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5 Comments

  1. Simone Neri
    9 February 2016 @ 8:48 pm

    The updated map of Minrothad really looks beautiful and filled with intriguing details! Some comments:

    1) Shouldn’t Seahome symbol be updated from “town” to “city”? According to GAZ9, the water elves’ capital has a population of 20,000 after all.

    2) I have a doubt about Serendib. From the short description of the city found in AC10, we learn that Serendib is a trading hub for exotic goods from around the world. In my opinion, the city should at least be found on a major trade route. The location you put it seems good since it’s at the northern end of the trade route which crosses the Sea of Dread via the Thanegioth Archipelago from (supposedly) Davania. The only thing I’d add is a sea route connecting the city to the trade lane.

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    • Thorfinn Tait
      9 February 2016 @ 10:30 pm

      1) Good catch!

      2) I’m not a fan of the idea of this trade route, personally… I view the Sea of Dread as a very forbidding and dangerous area that traders would generally avoid, so I doubt that this would be a commonly used trade route — it’s just too risky.

      About Serendib’s location… This seems like the only possible location on Trader’s Isle that doesn’t crowd the other stuff that’s already there. Well, there’s also the forest hex between Duns-on-Fell and Newport Keep. But the little bay southwest of Newport Keep seems like a better location, don’t you think?

      I’ll link it up to the trade routes once the location is locked in. 😉

  2. Simone Neri
    10 February 2016 @ 12:19 am

    About trade routes through the Sea of Dread, since canon sources features sea lanes linking both Minrothad and Ierendi with Thanegioth, I suppose they should be somehow, if infrequently, used. I have tried to give this an explanation in the last attachment of my “History of Minrothad and Ierendi” in Threshold #6, and there’s also an excellent article of Michele in Threshold #4 about this.

    Anyway, since individual views may differ, it’d be better to choose a solution for Serendib which makes its location consistent with the canon description of the city while still making it usable and acceptable by any DM. All in all, the best solution to leave GAZ9 mostly untouched would be having Serendib as the patois-name of Harbourtown (which would be “Serendib” translated into Thyatian). Note that the description says that Serendib has in fact been a prosperous port and exotic good trade hub since a long time – which means that we should find for the town a location which really makes for this description (good routes not contested or shared with other towns). Harbourtown has been one of the most powerful Guild towns for a long time, and its guilds specialize in exotic merchandise, so this seems to match.

    For these reasons, a second-hand location is then unwelcome, in my opinion. Nevertheless, if the “additional city” option is preferred, I’d stick with a location along the coast which runs from the southernmost tip of Trader’s Isle to Newport Keep – after all a number of real-history trade cities prospered on coasts which had hills or mountains at their back (think of Genoa, Amalfi, or Ragusa, just to cite a few we have in Italy and surroundings). Obviously, to make this location viable we have to assume that a flourishing trade comes to it through the sea routes shown on the map.

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  3. Anondson
    15 November 2020 @ 3:53 pm

    Regarding Serendib’s note. At the end you mention “As a result of this reference and the one from Dungeon 9, and as per Michele Carpita’s suggestion, Serendib has been placed as a town on Alfeisle.”

    I think your note for Serendib might need updating to match Simone Neri’s comment.

    Reply

  4. Thorfinn Tait
    17 November 2020 @ 7:23 pm

    Good catch! The only question is how it should be updated.

    Reading back over the comments here and at The Piazza thread for this map, it seems that both I and Simone concluded that having Serendib as an alternate name for Harbourtown would be the best solution.

    In that case, I should update the map as well as the note, removing the separate settlement icon and placing “(Serendib)” as an alternate after “Harbourtown”. It occurs to me that this would be far from the first place in Minrothad to have double names, so it seems rather fitting! 😉

    There is one caveat here: as this map has been up for some time, other maps now include Serendib as a town on the southern coast of Trader’s Isle, based on my map. Because of this, perhaps it would be most appropriate to take it that the ship has already sailed on this issue, and accept Serendib as a new town rather than an alternate for Harbourtown.

    For now, I will update the note to reflect the current map, but I’m open for discussion on further change.

    What do you think?

    Reply

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