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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2015 11:51:44 GMT -6
Iron rations are preserved foods such as slaked meat, hard bread, hardy vegetables (like potatoes), and some cheeses. They will last for a very long time, and are sold in a quantity sufficient to feed one person for one week.
Standard rations are unpreserved foods, such as soft breads, fruits, vegetables, and fresh meat, in sufficient quantity to feed one person for one week.
Water and wine skins come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and materials. The most common type is the kidney-shaped goatskin bag with a metal cap on the narrow end. Other types may be encountered made of sheepskin, bearskin, or other hide. Barbaric races and humanoids (especially orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins) may adorn their waterskins with teeth, horns, or hooves of the animal that gave up its hide for the item.
A waterskin of normal size can hold two quarts of water. Players should remember that a normal human requires two quarts of water per day to maintain good health. More water will be required in hot conditions or in cases of high physical activity. Characters subsiding on dry rations also require more water. An active character may drink a gallon of water a day, and those trekking through deserts and open savannahs may find it necessary to drink as much as two gallons per day.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2015 9:36:26 GMT -6
Many changes brought about by domestication of the horse have led to a need for shoes for number of reasons, mostly linked to management that results in horses' hooves hardening less and being more vulnerable to injury. In the wild, a horse may travel up to 50 miles per day to obtain adequate forage. While horses in the wild covered large areas of terrain, they usually did so at relatively slow speeds, unless being chased by a predator. They also tended to live in arid steppe climates. The consequence of slow but nonstop travel in a dry climate is that horses' feet are naturally worn to a small, smooth, even and hard state. The continual stimulation of the sole of the foot keeps it thick and hard. However, in domestication, the ways horses are used differ from what they would encounter in their natural environment. Domesticated horses were brought to colder and wetter areas than their ancestral habitat. These softer and heavier soils soften the hooves and have made them prone to splitting, making hoof protection necessary. Consequently, it was in northern Europe that the nailed horseshoe arose in its modern form.
Domesticated horses are also subject to inconsistent movement between stabling and work, they must carry or pull additional weight, and in modern times they are often kept and worked on very soft footing, such as irrigated land, arena footing, or stall bedding. In some cases, management is also inadequate. The hooves of horses that are kept in stalls or small turnouts, even when cleaned adequately, are exposed to more moisture than would be encountered in the wild, as well as to ammonia from urine. The hoof capsule is mostly made from keratin, a protein, and is weakened by this exposure, becoming even more fragile and soft. Shoes do not prevent or reduce damage from moisture and ammonia exposure. Rather, they protect already weakened hooves. Further, without the natural conditioning factors present in the wild, the feet of horses grow overly large and long unless trimmed regularly. Hence, protection from rocks, pebbles, and hard, uneven surfaces is lacking. A balanced diet with proper nutrition also is a factor. Without these precautions, cracks in overgrown and overly brittle hoof walls are a danger, as is bruising of the soft tissues within the foot because of inadequately thick and hard sole material.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2015 9:39:32 GMT -6
Gode Cookery Presents
Tales of the Middle Ages
True stories, fables and anecdotes from the Middle Ages
Inns and Taverns
Inns appeared in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and were apparently fairly common, especially in towns, by the fifteenth century. The earliest buildings still standing today, such as New Inn, Gloucester, or King's Head, Aylesbury, date from this time. While inns provided lodgings for travelers, taverns were drinking houses seeking to cater for the more prosperous levels of society. The leading taverners in larger towns were themselves vintners or acted as agents for vintners. The Vintner's Company of London, for instance, secured an essential monopoly of the retail trade in the city in 1364. A tavern of the later Medieval period might be imagined as a fairly substantial building of several rooms and a generous cellar. Taverns had signs to advertise their presence to potential customers, and branches and leaves would be hung over the door to give notice that wine could be purchased. Some taverns sold wine as their only beverage, and a customer could also purchase food brought in from a convenient cook-shop. Taverns seldom offered lodgings or very elaborate feasting, such as would be expected at inns. Pastimes like gambling, singing, and seeking prostitutes were a more common part of the tavern scene.
Excerpt from: Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England by Compton Reeves. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
The favorite adult recreation of the villagers was undoubtedly drinking. Both men and women gathered in the "tavern," usually meaning the house of a neighbor who had recently brewed a batch of ale, cheap at the established price of three gallons for a penny. There they passed the evening like modern villagers visiting the local pub. Accidents, quarrels, and acts of violence sometimes followed a session of drinking, in the thirteenth century as well as subsequent ones. Some misadventures may be deduced from the terse manorial court records. The rolls of the royal coroners, reporting fatal accidents, spell out many in graphic detail: In 1276 in Elstow, Osbert le Wuayl, son of William Cristmasse, coming home at about midnight "Drunk and disgustingly over-fed," after an evening in Bedford, fell and struck his head fatally on a stone "breaking the whole of his head." One man stumbled off his horse riding home from the tavern; another fell into a well in the marketplace and drowned; a third, relieving himself in a pond, fell in; still another, carrying a pot of ale down the village street, was bitten by a dog, tripped while picking up a stone to throw, and struck his head against a wall; a child slipped from her drunken mother's lap into a pan of hot milk on the hearth.
One village craft was so widely practiced that it hardly belonged to craftsmen. Every village not only had its brewers, but had them all up and down the street. Many if not most of them were women. Ale was as necessary to life in an English medieval village as bread, but where flour-grinding and bread-baking were strictly guarded seigneurial monopolies, brewing was everywhere freely permitted and freely practiced. How the lords came to overlook this active branch of industry is a mystery (though they found a way to profit from it by fining the brewers for weak ale or faulty measure). Not only barley (etymologically related to beer) but oats and wheat were used, along with malt, as principal ingredients. The procedure was to make a batch of ale, display a sign, and turn one's house into a temporary tavern. Some equipment was needed, principally a large cauldron, but this did not prevent poor women from brewing. All twenty-three persons indicted by Elton village ale tasters in 1279 were women. Seven were pardoned because they were poor.
Excerpts from: Life in a Medieval Village by Frances & Joseph Gies. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990.
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