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Mallard Town


Erol of Backford

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Looking at placing Signs and Portents RPG35 - A Raven in the Roost in Mallard Town.

Not finding anything besides the note bellow in the zines or on line. is there any other source for mallard Town?

Mallard Town A small market town where the Goodweaver clan traditionally trades with the durulz for flax and feathers. It was sacked and burnt in 1614 during a particularly vicious Duck Hunt. (p.36 TotRM 19)

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4 hours ago, Diadochoi said:

Bad Day at Bad Rock

Is the same note about feathers...

4 hours ago, Diadochoi said:

Company of the Dragon

town is on stilts, shrine to Humakt, severed heads of zombies and skeletons...

As its on stilts the A Raven in the Roost doesn't fit as I see it.

Thanks... maybe it needs to happen at Duck Ferry? I suppose it's similar to Apple Lane in size with a few buildings and likely an inn with a trading stand of some sort?

Are there any maps of it out there?

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I am not aware of any maps of Duck Ferry. The two duck places with good maps I know of are Duck Rock "Bad day at Duck Rock", which is similar in size to Apple Lane and has an inn and a store so might fit your needs or  Redfeather Safe (Duckpac) which is a single building duck "village" on stilts

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11 hours ago, Diadochoi said:

Redfeather Safe (Duckpac) which is a single building duck "village" on stilts

So Redfeather Safe is like Mallard Town, both on stilts. It doesn't work for A Raven in the Roost in my mind.

I'll look to something like MIkhail Mefodev's illustration (clip below) as an inspection as I like the look of the round dwellings, like sort of nests or nest-like if you can see that like I do, it sort of fits? Likely they are closer to the level of the water movement into the from the water is easier?

I noticed by chance the village of Goodnet in RQA 02 in the scenario On the Trail of Quackodemon and will just use something similar along the Stream for the location of A Raven in the Roost or even  with some minor tweaks, just use Goodnet, thanks for the assistance Dai.

I keep thinking the ferry is something like that in LotR... (sketch below0

The maps show the Stream as anywhere between 500-750m wide which isn't likely... does anyone have a good reference for how wide the Stream is at Duck Ferry? 

Does the water level of the Stream change much seasonally?

image.png.3fefc0539ed1a499b2fe36e5327e7fcf.png image.png.bea3e08a913bcc0642df718503d603b1.png

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River width is variable by nature, and an upland river tends to have a wide bed rather devoid of vegetation inside which the actual river meanders.

River widths are almost never represented accurately in maps as that would reduce visibility. Same goes for settlements and roads.

The Stream has Kjartan's Pool as a reservoir from which it is fed after the Sea Season combination of precipitation and melt-off. Given that a lot of Glorantha tends to be larger-than-life, I would expect regular floodings in Sea Season, and the few bridges need to be rather high and very sturdy to outlast these floodings.

Given the rather small intake area of the Stream (plus a somewhat larger area for the Chorms), it would take a secondary Skyfall at the headwaters of the Stream to make it any wider than 20 meters under normal conditions (and about 200 meters under flooding conditions, which would make ferrying or fording a very dangerous proposition - the Dragon Pass board game has rules for that as consequence of one of the Storm Walkers exotic ability options).

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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14 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I am guessing not more than 3-4m deep at center on average?

Less than that, IMO. My personal experience in a river would match the Stream to the Amper, a tributary of the Isar west of Munich. 20 meters in an untamed river bed rather than the maybe 8 meters in the channeled course of the Amper, with the deepest parts maybe a bit over 2 m towards the outer curve of the bend of the current course.  The river bed might well be a wasteland of pebbles too large and heavy to get carried away by the seasonal floods with the actual river meandering inside, much like the Lech upriver from Landsberg (the next tributary of the Danube west of Munich). Both these rivers run through the foothills of the Alps into the alluvial plain of the Danube, which sort of matches the situation in the Stream Valley west of the confluence with the Chorms at Wilmskirk.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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19 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I am guessing not more than 3-4m deep at center on average?

 

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Less than that, IMO. My personal experience in a river would match the Stream to the Amper, a tributary of the Isar west of Munich. 20 meters in an untamed river bed rather than the maybe 8 meters in the channeled course of the Amper, with the deepest parts maybe a bit over 2 m towards the outer curve of the bend of the current course.  The river bed might well be a wasteland of pebbles too large and heavy to get carried away by the seasonal floods with the actual river meandering inside, much like the Lech upriver from Landsberg (the next tributary of the Danube west of Munich). Both these rivers run through the foothills of the Alps into the alluvial plain of the Danube, which sort of matches the situation in the Stream Valley west of the confluence with the Chorms at Wilmskirk.

Just for information, the Loire river (one of the largest and longest french river) is almost never over 3m deep (except during floods). In most of it's course, you can cross it on foot (but of course, you are not dry at the end). In Tours, where I lived, average depth is a bit over 1m (and width just below 800m). Just above Orleans, where my mother's family lives, average depth is around 2m.

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Yeah in order to ford a river you want it to be at a shallow and slow point, which necessarily means that it'll be wide as well (same volume of water needs to flow through it, so shallow and slow necessarily means wide). Choosing narrow points to cross means that the water will either be deep or very fast flowing and turbulent (or both!) which makes it dangerous.

This is likely different to where you want to site bridges (if they're single span), where you need the banks to be closer together. If you're building bridges with pillars then it's back to slow-flowing and wide again.

Edited by Ynneadwraith
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