#me. five years later. frantically calculating numbers and looking up city definitions based on size: a small city you say?

[bookwyrminspiration]

What do you estimate the population of each intelligent species to be? I know it said the dwarves were 200 something (or something like that, I don’t feel like checking) but I don’t think they have exact numbers for any other species.

Oo that's an interesting question!! And I'll look for you the dwarves were said to have a population of 329, but then 30 went missing and some have since died, so it's probably in the upper 200s. Which is still not a lot I've gotta admit

That being said! All of my estimations are based off of vibes and very unofficial math, so please take it all with a grain of salt! I tried to reason through some of it but also we're missing a lot of information so I'm fumbling in the dark!

that being said, under the cut is my strange math!

We don't have an estimate of elven population numbers, but if the school for elves is built like "a small city," a small city is defined as between 50k-99k people. But since humans are much much more prolific than all the other species, Let's say there are...10-15k school aged elves (11-18 ish), and at least in the U.S. school aged people account for about 25% of the population. So that would make, what, 30,000 adult elves if they had a human life span? But then you've got to add on all the elves from the past who haven't died, so I'm going to throw out 100,000 elves as just a very very rough estimate based on incredible flawed and unreasonable math.

And then we see a lot of gnomes on elven property, frequently outnumbering the elves but not in every home. There are also colonies out in the wild and people living on their own. Gnomes are always available to help with things, but given their no-sleep nature there wouldn't need to be as many to make them seem equal to the elves...so I'm going to say...35-40k? I know that's a lot higher than the 300-ish dwarves and the intelligent species seem to be very few, but given that gnomes live throughout many neutral territories and are always present, I think there's gotta be a fair number of them.

Then there's the trolls, who I'm thinking are kinda low in number. They have one hive (that isn't experimented on and is actually used normally, that is), which is at Luzia's place. So if an entire generation of their people can fit on a single elven property, that probably means they're closer to the dwarves than the gnomes in terms of numbers. It seems to have taken a few minutes for them to have walked through the whole hive to get to the transport pods in the back and that was moving at about top speed. So lets say it was 1/4 of a mile, about 16 pods on either side every 11 feet...that adds up to maybe 3.3k trolls in the hive at any given time? So if there are 3.3k trolls in each stage, and eight stages...that's a population of about 26,000, give or take a few thousand depending on death rates.

There's also the goblins, who I think have a good population size. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of goblins, given that whenever it's needed there can be more assigned to various elves and elven places while still maintaining militaries and cities back home. However, not everyone nor everywhere has a goblin bodyguard, in fact they seem quite rare. So I'm going to say...60k goblins overall? Enough to protect the elves who need protecting, but not everyone needs it so there are many back in Gildingham

And finally, the ogres. Their city is big enough that there are different sections and there are different class levels, working class and warrior and maybe more we don't know about. So I'm thinking there are a pretty good number? But also, goblins and ogres seem like they'd be evenly matched in a war, so their populations are probably similar. Given my goblin estimate of 60k, I'll put the ogres at maybe 50-55k? They seem more viscious than goblins (like Dimitar one-punching Sandor), but then again Brielle did kill three before she died. But for some reason I think there are slightly fewer, but a close number

A lot of this is also based on us only knowing about one city for each of the other species. They're called the capitals, but we don't hear about secondary cities that I can think of so I'm assuming their populations can fit into one city.

But hopefully my very questionable math is helpful! Shannon may have very different numbers, but I have no clue what that would be. They'd probably be a lot lower given that she put the dwarves at like 300, but hey I'm trying my best here !!