Discussion: (Adventure - The Treasure of the Tierra Padre…[Knight Otu Judging])
Some things that are probably worth commenting on...
First, I largely ignored the travel times between locations that were given during the adventure. Where distances on the map weren't clear (the distance from the mill ruins to the "hye hill", for example), I used the ones given in the adventure. When they were clear (such as Orussus to the "T" intersection with the road to Lathirn), I just ignored them. The party may have gotten from Orussus to the bridge over the Roars in one day in Treasure of the Tierra Padre, but it will probably be the last party to do so without magical means.
River traffic on the Roars has been alluded to here and in other adventures (Ashlin's Commission? I can't remember.) I don't have any problem with this on the lower Roars, most rivers slow down as they approach the sea. But I don't see regular barge traffic between say, Orussus and Fallon. First, you can't effectively portage a barge without some engineering work...locks, a winch and cart arrangement, a "highway" of logs to roll the barges on, etc. We haven't mentioned anything like that. We've also mentioned swift moving current in places like the bridge on the road to Lathirn. No barge can sail or row upstream against that. Historically, this meant a mule-and-towpath arrangement. I don't have a problem with such a thing existing at that site, even though no description of the area has mentioned it yet. But then there's the problem of the ruined mill and the dam. There just isn't any provision for getting a barge over that dam, and until someone builds one, I doubt there is any commercial barge traffic going upstream. Note that it would be possible to portage a barge over the dam in the downstream direction, but that would require a day's work for a barge crew and it would be a one-way, one-time thing.
Note that this isn't the only impassible obstacle on the Roars...there are also waterfalls and rapids. There are ways of dealing with rapids, but see the previous paragraph for even small waterfalls. Oh, and none of the above applies to vessels the size of canoes...those are easily portaged.
The clearing and the mile marker by the bridge over the Roars is a great site, and has been used in three adventures that I know of. Thanks, pbartender!
In the thread, everyone referred to the river that flows north from Lathirn into the Roars as the "Gallgo". I think we got that terminology from the fake maps the baby dragon made. In every other adventure that I've seen, and on every other map, it's referred to as the "Grellgo". I used "Grellgo" in this writeup.
The map the dragon passed out implied that the old road to Fallon paralleled close to the river all the way from the bridge over the Roars to Fallon. However, the party was only able to verify that this was so from the bridge to the ruins of the old mill.
One last thing...some of the "stalactites" in the chamber in the hill appeared to be the "roots" of the stone tree on the summit.