As is fitting, name the fourth canton, Avalon.
This is the sort of thing I was thinking of for forestation.
This is only a proposal, to give people an idea of what's possible. More or less forestation can be done. What do people think? The range of lighter-colored trees around the edge of the forest are fruit trees. The mountains would be all forested with evergreens.
Fleurs methodology is to collect packets of seeds via magic from wild areas, so the forests she grows are likely to be a mix of wood types, and include whatever bushes and flowers might be appropriate to the type of woodlands as well. Exceptions apply where she is putting domesticated stands of trees, so far these have been close to her lab so as to involve less travel time...
The biggest problem with Meliai's technique is that it's very slow, relatively speaking. Meliai can plant say five acres a day of very rich planting. That's incredibly good compared to how slowly things actually grow, but it's slow if you're trying to cover an entire island. I did some (very) rough calculations and Danusylvania is about 100-150 square miles. That's 64000-96000 acres. At 5 acres a day, that means it'll take Meliai between 12800-19200 days or 35-53 years (140-211 seasons) to cover the canton in trees, assuming she doesn't miss a day. In other words, every season that Meliai spends casting, she covers only 0.47%-0.7% of her canton. Of course, she may not want canton to be covered in trees. Let's say that she wants to cover 1/3 of the canton in trees. That's still a 12-18 years of casting every day. That's a long time to spend when a single ritual can do most of the heavy lifting.
But in the end, how she covers Danusylvania with trees is up to her. I was just looking to see who was interested in some trees since Magnus is casting the spell anyway.
I can certainly omit Danusylvania from the forest creation if you prefer, silveroak, and leave it to Meliai to forest the canton in her own way.
Very meta feedback - I'd like us (at least Constantine's canton) to have some forest scattered around the edges too, to act as wind breaks and also potentially hide the settlements from being too visible from the sea. Even if it's smaller areas and not massive forests there is probably a benefit.
Constantine will also ask for Meliai's help with the seeding of other plants and flowers too - if she can spare some time. Not a large area at all, but some reasonable diversity.
Oh, and Constantine will name his canton Erewhon.
Edit: and can the road network join the aerie to the town in his Canton too please. That makes travel better between the town, the Aerie, and the main covenant.
I can work on that. The only problem is that since it's one ritual, the forest has to be contiguous. So, there will have to be some trails of forest going to the shore.
There's nowhere like home!
That should be okay, Currently there's one trail leading up to the Aerie. But the ritual that makes the road ought to be able to accommodate mountains.
Perfect. Create a few in grids closer to the town, lay them out using an inner area suitable for crops and the fields are marked out. : )
Anything is fine, it's rather meta.
Here's what I came up with:
As always, anything can be altered as desired before the spell is cast.
I know it seems like a lot of forest, but keep in mind that every square mile or so represents a manor of between 5-60 families (depending on the industries they pursue). At that rate, it'll be along time before we recruit enough people to fill the open land that's shown.
Meliai doesn't have a problem with beig included in a ritual per se, she just wants to make sure she gets actual wilderness, not just square miles of groves...
Well, the plan is to create a mixed forest with a density of about 500 trees per acre. That's a little more than 9'x9' spacing, which apparently counts as good for reforesting purposes. However, Magnus will probably put a random element in the spell so that the coniferous forest is not just row after row of trees. The fruit trees may be a bit more orderly, however.
There's grass on the ground already, so it won't be totally bare ground. But the ritual will not create undergrowth, that's true. It's just a spell to make trees. Unfortunately, Meliai's options are either to get lots of trees in an instant, or to get true wilderness over the course of 12-18 years. At the moment there's no option to get true wilderness in an instant. (That may change with future spells, of course.) Magnus may well try for a later ritual that creates undergrowth, but I can't say for certain. I'm also not sure whether the undergrowth would spontaneously generate once the forest was there. I doubt the medieval people thought about seeding individual plants for undergrowth. To them, undergrowth probably just came with trees. I'm not sure what others think about that, though.
So, just tell me what Meliai wants with respect to the ritual. It is what it is. Magnus isn't going to promise something that it isn't. But he's more than happy to include some or all of Danusylvania in the ritual if Meliai wants.
Meliai will think on it for a while, and decide what she wants to do is set aside some of the more important parts (like around Artemis grove so she can expand it, as well as near the other magic aura) and let Magnus spell fill in the rest, that way she can build a few years worth of wilderness and have pre-existing woodlands reverting to wilderness at the same time. Aside from her 'set asides' she will want a portion of the hills to remain grassy for pasturing animals.
How much of the rest of the canton does she want wooded? The whole thing (except for around the Artemis Grove, the other Aura, the Faerie Aura perhaps, and some of the hills)? Does she want any land left free for farmland?
Probably about 5-10 square miles left clear for farmland...
How about this for people?
"I"d like to raise another subject, if people don't mind," Magnus says during one of the meetings in early 1221. "It's about people - we need more. We need more farmers, more sailors, more woodsmen, more shepherds, more carpenters, more blacksmiths. more everything. Where are we going to find them, how are we going to convince them to move here, and how are we going to actually get them here?"
Meliai smiles "For myself, I had planned on finding those who would flee the iron hand of the Church. Finding should be harder than persuading, I would think. I can escort them here by the forest pathways, same as how we came."
Atolycus chuckles slightly. "I think you have it backwards my friend. You Magi and your gift make people uncomfortable enough as it is. To then try and convince a group of people you've never met, to follow you to a place they've never heard of, where everyone gets along and they're free to practice as they wish... They might think you mad, and that's in a best case scenario. So no, I'd worry more about how you'll convince them to follow you"
((OOC: Freedom of religion is very much a modern concept, don't be shocked if folks are very skeptical of the idea))
Actually freedom of religion did exist for a while in ancient Rome... between the era of Christian persecution and Christian dominance.
Meliai slumps "I hadn't thought about the effects of the gift, It never affects animals with me. maybe I should have Ook talk to them. Or would that cause more problems?"
"I'm afraid a talking monkey might be alarming to most normal folks," Magnus replies. "I can appreciate your frustration. I face the same problems myself. Some days I'm quite jealous of those blessed with a Gentle Gift." He smiles at Constantine to show that there's no real animosity felt.
"Right now Duncan is aiming for some of the low-hanging fruit. He knows some places around Scotland where there are families who might be willing to move far away of it meant land they could farm or pasturages they could use. He even knows a few knights errant who might be willing to set up a household if it meant they could become landed knights. I have no delusions that it will always be so easy. We can only take but so many people from any given area before it starts to get noticed. Still, it seems like we're best off getting the easy colonists first before we work on the challenging ones."