in regard to the map
* Which way is north? Up, or up and right?
* The elven kingdoms were said to be east of the Nossari kingdom. Though not necessarily east of Narseus. Where are they? I'm guessing that the land mass in the upper right extends off the map edge to the right, and the elves are that way?
* At one point it was mentioned that the Nossari capital was north of count Dmarra's lands. You have Donhawice either west or southwest of Dmarra. It take it we're retconning that because too much was said to be north?
* Where is Crystalkeep?
* The map shows no borders. Do for example, "the lands of Count Dmarra" begin where the keep is shown? Or if I walk 2 miles past the Narseus gates am I now walking on land he owns? I had imagined them to be farther apart, but from looking at the map, Narseus looks to be right next door to Count Dmarra's keep. If it's at most 4 days from Narseus to Radhan, I could be at Count Dmarra's keep tomorrow if I wanted.
* Map really needs a sense of scale.
* Dmarra's keep is shown pretty much right on the waterfront. We had said that a big part of Narseus's political situation resulted from it being the only port providing access to goods for a significant number of other areas. But you have cities, towns and keeps just about dotting the water. And if it's "no more than 4 days" from Narseus to Radhan, then Narseus to Dmarra is probably about 12 hours and Dmarra to Donworm is no more than 2 days. Why is Narseus so important again?
* The nearest library is
Crystalkeep Library, 300 miles away by water. The implication of that number with some other factors and looking at the map itself is that the entire Nossari kingdom is only a couple hundred miles across. Since CrystalKeep isn't even on the map, Donhawice is presumably much closer than CrystalKeep, and we've pretty well established that there's a library at the capital. So which is the closest library? Donhawice or Crytalkeep? If the library at Donhawice is
further away than the 300 miles of the library at CrystalKeep...then Crystalkeep should be within a couple inches of Narseus on the map. It isn't. It seems silly to suggest that CrystalKeep would have been "accidentally" said to be the closest library if library of the king himself at the capital were closer. That would be a difficult library to omit. So...presumably CrystalKeep is
closer to Narseus than Donhawice. If so, where is it? And is it within the Nosarri kingdom, or a neighboring kingdom? From the descriptions given, the visible map would seem to be pretty much the whole of Nossari. So...is CrystalKeep just not shown on the map for some reason, or is it
not inside the Nosaari kingdom at all? Does that mean there are no libraries in Nossari? What about the capital? I'm going in circles at this point, but no matter how we look at it, there are issues that are difficult to reconcile.
* For that matter, the relative distance of a library at all has been a significant game premise from the beginning. If the kingdom is only a couple hundred miles across, and the capital is a fraction of that distance away...Lady Radhan was able to travel halfway across the kingdom in just a few days...the capital and its library suddenly are very much closer. Related, if CrystalKeep library, instead of being 300 miles away
by land, is now 300 miles away
by water...Lady Radhan took no more than 4 days
by water to travel from Narseus to Radhan...that "faraway library" at CrystalKeep is basically right next door. In fact, plugging in the "120 nautical miles a day" figure that google gives me for medieval sailing vessels, CrystalKeep is probably even closer to Narseus than Radhan. Is CrystalKeep that town that appears right on the edge of the map near the bottom right? We can easily say that ships in this world travel more slowly...but doing so simply shrinks the size of the kingdom further, and doesn't really solve the problem. Narseus, which used to be "hundreds of miles away from the nearest library...wizards are rare" to "Narseus is sitting in the middle ground between two libraries, both of which are only a couple days travel away, and is the major port in this area, therefore wizards traveling between those two libraries inevitably pass through Narseus on the way."
* Looking at the general layout of the kingdom, Narseus is kind of in the middle. The orcs apparently live in the wastes on the other side of the mountains shows at the top of the map. How did they get here? Were all the lands from Narseus to that mountain range under the control of orcs 5 years ago? We can get around that by saying that the war was somewhere else, and Lorsen and others moved here in the 5 years since then. But if so...where exactly did the war happen? Where was the contested territory? I had assumed that orcs invaded the human lands, but if so...that would imply that the Radhan town on the map was probably in the possession of orcs not that long ago. Or were the humans invading the territory of the orcs above the map edge? I don't think we've established anything that would contradict either interpretation, but it's a significant question.
* The northern territory beyond Nossari has been referred to both as "the northern wastes" and "the frontier." But , again...there appears to be a mountain range there. We can say that the wastes are on the other side of the mountains...but where's the frontier? Calling a mountain range a frontier seems a bit odd. Wouldn't it also make invasion, whether orcs invading humans or humans invading orcs...difficult? How exactly did who cross that mountain range with an army? I see two possible interpretations: 1: Humans controlled one side and orcs controlled the other. Then a bunch of humans very humans stupidly crossed the mountains on their own and formed settlements in orcish lands, and were destroyed. If so, it would probably take a while for the humans on their side to even find out about it. Again, there's a mountain range in the way. And when they did, perhaps they put together and army and sent them over the mountains to try to defend/reclaim that town that had presumably already been destroyed. War ensues. But that scenario not only seems fairly implausible, it also completely eliminates any sympathy we might have had for the humans in the matter. They were seriously stupid. Or, scenario 2: Humans lived on this side, and then one day with no warning orcs started pouring out of the mountains and attacking towns. Humans then gathered their armies and repelled the invaders. That seems more plausible, but it means that Lady Radhan, in order to keep herself and her unborn son safe...decided to go resettle herself in an area that was in the hands of orcs just a few years ago. Which makes her seem suddenly not very smart. Though it does also nicely fit in with the idea that Baron Radhan and Marhsal Lorsen fought together in the war. The Baron's own family was personally under attack, and he was defending/reclaiming family lands. Lorsen was probably a
retainer of house Radhan at that time. And after the war, both decided they'd had enough and moved south. It also explains why the crown itself is interested in Baron Radhan's captivity, despite him being such a relatively insignificant noble in terms of land and wealth: He's a war hero.
Petronious
Previously worked as a journeyman wizard.
...whoa. When did you edit that in? That's a major detail for me to just be seeing now for the first time.