Course of the River Nithia
by JTrithenFirst of all, Robin, thanks for your map of the River Nithia. And I’m appreciative of James’ map, too. Great inspiration!
As always, Robin, your 1-mile-per-hex map is awesome, too. All your 1-mile-per-hex maps are incredible. I love using them when I have PCs in an area and I can use them to pinpoint what’s around them or use your maps for inspiration.
1. A picture of all the tunnels that lead from Barimoor’s lair to the other settlements of Ylaruam is below (from the inside cover of GAZ2). Many of these, as we discussed above, can be presumed to be parts of the former riverbed of the River Nithia – mostly underground, of course. Many of these partial riverbed tunnels could be utilized by Barimoor. I would assume many parts were caved in, filled with sand, etc. Barimoor has had to excavate many portions (many, many miles) to get them all connected.
Note that knowing exactly where Barimoor’s lair is in Ylaruam according to this tunnel map is difficult to ascertain. The map is not laid out with 8-mile hexes, so it doesn’t line up with the Ylaruam 8mph map. One has to kind of guess or decide for themselves exactly where Barimoor’s lair is.
2. Barimoor is supposed to be transforming the land for 100 miles around his home, apparently; this is part of the Testimony portion of the Path of the Paragon (on his quest for Immortality).
This would about 5 3/4's hexes in all directions around the hex of his lair (counting the center of his lair as the middle point of the 100 miles diameter area). (This would be 8 miles per hex, of course, from the main Ylaruam map from the GAZ2.)
So, one small consideration is that he should definitely be reforming, adding to, and improving the tunnels that run through these areas (such as to the different settlements), and not just “utilizing” them. Of course, he may be doing something else entirely to transform the land. (Another idea is maybe he’s making small pockets of Plane of Elemental Fire-friendly environs under the earth so such extra-planar creatures could come into those areas and reside/hide/whatever.)
3. I have currently made two maps for my proposed positions of the River Nithia.
These are mockups, so these are crude ideas. They roughly follow the tunnels from the Barimoor map above.
I have followed agathokles’ suggestions for which settlements and areas the river should go through (Parsa, Cynidicea, Barimoor’s lair, Ylaruam City, Marudi’s Lair, and Abbashan).
Barimoor’s lair is marked with a red hex.
The first mockup below has Barimoor’s lair just to the west of the Valley of Death and 2 hexes east of Cynidicea.
4. The second mockup moves Barimoor’s lair again still west of the Valley of Death but now roughly 4 hexes from Cynidicea, which I think is better for Barimoor himself to try not to attract too much attention from that place.
5. Cynidicea is kind of a problem for Barimoor, as far as his Path of the Paragon. For the transformation of the land, what is going on with this place (especially as related to him), and how is he going to deal with it? The region where Cynidicea lies will have to be part of his plan to complete the Path to Immortality. (I don’t know if this has been discussed before on the Piazza.)
6. This mockup below shows more organic rivers. This version has Barimoor in the first location (2 hexes east of Cynidicea).
Please forgive my crude mapping skills. All of this endeavor is mostly for figuring out the path of the River Nithia and placement of some settlements and future ruins.
More comments on how I placed rivers….
I went ahead and added rivers for all the tunnels from the Barimoor tunnel map. Many of these represent smaller tributaries contributing to and joining with the main River Nithia.
You’ll also see 2 bifurcations of rivers.
Here is an example of a bifurcation in real life.
Bifurcations are rare in the real world. My inclusion of these is an attempt to keep the tunnels as shown on the Barimoor map.
7. I also added 2 lakes from James Mishler’s map. They’re kind of thrown in there. (They’re not placed very well right now.) But I liked the idea of couple of larger bodies of water to break things up a bit.
I think the lake in the middle would contribute later to the Ylaruam Oasis (maybe from residual water under the ground). This lake is moved considerably from its original location on James’ map.
8. Lastly, comments on Nithian settlements. I haven’t placed any of these. I’m not too concerned about them right now.
I believe the only Nithian settlement we know a canon name for is Ranak, which is the capital of the Empire of Nithia from the surface world, and the same name was carried to the Hollow World.
I think I would initially place Ranak about where James Mishler has Nithus on his map. It’s “approximately” where Abbashan is on the modern Ylaruam map. (I don’t have any particular justification of why I’d put it there.)
Any thoughts from anyone on what you’d change or your preferences?
Any preference on the location of Barimoor’s lair?