Timewaster's Guide Archive
Alternate Realities => TW(i)G => Topic started by: Spriggan on May 22, 2004, 03:36:51 AM
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Ok so i'm trying to figure this out and frankly the internet isn't helping much.
If I've got a river that's between 30-40 feet deep and about 1-1.5 miles wide and it raises 10 feet (due to annual flooding) how much land on each side will be coverd in the flood waters? I know there's probaly some way useing your "Math" to figure this out which I have no clue how to do.
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Ok after a few hours of searching, you'd think this would be easier to find, the Nile (wich is about 30-40 feet deep and around 2-2.5 miles along the 1000 or so miles that egypt coved) would raise about 10-15 feet and would flood up to 3 miles in some places. And the flood plains would cover roughly 20,000 and 34,000 square kilometres.
So I'm thinking for mine that it would flood between 1.5- 2 miles would seam fair. However I do find this kinda hard to beleave that raiseing the water level 25% would flood that much land (effectivly doubbling the niles width in most places). Any thoughts on this? You don;t have to be involved in TW(i)G to help out here.
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The problem is that you're not taking into account volume, jsut height. how far on the banks that would get flooded depends on how steep the sides are. If the land doesn't rise more than 10 feet above the level of the river for miles away fromt he river's normal banks, than if the river rises 10 feet, it's going to cover all of that land. Yes, it takes a LOT more volume to cover that, so if you have less water, it won't rise as high. Basically, you can choose how far it is. Just remember, the further out it floods, the more water will have to come somewhere from the south to flood it.
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Ya I figured some of that. I think I've got it where I like if for the most part. There are one or two places where it floods for 2+ miles but most are less. Who knows what causes it, it could be several things depending on what we actualy put farther in.
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Yeah, the Egyptians had no scientific clue about what did it to the nil, so there's no reason for us to have to detail it right now.
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Next things is the weather. In the original write up SE wrote this:
It is a wild and chaotic sea. Storms, often of typhoon status frequently traverse the surface, and it is nearly unheard of to cross the ocean without some sort of storm.
So here's my delema. If the sea is that violent and stormy how come there aren't a lot more "green" Coasts in the south? Looking at the original map (http://www.saintehlers.com/twig/mastermap.gif) you see that both Tarth and Parth are dry as sandpaper. I'm assumeing that the Demon Cliffs (that large Island/mountain range) in the ocean north of them was ment to stop most of the storms headding that way. And while that may stop hurricans from forming above them would that realy detur or prevent smaller storms from forming over the ocean and hitting the lands there. Also the inland see that makes up part of Parth (where the Delta is) would also help keep storms away.
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maybe there's a curse. And while the storms hit the sea, they don't move inland.
Or perhaps they're just windstorms that close.
I don't know. I admit I hadn't thought of that at all.
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Well I would like to come to some solid consenus on this. The weather here is probaly one of the most important aspects of the world since large parts live on the coasts in all places and not just Parth/tarth.
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yes, we should. I just don't have immediate ideas. I'd like suggestions on how to fix it. My curse and windstorm ideas are just brain storms
an expansion on the windstorm.. perhaps the desert is subject to many frequent harsh wind/sandstorms, and those keep the moisture from falling on the coasts very often, as the winds from the land push back the clouds. That way, you could even have WORSE storms off the coast of the desert, as the two weather systems mix.
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My biggest hang up is that unless we go with the magical angle I cannot write up some of this stuff unless I'm 100% sure I'm beaing as realistic as I can be. I cant do it if it means people will read something and say that it's total BS. I personaly hate that in books.
Edit: what if we do this--Have the center of the ocean be very violent (how far out from the center is something we can decide later, but I'd think 1/2 of the way to land on each side) and that's the cursed area. The rest of the ocean is subject to normal weather, and sometimes magical storms would "shoot off" from the cursed waters. That way we have the cursed waters and we don't have to bang our heads against walls trying to figure this stuff out. That would still leave the center most Bask isle in very bad weather.
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now that I just posted to the other thread, lets move the weather discussion to this thread, to keep it in one place.
Yeah, i think I already agreed with this out there. YOu get progressively less violent as you move away from the equator. The equatorial island controlled by Bask IS subject to some pretty heinous weather, but it's still a fairly large island, and you could secure the ships in docks, and build your city inland a bit. You'd still get smacked around, and it would be a tough place to live, but doable. ANd in the end, profitable, since people need to refit anyway.
Even most coasts, however, would be subject to more bad weather than we're used to, I think though. Just because those storms, while concentrated near the equator, could easily wander off. So I guess I'm agreeing with you and just refining it. I want to see a gradual improvement of the weather, not a line of lattitude that you can cross, to the south being "safe" and to the north being "dangerous"