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Artillery Effectiveness?

"Hell's Gate" and "Hell Hath No Fury", by David, Linda Evans, and Joelle Presby, take the clash of science and magic to a whole new dimension...join us in a friendly discussion of this engrossing series!
Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by tonyz   » Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:37 pm

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Actually, Sharonan Mappers probably could figure out where the bedrock and channels were in a swamp... it'll still be a really annoying portal to get through, but it shouldn't be more than a major engineering challenge for them.
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Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Castenea   » Fri Oct 09, 2015 3:54 pm

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tonyz wrote:Actually, Sharonan Mappers probably could figure out where the bedrock and channels were in a swamp... it'll still be a really annoying portal to get through, but it shouldn't be more than a major engineering challenge for them.

Given that short of Authorial statement to the contrary, I think the swamp portal is somewhere in the Everglades, I do not think bedrock is too deep, but still going to be problematic (bedrock has much in common with swiss cheese). I believe that current method of dealing with this type of terrain includes seismic surveys and drilling cores to make sure you know what you are dealing with before even bringing the heavy equipment out.
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Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Louis R   » Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:57 pm

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Probably not the Everglades. TTBOMK nothing in Florida is 700 miles from the coast. That criterion also rules out the Mekong delta.

Castenea wrote:
tonyz wrote:Actually, Sharonan Mappers probably could figure out where the bedrock and channels were in a swamp... it'll still be a really annoying portal to get through, but it shouldn't be more than a major engineering challenge for them.

Given that short of Authorial statement to the contrary, I think the swamp portal is somewhere in the Everglades, I do not think bedrock is too deep, but still going to be problematic (bedrock has much in common with swiss cheese). I believe that current method of dealing with this type of terrain includes seismic surveys and drilling cores to make sure you know what you are dealing with before even bringing the heavy equipment out.
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Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Astelon   » Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:36 am

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The Glossary of HHNF puts Fort Rycharn at approximately the site of Belem, Brazil. The swamp portal being seven hundred miles away puts it comfortably in the Amazon Basin.
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Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Louis R   » Mon Oct 12, 2015 12:43 am

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::snort::

Thanks, I'd completely forgotten that. Explains why I was so sure it was the Amazon.

http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm is an easy place to plot a 700mi radius around Belem. The portal should be somewhere near the SW rim of the circle, or the fort would have been placed somewhere closer to it - there's nothing unusually attractive about that location.

Hmmm... IIRC, there's higher ground, or even hills, both north and south of the Amazon that's nearly as close, when not closer, to any part of that circle. If the only consideration is having a port, 60mi up the Para River from the sea , while good, isn't the automatic choice. You'd not add a lot of flying time going someplace cooler and drier. There are also places as good as Belem on the Amazon itself, which might actually be closer to the portal if minimising flight time is the main issue. I'm wondering if the thing isn't relatively close to the Para itself.

Astelon wrote:The Glossary of HHNF puts Fort Rycharn at approximately the site of Belem, Brazil. The swamp portal being seven hundred miles away puts it comfortably in the Amazon Basin.
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Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Howard T. Map-addict   » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:45 am

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We were also told that the Swamp Portal is forty (40)
miles from the ocean. The Arcanans use that coast as
a base from which to send a boat with the negotiators
to the Portal. Later, they use a marshy coastal island
as a waystation for their dragons before attacking.
{Edit Oct 13: Astelon found the textev, which shows
that the Arcanan base forty miles from Swamp Portal
is *not* necessarily on the ocean. See his post
below this one. TY to Astelon.}

Darcel, as Portal Hound, would have discovered that
the Next Portal was to the north; in fact, in the
direction of Cuba. When/if the Sharonans retake and
go through Swamp Portal, their obvious next step will
be to turn north and head for the Cuba Portal.
It is possible that they will pass {within sight of}
the Arcanan coastal waystation, assume that it was
set up directly from Cuba, plan to head straight there,
and overlook Fort Rycharn!

H True Map-addict

Louis R wrote:::snort::

Thanks, I'd completely forgotten that. Explains why I was so sure it was the Amazon.

http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm is an easy place to plot a 700mi radius around Belem. The portal should be somewhere near the SW rim of the circle, or the fort would have been placed somewhere closer to it - there's nothing unusually attractive about that location.

Hmmm... IIRC, there's higher ground, or even hills, both north and south of the Amazon that's nearly as close, when not closer, to any part of that circle. If the only consideration is having a port, 60mi up the Para River from the sea , while good, isn't the automatic choice. You'd not add a lot of flying time going someplace cooler and drier. There are also places as good as Belem on the Amazon itself, which might actually be closer to the portal if minimising flight time is the main issue. I'm wondering if the thing isn't relatively close to the Para itself.

Astelon wrote:The Glossary of HHNF puts Fort Rycharn at approximately the site of Belem, Brazil. The swamp portal being seven hundred miles away puts it comfortably in the Amazon Basin.
Last edited by Howard T. Map-addict on Tue Oct 13, 2015 10:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Astelon   » Mon Oct 12, 2015 8:03 pm

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I don't remember any mention of the portal being forty miles from the ocean. I went looking and found this in Hell's Gate chapter forty-five:

They'd been careful in their approach to deny the Sharonians any additional militarily useful information. Including, especially, any hint of the existence or capabilities of their own dragons. ... So Five Hundred Klian had ordered the transport dragon to fly them and their boat to within forty miles of the swamp portal.


From the context it appears that they were dropped off on one of the small "islands" within the swamp and went the rest of the way in the boat.
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Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Louis R   » Tue Oct 13, 2015 12:48 am

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The relevant data is in the 5th paragraph of Ch. 1 of HG "The dragon's arrival was a sign of just how inaccessible this forward post actually was. In fact, it was just over seven hundred and twenty miles from the coastal base, in what would have been the swamps of the Kingdom of Farshal in northeastern Hilmar back home."

Forty miles from the coast _and_ 720 from Belem puts you either 40mi south of Fortaleza or ~60mi SW of Paramaribo. Guess which location has swamps - not that it matters, since there's usable anchorage at both. Ft Raycharn would have been placed at one of them to start with, or abandoned and replaced pretty quickly when the portal was located if there wasn't a very good reason to have it where it was.

While the Farshalans probably haven't settled in all the places the Brazilians did [and probably have settled a few the Brazilians _didn't_] in the Amazon, I'm pretty sure that they've explored their territory well enough to know that those locations are suitable. The UTTTA certainly has access to that info and would use it for expedition planning.


Astelon wrote:I don't remember any mention of the portal being forty miles from the ocean. I went looking and found this in Hell's Gate chapter forty-five:

They'd been careful in their approach to deny the Sharonians any additional militarily useful information. Including, especially, any hint of the existence or capabilities of their own dragons. ... So Five Hundred Klian had ordered the transport dragon to fly them and their boat to within forty miles of the swamp portal.


From the context it appears that they were dropped off on one of the small "islands" within the swamp and went the rest of the way in the boat.
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Fort locations was: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Howard T. Map-addict   » Tue Oct 13, 2015 10:52 am

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Thank you, Astalon, for finding the textev,
and showing that Arcana's Forty-Mile Base might not
be on the ocean. It might be any distance inland.

If my identifications of the three locations is correct,
then Forts Rycharn (Belem) and Wyvern (Cuba) are farther
from each other than either is from Swamp Portal.
Fort Wyvern is at the Entrance Portal.

My Speculation why Rycharn was placed at Belem:
First, Arcanans did not yet have the Portal-locator Spell
that Halathyn & Gadrial were still developing.
Therefore, they had not known about Swamp Portal when
they built Rycharn. They needed other reasons for it.
(BTWay, locating Portals must have been a hit-or-miss
thing for Arcanans, before that P-l Spell!)

Second, their SOP might be to put a
certain number of forts on each new-found world,
spaced a standard distance apart.
I suspect that they have Standard Fort Locations
for their 200 worlds.

Third, Rycharn is on the Bulge Of Brazil, jutting out
into the Atlantic, and is close to Africa, seemingly
within one long dragonflight.
This reason suffices to explain its location.

Just in case that is not enough, Belem is far enough
to the south to be away from almost all hurricanes.

H T Map-addict

Louis R wrote:The relevant data is in the 5th paragraph of Ch. 1 of HG "The dragon's arrival was a sign of just how inaccessible this forward post actually was. In fact, it was just over seven hundred and twenty miles from the coastal base, in what would have been the swamps of the Kingdom of Farshal in northeastern Hilmar back home."

Forty miles from the coast _and_ 720 from Belem puts you either 40mi south of Fortaleza or ~60mi SW of Paramaribo. Guess which location has swamps - not that it matters, since there's usable anchorage at both. Ft Raycharn would have been placed at one of them to start with, or abandoned and replaced pretty quickly when the portal was located if there wasn't a very good reason to have it where it was.

While the Farshalans probably haven't settled in all the places the Brazilians did [and probably have settled a few the Brazilians _didn't_] in the Amazon, I'm pretty sure that they've explored their territory well enough to know that those locations are suitable. The UTTTA certainly has access to that info and would use it for expedition planning.


Astelon wrote:I don't remember any mention of the portal being forty miles from the ocean. I went looking and found this in Hell's Gate chapter forty-five:

"They'd been careful in their approach to deny the Sharonians any additional militarily useful information. Including, especially, any hint of the existence or capabilities of their own dragons. ... So Five Hundred Klian had ordered the transport dragon to fly them and their boat to within forty miles of the swamp portal."

From the context it appears that they were dropped off on one of the small "islands" within the swamp and went the rest of the way in the boat.
Last edited by Howard T. Map-addict on Tue Dec 22, 2015 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Artillery Effectiveness?
Post by Astelon   » Wed Oct 14, 2015 4:08 am

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It appears that Arcana had some kind of portal detector before Halathyn's invention. When Gadrial showed the new detector to Jassak he said:

It beats the hell, if you'll pardon the language, out of humping the standard detectors around the country side in a blind search pattern


Since they had a detector (of some kind) they may have known a portal was somewhere around here (here being South America)

Based on a post by RFC dragons need to take rests, they don't fly their full distance in a long flight. They may not be able to fly from South America to Africa.

Standard fort locations are potentially a good idea, but you would still need a reason to build one. Fort Rycharn's location could be standard for exploring South America, and have been built because there is a portal around somewhere.
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