EN World City Project: Geography

jdavis

First Post

• Apr 7, 2003

• #281

Conaill said:

And one more reference: Mor's End is about 7000 feet end-to-end, or about 1.3 miles. The width of the swamp on those maps is about the same. Do we really want to have a swamp you can walk across in just over half an hour?

Mor's End is quite small. If we really want the swamp to be a significant threat/obstacle, it'll have to be quite a big larger than in the maps above.

You're right that 50 miles is probably too much. And 1.3 miles is presumably too small. Do we want to make it 8 hours by an average horse? That would be 24 miles. Still too wide to cross by caravan in a single day. Or do we want to make it a "forced march" by caravan, say 12 hours? That would be 18 miles across.

Either way, that ferry crossing to the southern trade route will need to be redrawn as well. I don't think we want to make the big island *that* long.

Just as a reminder, here's the distances per 8-hour day for the swamp:

Walk, trackless: 12 miles
Walk, on causeway: 18 miles
Caravan: 12 miles
Horse: 24 miles
Fast horse: 36 miles

Click to expand...

If you go by the first map I put up the swamp runs all the way down the southern coast of the lake, I just put up the closer one to show where the caravan crossed to the big island, it was a older map. My point is that you are never crossing the swamp you are skirting the dge of it along the coast, you really don't ever go into the swamp you just run across one small corner of it. I wasn't trying to show scale with the second map just how the route ran over the island.

There really needs to be a final version of the area map in scale with the caravan routes and the swamp. I'm assuming the swamp is hundreds of miles deep and at least 50 miles across, 100 would be perferable, but that doesn't have much to do with the caravan route it just barely goes through the corner of it.

 

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C

Conaill

First Post

• Apr 7, 2003

• #282

jdavis said:

My point is that you are never crossing the swamp you are skirting the edge of it along the coast, you really don't ever go into the swamp you just run across one small corner of it.

Click to expand...

I figure the swamp would peter out into a series of disconnected islands and floating vegetation towards the lake. In order to have enough solid ground to build the causeway, you can't put it all the way at the edge of the lake, otherwise it becomes a series of long bridges.

Since someone mentioned the Everglades, here's some sections of the western part of the Everglades that might be a good model for our swamp:

 

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C

Conaill

First Post

• Apr 7, 2003

• #283

And a closeup of the second one (Ponce de Leon Bay, I believe). Just for kicks, I've drawn in where would be the easiest place to put a causeway:

 

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Last edited: Apr 7, 2003

C

Conaill

First Post

• Apr 7, 2003

• #284

Some more Everglades, to put things in perspective. Notice how absolutely huge 54 miles is. If the swamp stretches out inland even further, that would make it significantly larger than the Everglades. 18 miles looks more reasonable, perhaps extending inland about as far as the Everglades do (e.g. 40-50 miles or so).

(The little sections I posted above are only ~ 3 miles across. Didn't have a scale on those, I just picked them because they "looked right". Which is why I went looking for a better map...)

 

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jdavis

First Post

• Apr 8, 2003

• #285

The swamp would run further south off the map, it's just that the caravan route doesn't go all the way south it turns and follows the lake west, the caravan route could be 18 miles through the swamp and the swamp could still be huge because it runs North-South and the caravan route turns west. It would probably be better to say the swamp runs off the map to the south and just figure out how wide it is, I think the 18 miles along the lake for the caravan route makes more sense, it could be well over 50 miles wide and run as far south as DMs needed it to to fit it into their campaign.

 

Lalato

Adventurer

• Apr 8, 2003

• #286

OK... just so I have this straight... the swamp looks sort of like a cone. The mouth of the swamp is 18 miles wide... and it slowly spreads to a width of a bout 50 miles wide. The length of the swamp is undetermined... it could be 50 miles deep or more DM's discretion. Beyond the swamp there are forested hills. Beyond that there are rolling hills and flat land.

--sam

 

jdavis

First Post

• Apr 8, 2003

• #287

I have created the worst map ever to show what I was thinking, the green is the swamp and the red is the trade routes, you can see that the route just goes through one corner of the swamp not across it.

 

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Lalato

Adventurer

• Apr 8, 2003

• #288

That's about what I was thinking... somewhat cone shaped.

I think we also need to decide exactly how close to the city the swamp is. Is it right outside the city walls... or is it further out?

--sam

 

C

Conaill

First Post

• Apr 8, 2003

• #289

Well, how close do we want Mor's Endto be to the rampaging orcish hordes?

Assuming that we might get a surprise attack from the swamp, how much advance warning do we want to give the defenders of Mor's End?

A creature with a 30' speed can Run 1200' in a minute (up to Con rounds), or Hustle 6 miles in an hour. I think we'd want to be somewhere between 5 minutes and 1/2 hour from the swamp. That's 1/2 mile to 3 miles.

In terms of strategic watchtowers, we want one that overlooks the stream that forms the northern border of the swamp, plus one on the "big island" that overlooks all the little waterways coming out of the swamp.

 

jdavis

First Post

• Apr 8, 2003

• #290

THe marsh could run all the way up to the city but the trees would be cut back away from the wall, I don't know about a half mile as that's a lot to keep clear in a swamp. Close to the walls has probably been filled with dirt but they would want to keep it swampy to impede people chargng the walls across it or trying to bring up any siege weapons that way.