D&D is For Nerds

An army marches on its stomach. Please do not take this literally. As impressive as it may look, a thousand men flopping, rolling and laughing in the mud is neither intimidating or practical. What I am talking about is, very simply, food. 

Every quartermaster knows the phrase "send a druid before the cart and the army eats before it starts". Yet seldom do they know the second part of the phrase: "but slight her once, and mark it well, the forest keeps its own farewell". To put it bluntly, be nice to your druid and she'll be nice to you. 

This is harder than it sounds, as druids are, quite frankly, miserable countrymen. A druid does not march in formation, screams at most steel weaponry and will stop the whole host because a hedge "seemed unhappy about something." A druid will let a man go hungry on principle before she lets him shoot a doe that hasn't finished raising her fawns. She she will not apologise and she will remember exactly which soldier complained the loudest. Men who have survived three sieges without flinching will cross an entire camp to avoid a druid's disappointed silence. It is, by every account I've collected, deeply unpleasant to be quietly out-ranked in a moral argument by someone holding a badger and has sunflowers in their hair.

None of this matters however, as in the end it is a matter of arithmetic.

To feed 50 men for one week without a druid, you will need:

* 3 supply wagons

* 6 oxen to pull them, and feed for the oxen

* 2 armed escorts per wagon, minimum, against bandits, wolves and goblins. Especially goblins.

* 1 forager scout, who will get lost so best make it 2 forager scouts

* Standing goodwill (or standing coin) with whichever village you're passing

* A contingency plan for when the village has, quite reasonably, hidden its grain

* An extra crate of soft-leather shoes you can boil for "shoe soup"

To feed 50 men for one week with a druid, you will need:

* A druid

* Several unruly horses you hate (to feed said druid)

I once witnessed a single druid consume eleven horses over the span of a six week campaign. She never once touched the venison, the rabbit or the fish she herself had summoned to shallow water out of what I can only assume was professional courtesy to the fish. Only the horses. By the third horse I finally asked her why. She considered the question with the seriousness of a woman being asked to explain colour to someone born without eyes. She said that she liked them. Not the meat. Them. For the better part of a decade I have not stopped thinking about her answer and I am no closer to understanding it. 

In my youth, I naïvely thought it was only this particular druid that had a penchant for horse meat. Let me tell you dear reader, I had never been so wrong in my entire life.

- On the Matter of the Marching Stomach, and Other Inconveniences of War by Quartermaster-General Ordo Bramblehoof

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