Khitan Customs

Khitan Hunters - National Palace Museum in Taiwan

Khitan are a mongolic tribe federation which founded an empire in northern China in the 10th Century, before being driven out by the Jurchen. This sino-mongolic empire was called the Liao Kingdom and is mentionned page 130 of Wind on the Steppes.

Gianni Vacca, the prolific rpg-blog-runner and author of The Celestial Empire sent me a link to a blog dedicated to languages. The linked entry is about the Khitan and provides the full translation of a chinese text describing many of their customs: "Record of the Lands North of Yan". This text has been written in 1058 by Wáng Yì 王易, an envoy of the Song. It is a superb source of material to bring credibility, colour, amazement and ideas in your game.

How Much, How Big ?

Horses (from the blog les-verts-tacots)

This is a question which arises in many situations during a game, and many settings propose guidelines or even price lists. But in an economy based on exchange, it is difficult to set any price list, and in an oral culture, accounting documents are missing. We are therefore obliged to extrapolate from reports written by foreign visitors. The following guidelines try to give a comprehensive estimate of numbers to be found among nomads, either for exchange or to estimate the size of an encounter. I based these numbers on reports from visitors or on the amount of beasts sold every year at the town market in Bukhara.

The following numbers are very rough, may vary widely and are only given as guidelines to create an encounter or as background elements for player characters.

Size of a camp

The camp of an important Bey can be as small as 50 yurts, split in groups of 3-6 yurts, each one housing a family. Such a camp would have 5-6000 heads of sheep and 3-600 horses. Goats, cows and camels are less numerous. The usual ratio between animals could be the following:

10-20 heads of sheep / horse

50-100 heads of sheep / goat

1 cow / 10 horses

1 camel / 5 to 20 horses (depending on the area)

An average family consisting in 6 members is expected to have 4 yurts and take care of 40 horses, 400-head flock of sheep, a few goats, 4 cows or yaks and 4 camels. In desert areas, increase the proportion of camels. Since camels and cows have a similar usage, it is possible that an isolated family lacks one of them.

Costs of goods

These can widely vary according to variety, scarcity or quality. The BRP rule using item value levels instead of money is therefore well suited to this setting. One can use sheep as kind of reference, if not as currency.

Cheap items are supposed to be made by the Nomads themselves.

One sheep is an “inexpensive” item.

An average item like an average horse costs about 10 inexpensive ones (sheep).

An expensive item “costs” at least 10 horses or 100 heads of sheep. For example camel, slave, metal armour, high quality silk dress, or wolf fur coats. Of course, there is no price limit to expensive goods.

Religions and Traditions

After a short period of silence due to well-deserved holidays (and a few problems with my computer as well), I'm happy to present at last a new post which, I hope, will arouse new role playing ideas.

As explained in the book, Nomads always kept their traditional beliefs alive, despite their conversion to foreign religions. But what may not be clear, is how strong and long lasting the remnants of the old beliefs could have been, mixed with the new Religion into a kind of singular syncretism. This offers opportunities for interesting role-playing.

Alexis Levshkin, a Russian traveler in the 19th Century, wrote a full report on the Kazaks, plenty of prejudices for our modern 21^st century eyes, but also a great source of information about the life of the Nomads at this time, which was certainly not much different as centuries before. The author wrote a chapter about the faith and religion of these tribes which have converted to Islam centuries ago: it confirms how these conversions have been superficial and how the traditional beliefs, including Tengriism, resisted in a form or another.