Difference between revisions of "Talk:Ianian"

Revision as of 14:05, 25 October 2014

. . . and even if the claims are bullshit, it's hard not to imagine it being an oft claimed bloodline.

• Totes agreed, good change -Slitherrr
  • And re: crossroads, that was what I was going for, so your change is much clearer. Teamwork! -Slitherrr
    • You're shocked my editorial hand is both light and well guided? What do you think I've been doing for the past decade? :P -gm
      • Hey, just giving credit where it's due. I'm used to responding to pull requests, where the context and structure makes +1 seem less like kissing ass. -Slitherrr

PERSIA

• P,E: Looking at that map, as far as low status high influence positions, whoever dredges that river mouth to allow maritime traffic is probably hugely influential. I remember reading somewhere about the major criticism of GRRM's otherwise quite naturalist map is that a huge number of cities are build on top of river mouths. In reality, very few cities actually do this because of silt buildup, etc. Then I thought about it and realized that, yeah, most cities are somewhere on or near rivers in the interior country, but for coastal cities that seems to be a lot less true. New Orleans is a huge obvious contra example, but that's one of the most heavily engineered riverways in the world.
  • New Orleans, Chicago, Seattle all qualify (and New York, but its geographic situation is weird). New Orleans and Chicago are also hugely influential, and like you say, they do a lot of work keeping those riverbeds in more-or-less the same place year after year (and sometimes fail at it). I'll ponder a bit to see if I can think of a way of hinting at that without making it a focus-Slitherrr

None of these became megaports until the industrial and transportation revolutions, though. and all of them rely on some not insubstantial dredging (aka magic). Compare with all the major cities of Europe and Asia built on rivers - Paris, London, Rome, etc. - and you find a city built upriver, maybe with a satellite port town close by on the coast. (Ostia for Rome, for example) A lot of times, also, you might find a big coastal city a few miles in either direction of the river's mouth, but especially in warmer regions, river mouths tend to be swampy shitholes not ideal for settlement except maybe by lizard people. MSA can chime in here, as he is an expert both on river systems and lizard people. -gm

I'm going to go with that other thing you said (magic), although obviously the real answer is "everyone who makes a fantasy map thinks London and Dover are the same city". Does Celestia count as a warmer region? This is all South of the Equator, right? Which is somewhere North of Sidhe Island? I was figuring Celestia's climate to be something like Scotland (cold and a bit rainy), which would probably make the Persia analog have a climate probably more similar to... I dunno, Mongolia? Coastal, but cold and dry, so less Washington and more Chile (because all the moisture would be being pushed to the Celstia side of the Heretic Sea). -Slitherrr

This sounds about right. It makes Celstia an appropriately Celtic level of dreary and cold. Odessa, of course, boasts a climate too diverse to be the British Isles proper, but might stand in as more of a British Empire lain onto the past. This gives Alexia of Olde a Greek/Mediterranean flavor and the Alexia of present a dusty, windswept arid North Africa flavor. Flannary's heartland is perfectly suited to be more or less that of provincial France, but Coastal Flannary would look and feel more like Normandy or Pas-de-Calais than Nice or Marsailles. Fresia is also the German states of the medieval imagination: the dark and gloomy forests of Grimm, the political schizophrenia of the HRE, along with the free cities and guilds of the Hansa.

Petara was basically fleshed out to be the Near East analog, so obviously with a lot of Persian and Islamic flavor. As the climate modeling for the mainland has become more clear, though, I've started to envision Petara - at least geographically - as less like a straight up Persia an Egypt and more like Persia as reflected by the successor states of Turkey and the Stans, with urbanized areas being more Samarakand and less Baghdad and the desert being more steppe and mountain and less, well, hot sandy wastes.

• E: I've read too much about ancient and classical cities to not always be really angry at some feature or another of fantasy cities. In this case, it drives me crazy all the dock frontage for Ianian is on the east, landward side. Probably there are significant docks for the blue water vessels south of the city not featured. Or so I tell myself. The east side docks are obviously smaller fishing craft and stuff. It's the only way it makes sense.
  • Ha, yes. It might be worth drawing some shitty mspaint piers on the West side, with some sort of artificial protective barrier (whatever would make sense with Move Earth and its ilk)--it doesn't make much sense to have them South of that wall, but it also would be some really shitty exposure to the Heretic Sea if it was just glommed onto the West side, there. -Slitherrr
    • I guess the main problem with that is that all the buildings on that side look really residential, but honestly, that's kind of a problem on the whole map--all that greenery and the size of the buildings makes the whole damn place look like a suburb, to me. -Slitherrr