AbsentWizard March 23, 2023 Economy The primary economic activity of the living is medium-intensity irrigated agriculture. The two primary calorie crops are giant yams (usually purple and can weigh several kilos when harvested) and teff. Yams are traditionally eaten boiled, baked, or made into a flatbread. Teff is used for silage and seeds are ground and made into a flatbread. Leavened breads are not known, and cooking oils are limited to the lard-like oil pressed from the spore-pods of certain cyrid species. Construction and manual labors are the second most common economic activity of the living; almost all specialized non-physical labor is relegated entirely to the dead. The primary economic activity of the dead is philosophy. Government True tribal democracy with deeply multilateral factionalism. The state capacity is very high; Weak Lands can organize an enormous amount of scribes and clerks for its population. However, state direction and decision-making is very slow due to the consensus-based nature of these functions. There is no recognized, stable central government; just whatever is the consensus at the time. Elections occur constantly to various offices that are created and then abolished a while later. Resource The primary import is cats. There is much more interaction and physical contact between ghosts and cats than between any other type of living creature, and the processes to free the soul from people do not work similarly on other creatures for uncertain reasons. The Weak are cat people, and they import cats in huge numbers. The primary export is mental products: philosophy, literature, plays, mathematics, and the like. Over longer distances, this mostly takes the form of books, scrolls, and other recording devices.
AbsentWizard March 18, 2023 Economy The primary economic activity of the living is medium-intensity irrigated agriculture. The two primary calorie crops are giant yams (usually purple and can weigh several kilos when harvested) and teff. Yams are traditionally eaten boiled, baked, or made into a flatbread. Teff is used for silage and seeds are ground and made into a flatbread. Leavened breads are not known, and cooking oils are limited to the lard-like oil pressed from the spore-pods of certain cyrid species. Construction and manual labors are the second most common economic activity of the living; almost all specialized non-physical labor is relegated entirely to the dead. The primary economic activity of the dead is philosophy. Government True tribal democracy with deeply multilateral factionalism. The state capacity is very high; Weak Lands can organize an enormous amount of scribes and clerks for its population. However, state direction and decision-making is very slow due to the consensus-based nature of these functions. There is no recognized, stable central government; just whatever is the consensus at the time. Elections occur constantly to various offices that are created and then abolished a while later. Resource The primary import is corpses, which have their souls freed and become immigrants. This process is critical to the functioning of the Weak lands on an ideological level ("all corpse-souls deserve freedom") and economic level (ever-increasing numbers of freshmen ghosts are needed in order to prevent the various factions from calcifying) The primary export is mental products: philosophy, literature, plays, mathematics, and the like.
