Definition

A farm can represent almost any type of farm or agricultural holding. It could be vineyards, orchards of fruit or more prosaically sheep, cattle or crops. It shouldn't be a forest or wood - if that is what you want to take then we would recommend you choose the forest resource instead.

The size of a farm can vary dramatically, depending on how productive the land is and what crops are grown, a normal size for a farm would be around twenty acres but an orchard might be much smaller, only a few acres, while a sheep farm on the Urizen hills could easily be ten times this size.

Production

A farm produces 9 crowns. This represents your disposable income each season; things like supporting your lifestyle, paying taxes, and the like all exist below the abstraction layer.

Downtime Options

There are no downtime options for a farm. It produces income automatically.

Upgrades

A farm can be upgraded using weirwood obtained from the Bourse. Each time a farm is upgraded, the owner receives an additional income of 36 rings from then on.

To upgrade a farm requires Imperial wains of weirwood equal to the level the farm is being upgraded to. So the first upgrade of a starting level 1 farm costs 2 Imperial wains of weirwood, from 2 to 3 costs 3 Imperial wains, etc.

Diversification

A farm can be diversified to sacrifice income for resources or herbs. To diversify a farm costs one throne. Each time a farm diversifies, the owner chooses one resource produced by a forest or a single herb; the farm produces 2 measures of the chosen natural material or two drams of the herb but produces 36 rings less income. If a herb is chosen it must be one of the standard five herbs available from a herb garden.

A Marcher farm owner in a Marcher territory has a special diversification option as long as the Imperial Conclave continues to interdict the Rivers Run Red ritual. With the aid of the landskeepers, they can raise menhirs that will allow their farm to produce a small amount of crystal mana. They will lose 30 rings of income as a result, but the farm will produce one mana crystal for each level of this diversification. It costs one throne each time they diversify in this way. The landskeepers have made it clear that this help will be withdrawn if the Conclave remove the interdiction. If this happens, the option to build new stones would disappear, although any menhirs already built - any diversification that was complete - would be unaffected.

National Implications

Senators in The Marches are chosen by the steward who controls the most land; this is represented by the farm personal resource. A Marcher character who has been operating a farm personal resource in a Marcher territory has 10 votes towards the election of the steward for the territory. If the farm is upgraded - then the character who operates that farm contributes 2 additional votes for each upgrade.

Rituals

The table below shows a list of the rituals in Imperial lore which can affect the production of a farm.

Ritual Effect Realm Magnitude
Blessing of New Spring Produces an additional 10 rings for three seasons and serves as foundation for Strong Ox, Golden Sun Spring 2
Strong Ox, Golden Sun Produces an additional 50 rings for two seasons and serves as foundation for Gathering the Harvest Summer 4
Gathering the Harvest Produces an additional 400 rings after the Summer Solstice Autumn 15
Fallow Fields and Dried Meat Produces an additional 18 rings after the Autumn Equinox Winter 2
Withering Touch of Frost Reduces production by a quarter for a year Winter 6
Anathemic Call of Bug and Briar Reduces production by a half for a year Spring 16
Like Water Through Your Fingers Reduces production by three quarters for a year Autumn 30
Naeve's Twisting Blight(1) Reduces production by a half for a season Winter 15
Thunderous Deluge(1) Reduces production by a half over the next season Spring 46
Winter's Ghosts(1) Reduces production by a quarter over the next season Winter 50

  1. This curse affects an entire territory