Nochet, the Antones Estates and the Devastation of the Vent (and its tsunamis)

[Joerg]

Watching a series of documentaries on Egyptian achaeology focussing on the death cult there, I have started to wonder about the Nochet necropolis aka the Antones Estates again, especially since I still need to flesh out the clandestine entry into the family crypt of House Norinel .

One question that bugged me for a while was how the Antones Estates were pushed back into their current extent after having spread well into the western portion of the modern city prior to the Devastation of the Vent, but that event may have been instrumental not just in depopulating 2^nd Age Nochet but also burying the sprawl of grave sites under rubble, possibly collapsing the whatever edifices marked them, possibly washing them aside with the return of the tidal wave that crossed the Choralinthor Bay, possibly covering them with quite a layer of bay sediment, sinking all evidence of earlier grave sides well beneath the foundation levels of the newer city.

I am wondering about the underground of Nochet and the Antones Estates. We know about mudflats on the Choralithor shore, and clay pits around Meldektown south of the walled city. We know about the old river bed of the Lyksos that passed south of Kena Hill into what now is the Bay but which may just have been a lowland in the Golden Age, inhabited by the rivers that had been spawned by the Sshorg River.

Kena Hill and Orlanth Hill appear to be outcrops of limestone or similar sedimentary rock, or possibly igneous rock pushed up by a child of Veskarthan or two.

The old cyclopean walls .surrounding parts of Nochet point to rather generous quarries within reasonable transportation range to the city. What is reasonable will depend on the builders’ means of transportation, though, and if they had the cooperation of Maran Gor’s Earth Shakers, the quarries may have been as far away as the Skyreach foothills. But there is also a possibility for underground quarries, like under Rome.

 

One question I find hard to answer is what a 10 m wave pushing up and down the bedrock and soil of Esrolia would have done to the bedrock and its structure. Would material in the quarries remain compact enough to provide building blocks for architecture, or did the Devastation soften all the rock underground?

How would subterranean buildings have survived this shockwave? There are sewers and aqueducts under Nochet, with portions that may be ancient. How well did these survive? Did the aqueducts require repairs to bring the water into the city? How did the cisterns fare?

As to the family crypts of the Enfranchised Houses, how much did these suffer? Did the tombs of Norinel or Merngala end up under piles of rubble? If so, did the Houses spend significant amounts of time and resources to rebuild these tombs? Could this have been ongoing during the Adjustment Wars, or only after that confict was resolved?

Edited June 23 by Joerg

[Malin]

4 minutes ago, Joerg said:

One question I find hard to answer is what a 10 m wave pushing up and down the bedrock and soil of Esrolia would have done to the bedrock and its structure. Would material in the quarries remain compact enough to provide building blocks for architecture, or did the Devastation soften all the rock underground?

Oh that would not have been an issue at all, at least for the quarries and bedrock. Sure, the quarries would most likely be lakes for a while, or filled with sand and silt, but such a small wave wouldn't affect the rock at all. The earthquakes might have caused cracks and strain in the rock, but I don't think it would have been a big thing. In such an earthquake-prone country, I suspect they'd know how to build mostly earthquake-prone cyclopean walls. Look to some ancient sites in South America, those have survived strong earthquake, and what parts collapsed could be repaired with some efforts. It's not like the blocks break, they are just out of alignment.

I think a lot would depend on whether the disaster caused a general uplift across the coastline (affecting harbors and the like), a general drop in the level of the land (making flooding worse, loss of fields) or whether it was mostly level. I'm not sure how much the magma chamber under the Vent affects the surrounding dry land, if it's like around the bay of Naples where the ground rises and sinks with the filling/emptying of various magma chambers and sills, or whether most of the deformation is kept out at sea. I'd assume the latter, but it might every well vary along the coast.

The fields would be inundated with a thick layer of sand and ashes, though, which would take a long time to remove. Soil might also have been washed away in places. Look up some stuff about the Cascadia Fault and how they found it, and you might get some more facts. Got like a shelf of volcano/earthquake books here if you want tips, but in short, it can vary a lot.

[Squaredeal Sten]

Devastation of the Vent 1050ST?  https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/history-of-kethaela-the-second-age/

As described here I don't rven see a tsunami described on the east side of Caladraland. Choralinthor Bay is a fair distance from Slontos and shielded by the Caladran peninsula.

The quakes and eruption.....

The quakes may well have collapsed Graves / tombs, but monuments on the surface would be identifiable and repairable.  Probably after some years of delay considering the rest of the described events.

The ash cloud might bury them.  It is not clear how much ash there was.  Probably not as deep as the pyroclastic flows at Herculaneum, and since Nocher survived, I am inclined to think the ash so far from the Vent would be closer to a foot deep, not 20-30 feet.. 

Think about the ash falling in Eurpe after recent Icelandic eruptions.

Edited June 23 by Squaredeal Sten
just additional RW examples

[M Helsdon]

From the Guide, it wasn't an earthquake, but an earth wave: A ten-foot-tall wave of earth passed through Esrolia, knocking down almost everything, followed by a smaller ripple.

And from the Well of Daliath: Miskos was abandoned after the Vent erupted. Even though most of the ash went westward towards Slontos, there was still a tsunami that hit Miskos hard. It was abandoned and Backford founded.

So we have a wave of earth that hit the land and continued under the water of the bay, creating a tsunami which hit the east coast of Choralinthor Bay.

And from the History of the Heortling Peoples:

In Esrolia this was the Devastation of the Vent, angry Veskarthan, coughed a poisonous cloud that drifted southwest over Slontos. Waves of lava flowed from the lower parts of the volcano out to sea. A huge wave rolled over both arms of the southern islands and destroyed most of the manmade things at sea level. Lesser waves washed across the Mirrorsea, so that all the cities around the Choralinthor were flooded by the seven deadly waves. These were what put the Ship Clutter ten miles upriver from Smithstone.

Edited June 23 by M Helsdon

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Malin said:

Oh that would not have been an issue at all, at least for the quarries and bedrock. Sure, the quarries would most likely be lakes for a while, or filled with sand and silt, but such a small wave wouldn't affect the rock at all.

You misread the nature of that wave - it was not a wave of water flooding the land, but a wave going through the very soil and bedrock of the land. The shockwave sank much of Wenelia and Slontos.

The coastlines of the Choralinthor Sea experienced a tsunami as a secondary effect of the Devastation, and that's where my comment on silt being deposited over parts of the Antones Estates in the western portion of the city stems from.

2 hours ago, Malin said:

The earthquakes might have caused cracks and strain in the rock, but I don't think it would have been a big thing.

The ground being lifted by more than 3 meters did cause quite the destruction:

Quote

A ten-foot-tall wave of earth passed through Esrolia, knocking down almost everything, followed by a smaller ripple. (Guide to Glorantha p.237, sidebox)

The longitude of that wave must have been rather short for its height to be estimable to that degree, significantly shorter than 100 meters/yards.

There is a chance of additional sedimentation of volcanic ash all over Esrolia, possibly covering up the fertile soil of Ernalda for half a generation.

The aftermath of the Devastation saw the onset of the Adjustment Wars. If there was a layer of ash covering the fields, the arrival of Storm worshippers able to blow that aside might have even been a blessing to the rural population.

2 hours ago, Malin said:

In such an earthquake-prone country, I suspect they'd know how to build mostly earthquake-prone cyclopean walls. Look to some ancient sites in South America, those have survived strong earthquake, and what parts collapsed could be repaired with some efforts. It's not like the blocks break, they are just out of alignment.

The cyclopean portions of the city wall did survive the Devastation largely intact.

2 hours ago, Malin said:

I think a lot would depend on whether the disaster caused a general uplift across the coastline (affecting harbors and the like), a general drop in the level of the land (making flooding worse, loss of fields) or whether it was mostly level.

The shoreline off Nochet survived largely unchanged, judging from the Dawn Age and Second Age maps of the city in Esrolia: Land of 10,000 Goddesses. Details of (low) cliffs along the shore line may have receded quite a bit, though.

In Slontos and Wenelia, the effects were dramatically harsher. Locals report that the Land Goddess rolled over, as an explanation of the Devastation of the Vent.

If you prefer a more mundane explanation for the loss of land in Maniria, possibly a submarine landslide of silt-filled valleys running down to the sea caused the lowering of the ground there (like it did for parts of Cleopatra's Alexandria, or for the city of Rungholt during its submersion in the Great Mandrenke 1362 where the silt below the marsh soil seems to have been mobilized to slide towards the deeper Hever canal separating the island of Strand from the Eiderstedt peninsula south of that, lowering the level of the land.

Another possibility for the lowering of the land might be collapsing cavities beneath the ground. Whether Mostali, Troll or Krarshtkid tunnels, a big shake-up might collapse some of those, or natural caves below the ground.

2 hours ago, Malin said:

 I'm not sure how much the magma chamber under the Vent affects the surrounding dry land, if it's like around the bay of Naples where the ground rises and sinks with the filling/emptying of various magma chambers and sills, or whether most of the deformation is kept out at sea. I'd assume the latter, but it might every well vary along the coast.

While the Vent and the surrounding foothills might rise and fall with Veskarthan's breath, I doubt that that effect extends into Esrolia. Lodril's chamber probably goes down very deep, and has branches or children leading up to the sons of Lodril, like Quivin.

 

2 hours ago, Malin said:

The fields would be inundated with a thick layer of sand and ashes, though, which would take a long time to remove. Soil might also have been washed away in places. Look up some stuff about the Cascadia Fault and how they found it, and you might get some more facts. Got like a shelf of volcano/earthquake books here if you want tips, but in short, it can vary a lot.

While I acknowledge a certain effect of the ash cloud on at least the Esrolian mesopotamia, IMG the fertility of the Esrolian soil is in no small part due to the layers of loess that were produced as a by-product of the Great Winter of the Storm Age. Volcanic ash might contribute a bit, but that's more the case for Caladraland.

 

2 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Devastation of the Vent 1050ST?  https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/history-of-kethaela-the-second-age/

As described here I don't rven see a tsunami described on the east side of Caladraland.

Some more detail can be found in in History of the Heortling People (p.88) (placing the Devastation after the start of the Adjustment Wars, but with dates that are at best approximations).

Quote

A huge wave rolled over both arms of the southern islands and destroyed most of the manmade things at sea level.

At sea level does not mean that the islands were washed over entirely. The God Learner places Iron Fort and the Zoo survived the wave with at best some damages, otherwise there would be no exotic critters left at the Zoo. In the God Forgot archipelago, several of the islands have been described as having significant cliffs above the beaches, especially Kostern Island. I am going with a limit to the damage at 2.5 meters above a wild day blue moon high tide, or less. Most of the denizens of the coast and the islands would elevate their homes to that height, whether on stilts or on artificial mounds.

I sincerely doubt that Veskarthan timed his eruption with Annilla and (IMG) the pulsation of the Chaos rift inside Magasta's Pool, an effect that has been observable in Moonbroth already before the rise of the Red Moon, although that may have upped the amplitude of the weekly cycle a lot. But "at sea level" is a very ambiguous thing to say along the Mirrorsea coast.

Both stilt houses and to some extent artificial mounds would have been hit by waves seven times. Waves are pretty much an exception on the Mirrorsea Bay, with hardly any wave action at all lapping away against the beaches. Tsunami waves have a lot more force than normal (wind-driven) breakers, but the Mirrorsea Bay was visited regularly by tidal waves caused by visiting Waertagi well into the seventh century, without the islands or beaches being depopulated by these.

Quote

Lesser waves washed across the Mirrorsea, so that all the cities around the Choralinthor were flooded by the seven deadly waves.

I live in one of the cities that experience flood damages in the ununsual storm surge on the Baltic last November. Places like the Holm in Schleswig or the low-lying portions of Arnis (a small city on an island further out on the Schlei fjord) got swamped, with water damage to the houses on the shore lines but higher elevations escaping completely unaffected.

The City of Karse is surrounded by a cyclopean wall which would have held off most of the force of the seven deadly waves. The God Learner port of Leskos has higher portions, too - not just IMG, the Slontan fort was erected on a rocky outcrop overlooking the dunes that are found all along the beaches of Heortland.

Thes dunes are piled up by the constant winds that blow across the tidal flats of the Mirrorsea Bay. As the last humidity gets dried away, finer sands may start to be blown across the flats, piling up where the ground rises.

But (at least IMG) only part of the intertidal in the Mirrorsea Bay will be sand flats. There will also be mudflats with much finer sediment (marsh clays) that don't dry out as easily and may survive the wind erosion better, and there are rocky outcrops in the intertidal which may be debris from the coastal cliffs carried out by extreme events, shelves of the limestone that persist in the intertidal, or the result of abortive volcanic activity in the bay.

We don't know whether there were seven waves arriving within the Devastation event, or whether the seven waves were localized to affect a different portion of the coast each, or whether this was the back and forth of the excited waters in the bay before Choralinthor's influence calmed them down.

Half of the coastal cities on the Mirrorsea Bay sit on the western shore of the bay, where the wave would have originated. Nochet, Rhigos, Storos and the cities along the tidal portions of the rivers would only have experienced the backwash.

Quote

These were what put the Ship Clutter ten miles upriver from Smithstone.

Weirdly enough the river bypassing Smithstone is the Marzeel, not the Creekstream River whose bed still remained unblocked by the Lead Hills. The Marzeel was only one of several tributaries of the Creek-Stream River, which ran about 10 miles west of Smithstone.

I wonder where the ships for the clutter would have come from a century into the Closing - did the Only Old One maintain a naval base of black galleys at the ruins of Lylket? Sea travel was possible on the Mirrorsea Bay after the first shockwave of the Closing that pushed the sea surfaces empty had passed, but ship size would have shrunk as there would not have been large cargoes to carry across other than the Adjustment armies and possibly the plunder or tribute they might send back across the bay. Mothballed fleets on high beaches on the riverside might be possible, but after a century those would be lucky to remain adrift upriver. Maybe on high beaches of the Marzeel?

The port of Karse lies east of the peninsula on the east shore of the now Marzeel River estuary, then the Creek-Stream River, and while the first of the waves could have lifted ships off the beach there, they are more likely to clutter the beach further inland of the Karse harbor bay, possibly in the woods and orchards shown on the detail map on the Well of Daliath, or drift into the Solthi inlet.

The Creek-Stream River estuary doesn't really provide much of a funnel to attract the waves, and its orientation is at an angle to the wave front rather than experiencing the main impact. Also, the shape of the deepwater areas in the bay suggests that the wave would spread out rather than narrow towards the Creek-Stream River estuary (nowadays Marzeel estuary).

The devastation of Miskos may have been aggravated by the funnel effect on the Syphon estuary, and both Durengard and Jansholm may have been reached due to the same effect.

The way to create a tsunami with an amplitude higher than the inciting ten feet would be an underwater landslide caused on the flanks of the deeper parts of the Choralinthor Bay. The huge wave running across islands might be the result of the eruption running towards the Poison Shore, or a land slide there.

There are no reports of the ten foot wall extending all the way across the Mirrorsea Bay, although occasional tremors would be unsurprising throughout Glorantha.

Ships&Shores has interpreted the reports on the Devastation much harsher than I would - see pages 45-50, 175-177 (about Slontos) and again p.316.

 

[M Helsdon]

3 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

In Esrolia this was the Devastation of the Vent, angry Veskarthan, coughed a poisonous cloud that drifted southwest over Slontos. Waves of lava flowed from the lower parts of the volcano out to sea. 

For a view of the level of destruction along the southern coast in 1050, it is instructive to view a before and after map. Slonta rolled over and Veskarthan sent destruction.

Note the position of Gemborg in the upper right, and consider the proximity of Choralinthor Bay.

Also, note the volcano temple at Meetinghall Mountain, the highest surviving mountain in the Slontos Isles (though I'm not sure where it is on the map).

Maps from the Guide.

Edited June 23 by M Helsdon