How big is La Familia?

this is a pretty fascinating discussion. it really makes your tale all the more vivid and immersive!

its inspiring me to make my long-form a little less fly-by-night.

What a cool Concept. And refreshingly original in the realm of sci-fi.
Now what i'd like to know is why was the first council called?

DRIVE reader Ben Blank was having trouble posting to the forum, but he sent along this interesting thought about drive-related accidents:

I played with the numbers a bit and found a scenario I like. Assuming that:

Children stay at home for ~18 years…
…then service the drive for ~12 years, with a mortality rate of about 1/6…
…then spend ~25 years raising a family a large family (with an average of 6 children)…
…and work in non-drive-servicing jobs for ~35 years until an average age of death at 80.

(Drive-operator mortality rate isn't considered by Brian's calculator, but seems reasonable based on the emperor's reaction to losing ships to the drive, and can be accommodated by considering the "number of children" to mean "number of children who survive to have children of their own".)

This would make La Familia ~9,100 members at time of the comic, with ~7,000 adults, ~1,240 of whom are servicing the drive. I can see why the emperor's cousin is worried about getting them all together!

Thanks for the props, Mr. Kellett!

I just added another element to the script [greywyvern.com] that you may find helpful when drawing the mob of La Familia. :) If you hover each row of the table, it will now show an age distribution chart for that year.

If each child has their children between the ages of 25 and 30, you can see that the progeny will be grouped relatively tightly into distinct age groups.

These groups will blur as the time between each childbirth increases, although the final total progeny will go down significantly.

Now Drive mortality is also added to the script. At the year before child bearing age, the script does a random check with a 1/6th possibility (adjustable) of "killing" that person. That means the person does not add any children to the Familia.

It adds a random factor to the script and you shouldn't get the same final total twice now :) Sometimes even Conrado will be killed while servicing the very first Drive and the chart will show no Familia at all after 140 years!

Does La Familia have to marry La Familia? Or is new blood ok? If only La Familia, start upping that death rate as the genetic issues start cropping up. And lower the birth rate.

You should have the Grand Council be a potluck, and then everyone brings potato salad. Awkwaaaaard!

I really like how in-depth this is all becoming.

There are a variety of reasons that they might intentionally restrict their numbers as well. It may not be correct to assume 5 kids per family.

On the other hand there are always going to be "black sheep" and spies in the family, and not all of them can be dealt with in a handy accident, so a large number might be required...