MjM
Deity
On the Milnarid Empire
The farmers of the Milnarid empire farm farms. The farms compose 100% of the farmland. The farmers are usually 100% farmers. The farm is made up of dirt. If it wasn't for dirt, there would be no farms, because farms are places that plants are grown for food. Some plants can have grain on them, and that grain is what people eat, and plants grow on dirt. That is how plants are grown for food, and why dirt is important -- because dirt is where plants grow, and plants have grains that people eat. But not all plants have grains; some have other edible things, too, like fruits, and vegetables. Those grow in farms too. But these edible plants aren't exclusively found in farms. They are also found in the wild. Grain is actually a variant of some wild grasses, most from the Mediterranean region. The Milnarid Empire can be said to live off farms, because people live off food, and farms provide food by having the dirt that plants grow on, though we mustn't forget the farmers who actually take care of the dirt and the plants that make a farm a farm. A farm is not a farm if it didn't have the plants that grew on it that provided the food. However the farmer despite being so fundamental isn't the most important person. Farming doesn't make him rich despite the fact that everyone needs to eat. It's just a fact of life. There are what are known as subsistence farmers and what some would call capitalist farmers. Subsistence farmers grow food to eat for themselves. They don't actually grow food through magic, it's just synthesizing -- photosynthesizing, you might say, knowledge of how plants naturally grow with dirt, water, and sun. Farmers know how big some plants get at certain times of the year, and when those plants have grain and fruits and such. Plants that are planted in farms don't always have food on them, the farmers should know what a plant will be like after some time. Though simple knowledge not everyone knows this because most people are stupid or lazy, or a combination of the two. Again, subsistence farmers grow food for themselves and a minimal amount after that to trade for other things they need; sometimes not even so much, because they sometimes know how to make those things themselves! It's not just a matter of know-how, but also of willingness and time and personal goals. Capitalist farmers also grow food, but they grow much more food than they need. It's not that they want to get fat, but they want more things that are not food. Food doesn't turn into other things, however! Sometimes they can, like a gourd can turn into a water pouch, but there are limits. Other people who are too lazy or stupid to farm, or grow their own food, do other things to compensate. For example a cobbler might make shoes. He'll make shoes, not just for himself but for the farmer. The farmer would then give him food in exchange for shoes. How much food the farmer is willing to give depends on how much he really wants those shoes. Although it might be intuitive that from this set-up, farmers should be able to get as much as they want in any society because everyone wants to eat food, this is not the case. I would say that this is a fact of life, again. Subsistence farmers are usually poor, even those who dabble in a little bit of capitalism on the side. Poor is when they don't have a lot of things. Again, facts of life, but maybe the next few sentences will bring more illumination to this matter. The reason why 100% of the population aren't farmers is because not everyone just wants food. Some people want to have nice things, too. But sometimes these people are just plain mean and selfish. They let the farmer farm as he does, letting the plants grow on dirt sometimes and then killing the plants to get the grain or the fruits or the vegetables, and yes, killing is usually necessary, but don't worry though, plants have seeds. Seeds are like tiny baby plants, that when placed on dirt, and given water and sunlight, become new plants with grains and vegetables and fruits anew! That's what's meant by planting. Anyway, these mean people lie in wait until the farmers finish with the planting and the harvesting. Harvesting is just a fancy word for killing plants or parts of the plant -- it's not always necessary to kill the entire plant! -- to get the edible bits. Edible just mean eat-able, but I don't know why it's not just called "eatable." Maybe because it sounds too much like "eat table," and nobody wants to eat a table, even though tables are made from wood and wood comes from plants! As you can see, not everything from a plant is edible. So the mean people wait, the farmers harvest, and then once the farmers are carrying their food to their houses, bam! The mean people point a sharp stick at them and tell them to hand over the food! These mean people go by many names, like "raiders," or "burglars," or "bandits," but that's only when the farmer thinks he can resist. When the farmer's finally given up on resisting, they're called "armies," "soldiers," and "government!" Farmers don't just raise crops though. A crop is what you call the food that you get from plants, or the plants that grow these foods, I'm not really sure, but it's close. Farmers also raise domesticated animals. Domesticated means these animals are comfortable doing the deed to make more of them in crowded conditions, and sometimes in the presence of the farmers; it also means that the animals won't try to kill the farmers who end up using them up for what they're worth and killing them in the end. Raising them basically means having them multiply -- a nice term for have sex and more babies -- then kill some of them for food and other materials. Sometimes they don't have to be killed to get the good things from them. A cow for example can be milked, a nice way of saying having its breasts fondled by a farmer, when she has a baby so that the farmer can drink the milk meant for the baby cow, or a calf as they are known. Once the cow is too old to make any more milk, she is killed for some beef, or meat that comes from cows. Meat is protein-rich food that comes from many living things. Beef from old cows isn't usually nice though, so sometimes calves are killed for nice, soft, beef. When people buy things from farmers, that is to say, trade, say shoes or whatever they make for food, how many shoes they give is not just determined by how much food they will get, but how much they want the food that they're going to be given! A lot of people like nice beef from calves, so a cobbler might give two pairs of shoes instead of just one when buying the same amount of calf-beef instead of old cow-beef. Shoes usually come in pairs, but sometimes they don't. After all, like I've said, farmers are usually poor, and poor people sometimes only wear one shoe, or no shoes at all! Come to think of it, pirates sometimes only wear one shoe, even if they are rich, because sometimes they have a peg leg. A peg leg is a wooden shaft someone attaches to their leg if their leg's been cut off, so that they can walk. A pirate doesn't need to produce anything of his own, since he can just go to a farmer and threaten the farmer with violence to get fruits to cure his scurvy and wood to make his planks. In this way, pirates are mean people, and have the potential to be governments. The Milnarid Empire acts in the same way, except it uses the wood for ships -- note that pirates don't actually make ships themselves, they have to take it from others! -- and the food to feed its armies. Empire is just a nice way of saying that a bunch of farmers and other honest folk who make stuff have given up on resisting a bunch of mean folk who take things from them without giving them anything in return. Sometimes this is justified, or made to look nice, to the farmers and other honest folk by the Empires with the reason that the Empire will protect them from other mean people like pirates, so they only have to lose some and not more. A lot of farmers and honest folk accept this, but those who don't sometimes organize to resist, that is to say gang up together to fight the so-called governments. When these gangings-up occur, they are called revolts; however, the government did not make the farmers and honest folk give up resisting in the first place by letting them have what they want, so they usually stab these people who join revolts dead, with the pointy sticks they usually carry around. Not to say that the Milnarid Empire's government and army came from pirates! They probably came from bandits and raiders, the landlubbing cousins of the ignoble pirate, arr.
Milnarid Empire : +1 asteroid
(not an income asteroid, the kind that blows up annoying stuff)
rders soon
