Sog's Ruins

[Erol of Backford]

There are a good number of entries on Sog's Ruins but not its own thread. Curious if anyone has a sketch map they have done. I see it as being a two-level or two-tier city, the city proper and the docks below. 

The marsh seems a good bit south of the ruins so maybe its relatively dry besides whatever river may be running through the ruins?

GtG: Sog’s Ruins: These are the ruins of a Storm Age Waertagi dragonship dock left high and dry when the Great Flood receded.

What would a dragonship dock look like. We have the samples of what we see from the Sog City sketch or the island at Nochet. They are huge. 

Looking at the sketch map of Sog City, the dragonship drydock ruins is quite wide, I see it as about 3/4" a mile wide based on just the thickness of the ruins.

For Sog's Ruins, it seems that what might have been a large cove or small bay may have been where the drydock was/is slightly to the west and south of the city proper?

If I had to guess the city would have been massive, at least 3-4 times as large as the drydock but I am only basing this off the size of Nochet and Sog City where other dragonship docks where or dragonships called to port. Even if the city was only 1/2 the size of the dock it'd still be larger than most Gloranthian cities.

  

Edited February 4 by Erol of Backford

[Erol of Backford]

So we have a mosquito area with broo and chaos... there is potentially a trapped elephant demigod spirit in some sort of protected EWF's tower.

Throw in some Yuan Ti due to Cam's Well influences from 100's of year ago and it becomes like an old spaghetti western where one side of town is pitted against the other... 

Maybe there is a tunnel from Cam's Well to Sog's Ruins, an underground river perhaps?

    

 

  

[pachristian]

I imagine the size of Sog's Ruins depends on how large the city was (duh). So the first question would be: Was Sog a permanent port that supported a dry dock? Or was it a temporary port, which people immigrated to when a dragon ship was coming in? How often did the dragon ships come in? We know dragon ships are "mile-long". If they had a length to beam ratio like a modern supertanker, they would be about 250 meters wide. Treated as a city, there could be 3,000 to 10,000 people on a dragon ship (bear with me). 

So I can imagine two Sog Cities: One is a permanent port, where dragonships come in often enough that a full-time facility can be manned. This port would be large enough to support the work crews, recreation for sailors come ashore, warehouses for supplies. A dragon ship would be largely self-sustaining, but there would always be a demand for goods and services the ship could not sustain. I would give such a city a population ten times that of the ship (to allow for children and secondary support). The second vision of Sog City assumes that dragon ship rarely arrive, and when one does, it's cause for people from the surrounding countryside (and possibly even neighboring countries) to gather at the docks for work and pay. This version of Sog City would only have a few hundred, or even a thousand, permanent residents; a sleepy town of warehouses, empty residential shells, and idleness, waiting for the next ship to come in. When the ship did come in, the town explodes in size; runners are sent to all nearby towns and cities ("Jobs in Sog!, Jobs in Sog!"). Temporary works flood the area, and a vast tent city springs up, apparently overnight. Many of the people who arrive are workers - but many are parasites; professional gamblers, confidence men... people who will relieve the sailors and shipworkers of their hard-earned money. Sog is a boomtown for weeks, even seasons. Then the ship leaves, as do the workers. Sog sinks back into being a backwater, empty buildings, trash blowing in the wind. Waiting for the next ship.

What other information do we have about Sog?

[Joerg]

The question is how much the Waertagi would be interested in a dryland city next to their drydock.

The drydock apparently stems from the Flood Period, when Prax still was a fertile savannah with cities and holy places galore, and the animal nomads just migratory guests to the Tada-Shi. These ancestors of the Oasis Folk would be the likely citizens of the dryland port, possibly with some Brithini transported there for sorcerous support (possibly ancestors of (some of) the God Forgotten).

[Erol of Backford]

3 hours ago, pachristian said:

they would be about 250 meters wide

I recall some illustration showing smaller dragon ships in the foreground of a larger ship. Possibly they had dragon ships of various sizes?

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

The drydock apparently stems from the Flood Period, when Prax still was a fertile savannah with cities and holy places galore, and the animal nomads just migratory guests to the Tada-Shi.

Who knows, possibly it was a floating drydock tethered to the shore somehow and literally was left "high and dry" when the floodwaters receded?

On 2/3/2024 at 8:58 PM, Erol of Backford said:

GtG: Sog’s Ruins: These are the ruins of a Storm Age Waertagi dragonship dock left high and dry when the Great Flood receded.

 

[davecake]

On 2/12/2024 at 4:09 AM, Erol of Backford said:

possibly it was a floating drydock tethered to the shore somehow

That isn’t quite a contradiction in terms, but it certainly seems to sort of miss the point? If you could practically create such gigantic floating thing (which seems unlikely - the Waertagi can only create their titanic dragon ships by defeating sea dragons, so presumably they’d create a floating drydock from an even bigger dragon?), you’d need a drydock for that? 
In any case - the other known dragon ship drydocks we know or seem to be shore based facilities, like to one in Sog City, which was presumably very similar in design. And it wouldn’t seem to make much difference Millenia later. 
While I do think it was a fairly big city when active, and yes, probably populated with Brithini as well as ancestors of the Oasis people, that was a very long time ago, and the rest of the city would be of much less sturdy construction and I think would be already long deserted by the time of the Gods War when it was crushed by the bouncing Bock. Only the ruins of the dock itself would survive I think. 
I had it inhabited by mostly weird old Waertagi magic and traps and ‘sorcerous spirits’, mostly on a Water theme, including some quite nasty ones like water elementals that are also acidic, and invoking various Waertagi ancestor gods. A vough and her brollachan spawn is also fairly obvious? (Once a more pleasant water nymph, but now clearly mad and hateful)

[Erol of Backford]

14 hours ago, davecake said:

That isn’t quite a contradiction in terms

Modern shipyards have had them... been around for a while, figured with magic they'd be used a lot in "Old Glorantha"?

 

Also was thinking the old Sog city itself was a terrace level below a U-shaped mesa or something like that and the dock was at another step down from the city. Who knows possibly it was like Mesa Verde set back under an eroded mesa side? I like it as a horseshoe shaped mesa with pueblos stacked up the sides... fun idea to work with. Step down into the city and step further down to the dry dock...