Taos
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Post by Taos on Nov 23, 2008 19:30:28 GMT -5
LBTL Distances I was bored at work today, so I decided to try and finalize the distances from Point A to Point B in the currently settled and mapped area of the Land between The Lands. I have treated the primary practice locations of each realm as being representative of a fairly central training area in each realm’s town/encampment/village, and measured the distance between them. Where this wasn’t possible, I measured the approximate center of each realm’s mundane town or city. Distances and travel times are as follows. For reference, average walking speed is 3 mph. Average hurrying speed is 5 mph. This is essentially jogging all day long, which is achievable by average people, though probably not by characters in armor and equipment. Average horse trot speed is 8 mph. Any faster, and the horse will tire and need to be switched out. Mittelmarch to Dragoon Encampment: 113 miles as the wolf runsWalking: 37 hours. Given 10 hours a day of walking, a 4 day trip. Hurrying: 23 hours. At 10 hours a day, a little over 2 days. Riding: 14 hours. A little over a day. Hard riding would bring the distance down to one day’s ride. Mittelmarch to Kanthea: 38 miles as the wolf runsWalking: 13 hours. A little over one day of travel. Hurrying: 8 hours. A trip that can be made in a single day. Riding: 4.75 hours. Kanthea is practically an outlying village of Mittelmarch. Mittelmarch to Fangorn: 172 miles as the wolf runsWalking: 57 hours. 6, almost 7 days travel. Hurrying: 34 hours. 4 days travel. Riding: 22 hours. 3 days travel. This is where it gets interesting. Up until this point, all destinations have been connecting points east of the Iron Mountains. Because of this, I haven’t really taken travel difficulty into account. There appears to be one major pass through the mountains on the LBTL map. (It’s in the south of the range.) I’ll consider this “The Easy Road,” or the route everyone takes during winter, when time is not of the essence, and the route large movements of men and materials would have to take. I’ll still provide direct point to point distances, to take into account solitary travelers or small groups, forging their way through the mountains. Mittelmarch to Dunland: 65 miles as the wolf runsDunland and Dragonspire are both quite close to the “The Easy Road,” so in almost all instances, it would be easier to go the extra 30 miles round trip and not go over the mountains. These cities are pretty important strategically, too, as they stand quite close to a major travel area. Walking: 22 hours. 3 days, plus over the mountains travel time. Hurrying: 13 hours. A little over one day, plus mountain travel. Riding: 8 hours. One day, although you would walk ahead of your horse in the mountains. Through The Pass (+30 miles)Walking: 32 days. 3 days travel time. Hurrying: 19 hours. 2 days travel time Riding: 12 hours. Just over one day away. Mittelmarch to Dragonspire: 78 miles as the wolf runsWalking: 26 hours. 3 days travel time. Hurrying: 16 hours. 2 days travel time. Riding: 10 hours. 1 day travel time. Through The Pass (+ 10 miles)Interestingly, Mittelmarch to Dragonspire is basically a straight shot through the pass. Very slight divergence. Walking: 30 hours. Arrival at nighttime on the 3rd day. Hurrying: 18 hours. 2 days travel. Riding: 11 hours. One day, if you push it. Mittelmarch to Stormhaven: 97 miles (Going around the mountains.)Stormhaven is weird. It’s mostly surrounded by the Iron Mountain’s central bulge. The terrain of the mountains here is generally considered the most forbidding and treacherous terrain in the land. This is where Dragoons seeking advancement hunt the mountain’s dragons, and where Grish’nak retreated after defeats. As such, almost all travelers will travel around the mountains. Walking: 32 hours. Between 3 and 4 days. Hurrying: 19.4 hours. 2 days travel time Riding: 12 hours. One day, two if you’re in no hurry. Mittelmarch to Aethenu: 141 miles (Across the mountains)Not advised. Not only does this take you across the central Iron Mountains, but you’d come out of the mountains right into Jovian territory. But…if you must. Walking: 47 hours. 5 days, with the terrain, more like a week and some days. Hurrying: 28 hours. 3 days. Extremely optimistic. Going over mountains, after all. Riding: 18 hours. Not at all likely. Probably more like 1 day over the plains, 3 or 4 in the mountains. Taking the Southern Pass: 218 miles as the wolf runs.Walking: 73 hours. 8 days travel time. Hurrying: 43.6 hours. 5 days travel. Riding: 27 hours. 3 days by horse. ConclusionsThe entire explored area of the LBTL is a large, squarish rectangle. According to the map, the explored area is slightly larger east/west than north/south. It is bounded on all sides by ocean, or at least, extremely large bodies of water. Rough north/south distance is 300 miles, east/west is 350 miles. 105,000 square miles of surface area. The mountain chain running down the island would be about 300 miles long as well, with the River of Flame being in the vicinity of 250 miles, taking its curves into account. This makes it roughly the length of the White River. The River Isen is approximately 100 miles long. It’s become a fact through years of background expansion that there are other islands scattered throughout the oceans, with at least one other, much larger continent somewhere on the planet. What we can take away from this, is that all of the settlements of the land are, in fact, within reasonable defensive distance of each other. While it may be a month or more before the Dragoons could be warned of trouble at, and get to, say, Aethenu, Dunland is only a few days ride from the Aethenric. Mittelmarch, by virtue of its central location, could have almost every able-bodied soldier in the Land at its gates within 2 weeks, and most much sooner than that. If there’s interest, I’m willing to determine distances from any realm to any other realm, with probable travel times included.
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Anvil
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Post by Anvil on Nov 23, 2008 21:13:34 GMT -5
Nice work. One note of interest though dunland has 2 major cities. Gatereach (Brazil) on the western side of the mountains and Gladden Fields (Greencastle) on the eastern side of the mountains a little south of the Shogunate. We RP as having a cart path wide trail between the towns through the mountains. guarded on both ends by walled sections with gates left over from the earlier age. We alsoare in the process of building signal towers between Gatereach and Gladden Fields and to Shogunate. With more planned for Dragonspire, but we have not reached a formal agreement with them as yet.
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Taos
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Post by Taos on Nov 23, 2008 21:25:30 GMT -5
Cool. For reference, I measured to Brazil. Looking at the map. using the cart path would line up more or less with the straight shot distance.
As I was working on this, I had a feeling people would have mountain passes or tracks or whatever in their realms, but the map was all I had to go off of at the time.
The South Pass still seems like the quickest way to move large, army-sized groups around.
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Anvil
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Post by Anvil on Nov 23, 2008 21:31:29 GMT -5
yup, I suggested on the LBTL boards we try to up date the map. If we do start doing more RP battles for territory we'll need it updated anyway.
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Post by Lord Kensman Oron the Wolf on Nov 23, 2008 21:53:26 GMT -5
Taos, I would argue your time/distance calculations, but they may simply be the differences between Kensmen and elves.
Speaking only for myself (and the Sword Brothers I have trained), I can truly say that I travel 4 miles per hour on even trail. I can maintain this easy pace for hours unending, without knowing fatigue. 3 miles per hour would be more accurate for broken terrain, no road, path, or trail, or unfamiliar territory.
Jogging takes you (or me anyway), up to 6 miles per hour under the same above conditions. Unencumbered, or at least lightly so, I can push 8 to 10 miles an hour for 2 to 3 hours before requiring rest (running). Truly fast runners have covered 25 miles in only 2 hours under ideal, or pressing conditions, and distance runners and couriers have been known to run 100 miles in only 15 hours.
Healthy horses when used only for ridding (not farm/plow work), can trot/canter for many hours. 75 miles in a day on well worn roads under average conditions is normal. Better horses bred for endurance can be pushed further and faster before they need to rest or be swapped out (100 to 150 miles under the same conditions). War horses fall between the two (riding, and endurance) as they are bred for both strength/power and endurance to a lesser extent.
I could not help but notice that you left off travel speeds of ships, my friend. I know that you do not sail much, but as their are several wide rivers that cut across the LBTL I feel that it is worth noting. Long ships are by far the fastest of ships averaging 10 to 14 nautical miles per hour under decent sail and 6 to 8 miles per hour by oar.
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Taos
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Post by Taos on Nov 23, 2008 22:05:59 GMT -5
Average humans, Oron. Not everyone's a hero. Some of us also like a bit of a stroll from point to point. For reference, though, I used the same sources Muhdurin of the Senegals did. For walking speed. www.iloveindia.com/fitness/walking/human-walking-speed.htmlAnd for horses at a trot. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_gait#TrotAlso... 8 mph x 10 hour travel day = 80 miles Like I said, any faster, and the horse will tire and need to be switched out. My hurrying calculations were mostly just a guess, taking into account moderate encumburance. (I.E. about how fast I personally run and can keep up while wearing battle rattle.) I know nothing of ships, although, most merchant travel up and down the rivers is probably oar-powered flatbottomed barges. Any suggestion as to how fast they would go? P.S. The more specific reason for excluding ships is that the LBTL's rivers have no real-world counterpart like overland distances do. I'm waiting for people to agree or disagree with my distances before I apply the measuring stick to the rivers.
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Post by Lord Kensman Oron the Wolf on Nov 23, 2008 23:14:33 GMT -5
I hardly consider myself "everyone's hero", but walking 15 minute miles is hardly difficult for somebody that travels by foot as a daily necessity. I may not fall under "average" by national standards, but I doubt that any warrior worth his salt would, either. I have pushed myself to walk, jog, and run under the best and worst conditions with gear, without, and even in armor (both chain maille and leather). This was mostly for my own idle curiosity, and to see how running in garb/gear/armor times compare to road racing against trained runners in ideal conditions.
While I agree with your trotting estimates of horses (or at least those you found on-line), it is important to understand that trotting is not a comfortable gait to sit for long travel. A slow canter is far easier on both horse and rider, and covers more distance.
Flat-bottomed barges are by their nature very slow. They have terrible draft in the water, are very heavy, and do not typically use any sail what-so-ever. Using hard working rowers and halfway decent river currents you would be fortunate to reach 6 nautical miles per hour. Tis far more likely that without mule or draft horse teams to aid a barge laden with goods for market, 4 nautical miles per hour would be the norm.
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Post by Siobhan Sith on Nov 24, 2008 7:34:04 GMT -5
To put in my two cents or so, I own a tennessee walking horse and can maintain a running walk (a gait ranging between a fast trot and a slow canter) for a very, very long ride... while drinking coffee. Some breeds would be like riding a jackhammer for a day-long jaunt, but there are even some amongst notoriously hard-trotting horses (even quarter horses) that have an unusually smooth gate. I would say a day-long trot would not be too unreasonable, though I would want to know my horse and alternate between cantering and walking for a pace-change depending on the terrain.
Also, it would be more than practical for anyone traveling more than a day's ride to have one horse as a light pack animal strung behind their own horse. These horses would be switched out when the horse carrying most of the weight (ie you and your heavy-ass armor) gets tired. I would also contend that if a soldier knew that the battle was more than a day's ride away, they would unload their heavy armor onto the pack horse because, I don't know about all of you, but I would think that being stuck in a tin can on top of a trotting pony for hours on end for no good reason other than you're headed to war would get a bit chaffing after time. That would probably be circumstantial, though.
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Post by Sir Nichtmar on Nov 24, 2008 8:10:58 GMT -5
This is great work Taos, very helpful. Once you all iron out distance and land speed I'll put this on the site.
I can update the map, may make a new one. We could put routes on the map and a Landspeed Key.
Walking trail
Road
Climbing paths (No Horse Access)
Think this could be great for RP
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Post by Rook on Nov 24, 2008 9:27:58 GMT -5
<--Wants to learn to ride a horse.
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Kotaro
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Post by Kotaro on Nov 24, 2008 11:49:37 GMT -5
How long is the distance and time to travel to Kyuden Tatsumura?
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Taos
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Post by Taos on Nov 24, 2008 18:47:39 GMT -5
If you give me the real location that corresponds too, I can tell you.
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Post by Rook on Nov 24, 2008 20:15:31 GMT -5
<---misses Taos.
I think it's about time we had Nichtmar make another man love movie about us...
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Taos
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Post by Taos on Dec 1, 2008 18:08:18 GMT -5
After further research, I'm sticking with an average walking speed of between 3 and 4 miles an hour, 3 mph for the purposes of this project. It wasn't exactly thoroughly exhaustive research, but I hit up some museums in the local area and checked into older units of measure, and they support me. In Frontier Texas, traveling 20 miles from town to town was considered one days walk for the average person, 60-70 miles about average for horseback, and a stagecoach could reliably travel 100 miles a day. Towns would be within roughly walking distance of each other, if possible, and forts tended to be within two or three days ride of each other. Obviously, this is in ideal circumstances, not taking into account local water availability and suitability of the terrain. Also, the league, a unit of measurement that has fallen out of use, is a distance of three miles. Before it became obsolete, it represented the distance a person can walk in one hour. They also seem to have included horses on occasion, although I'm assuming a horse can actually walk faster than that. Interestingly, the league used to be about 3.5 miles. Seems to indicate that people have gotten slower and lazier as the centuries have ticked by, so I don't think your totally wrong, Oron. I'm just working with what I've got As for how fast can someone hurry? That comes down to the character. A dwarf or hobbit character, for instance, may not hurry much faster than their walking speed. Oof, by contrast, might be capable of hurrying down a road at 10 miles an hour, because of his massive strides. I think for characters considered to be lightly encumbered, and of roughly human-size, Oron's suggestion of 8 to 10 miles per hour is a good top end of ability, especially if one is bringing along some light armor and weapons. Sticking with my horse calculations, because I think Siobhan agreed with me, and she owns a horse, and is therefore much more experienced on the realities than I am. The question arose via PM as to how fast Elven horses could be considered to run? I turned to the original example of the Elven horse in modern-day fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien's Shadowfax. Turns out Shadowfax was pretty slow over long distances. He covered the 450 miles from Isengard to Minas Tirith in 9 days. Granted, he and Gandalf only traveled at night in order to avoid the Ringwraiths, but this still gives him a speed of about 5 miles an hour, if they traveled 10 hours a day. A better basis might be their initial ride from Isengard to the Fords of Isen, or the first 15 miles of the trip. Shadowfax was able to cover this distance, bearing Gandalf and Pippin, in the span of less than an hour, and it's implied that this was a sustainable speed, and also somewhat slow for Shadowfax. So, if your character has access to an elf-horse, or similarly fast mount, 20 miles an hour over clear, open terrain, 15 or so in rough terrain.
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kain
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Post by kain on Dec 16, 2008 16:38:23 GMT -5
Taos, I have recently acquired a fractal mapper and began setting about making a map of the LBTL, and there is a pretty immense problem.
Basically, if there are mountains between Dunland and Mittelmarch, it's hard to make anything near a realistic mountain range between Indianapolis and Brazil, or even worse: Greencastle.
Just think of the spacing. If the mountains are truly impressive, like the Rockies or the Alps, they would need a much greater distance than 50-60 miles to reach their full height. Basically, either the mountains are just hills, or they're a massive wall just a few miles wide (which is what I ended up with on the mapper). Since a lot of role-play has gone on in the mountains portraying them in a light similar to the aforementioned ranges, the distances wouldn't make sense.
After speaking to Nichtmar, he is of the opinion that the realm is actually much larger than it's real world equivalent, which would fix any of these problems. Can you think of any other way of handling it?
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Taos
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Post by Taos on Dec 16, 2008 20:11:39 GMT -5
I've had the same problem trying to whip up my own map. I came up with the solution of tripling the distances, and it seems to work out better. It's not perfect, but a little better. It also ties into my idea at the bottom of this thread. lbtlcouncil.proboards104.com/index.cgi?board=theland&action=display&thread=45If you haven't signed up for the LBTL Council boards yet, you should. I also suggest everyone else keep track of it, because I'm probably going to move to putting up my work on this to those boards, to make it fair to everyone in Indiana. Out of curiosity, what fractal mapper are you using? I'm using Campaign Cartographer 3, and it seems like the best on the market, but I'm kind of unsatisfied with its coloration of the maps. I guess I should just develop some geniune cartographic skill and handdraw everything, eh?
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kain
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Post by kain on Dec 17, 2008 10:47:48 GMT -5
Tripling sounds like it might fix it. I'll check out the boards later tonight when I have some time. Same with the mapper (which is Fractal Terrains, from ProFantasy, same company that makes CC). I'm going to purchase some sides of leather at Tandy's shortly due to their kick ass December sale, so I may very well be engrossed in some armoring.
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Tatsumura Masamune
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Post by Tatsumura Masamune on Dec 17, 2008 14:04:18 GMT -5
By your estimates, how far does that drop Kyuden Tatsumura from Mittelmarch. Would be great info to have for next spring when the battles restart.
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Taos
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Post by Taos on Dec 18, 2008 18:03:36 GMT -5
I don't know where that corresponds to in the real world, but, I think I have enough of a map put together (just of the LBTL region. The whole map encompasses a continent some 5000 km long and 3000 wide.)
So, bearing in mind that this is just guesswork, and going with a tripling in size of the explored area, and the requisite tripling in distances...I'm going to say about 90 miles.
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Tatsumura Masamune
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Post by Tatsumura Masamune on Dec 18, 2008 20:55:50 GMT -5
Kyuden Tatsumura is where Speedway would be in the real world (West side of Indy). And 90 miles...that's a bit further then even Dunland, and I'm sure I'm closer then they are . If you look at the map, the kyuden is just west of Mittelmarch, and south of the Jovians, on the Mittelmarch side of the mountains.
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Post by Kaida NyteClaw on Dec 18, 2008 22:11:02 GMT -5
One thing you might consider is that Stormhaven is but a few hours of (In character) travel from kanthea, its about a 15min drive from Alex and Anderson for me...In real life.
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Taos
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Post by Taos on Dec 18, 2008 22:52:41 GMT -5
Bear in mind that the distances at the top of this page are from before Kain and I decided to go with triple distances to accomodate the mountains.
Kyuden being 90 miles away is roughly in line with those new distances. I'll check and make absolutely sure tomorrow.
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wolfblade
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Post by wolfblade on Dec 26, 2008 2:21:13 GMT -5
is there a map somewere thats printable ?
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Post by greybeardabbot on Jan 10, 2009 22:11:50 GMT -5
Good work elf. I think that the NS and Dragoons could travel to Aethnue a bit quicker then your estimates since they, (like we) are North of the Iron Mountains. otherwise, ilike the layout. Nice to have for rp aspects.
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wolfblade
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Post by wolfblade on Jan 17, 2009 17:11:05 GMT -5
ID like to see you Figure out Dragon Griffin and hippogriff Ridders!! That be a challenge for your chronic work boardom
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