Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

The fact that the acid swamp borders a major river system argues against large highly acidic areas, since the acid would tend to be diluted. The presence of a river system means that you could have extensive wetlands, however, like the Pripyet Marshes or the Everglades. That would seriously complicate humanoid expansion from the eastern part of the continent to the western area. If you like the idea of hydrocarbon-based hazards, Out In The Middle of Nowhere is also a good place for any obvious coal or petroleum deposits, since they'd be massively exploited if they were any closer to civilization.

Or... Okovango Delta? After all, int's in drylands. Making it endorheic allows for non-diluted acidic areas. And it covers from 2300 to 5800 sq miles every year, so it could be pretty big. A question for the geometers- how many sq miles is a 25 mile hex? If it were a circle it'd be about 490 sq miles, so covering about a dozen hexes, with one (acidic) spot that's only 1 hex wide to make it "crossable in 1 day"?

[darebear]

One hex is almost 500 square miles. I have re-drawn the whole area. I think it will suit just about everyone.

[acrosome]

I can't access the google drive. I get an Error 400:

The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried.

[darebear]

I have posted a new .PGN file on the blog with the re-drawn wetland and swamp areas of the Orclands. I reduced the acidic region to a smaller area near Castle Defiant. There are other swamp/wetland areas scattered round the region to the north and south. I only up-loaded one map with the new re-drawn area. I left the others up for comparison.

Let me know what you think.

I also added some adventure areas/sites of interest around the Blackwoods.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Or... Okovango Delta? After all, int's in drylands. Making it endorheic allows for non-diluted acidic areas.

That would be the logical way to do it, but the acid marshes eventually drain into the Kashk River, to the south of Castle Defiant and the wooded area, which drains into the Western Sea.

There are a number of geographical oddities about the whole Solfor Swamp/Kashk River basin area.

1) It's a major river system right next to a major desert, without any obvious sources for all that water. I've got no problem with major rivers flowing through desert - the Nile and Colorado Rivers are good real world examples of those. My problem is that there doesn't seem to be enough water to feed such an extensive hydrological system. There are two major rivers that feed the lake, which in turn feeds the Kashk after flowing through the lake and marsh area.

2) You have a massive lake and marshland area, including the Solfor Swamp, halfway along the basin, that then resolves into a single river - the Kashk that flows hundreds of miles to the sea in a relatively straight line. Normally, swamp + shallow lake plus river means relatively flat land and a wide meandering river with lots of oxbows, like the Dniepr or Mississippi. The River Kashk is very straight, however, which implies a much steeper drainage basin.

3) Near the source of one of the rivers, right at the base of a mountain range, is The Great Salt Marsh. Again, it's an oddity because it's NOT endorheic.

The more logical way for a major river in a desert to happen is that you've got a massive seasonally wet area in a rift valley that eventually feeds a single major river, like the Nile Basin. Oddities oddities like acid swamps and salt lakes appear in nearby rift valleys that don't drain to the sea.

Ignoring magic origins, here are possible ways to make the Great Salt Marsh, Solfor Swamps and Kashk River basin make sense in geological terms.

1) The western Zarak Mountains get ridiculous amounts of snow. Lots of glaciers and lots of seasonal runoff. That makes sense since they're the first elevated area that moist air coming off the Western Ocean would hit. Assume that major weather systems come from the Northwest rather than the West, as on Earth, and the Western Zarak mountains act like the Himalayas or Sierra Nevadas, pushing massive water-filled clouds to high elevations where they are forced to dump their moisture as snow.

That means that the highest mountains in the Western Zarak chain are massive - equivalent to Mount Everest or K2. There will also be lots of relatively abandoned mountain valleys mostly filled with rubble and scrubby seasonal grass. It's snow leopard and Yeti territory.

2) The Kashk River basin is part of a rift valley that extends to the east and South of Castle Defiant. You've got a geological oddity in that there is a massive fault to the north of the Zarak mountains pushing south and simultaneously, the tectonic plate to the southwest is being pulled away from the central tectonic plate that forms much of Central Ytarria. Some force is making the "Castle Defiant plate" spin clockwise on its axis, opening a rift to its southwest side while forcing up massive mountains to its north and northeast.

3) At points where the rift meets the subduction zone and the mountains, you get lots of volcanic and tectonic action as well as mountainous rift valleys that feed huge amount of water into the rift valley to the south.

4) Once upon a time, there were massive inland seas on the northwest corner of the Castle Defiant fault. While much of the fossil seabed has been subducted, there are still massive salt domes, and possibly some hydrocarbons in the area of the Great Salt Marsh. The area forms a relatively flat, very large "hanging valley." Seasonal flooding from the river to the south and east periodically floods the dome area and thick layers of clay and non-porous metamorphic rocks keep the brine from escaping. The area has largely silted in, creating a massive, temporary inland salt marsh. Eventually, the brine will escape but only over a period of thousands or tens of thousands of years. For now, a low, wide ridge separates the salt marsh from the river.

Our friend the giant meteor crater could also be involved, creating a small basin, isolated from the main west branch of the "Upper Kashk River" and depressed relative to the rest of the flat upland area.

5) Both branches of the Upper Kashk are fed by massive numbers of seasonal snowmelt and glacial runoff streams from the mountains. There are dozens of different sources which flow from the north, and each is located in a rugged valley, but they only resolve into a navigable river at the points indicated on the map. Both the western and eastern branches of the Upper Kashk then meander across the tablelands to the point where they join. At that point, they form a massive waterfall or cataract and spill into the rift valley below. The river is fast-moving at this point and flows down a canyon until it hits another relatively flat area.

6) A deep depression - either a geological rift or another massive meteor crater - forms "Lake Kashk" which is also fed by the "Eastern Kashk River." This could be a broad, flat lake which is mostly silted in, or extremely deep and subject to periodic geological activity like Lake Victoria or one of the other African Great Lakes.

7) The Eastern Kashk drains the "badlands" of the Northern Great Desert. Like the Upper Kashk, it is a largely seasonal river, but it is fed by hundreds of seasonal streams and arroyos, like the Colorado River.

8) Due to its proximity to the mountains to the north, and the flow of the river draining to the west, the Northern Great Desert looks a lot like northern Arizona or New Mexico, Southwestern Utah or Eastern Montana. Not flat, but lots of canyons and gullies and seasonal grasslands. If you want cliff-dweller Indians like the Pueblo or Anasazi, that's the place to put them. Ditto for similar cultures like the Navajo or Apache or East African Rift Valley tribes.

9) The Acid Swamp of Solfor is another endorheic water feature isolated from Lake Kashk by a rift valley.

10) If you place hydrocarbons in this area, they will either be deep underground or easily exposed on the surface. That means naphtha seeps (dried up crude oil), possible methane vent flares, "tar pits" and "tar sands" and possible exposed coal faces. Exposed coal faces means that you might have naturally occurring underground fires in places where wildfires ignited coal seams.

11) Lake Kashk drains to the southwest flowing relatively slowly until it turns to the west and flows quickly down to the sea via a series of waterfalls and cataracts, possibly in the same way as the Zambezi River or parts of the Columbia River.

12) For whatever reason, the Kaskh River delta is a lousy place to build a town. The relative absence of towns along the Western coast might indicate rough cliff faces along much of the coastline, like along the U.S. Pacific Coast. Even ignoring relatively low population densities and the proclivities of the territory's orcish inhabitants, river deltas are normally great places to hunt and fish, so there should at least be seasonal villages. The fact that there aren't any settlements means the area is too steep or treacherous to settle.

13) It hasn't been mentioned yet, but historically areas with limited human presence absolutely teemed with wildlife. Even at TL3 with magical add-ons, sea life will be incredibly rich by modern standards, with incredibly productive fisheries and shellfishing grounds within a day's travel from major cities. Game would be scarce in settled areas, but biodiversity in terms of plants, birds and small animals would be far richer than in a modern rural landscape. In areas of Earth which were mostly devoid of human inhabitants, the abundance of game animals and sea life astounded contemporary observers from the 15th to early 19th centuries. For that reason, Western Ytarria might seem like a paradise to explorers from the eastern parts with salmon runs so heavy that you can just grab fish out of the river, herds of animals which an entire day to pass and flocks of birds which darken the skies at midday. Alternately, there might be less abundance of game animals and fish than historically existed in unsettled areas because there are more large and hungry apex predators.

14) The orcs might manage their territories much like the Eastern North American Indians did, burning out underbrush to create open forests and meadow areas to encourage game animals and slash and burn agriculture. That might explain the lack of forests in what should be a temperate rainforest region immediately to the west of the Zarak mountains.

15) Dragons, djinni and other powerful foes might do the same in their territories, managing herds of large wild herbivores as a food source. They might work in cooperation with pastoral humanoids, with the humanoids acting as scouts, skirmishers and herders and the dragons acting as leaders, long-range scouts and shock troops. Imagine an old-school Western where the Indians had the cavalry and it was mounted on dragons. There might be a very good reason why there's so little settlement in Western Ytarria beyond just the presence of the Djinni.

[darebear]

You gave me a lot to think about. I had to print it out to digest it.

1) My plan is to redraw the western Bronze Mountains into just the area you described actually, and moving the glaciated region to the center, north to where I located the Dengar valley.

2) I re-envisioned the Great Salt Marsh as being more of a series of smaller lowland swamps, fed by run-off from many tributaries of the western Bronze Mountains. Nothing atypical about their nature. The swamps gradually give way to the dryer uplands of Candledoom Wood. I need to change the color and icons to delineate between swamps and marshes.

3) A large waterfall is a perfect idea for where the Upper Kashk branches off. I envision a second one where the other unnamed major river flows into the lower Kashk.

4) The small tributary running east of Lake Kashk (which Caithness named Lake Dundain) is surrounded by marshes and wetlands. This tributary could be fed by seasonal runoff from the mountains, running through the northern Great Desert like you described. Similar to the wadis in the southern Djinn Lands, the ravines flood seasonally. I can model these ravines which run through the northern desert by using the same method as I did the southern wadis. Alternatively, perhaps this area is fed by a permanently open magical portal to the Elemental Plane of Water, or to an oceanic world.

5) The entry for the Barony of Wallace on page 118 indicates it has water due to mountain runoff. It would make sense to add some seasonal rivers/ravines which flow through the northern rocky desert which then flow southeastward through to Wallace. Perhaps they end-up in various lakes, and or continues east until they meet up with tributaries from the Smoke River. Thoughts?

6) Funny enough I was envisioning the northern desert region just like you described, rocky and dry, not and endless dune sea. I need to add the necessary icons and contour lines to indicate these rocky areas.

7) I did envision the western coast north of the Djinn lands to be a series of cliff faces just as you described, making settlement of the coast difficult. I have since decided not to model the locations of the various orc and human tribal areas, at least for now. I feel that those areas are better left to individual GMs to determine. There are at least 12 large orc tribes and probably numerous smaller ones. Human tribal numbers are not described.

8) Your ideas for 13 and 14 are something to consider. #14 provides a plausible explanation for the lack of forested areas. This might infer a higher level of orc tribal organization than is presented in the core rules. I was never a fan of mindless orc savagery.

9) For the human tribes I envisioned a horse-warrior culture dominates the region, being an amalgamation of various human steppe cultures. Quite possibly some of the Orc tribes started to emulate this culture as well.

10) The old AD&D DM World Builder Guide gave good information about predators and their needs. A large beast, such as a dragon needs around 500 square miles of area for hunting in good areas, and 1500 square miles in poor areas. I would consider the whole area rich in game. Since each hex is 500 square miles there is more than enough room for predators of unusual size. For the Djinn Lands, I think that is best left as a DM playground, since my vision might be drastically different than what others desire.

11) I consider Lake Kashk to be a very deep lake like you described. In the depths of the lake reside "Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know".

12) The acidic swamps are a smaller area know and I am happy with their size. I see no reason for a large death-zone at all, other than for specific adventures, possibly to travel to the center of said zone for some sort of "fetch-quest".

I am trying to figure out a way to have information pop up when you click on a terrain feature while viewing the file on a browser. I have it working right now, but I am limited in the amount of text I can show at the moment. There might be a work around though. My goal is to have a fully interactive atlas, which, if you click on a "named location" it will give you a small pop-up window with a description of the area.

From north to south of the map, it is roughly 44 degrees of total latitude. For simplicity, I assumed that Yrth the same as Earth, with 69 miles per point of latitude. If we assume that the bottom is roughly 20 degrees north, than the upper part is 64 degrees; this puts the Nomad Lands and Sahud in the same climate zone as central Sweden. The cities of Megalos and Carrak are basically the same as London and Tredroy is basically Istanbul in climate. Southern Cardiel and al-Haz are in the same zone as Syria and Baghdad. Of course this can be tweaked by moving Ytarria further south if you desire. Even a 5 point latitude move south makes a big difference for northern Ytarria.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by darebear

8) Your ideas for 13 and 14 are something to consider. #14 provides a plausible explanation for the lack of forested areas. This might infer a higher level of orc tribal organization than is presented in the core rules. I was never a fan of mindless orc savagery.

It's also worth noting that steppe nomads and Plains Indians also used fire to keep the underbrush down and to renew pasture lands for their herds. Heavy grazing by animals able to eat scrub, such as goats (or woolens other ytarrian herd beasts?) will also keep forests down.

Another thought as to why the northwest corner of Ytarria isn't steep foothills of the Zarak range: A glacier ran over it. For the same reason that you have glacial lakes and muskeg all over northern Ytarria, you also have seriously glaciated terrain that used to be much more severe north of the Kashk River. It used to be steep foothills, like parts of Northern India, but then a massive glacier overran the area, grinding hilltops flat and filling the valleys with glacial moraines. That might result in relatively poor, rocky soil in the valleys and slightly more fertile tablelands where the hilltops used to be. The tableland areas might also be natural fortifications and corrals for herd animals.

There should still be a lot more fjord-like features along the coast, but they got sunk below the surface by tectonic action, resulting in a much smoother coastline. The whole coast is a massive sunken slip fault. The coastal chain of mountains that should exist along the coast is actually a ridge of seamounts. Imagine California sunk as far inland as Sacramento and the Central Valley.

If you buy my geological premise that the "Castle Defiant Plate" is being spun clockwise by some sort of massive coastal slip fault (e.g., like the San Andreas and similar west coast American faults) which is gradually moving north, while being subducted by the massive Zarak fault to the north, the whole area will be a geological nightmare.

The northern Great Desert and the area around Castle Defiant is a good place to put hot springs, geysers, sand blows, cinder cone volcanoes and other obvious signs that the planet's crust is hard at work.

If you take my suggestion that the terrain in the northern Great Desert looks a lot like Montana, you couldn't be too far out of place in putting in the Ytarrian version of Yellowstone. If you want it to look more like northern New Mexico or Arizona, keep in mind that there were serious lava flows in those areas in the recent geological past.

Humans and orcs living in the Castle Defiant area might not have had a choice about adopting a nomadic existence, since massive earthquakes and ash from volcanic eruptions will be regular events. People living in houses get killed during a quakes, people living in tents just get a good scare. The coasts might also be uninhabited due to regular tsunami action.

If the seismic activity is really bad, Castle Defiant is doomed by geology since the next big quake will render it uninhabitable unless it was seismically reinformed to withstand earthquakes of 8 or 9 on the Richter Scale.