Thread Recompilation - Places

[El Jefe]

(Adventure) To Delmon’s Aid (Creamsteak Judging)

There was quite a bit of stuff here, both about the dwarf wizard Delmon's Tower and about the Monastery of St. Feragon.

• The Roadhouse (Roadwarden station) on the east road from Orussus has a barn for animals.
• Six miles east of the Roadhouse on the east road from Orussus is the beginning of a path that leads to a Wizard’s Tower.
• The path from the road to Fallon to Delmon’s tower is three miles long.
• Delmon’s Tower, about 15 miles southeast of Orussus, lies in "low and easy hills".
• Delmon’s Tower is 4 stories and 60 feet tall. It is in some need of repair, and has an iron-studded door a few steps off the ground.
• The lowest windows in Delmon’s Tower are about 25 feet from the ground.
• There is no cover within 30 feet of Delmon’s tower.
• The bottom floor of Delmon’s tower is a round room 80 feet in diameter. The exit is through a wooden door opposite the entrance, at the top of a stairway 12 feet above the floor.
• There are some trees with low-hanging branches near Delmon’s tower.
• The room beyond the door at the top of the stairs inside the first floor of Delmon’s Tower is a dining room or guest chamber.
• The platform at the top of the stairs inside the first floor of Delmon’s Tower is only 5 feet wide.
• There is a stairway leading up to another door from the second-floor "dining room" or "guest room" in Delmon’s Tower.
• The third floor of Demon’s Tower is a living room. A stairway opposite the entrance to the room leads up to the fourth floor.
• The fourth floor of Delmon’s Tower is occupied by another living room. There is a door on the entrance, opposite stairs leading up to a fifth(?) floor.
• There is an opening about 20 foot from the floor of the fourth-floor "living room" in Demon’s Tower that might lead to the fifth(?) floor.
• The fifth(?) floor of Delmon’s Tower is a bedroom, with a canopy bed.
• The walls of the Monastery of St. Feragon are 15-20 feet tall. A small field of wheat is planted just outside the gates.
• A ledge from 4-10 feet wide runs along the inside edge of the wall around the Monastery of St. Feragon.
• The foyer of the Monastery of St. Feragon measures 40 feet by 55 feet.
• There is a door in each of the four walls of the foyer of the Monastery of St. Feragon (counting the door to the outside).
• The door in the foyer of the Monastery of St. Feragon opposite the entrance leads to a hallway of about 70 to 80 feet long.
• The foyer/hallway of the Monastery of St. Feragon slope almost imperceptibly downward from south to north.
• A map of the hallway leading north from the foyer of the Monastery of St. Feragon can be found here.
• Beyond a set of double doors at the 80 foot mark, the corridor north of the foyer of the Monastery of St. Feragon narrows to 13 feet and continues north for another 30 feet to another single door.
• North of the second hallway north of the foyer of the Monastery of St. Feragon lies a 20 by 40 foot chamber.
• Two hallways and a 40 foot chamber north of the foyer of the Monastery of St. Feragon lies a short passage, then a door, then steps leading down to another chamber.
• The underground storage or meditation chamber at the Monastery of St. Feragon is a long room with a stairway at either end.

 

[El Jefe]

Discussion - (Adventure) To Delmon’s Aid (Creamsteak Judging)

The only thing that was a problem for me here was the description of Delmon's Tower. From the outside, it was described as 4 stories and 60 feet tall. (The bottom floor was described as being 80 feet in diameter, and the accompanying maps of the upper floors indicated 80 by 80 foot floors, so that would be a very squat tower, but that's not my beef.)

However, from the inside, 5 distinct levels are described (main hall, "dining room" or "guest room", living room (with automatons), living room (without automatons), and bedroom. How to reconcile this?

The cheesey way out is to just describe the place as "magical', with more volume on the inside than on the outside, like a bag of holding or something. However, Delmon is only 8th level (as determined by the properties of some Phantom Steeds he conjured up for the party), so either he inherited the tower from someone else, or else it's his masterwork. I'd prefer a better explanation.

Another might be that the Tower simply looks like it has fewer stories on the outside than on the inside. That's not unheard of in architecture. For example, the US White House looks like it only has 2 stories from some angles, but inside it clearly has 3. Likewise, Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello looks like it is a single story building, but any visitor can ascertain that it has two.

Another explanation might be that Uriel simply made a continuity error and added a superfluous living room. That seems to be the most plausible explanation to me, since he placed a dead crow in the 3rd floor living room with the automatons, then placed a dead crow (which the party examined) in the 4th floor living room. From the storyline, it's obvious that this is Delmon's crow familiar, and that there is only one crow.

Another explanation might be that the "5th" floor bedroom is only a loft, since the 4th floor living room is described as having an opening on an inside wall 20 feet up from the floor. 80-foor diameter or 80-foot square rooms are pretty huge for a private residence, even a wizard's castle, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of the upstairs living space is divided. I guess you might question what is under that "bedroom" at the "4th floor level", but hey, even a wizard's got to have a closet or store room, right?

Finally, I was curious to see if it was possible to fit 5 stories into 60 feet. It is, although the design is strange. From the description of the tower in the thread, here's what I have:

There are stairs leading up 11 feet from the ground to the iron door of the first level. From there, stairs lead up 12 feet to the second (dining room or guest room) level. The lowest windows are 25 feet from the ground. If the first level is that high, nothing fits, so I'm assuming that the first level is windowless and the lowest windows light the dining room. Windowsills more than 2 feet high make little sense in a dwarf's home, so I'm going with the 2nd floor being 23 feet off the ground. The stairs between the first and second floor are described as being 12 feet high, so subtracting tells me the outside stairs to the first floor are 11 feet high.

Now, the 4th floor has an opening 1 foot high, and 20 feet off the floor. If the whole thing is 60 feet tall and the opening is right up against the ceiling, that means the 4th floor has at least a 21-foot ceiling, and thus the floor must be no higher than 39 feet off the ground. That's 16 feet higher than the 2nd floor, so if you split the difference, the 3rd flloor would be 8 feet above the 2nd floor, or at the 31-foot level. Now, if the floors/ceilings are about 1 foot thick, that would mean the 2nd and 3rd levels have 7-foot ceilings. That's just a tad short for humans (most human houses have ceilings at about 7'6"), but just about right -- even spacious -- for a dwarf. We know the bedroom floor is 8 feet below the "window" to the 4th floor, so it has a 9-foot ceiling and is at the 51-foot level. To summarize:

1st floor - Great Hall -- 11 feet from the ground
2nd floor - Dining Room -- 23 feet from the ground
3rd floor - Living Room 1 -- 31 feet from the ground
4th floor - Living Room 2 -- 39 feet from the ground
5th floor - Loft Bedroom -- 51 feet from the ground
Roof -- 60 feet from the ground.

Weird, but possible.

 

[El Jefe]

(Adventure) eK-1 The Tower of Koltifineous (Creamsteak Judging)

This one was interesting, as the location details were given in such a way that a lot of interpretation was necessary to link them to anything concrete. Here's my best stab at it:

• A market area (The Street of Merchants?) lies in the direction of Allimon (the southwest road from Orussus) from the Red Dragon Inn.
• About a half hour’s walk from the Red Dragon Inn, outside the gates of Orussus on the road to Allimon, lies a small shrine to Taka.
• A little over an hour’s walk from the Red Dragon Inn on the road to Allimon lies a squat stone structure. Apparently, this is Koltifineous's Tower.

 

[El Jefe]

Discussion - (Adventure) eK-1 The Tower of Koltifineous (Creamsteak Judging)

This struck me as an adventure that didn't pay as much detail to location as some of the others I've just read. My biggest worry was that it was going to start or follow a trend of "about an hour out of town, you encounter the scene of the adventure". Well, we all know by now that about an hour (3 miles or so) out of Orussus on all the major roads lies a Roadwarden house. Fortunately, the directions were given in terms of walking time from the Red Dragon Inn, and we all know that it takes a few minutes to get from the Inn to the city gates. Because of that, none of the details given in this story conflict with anything else I've seen so far.

The other interesting point is the location of the Street of Merchants. For convenience's sake, Graf had the party pass by a market on the way out of town, presumably so the characters could make some last-minute purchases. Well, if Orussus has a Street of Merchants where most of the best goods can be found (as well as other commercial wards of the city of less renown), it can't lie in every direction from the Red Dragon Inn. Since no one else seems to have claimed it, let's say it lies southwest of the Red Dragon Inn. Maybe someday we'll actually draw up a map of Orussus, but until we do, I'd like to consider "picking up stuff" to be less convenient for adventures that take place to the north and east, and more convenient for adventures that take place to the southweast.

 

[El Jefe]

(Adventure) Feral Smackdown Battle Royale

There wasn't any location information in this thread. This was possibly because all the action took place in one room of the Monastery of St. Feragon, and two previous threads had described the Monastery and its surroundings.

 

[El Jefe]

(Discussion) General Part IV

No location information in this thread. I guess ENWorld had gotten sufficiently mature by this point that most world creation was takinig place outside of the General Discussion thread. Also, General Discussion was pretty much taken up with dealing with things like player generated rules, resurrection rules (sound familiar?), and item creation rules (ditto).

 

[El Jefe]

(Discussion) Enworld Physics and World Concept

Oestensibly, this thread was all about Enworld as a location, or more specifically, Enworld cosmology. Even more specifically, Enworld cosmopachydermology.

First we have garyh's description of Enworld:

Enworld travels on the back of a giant elephant named Enworphant, which marches through the cosmos. The sun and moon are birds that accompany Enworphant on his journey. The stars are brightmoths, insects that are eated by the sunbird.​

The following facts:

• If somebody falls of the edge of Enworld, he ends up in an outer plane.
• Enworphant is androgynous and immortal.

And Lichtenhart's description of the flow of time on Enworld:

Time flows because Enworphant eternally walks. Should it ever stop, everything would freeze in a stillness of death. As it walks, with every little step it takes reality vibrates, and it sends slow waves of time upon Enworld. On Enworld's surface these waves collide, creating small ripples in the tissue of time. Wherever smaller crests rise, time starts flowing faster; wherever they ebb, time slows as the place is slowly left behind.

Wha do you think of it? We could use this in many ways, ther could be enchanted forests where you go to be forgotten by the world, and busy cities whose artisans deliver craft in half the time, and also it would save us lots of headaches calculating if an adventurer can be back from his adventure to the tavern on the 3rd rather than the 5th of october.​

And two more interesting Enworld facts:

• Enworld has global seasons.
• Enworld, as it rides on the back of Enworphant, is in the shape of a hexagon. An elemental tower is at each point of the hexagon, and Orussus is at the very middle.

Finally, there is this description of the Empire of Carduth by Uriel that seems to have just snuck in here:

Empire of Carduth

Massive Empire located East of Orassiss, on the other side of the Bainlund Hills and the Stonepike Mountains. Currently expanding Westwards...perhaps 150 to 200 miles east of Orassis, for now...

Roman Empire on Steroids, Legions backed by Wizards,air calvary (hippogryph);largest land army on ENWorld, though they are spread out in many locations. The force arrayed against Bainlund and Stonepike is rumoured at 10,000...while the Bainlunders have barely 3,000 career soldiers and Stonepike half that (1700 or so). Not an Evil Empire specifically, but an expansionist one that seeks to subjegate and/or assimilate those on it's borders. The last great expanding of Carduth was nearly 40 years ago, when they annexed the Sultanate of Gallipona, a desert dwelling land of spices and horse traders to the South of Carduth.
Carduth is at odds with Herdrallia to the North (Goths/Celts), and seeks alliance withn Rivenblight against that Realm of barbarians. So far, none has manifested except in the most vague of ways, and always to the Elves' advantage.

 

[El Jefe]

(Discussion) SRD, OGL, WotC, and Third Parties

There is no location-related information in this thread.

 

[El Jefe]

(Proposal) Let’s build the LEW Pantheon!

This thread, which was all about various deities, had one good location information disclosure:

• The Church of Gliran is the official religion of Ushad.

 

[El Jefe]

(Discussion) General Part V

There were a few interesting descriptive paragraphs in this thread. First, The Goblin King gave this description of the Fortress of Unending Night:

Five centuries ago the Fortress of Unending Night was the bane of the surrounding region. It was built by Unseelie Faeries who had fled to Enworld. The castle was constructed from half-realized nightmares and spun moonlight. During the day the fortress disappears like the morning mist. During the night it returns. From its depths all manner of fell creature would come forth. It is situated in the middle of vast windswept moors on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

Finally, a company of Paladins armed with cold iron weapons laid siege to the fortress. They could not break the enchantment that held the castle togather and so it stands today. A monument to shadow. There are rumors that not all the Faeries were put to the sword. The story goes that some escaped and have been in hiding all this time. Certain unnatural events in the countryside may be evidence that something evil is once again living the the Fortress of Unending Night.​

Also, Uriel expounded a little more on Rivenblight:

When I created my character, I was envisioning Rivenblight as a sort of Renaissance City of Elves, and Romeo and Juliet was very forefront when setting the tone in my own head. Guilds and Clans of duelling Grey,High and some (outsider) Wood elves, political intrigue etc...
At the core of many of the problems are the Drow, who live in the ruins down below and infiltrate the society above.

Swashbucklers fit the archtype far better than a fighter, which really isn't designed for roof-top battles, duels on causeways overlooking five hundred foot drops and running battles between buildings. Neither is the Rogue, which can do most of that well (and far betteer than a fighter), but relies on backstabbing and ambush, where the Elves of Rivenblight are honorable adverasies with very strict rules of engagement.
Sure, there are Rogues skulking amongst the shadows, and plate armored fighters serving in the Houses, but the bulk of the folk waging war in the City don't fit into either archtype.​