Quote:"You keep changing things... Before you came I could see everything clearly, I knew what the path looked like. I saw everything that was going to happen; the direwolf and the stag dying together, the sea coming to Winterfell, the three-eyed crow and the winged wolf, I knew how it all happened. But then you fell from the sky and everything's changed... Why do you have to keep changing things? It all ends with the sun rising in the north and I don't understand anymore. Why couldn't you have stayed in the woods and not changed things?"

Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396 Wrote:Immediately prior to the conclusion of the Dragon War in AD 1040, Berk's society was structured around four major clans of 110-150 persons—Ingerman, Hofferson, Thorston, and Jorgenson—plus the Chief's clan, Haddock, plus approximately two hundred more clanless members of the Hooligan tribe, grouped in small families or as solitary individuals.  During this time, most of the resources of the village and island were under the control of these five clans, granting them significant influence and economic influence.  This state of affairs is generally agreed to be a result of the depredations of the dragon raids, which made it such that only larger clans were truly viable, as they collectively had the resources to withstand the constant losses that would debilitate any smaller clan. 
This can be seen in the case of Clan Haddock, which had been reduced from the 108 persons listed as their maximum in AD 875 down to four (Stoick, Valka, Hiccup, and Gothi) in AD 1025.  Stoick was able to maintain control over the rest of the village due to tradition, but also due his charisma, leadership skills, physical prowess and strength—and due to being the sole inheritor of his clan's comparatively vast wealth, which he used judiciously in order to stay in power, creating debts of honor and capital that would need to be repaid by the recipient out of social expectations.  He also made use of Clan Haddock's web of kin ties to the rest of the village; for examples, Stoick's sister, Serena, had married into the Jorgensons at about the same time Stoick had married Valka clan Jorgenson, and Stoick's paternal aunt Rhonda was the wife of Rikard clanhead Hofferson and thus the matriarch of a third of the Hofferson clan.
Despite all of Stoick's efforts and skilled politicking, however, his clan was simply not as vibrant and able to absorb damage as the other clans.  Stoick's assets were mostly static compared with the others, despite the loans that he constantly engaged in for investment, and only his skills—in politics, and in dragonslaying—allowed him to defer the inevitable collapse of his clan, according to the Gobber Ledgers.  This persisted until his son came up with a completely different solution to their problem, revived their clan, and changed the course of history.
Without Hiccup's efforts, however, Clan Haddock would almost certainly have joined the other nine extinct clans listed in the Hooligan records at the end of Stoick's life.  Instead, by AD 1050, the social structure had shifted—occasionally catastrophically—to medium-sized clans, ranging in size between 30 and 70 people.  Clan Jorgenson was the first to split, in response to the death of…

(01-28-2018, 10:48 AM)Mamorien Wrote: Also available at AO3 and SV:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/11935179/chapters/30959200
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/10052391/

(01-31-2018, 09:02 PM)M Fnord Wrote:

(01-28-2018, 10:48 AM)Mamorien Wrote: Also available at AO3 and SV:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/11935179/chapters/30959200
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/10052391/

And for those reading along at SpaceBattles, there was a brief crossover omake with the ASoIaF SI The Black Princess:
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-westerosi-ii-subprime-directives-asoiaf-star-trek-ish.561856/page-34#post-43316857
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-westerosi-ii-subprime-directives-asoiaf-star-trek-ish.561856/page-34#post-43334395
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-westerosi-ii-subprime-directives-asoiaf-star-trek-ish.561856/page-35#post-43440685
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-westerosi-ii-subprime-directives-asoiaf-star-trek-ish.561856/page-36#post-43460266

xoxo,
Za Fun Tyranto!

Nationbuilding: How People Move, Talk, Think, Organize, & Structure Themselves, 1888, Amsterdam University Press' Wrote:…when discussing the size of a state, it is important to remember that the effective limits of the size of any nation is based on four primary factors: the communications response loop, the information/decision-making effectiveness, law enforcement effectiveness, and social viewpoints on society size.
All of the large empires prior to the domestication of dragons were limited primarily by the communications loop factor; an empire's size is restricted by the distance a messenger can travel from the decision center to the periphery with orders and get back in a reasonable period of time. Various pre-dragon empires tried various means of extending this range; for example, Rome made use of its famous roads and Persia had the first post office, while China worked by decentralizing the provinces, but this did cause several civil wars over the course of their history as rebellious provinces attempted to break away.
The coming of the dragon courier, though, changed all of that, by significantly increasing the speed at which messages could travel; a horse courier on well-paved roads can travel at an average of 15-25 kilometers per hour, if they have ready remounts at waystations along the route.  However, average speeds of 10-16 km/hour for horse couriers were more typical, especially away from main routes and their waystations.  A dragon courier, in contrast, when flying one of the breeds used for courier duty, can reliably expect average speeds of 100-160 km/hour, potentially faster for shorter sprints, and needs no roads or waystations, with the primary limiting factor being the provisions needed to feed the dragon. 
As a direct result of that event, the effective range at which a nation could be managed and organized, in the absence of the other factors, had effectively increased by an order of magnitude, and this had tremendous influence into shaping the world of today.
Changes in decision making, however…