The cow standard

[ffutures]

For the Tooth and Claw game dragons eat a LOT of meat, so I think that I have to assume that the average wage will pay for e.g. a cow every few days, and that meat in general will be cheap whereas some types of food (e.g. bread, cheese) either won't be on sale at all, or will be a niche market catering to foreign (human) tourists and foodys. What I want to do is work out things adventurers might want to buy - e.g. beer, guns, etc. - based on the thing I know - e.g. cows.

What I really need is some idea of the cost of a beef carcasse in the mid-Victorian era. I can then relate other prices I know to that. Presumably information like this is available, but I've not got very far - I got a victorian maths text that gave three different prices for a cow in three different sums, but I'm pretty sure that there is no real world connection, the numbers were just used to make the sums work.

Maybe something like a naval history, presumably navies bought meat in bulk? Anyone got any thoughts?

Later It occurs to me I'm looking at this wrong - it's only the big rich dragons that will be eating whole cows, your average dragon in the street probably just buys a goat or a few pounds of beef. So I'll work it out from butcher prices, which I already have.

Comments

[i_kender]

This is tangential, but have you read the Temeraire books? Naomi Novak... dragons in the Napoleonic Wars.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've heard about them vaguely, but I'm deliberately avoiding looking until I've got this finished so I'm not tempted to nick anything from them.

[i_kender]

Fair enough. They're enjoyable... especially when they start getting into issues of dragon emancipation and rights.