeth, or drawing blood. A hard ass beating or a thump on the head was frowned on in public, but often went on in private. Once they could walk well, the tabask was removed, and the child learned to do small chores and help.
• Children Aged 6-10: Went to school if there was one. At night, the father read to them, or told them stories that would teach morals and values in their slow, subtle way, and gave warnings not to go out after dark, not to trust strangers, and to stay on the paths. (Grim Faerie Tales had a purpose beside entertainment)
• Boys 11-15: Work in the fields with their fathers, uncles, brothers, ect, putting in a full workday of dawn till dusk. At dusk these young men carry in wood and water before nightfall, and are charged with guarding the women and children if anything happens while the men handle it. They are dominant over the women and the parents will be hoping the boy shows some aptitude for the family business, or something he might be able to be apprenticed to.
• Girls 11-15: Are taught sewing, household duties, and when they turn 13, are given advice for controlling the man through sex and food. A girl of this age eagerly awaits her First Blood, the sign that she is truly a woman and can now go out and look for a mate. Although some girls may begin menstruating as early as 9, she still must begin to grow breasts before getting married.
• Boys (15+): are considered men. They will be looking for wives, getting their houses built or moving out, getting jobs or becoming apprenticed, or joining whatever local military or law enforcement they can. If they stay on the farm, they still take orders from their father, but are considered full grown adults.
• Girls (15+): Any of these girls who are beginning to show breasts and starting their menstrual cycle are now considered women, and will be active in seeking a husband. By fifteen, most of them will be married and have one child, some of them will be dead in child birth, and others will still be looking.
• Men (40+): These men have arthritis and have grand kids now. They are definitely toward the ass end of middle age and are well aware of their own mortality. Their joints ache in cold weather, and are considered an older man.
• Women (35+): Hey, they're still alive, pretty good. . By now, they are barren from uterine scarring (good thing for them, another kid at this age WILL kill them), and spend time caring for the house and the grandchildren. Hair is beginning to Grey, and wrinkles are definitely making an appearance.
• Men (50+) What the hell are you doing still alive? You should have worked yourself to death by now, you lazy bastard. Lucky you, retire onto the front porch and tell stories, you'll be dead within a few years anyway. Say, don't those swollen joints hurt, and isn't a little hard to eat with only three teeth?
• Women(45+) WITCH!!!! BURN HER!!! Maybe, most women are dead, and the rest are considered oma's or grandmothers, often with great grandchildren. Some women are considered wise women, or village elders, others were merely lucky and still live on the farm. The farm women have nothing to lose, and are considered the most expendable, so if the family needs wood in the middle of the night, guess who gets to go get it. They can no longer produce children, have trouble getting around, get chilled and sick easy, and don't make much contribution.

In some places, men above mid-forties and women in their late thirties will walk out into the woods to die of exposure or be eaten by a passing Loup-Garou, or killed by trigger happy adventurers. Some take poison tea or crumpets, and some will themselves to die in their sleep. All of these rituals are very sacred to the people that make up that society, and great respect is given to those who have the courage and wisdom to seek their end at the proper time (No, this is not a plug for Euthanasia) The worst thing a player character could do is climb on top of a pole held mat to check out a travios with a body on it. They will have desecrated the resting place of a sacred ancestor of someone, incurred the wrath of the spirit, and in general, just fucked themselves.

The nobility and social elite get to add 10 to 15 years to this, but hey, as little as that seems to us, that's another third of a lifetime for them. The equivalent of getting an extra 25 years to us. Hmmm, seems like quite a bit now, don't it? All those servants who dropped dead caring for them kind of added to their life span in a strange, parasitic kind of way. Your typical noble woman also did not get married until her late teens. By her mid twenties, her beauty had faded, and she was stuck as a spinster, unless she could pony up a good dowry.

The day of a typical Ravenloft peasant? It goes something like this.

1 hour before dawn the chicken in the a cage in the kitchen begins crowing. The men get up and dress while the women begin getting the fire going and the breakfast cooked.

The men go and feed and milk the animals, and the females finish breakfast.

The children are woken up, and the family eats.

The men go out to tend the animals, work the fields, or what ever work they do.

The women clean the house, make blankets, preserve food, fix clothing, etc....

Before noon, a cold lunch is made and two of the small boys (5-6) are sent with a bucket of beer and the cold lunch to the men.

Late evening, the older men go to the tavern, sometimes taking their wives. The younger men return to bring in firewood, milk and night feed the animals, ect..

The women make and serve dinner, then wash the pots and dishes.

Before dark, everyone better be back, because the doors are barred, and no one gets in.

The oldest male tells stories, and the children are put to bed. Adults (15 and older men, breasted and bleeding women) stay up and discuss the day, or the future, or just tell stories. Most read from religious books.

Repeat after sleeping until dead

Boy, wish I could do that every day. No wonder the poor bastards died so quick. Very few holidays, usually the summer and winter solstices, and maybe a religious holiday or two. Remember also, in Ravenloft, about ten or twelve per month, per domain are scarfed up by some wandering lycanthrope, or had their soul sucked out accidentally by some wraith who floated by. Ravenloft makes up for this by sucking in some peasant farmstead from another world and altering memories all the way around. It also takes slightly evil farmsteads, PC's who eventually retire, or builds villagers, townsmen and farmsteads from scratch.

"The Ludendorf's, oh sure, they've always been there."-phrase heard when the party questioned a villager about a farm that suddenly appeared between one night and the next. Subsequent research found tax records, marriage, death, birth and church records. According to the people's memories and town records, the Ludendorf's had always been there.

And in Ravenloft, they had.