The Western Turmoil (8)

Previously, when I relocated the elves from the forest of the Rudoria Kingdom to the surrounding countries, there were approximately eight thousand of them.

That number was possible precisely because the Rudoria Kingdom was a large country with an expansive territory, but even so, a single country had held that many elves.

Even if that did not account for all the elves in the west-central region, Inelda—the largest forest, where many elves had gathered—apparently was home to nearly thirty thousand.

If I remember correctly, the dwarven country where Azvald was king had a population of forty or fifty thousand, so it would hardly be an exaggeration to call Inelda, with so many elves gathered there, an elven country already.

However, once enough people gathered to form a country, problems of a corresponding scale inevitably arose.

Even a large forest would be placed under far too much strain if it had to support thirty thousand elves on its bounty alone, and there was also the question of who would take charge of such a huge number of elves, and how.

In settlements the size of villages, with anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred people, the problems that arose were, at most, personal disputes.

But when more than ten thousand people lived together, disputes could easily grow into conflicts between groups of hundreds.

To prevent that, human societies had laws, social ranks, rulers, and religions to ensure a shared set of values.

Elves were a race that rarely quarreled with their own kind, but these were troubled times, and there were still countless sources of discontent: who would serve as warriors and handle the defense, who would grow crops in the fields humans had left behind to make up for the food shortage, and how the food they obtained would be distributed...