Quote Originally Posted by Wolfyboy View Post
Well since this has turned into a Hrothgar thread I might as well say my piece. The whole "breeding slave" thing that people are implying can be easily explained away if they simply say they have similar breeding habits as cats. Cats have a pregnancy period of around 2 months and breed on average 4-5 per litter (Lets say 5 for easier math). We know that male Viera are considered rare on a 1-5 ratio, so lets assume female Hrothgar follow the similar pattern.

200 females and 800 males for a total population of 1000. Now if every female gets pregnant with one man and has 5 children then they doubled the population. 200 x 5 = 1000.

The lore that we know of Hrothgar is literally the racial description. Does any of the races description on the character creator have their breeding habits enlisted? Is that the first thing people look for before making a race?
I also think the breeding slave thing is amiss, but say we're talking about a ratio of 4:1, the replacement rate for a modern population (not subject to such vagaries of life as famines, plagues etc.) is 2.1. Even without making allowances for the population dying off at a higher rate than a modern population (or, on the opposite end of that, having the need to sustain an ageing population), they'd probably need to have 10-15 children apiece to sustain their population. So I agree that the key factor here is the litter size. Otherwise that'd be an awful lot of time spent pregnant and then rearing the young. I think it's fair to assume they have fairly large litters, in that case.

Personally, I'm not too big a fan of these out of whack sex ratios, but I agree that it doesn't necessarily imply they're bound to be having kids their entire life. Maybe 1-2 large litters, and that's it.