1652 Great Flood

[Pentallion]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

KoS p.26 describes an event roughly in 1650:
In the next spring, the Dara Happans would have liked to help their allies, the horsemen, but Argrath Storm‑maker raised the waters of the Oslir so much that every house which was not on a hillside was washed away. Anyone without boats could not move around, and so they all stayed home.

roughly 1650 could be actually 1652 or 3 and all Argrath did was open up a canal in that little circled area on Davids map and let the flood pour into the Oslir River Valley.

[jajagappa]

20 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

roughly 1650 could be actually 1652 or 3 and all Argrath did was open up a canal in that little circled area on Davids map and let the flood pour into the Oslir River Valley.

That's what I thought when I read the KoS reference too.

[Pentallion]

1 minute ago, jajagappa said:

That's what I thought when I read the KoS reference too.

But for that to be so, then at least some finger of the flood has to reach that point.  Bypassing Esrolian dykes onward onto Sartar no doubt.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Pentallion said:

But for that to be so, then at least some finger of the flood has to reach that point.  Bypassing Esrolian dykes onward onto Sartar no doubt.

Or taking the much lower barrier and flooding out of the Sweet Sea. If it was the year after the Kalikos expedition, he had just been in the region, and the Sweet Sea has myths about not remaining inside its shores.

[AndreJarosch]

18 hours ago, David Scott said:

Greg's Hero Wars map for the shows:

Flooded 

• the area in map 3 (Sartar, Esrolia).
• The Janube Valley up to about Eastpoint.
• The Tanier Valley up to just before Lake Felster.
• Kralorela & Teshnos up to the Shan Shan Mountains.
• The Eastern side of the new dwarf land cube
• The Northern coasts of Pamaltela

Not Flooded

• The Pelorian Basin.
• East Isles
• Northern edge of the Dwarf land cube.
• The Wastes 

 

 

Is there a chance to show Gregs original crude map?

[simonh]

13 hours ago, Pentallion said:

But for that to be so, then at least some finger of the flood has to reach that point.  Bypassing Esrolian dykes onward onto Sartar no doubt.

The dykes would have to encompass Heortland as well to block it's way into Drago Pass.

[David Scott]

Just now, simonh said:

The dykes would have to encompass Heortland as well to block it's way into Drago Pass.

Just a note that the last map’s flood level is at the 3000 foot contour line to reach the foot of Kero Finn. Whilst this is a dramatic event with mythic answers, I suspect the Dyke’s aren’t earth walls 3000 feet tall. I believe other forces will be at work. Orlanth standing with his shield on Esrolia would work. He could be 4000 tall and hold back the waters. He’s loads of arms so could be well braced. Or he could just do a dragon fight thing. Greg’s notes do say however that all the coastal cities were destroyed. 

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

Just a note that the last map’s flood level is at the 3000 foot contour line to reach the foot of Kero Finn. Whilst this is a dramatic event with mythic answers, I suspect the Dyke’s aren’t earth walls 3000 feet tall. I believe other forces will be at work. Orlanth standing with his shield on Esrolia would work. He could be 4000 tall and hold back the waters. He’s loads of arms so could be well braced. Or he could just do a dragon fight thing.

The dykes may well be flooded but keep the watery invaders from plundering the area protected haphazardly, invoking ancient pacts turning the local water entities into guardians.

The extent of the catastrophe depends strongly on how unexpected the flood comes. With prophecy, and especially prophecy in player character hands,  hundreds of grandiose schemes may be carried through.

Nochet alone has two supernatural backdoors, the Fish Road and the Blackmaw.

Seapolis should be immune as its city area already is part of the seas, magically, as the Fish Road terminus. And the Pelaskites will have boats for their entire population, and possibly space to spare.

The situation will be exacerbated by the Waertagi, though, and possibly Vadeli and chaotic Artmali contribute to the damage, too. No idea whether there will still be wolf pirates by this time, or whether they will have re-organized as coastal warlords elsewhere. On the other hand, the cult of Faralinthor might be revived in time, and provide a wet but non-lethal embrace e.g. for the temple city of Ezel.

Coastal Pamaltela, including the oldest Elf Jungles, will set up a different kind of resistance, too. Kimos might become a game changer.

We are talking about an event 25 years in the future of the Gloranthan now, however. There is a good chance that it will be 2052 before official publications for any of the systems get to deal with this, and few campaigns are as long-lived and far in the future as the one recently come to an end for @soltakss (and that one took more than two decades, too).

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

Greg’s notes do say however that all the coastal cities were destroyed. 

Destroyed as in drowned with all the inhabitants, or flooded out and temporarily left behind, badly damaged by the hungry seas?

Especially with Nochet and its Great Library I can see desperate and heroic action drama. Argan Argar's Safe spell might play a role here.

[simonh]

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

Just a note that the last map’s flood level is at the 3000 foot contour line to reach the foot of Kero Finn. Whilst this is a dramatic event with mythic answers, I suspect the Dyke’s aren’t earth walls 3000 feet tall. I believe other forces will be at work. Orlanth standing with his shield on Esrolia would work. He could be 4000 tall and hold back the waters. He’s loads of arms so could be well braced. Or he could just do a dragon fight thing. Greg’s notes do say however that all the coastal cities were destroyed. 

Sure, but at a mundane level even a 1000ft dyke would save a significant chunk of Esrolia. Where to build it though? To put it at the optimal contour you’d need to know how high the water will go.

[Joerg]

16 minutes ago, simonh said:

Sure, but at a mundane level even a 1000ft dyke would save a significant chunk of Esrolia. Where to build it though? To put it at the optimal contour you’d need to know how high the water will go.

There is no realistic way to produce a 1000 ft dyke even with modern technology, except for very small dams for hydroelectric power. Current sea and river dykes are less than 50 ft high.

Anything that holds back a flooding of 3000 ft will have to be magical rather than material, and possibly trap pockets of air underwater rather than keeping it away from a region completely.

The seas encircling the Vingkotling lands were of a different character, huge bulges that didn't care about contour levels of the mountain ranges they covered. This flood is a lot more passive, although it may be slightly powered by a Tidal Wave deity.

Imagining a storm that might push away such an amount of water would be powerful enough to eraze any earth surface it might touch without any additional effort, too.

 

[simonh]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

There is no realistic way to produce a 1000 ft dyke even with modern technology, except for very small dams for hydroelectric power. Current sea and river dykes are less than 50 ft high.

The Wall in Game of Thrones is 700 ft high, surely we can beat that.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, simonh said:

The Wall in Game of Thrones is 700 ft high, surely we can beat that.

Sure? We have two examples of super-heroic trench digging, the Good Canal in Prax and the New River between the Dammed Marsh and the Lyksos river. The amount of soil moved in these projects would have yielded a dyke maybe 100 ft at the crown.

Of course, there is always another way. Belintar showed us when he lifted Loon Island from the Choralinthor Sea, and again when he erected the Building Wall. @jajagappa/Harald's Nochet campaign has a similar event in its back-story when the river dyke on the Lyksos was erected as the northwestern quarters of modern Nochet were developed. But the last time a bulwark of this size was pulled up was the formation of the Lead Hills blocking the Creek Stream River, before that either the Mostali raising Nida in the middle of the Kachisti lands or Larnste sowing the Rockwood Montains or stamping up the Storm Mountains.

 

That said, the Wall of Westeros only was supposed to hold back the White Walkers, and despite standing there for millennia, it served that purpose for about a quarter of an hour between the arrival of the army of the dead and their marching across its debris. It wouldn't have held back a flood a third that high.

 

Esrolia has ancient history in water management. South Esrolia is dominated by the twin rivers joining the Mirrorsea bay at Rhigos, and flood regulation is part of the annual cycle there. So are dyke maintenance and repair.

At  Korovaka/the Necropolis, there is an artificial dam (erected by Vogarth Strong Man) which maintains the lake that prevents the dead of Necropolis from swarming all over Esrolia.

Breaching dams to hinder or stop invasions is a proven method, and probably was practiced by Darjiinians over and over again to slow down Alkothi hordes. Minaryth Purple destroyed the Lunar expedition to the Hill of Orlanth Victorious this way at the onset of the Starbrow Rebellion. Argrath used this against Sheng. I would expect this method to have been ineffective in Fire Season raids into Esrolia, however.

[Steve]

20 hours ago, David Scott said:

Just a note that the last map’s flood level is at the 3000 foot contour line to reach the foot of Kero Finn.

So The Block, at 2000m high, is showing up above the waters?

[Joerg]

14 minutes ago, Steve said:

So The Block, at 2000m high, is showing up above the waters?

Yes, as a cube. It is missing from the map because it has no contour lines.

[JonL]

I was only half-joking earlier in the thread about the way Edbert would turn back the flood. The kicker on something like that is that you'd need enough people backing it over a wide area such that it's not just a localized reprieve. Various groups around coastal areas all doing similar things relevant to their own cultures would become an I Fought We Won scenario. 

Another myth that might be invoked is Magasta rallying the Water Tribe to close the hole in the world in the first place. The birth of Nysalor might be powerful as well if that is accessible, if the sun could be made to pause above the berg for a while.

[David Scott]

3 hours ago, Steve said:

So The Block, at 2000m high, is showing up above the waters?

I haven’t looked exactly at that, the guide tells us it’s a mile tall, so that’s 5280 feet tall and it sits on the 1000 ft contour so at a rough guess there’s 3000 feet of it visible. 

[David Scott]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Yes, as a cube. It is missing from the map because it has no contour lines.

The guide tell us it’s half a mile each side and a mile tall, so not a cube. See the picture on page 411 of the Guide. Some of it is clearly below ground.

 

[Steve]

3 minutes ago, David Scott said:

I haven’t looked exactly at that, the guide tells us it’s a mile tall, so that’s 5280 feet tall and it sits on the 1000 ft contour so at a rough guess there’s 3000 feet of it visible. 

Thanks. My 2000m bit came from the RQG rulebook, where it says that it's 2km tall. I guess that there's not a huge difference between 1 mile and 2km. I didn't realise that the plains of Prax were so high up though, interesting.

[Steve]

2 minutes ago, David Scott said:

The guide tell us it’s half a mile each side and a mile tall, so not a cube. See the picture on page 411 of the Guide. Some of it is clearly below ground.

 

It would look more like a cube above the Flood though, right?

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, Steve said:

It would look more like a cube above the Flood though, right?

Please you guys reassure me that truestone is really dense and that thing isn't going to float away from its sacred world-preserving duty like a big fizzing lode of lithium.

[Revilo Divad Of Dyoll]

48 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Please you guys reassure me that truestone is really dense and that thing isn't going to float away from its sacred world-preserving duty like a big fizzing lode of lithium.

Truestone is really dense.  But of course, the ground under it could erode away . . .

[David Scott]

On 7/25/2018 at 9:14 AM, AndreJarosch said:

Is there a chance to show Gregs original crude map?

Yes!, Jeff gave me permission to post it so here it is:

[Zit]

1 hour ago, Revilo Divad Of Dyoll said:

Truestone is really dense.  But of course, the ground under it could erode away . . .

and Glorantha is not following physics but myth, so there may even be a mythical reason for the block to float away.

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

The guide tell us it’s half a mile each side and a mile tall, so not a cube. See the picture on page 411 of the Guide. Some of it is clearly below ground.

I was working with 2 km tall and 1 km to the sides, some part of it below ground (which is elevated about 300 m), so about 2 km above sea level, minus 1 km for the flood, resulting in a 1k cube above the water.

If it is but 800 m to each side and 1600 m tall, then it would have to be only 100 m below the plateau to remain as a 800 m cube above the water.

Either way, what remains above the water approximates a cube, give or take 100 m.

 

And though my feet are about one foot long, I prefer to measure distances and heights in steps, which are about 1 m or a bit more than a yard for me, and from there on Dara Happan measures in powers of ten (the one thing Plentonius got right). I wonder whose feet were used when the unit was fixed...

[JonL]

43 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I wonder whose feet were used when the unit was fixed...

The Emperor's, surely.