Mapping out The City.

Randy on 15/8/2001 at 19:54

Foolish non-believers. You underestimate our powers of anal-retention. We've been working with the same map of The City for 3 games now. It was already there in 1997 when I joined The Dark Project. :p

To be fair, I'm not sure how religiously everyone's been sticking to it over the years. (Mostly, I think, though.) And there has, of course, been a fair amount of deliberate misinformation in the dialog and text from T/T2. You can't trust everyone in the city. Sometimes they are either dumb or on their own agenda. So, between these 2 things, I can see how your map isn't perfect.

Anyway, your map is pretty good, impressive, really, but it's off. No, I'm not going to help, sorry, cuz what's the fun of that?

I will point out one major feature that you're lacking though, and it amuses me that never came up explicitly in T/T2. There's a big friggin' river in the city. It runs N-S and splits the city in 2. It joins the ocean to the south.

Keep up the good work. This kind of stuff is always useful to us. It can be hard to keep track of everything we have and have not said (yet).

- R

Sneaksie Thiefsie on 15/8/2001 at 20:14

Hehehe - I think that's thrown the proverbial spanner into the works, Randy. Every hypothesis I've seen has an East-West river [as shown on the map in the Keepers' Grotto, I might mention]. Ah well, back to the drawing board... :)

Sneaksie Thiefsie

Grundbegriff on 15/8/2001 at 20:52

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Originally posted by Sneaksie Thiefsie:
Two points: there is no guaruntee that the gemstone was mounted when found, or even when used by the Precursors. I believe that relics in the era of the Crusades were decorated very ornately when they passed into the hands of the Crusaders, and I think it is not altogether outside of the realms of possibility that the Hammers found the gem, saw something of its powers and decided to decorate it

The only gems we do discover in the buildings at Karath-Din are carefully cut. We also find among the Precursors an unusual diligence in honoring perceived elemental powers through ritualized spaces and behaviors. It seems to me unlikely that such people would leave a potent magical gemstone uncut and unmounted. Meanwhile, we have no evidence at all that the Hammerites engage in gemological crafts at all.

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Secondly, the distance of the gem from Karath-Din does not prove that it never existed there.

Oh, I do think it existed there, as I noted. However, I doubt that it has anything to do with Cragscleft.

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Earth tremors, such as those that created the mountains, might have moved the gem there. [This theory is very unlikely, but I decided to advance it anyway].

Very unlikely. Good call!

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Another possibility was that the gem was buried in the distant mountains in a desperate attempt to rid Karath-Din of its evils. Perhaps it was discovered in the intervening years by farmers, sheperds, etc who moved it to another place before it was lost again.

Perhaps it went through that cycle seven times. Perhaps it was lost only when the moon was full. ;)

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I readily admit that a lot of my theses relating to the early period of the City's history have little, if any, basis on facts available within the game.

Thanks for the confirmation.

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However, you do me a small injustice by saying that I lack "evidential basis" for my conclusions.

I didn't say that. Indeed, I think many of your inferences do follow from in-game evidence. What I did say, as a careful rereading of my note will confirm, is that your inferences don't necessarily follow from an evidential basis in the game. This means that for any particular claim you offer regarding the City's history and culture, that claim may or may not be grounded in evidence with the sort of rigor that some of us prefer. In other words, caveat lector.

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I researched the gameworld thoroughly before I wrote both theses, and tried my best to make the theories fit the facts, a process that I believe succeeded. If you can advance a contrasting thesis that likewise conforms with the facts, I would be happy to read it and debate it with you.

I'm very pleased that you found the gameworld interesting and rewarding enough to study it and attempt to synthesize (and occasionally fabricate) a continuous history. With respect, I disagree with a good number of your inferences for what I reckon are pretty good reasons. Some of your connections or assumptions seem unwarranted or tenuous to me. But perhaps that only means that everyone has to draw the line somewhere, and that I choose to draw it a bit more strictly. That's ok, since it's all in fun, and I hope it's clear that by pointing out these differences I intended no slight.

Cheers,

G.

[ August 15, 2001: Message edited by: Grundbegriff ]

Oliver Gregory on 15/8/2001 at 22:24

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Originally posted by TheWatcher:
One minor problem with the mine theory: The Lost City. That's pretty much slap underneath the new City and at not too huge a depth. It at least stretches from the middle of the City to the sea and probably more: possibly out to the Cragscleft area or beyond. Any significant mining industry in that area would be bound to come through into the lost city sooner or later, especially if the lost city is more extensive than the areas in T1 and T2 (which it almost definately will

I said the City was linked to mining, not that the mines were nearby. They would probably be in the mountains (wherever they are). This means they wouldn't run into the lost city:
|
|mines in mountains
ground level-----------------|
lost city below.

I believe that the docks in the City support the 'mines in the mountains theory' - Coal etc. is mined, transported to the City and then exported accross the sea to other cities.

Grudny - from what Randy said, it seems the river in some of the cutscenes does split the City, rather than there being another town on the other side.
[edit: whoa that little picture didn't work too well ;)]

[ August 15, 2001: Message edited by: Oliver Gregory ]

TheKeeperAgent on 15/8/2001 at 23:46

I would just like to throw my two cents in. In the Lost city briefing it shows the city, with a river splitting it and a rather large bridge, a couple cutscences feature garrett crossing bridges (he seems to have a thing for this) we know there are canals through the city. I also was thinking, its very possible for the sea to be east and at the same time visible mountains be east. The servant or guard or whatever could be referring to harbor and the moutains beyond...What I am saying is the city could be U shaped, and split onto several islands, sorta like New York City. Just some random thoughts

Agent Monkeysee on 16/8/2001 at 03:56

Grund, I'm dying to hear your response to Randy's comment :)

He's certainly been a trouble-maker here lately ;)

NoCokePepsi on 16/8/2001 at 04:13

Yeah! How dare he rain on our fantasy-, er... fact-finding expedition? ;)

Purah on 16/8/2001 at 04:52

The following map is posted w/o explanation. I.e. You die-hards certainly don't have to accept it as anything but fluff...but... ;)

Inline Image:

http://www.aros.net/~purah/images/city.png

Oliver Gregory on 16/8/2001 at 11:11

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Originally posted by TheKeeperAgent:
 I also was thinking, its very possible for the sea to be east and at the same time visible mountains be east.

Nope - Randy said: "There's a big friggin' river in the city. It runs N-S and splits the city in 2. It joins the ocean to the south."

Grundbegriff on 16/8/2001 at 11:38

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Originally posted by TheKeeperAgent:
In the Lost city briefing it shows the city, with a river splitting it and a rather large bridge

Are you sure that's not supposed to be a vision of the Karath-Din prior to its destruction? When that image appears, Garrett isn't discussing the City; he's talking about Karath-Din. Likewise, there's an obelisk in the background, a monument typical of Karath-Din but seen nowhere in the City:
<img width=300 src="http://pantheon.yale.edu/~dcbyron/screenshots/lostcity.png">

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a couple cutscences feature garrett crossing bridges (he seems to have a thing for this) we know there are canals through the city. I also was thinking, its very possible for the sea to be east

I thought so too until Oliver Gregory mentioned the sunrise/mountains issue. And Randy has already confirmed that it's to the south.

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at the same time visible mountains be east. The servant or guard or whatever could be referring to harbor and the moutains beyond...What I am saying is the city could be U shaped, and split onto several islands, sorta like New York City.

Can you see mountains in Brooklyn? ;)

Yes, that's possible. But it's unduly complicated. But why posit a peninsula when everything fits nicely with a southward sea?

[ August 16, 2001: Message edited by: Grundbegriff ]