7 hours ago, Mandalore525 said:

Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the trapezoid we have a river running down from a lake that , again, either converges with that horizontal river or splits at a ninety degree angle for some reason. That horizontal river, by the way, is the most confusing part of this map for me. Which way is it flowing? Which side is it forking from and which side is it converging on. There's a tiny little stream feeding into it in the middle from the north--is the river supposed to be flowing away from it in BOTH directions? Maybe it's a Kami-blessed tiny stream that turns into a crapload of water when it meets the river because of Phoenix shenanigans.

...Yeah, I'm no geographer, but this map makes NO sense to me! Are the trapezoid rivers anywhere near Phoenix lands? Because the only way I can justify these rivers is if someone was meddling REALLY DEEP in the Maho!

If my memory of the O5R map still serves, that lake is on what would have been the Phoenix/Dragon Clan border, so I'd say it's pretty close to Phoenix lands.

On 2017-12-21 at 1:07 PM, Schmoozies said:

I would counter that with 1) Montreal and most of Quebec are on the Canadian Shield and in geological terms are relatively young rebound development area from the last Ice Age. 2) they are also a very hilly/mountainous region so watercourses take some odd turns up there (just look at all the lakes we have). Islands happen in most rivers and lakes as they are a natural effect of a temporary high point (normally caused by a base layer of harder rock than the natural soil around them). The issue is that once you get cities built up there is a natural effort to protect the land that would normally be eroded and as the need to expand grows efforts are made to "reclaim" what would have been naturally lost land. In Montreal's case there was a lot of development to expand the island using the excavated soil from the Subway lines. We have the same thing in Toronto where most of our waterfront shouldn't exist except that we dumped lots of back fill into Lake Ontario to expand and reshape our waterfront.

Amazing. Every single thing in that paragraph was wrong.

1)Saint Lawrence lowlands, actually. The Canadian shield starts about fifty kilometers north of Montreal, and only reaches the Saint Lawrence river around Quebec City. Quebec City is partly on it; Montreal most definitely is not.

2)Very flat and low-lying, actually. It's the bottom of the old Champlain sea, and except for a handful of isolated igneous intrusions from the New England hotspot that were dug out by the last ice age (the monteregian hills, including Mount Royal), most of the region is considerably less than 100m above sea level.

3)Much of the subway excavation soil was used to expand St Helen island and create Notre Dame island, between Montreal and the south shore, not to the actual Montreal island. The shorelines of Montreal island itself (and really most of the Hochelaga archipelago)in fact still look largely as it does on French regime maps (and on early 1900s ones, and...)

Unrelatedly, on stream themselves, streams that do weird things exist on our planet. Sure, there are basic rules...but when basic rules encounter complex situations (and every situation is complex), weird things happen. The Orinoco and Amazon basins , throuh the Casiquiare channel, (flows from the Orinoco to the Amazon basin (can't name the actual river because of a zealous word filter; think black river in Spanish) is probably the most famous such weirdness.

Now then. interpreting that geography,

I'll refer to the rivers as North River (the one that rise from that big lake at the Dragon/Phoenix border ; Central River (Rise in Unicorn land, follows the north edge of the mountains) ; Small River (rise in the mountains, follow the southern edge) and South River (rise in the central mountains, reach the sea in Crab lands).

Some observations.

1. There's an upland region in central Lion lands. Note the drawing of a hill there, about midway between the North river and Central river, directly in the original axis of the North River. This is a key factor in understanding the course of the North and Central river. That upland region is probably topographically connected to the southern edge of the Mountains of Twilight, along the coast.

2)The north river branches, likely flowing on either side of the aforementioned Lion upland ; the East Branch north river eventually passes between the Lion uplands and the Mountains of Twilight to reach the sea. and the West branch north river reaches a confluence with the Central river. While uncommon, this is not unheard of in our reality ; the Casiquiare, noted above, is the biggest example. There are a few other in the Rocky mountains on a much smaller scale (more on that when we deal with the Small river.

3)The Central river flows from Unicorn land, to its confluence with the west branch north river, through a valley between the Lion uplands and the Spine of the World, to the lake where it receives Two-Way Creek (more on that in the next section), and eventually has a mall delta as it reaches the sea. Nothing unusual or noteworthy here. It does NOT, despite what might appear from the map, flow through the spine of the World (hopefully. If FFG changed that, they're dumb).

4)The Small River rises at two-way creeks. Two way creeks is similar to Two-Ocean creek and Divide Creek in the rockies : rivers that rise in mountain passes and then flow to both sides of the aforesaid pass, with one branch eventually reaching the Atlantic and the other the Pacific. This small creek, and half a dozen others (a number of which are on-map), feed into a large lake on the southern side of the mountain, from which rises a river that flows south-eastward into the sea. Nothing particularly noteworthy here once one figures out Two-Way creek.

5) The south river is fairly straightforward: a long river fed by a number of tribunatries, which eventually branches off on two sides of a major island at its mouth. This is not entirely unusual , although the scale might be.

6)The Shadowlands river. That one actually doesn't make any geographic sense...and that's explicitly noted to be a characteristic of the Shadowlands. The geography is twisted, warped. In this specific case, "A Wizard did it" (or, more accurately, a Jigoku did it) *is* the canonical answer.

Yes, that's a lot of unusual (but not unheard of) phenomenons in a small region, and some of them on a very unusual scale. Yes, the geography could be done a lot better, and how and where those mountains came together is a question best left unanswered. But it's possible, roughly, to make sense of the rivers.

On ‎12‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 6:57 PM, MrMenthe said:

Well to be fair there is a really good explanation for the mountains around Mordor (and a lot of strange landscapes etc in Arda) : they aren't the result of natural effects at all.

The world was literally made by gods (the valars). The square mountains were created by Morgoth (Sauron's boss) as a measure of defense against his kin.

This^ Mordor's geography is anything but natural. In fact most of the unique natural wonders of that world came from the intervention of the divine.

I don't know if Morgoth crafted the mountains of Mordor. His home was farther north west of Beleriand, long sunk beneath the waves at the end of the First Age, but the ancient mountains that surrounded Angband were wrought by his hands until Ancalagon broke them upon his death. The point still stands that Sauron had the power to shape the world, twisting it in his own manner, in similar manners to how Eldrond upkeeps Rivendell and Galadrial locks Lothlorian in its golden beauty.


As for Rokugan, the answer that "the kami did it" isn't a cop out, but the actual truth in the setting. Everything is pretty much done by them. Laws of nature are upheld by respect to the kami, not the other way around.

3 hours ago, TheItsyBitsySpider said:

As for Rokugan, the answer that "the kami did it" isn't a cop out, but the actual truth in the setting. Everything is pretty much done by them. Laws of nature are upheld by respect to the kami, not the other way around.

I think the difference is: In one setting the weird things are deliberately written that way, drawn attention to, and given an explanation. In the other, the artist draws something that looks neat, not realizing it doesn't make any sense, and people are left trying to deal with it.

Sure, there may be a workable explanation in-universe that can be used to justify the oopsies, but that's damage control. Ideally, we can do without the damage in the first place.

On 26/12/2017 at 3:36 PM, TheItsyBitsySpider said:

This^ Mordor's geography is anything but natural. In fact most of the unique natural wonders of that world came from the intervention of the divine.

I don't know if Morgoth crafted the mountains of Mordor. His home was farther north west of Beleriand, long sunk beneath the waves at the end of the First Age, but the ancient mountains that surrounded Angband were wrought by his hands until Ancalagon broke them upon his death.

I thought Mordor was a lesser base of operation for Morgoth and that Sauron flee there after the destruction of Angband. But I could totally be wrong tho.

Hopefully the waterways will be retconned to make more sense, but I'm not optimistic about that. So I've come up with some headcannon explanations for the odd hydrology of Rokugan just in case it comes up in my campaign. And because I overanalyze everything. I figured I'd share them here since others seem to be having similar problems.

I labeled the waterways on this map , so you can easily see what I'm talking about. I also added directional markers to show my best guesses on which way the rivers flow.

Dragon Lake , White Shore Lake , Chrysanthemum Petal Lake : Tributaries seem to have been added to these Unicorn lakes, which is great. These are fine.

Drowned Merchant River , Three Sides River , River of the Blind Monk : These three rivers (really just one river with too many names) mostly encircle the Lion lands. This only makes sense if the Lion lands are elevated above the surrounding area... in other words, a plateau. As far as I know a plateau has never been stated or even implied to be there, but I kind of like the idea. The Lion lands are dead boring otherwise, geographically speaking.

The Phoenix, Dragon, Unicorn, and Lion lands, as well as part of the Crane, all drain into the Three Sides river system. So the river must be friggin massive by the time it reaches the ocean.

Imperial and northern Crane lands have their own drainage basin, which is almost completely surrounded by the Three Sides one. This is kinda weird, but not so much it breaks immersion, hopefully.

New River 1: This is one of the waterways that's new to this map, and it's a bit hard to explain. Why would the Drowned Merchant River exist when there's such an easy path to the ocean the water could follow instead?

I've decided that in my Rokugan that "river" is a recently built artificial channel, created by the Phoenix to provide easier sea access for their western provinces. And possibly to provide an outlet for extra runoff, so when there's heavy rainfall in their lands it won't flood downriver.

Hmm, would the Phoenix be obligated to shunt that excess water to the ocean to prevent the other clans from being flooded? Even if they're on bad terms? There could be some interesting ethical questions to explore there.

River of the Hour of the Wolf : This one is rough. Apparently an absurdly productive mountain spring creates a river that flows in two opposite directions down the mountain? That shatters my suspension of disbelief, so I'm invoking magic for this explanation.

Way back when, there was an enormous, unruly Water kami that was causing trouble. Somebody distracted it by issuing it a challenge: to prove its superiority over Earth kami by submerging the Spine of the World Mountains. It's been up there ever since, generating water, which then flows down and becomes the River of the Hour of the Wolf, in a Sisyphean effort to drown the mountains.

Keep going, big guy. You'll win one of these days.

River of Gold : This one mostly makes sense already. The fork at the end is unlikely, but it might be possible with some engineering effort. Maybe at one point the river ran south, then jumped its bed to go east. The Crab wanted to restore the river to its earlier course, and the Crane didn't. In order to avoid a reprise of the Yasuki War, the Emperor decreed that the river had to go both ways. Kaiu engineers maintain it that way to this day.

Lake of Cherry Blossom Snow : This lake is hard to explain. Either it spontaneously generates itself and feeds into the White Gold River, or the White Gold River feeds into the lake and the lake has nowhere to drain.

I've decided that in my Rokugan, the lake was created semi-accidentally by a poorly considered irrigation project. Since it has nowhere to drain it'll eventually turn into a salt lake , but for now the water is still more or less potable.

River of the Last Stand : Eh, this is in the Shadowlands. Any map of the Shadowlands should be taken with a few grains of salt anyway, so I'm not too fussed about this one.

Whew. Anything I forgot to handwave?

4 hours ago, Fumi said:

Lake of Cherry Blossom Snow : This lake is hard to explain. Either it spontaneously generates itself and feeds into the White Gold River, or the White Gold River feeds into the lake and the lake has nowhere to drain.

I've decided that in my Rokugan, the lake was created semi-accidentally by a poorly considered irrigation project. Since it has nowhere to drain it'll eventually turn into a salt lake , but for now the water is still more or less potable.

If it weren't in the middle of the Shinomen Mori I might suggest that it could be a reservoir built to control flooding on the River of Gold.

26 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

If it weren't in the middle of the Shinomen Mori I might suggest that it could be a reservoir built to control flooding on the River of Gold.

Actually, this is a really good idea. Putting it in the Shinomen Mori makes a lot of sense to me. After all, most of the rest of the land around the River of Gold is probably taken up by farms. And if you had to create a new reservoir, which would you rather submerge, your farmland or an uninhabited forest?

I can't imagine the Naga would be happy about it, of course, but another excuse for conflict can't be a bad thing.

Mostly I can't imagine anyone being willing to risk the hauntings of the forest long enough to build a dam.

But I suppose they have shown the Crab being willing to harvest lumber from it so maybe...

So I looked up the lake on the wiki and it looks like it didn't used to be fully within the forest... so I wonder what other changes might coincide with that. For example, the sources used for the wiki indicate that the lake was often a destination for the devout for meditation during the cherry blossom season. Not sure that's as likely with the new map, but maybe? It also confirms at least in the old source material that the White Gold River feeds into it, though IMHO it would make a lot more sense as a spring-fed lake.

How has this thread made it 4 pages without a Dora The Explorer reference, gif, or meme?

Get it together people!

Quote

New River 1: This is one of the waterways that's new to this map, and it's a bit hard to explain. Why would the Drowned Merchant River exist when there's such an easy path to the ocean the water could follow instead?

I've decided that in my Rokugan that "river" is a recently built artificial channel, created by the Phoenix to provide easier sea access for their western provinces. And possibly to provide an outlet for extra runoff, so when there's heavy rainfall in their lands it won't flood downriver.

Hmm, would the Phoenix be obligated to shunt that excess water to the ocean to prevent the other clans from being flooded? Even if they're on bad terms? There could be some interesting ethical questions to explore there.

No need to such fancy explanation. Phenomenons like this happen in the real world . Usually it takes the form of a stream flowing down one bed, then (natural) changes in the landscape due to silting and erosion partially closing down an old river bed, or opening a new, easier one, causing some of the water to flow that way instead. Eventually - on a scale of several centuries - this may lead to the old stream closing up altogether andd the new one taking over, but for the several centuries in-between, the river will split in two separate streams. We're not talking about something that occurs only with small streams either : the Mississippi and Orinoco have both been undergoing that very process for the past several centuries with the Atchafalaya and Casiquiare, respectively ; in the case of the Mississippi the process is currently being held at bay by various man-made structure.

(Natural disasters can also cause the formation of such alternate courses, and the Yellow River in China has spectacularly shifted course dozens of time in recorded history alone due to flooding ; we're talking about the mouth of the river shifting by hundreds of kilometers), from as far south as Jiangsu and as far north as Tianjin)

If you really want a Phoenix intervention, just go with the idea of a natural branching-off (like the above) that the Phoenix are using magic to artificially maintain (ie, similar to the Atchafalaya, but with magic instead of technology).

Quote

River of the Hour of the Wolf : This one is rough. Apparently an absurdly productive mountain spring creates a river that flows in two opposite directions down the mountain? That shatters my suspension of disbelief, so I'm invoking magic for this explanation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parting_of_the_Waters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_Creek

Hopefully I didn't just shatter your belief in the real world. But yes, a stream naturally flowing down both sides of a mountain and ending up in two very distinct spot is a phenomenon that has been observed in the real world. While unusual, it should not shatter suspension of disbelief.

(I disagree the river has to be absurdly productive. The large lake on the southern side is fed by multiple streams, so it needs not draw all its water from the one source; the river to the north is of course getting most of its flow from the rest of its course).

Quote

Lake of Cherry Blossom Snow : This lake is hard to explain. Either it spontaneously generates itself and feeds into the White Gold River, or the White Gold River feeds into the lake and the lake has nowhere to drain.

I think the first explantion is closer to the truth - I suspect the lake sits in the middle of a marshy depression in the Shinomen, where rainwater from a vast surrounding region tends to accumulate through no precise channel. It then flows out through a constrained channel in the form of the whitegold river.

9 hours ago, Zesu Shadaban said:

So I looked up the lake on the wiki and it looks like it didn't used to be fully within the forest... so I wonder what other changes might coincide with that. For example, the sources used for the wiki indicate that the lake was often a destination for the devout for meditation during the cherry blossom season. Not sure that's as likely with the new map, but maybe? It also confirms at least in the old source material that the White Gold River feeds into it, though IMHO it would make a lot more sense as a spring-fed lake.

Yeah, I came up with the "failed irrigation project" idea while looking at the old map. I admit, it made more sense back when the lake wasn't entirely surrounded by the Shinomen.

2 hours ago, Himoto said:

No need to such fancy explanation. Phenomenons like this happen in the real world . Usually it takes the form of a stream flowing down one bed, then (natural) changes in the landscape due to silting and erosion partially closing down an old river bed, or opening a new, easier one, causing some of the water to flow that way instead. Eventually - on a scale of several centuries - this may lead to the old stream closing up altogether andd the new one taking over, but for the several centuries in-between, the river will split in two separate streams. We're not talking about something that occurs only with small streams either : the Mississippi and Orinoco have both been undergoing that very process for the past several centuries with the Atchafalaya and Casiquiare, respectively ; in the case of the Mississippi the process is currently being held at bay by various man-made structure.

I don't think an artificial canal is a particularly fancy explanation. The ancient Chinese used to make them, no reason the Rokugani couldn't. But your explanation works too.

2 hours ago, Himoto said:

Hopefully I didn't just shatter your belief in the real world. But yes, a stream naturally flowing down both sides of a mountain and ending up in two very distinct spot is a phenomenon that has been observed in the real world. While unusual, it should not shatter suspension of disbelief.

(I disagree the river has to be absurdly productive. The large lake on the southern side is fed by multiple streams, so it needs not draw all its water from the one source; the river to the north is of course getting most of its flow from the rest of its course).

What you're talking about are creeks. I'd have no problem with a small creek forming and splitting like that. What bothers me is that it's apparently a major river from the point it spawns on top of the mountain. I was calling it absurdly productive not because of the lakes, which I agree are also fed by other sources, but because it has to be a major river to be included on the map at all. Not to mention it has "river" in its name, and it's drawn the same thickness as the Three Sides River, which we know is a major river.

Also, the patronizing tone is unnecessary.

3 hours ago, Himoto said:

I think the first explantion is closer to the truth - I suspect the lake sits in the middle of a marshy depression in the Shinomen, where rainwater from a vast surrounding region tends to accumulate through no precise channel. It then flows out through a constrained channel in the form of the whitegold river.

This makes sense.

Thi is an artistic map, I don't think we should infer too much from the size at which it is drawn. There is a stream of some sort running down both sides of the mountain this is about the extent of what we can say, and it has enough significance (not necessarily size!) to include on the map. This significance may be historical, cultural, milotary, etc.

Names and size of water bodies don't always correlate, either.

On ‎12‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 10:20 AM, Ishi Tonu said:

So can Shadowlands just not swim or sail? It seems like going around the wall and doing a little river hopping is a possible way into the empire. Or is Fu-Leng just looking to complete more achievements so he can get high score when he conquerors Rokugan?

Oh, please. Like there's any chance of the Shadowlands bypassing the Maginot Line Wall by swinging around through Belgium the sea.

On ‎12‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 8:54 PM, DGLaderoute said:

Again, I don't disagree. But we've literally had a handful of people say anything at all about the rivers on this forum and on the L5R FB group combined, so it's not exactly a representative sample! But I also intend (if it ever comes up while writing) just to pretend that the rivers make sense; again, what matters is the story. The perfectly square mountains blocking off Mordor in Middle Earth make even less sense than Rokugani rivers, but I still enjoyed reading about Frodo, Sam and Gollum climbing around and near them, and generally venturing into Mordor to toss away the Ring!

I'm not really well-versed in geography, but from what I can see on maps, don't the Carpathian Mountains bend sharply in Romania? If there were massive fortifications protecting a pass at the bend, it doesn't seem like it would be too much of a stretch to just draw straight lines to the pass and call it a day.

On ‎12‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 3:58 AM, Mandalore525 said:

I'm still VERY confused about what's supposed to be going on with that trapezoid-looking river system in the north. So in the northwest you've got two rivers draining out of two lakes converging together, which then...either fork at a ninety-degree angle or converge with a river coming from the east. Then they flow south into a mountain range...somehow, and somehow the path of least resistance at that mountain range was to split into two branches, one of which travels along the eastern edge of the mountain range and the other apparently bored its way down through a mountain peak (from what the drawing makes it look like) before travelling southward and eventually emptying into the sea. Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the trapezoid we have a river running down from a lake that, again, either converges with that horizontal river or splits at a ninety degree angle for some reason. That horizontal river, by the way, is the most confusing part of this map for me. Which way is it flowing? Which side is it forking from and which side is it converging on. There's a tiny little stream feeding into it in the middle from the north--is the river supposed to be flowing away from it in BOTH directions? Maybe it's a Kami-blessed tiny stream that turns into a crapload of water when it meets the river because of Phoenix shenanigans.

It's a simple matter of rates! River 1 is 2 miles wide and flows at a rate of 10 MPH, while River 2 is 1/4 mile wide and flows at a rate of 20 MPH. If River 3, which connects them, is exactly 1 mile wide, but has the kami of a 3-mile-wide river, how bored does the Imperial Cartographer have to get before he decides, "it's close enough," and goes home? Solve for X.

This reminded me of this thread: https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2018/03/22/guy-makes-role-playing-games-criticised-map-new-orleans-unrealistic-gone-viral/

Rivers aside, My problem with Rokugan has always been the mountains and climate.

One Mountains are formed from the collision of tectonic plates. So in the Rokugan example it would have had to be to separate plates that collided north and south with each other then swiped west into another to form the mountains they have. Logic not there.

As for Climate, how do you have a temperate Rokugan then go north getting increasingly colder, to end up in a desert?

Then at the same longitude as the temperate zone have a jungle?

2 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

One Mountains are formed from the collision of tectonic plates. So in the Rokugan example it would have had to be to separate plates that collided north and south with each other then swiped west into another to form the mountains they have. Logic not there  .

You just have to assume at least three plates. Two collided with each other to form the middle bit, then collided with the rest along a crescent shaped border.

2 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

As for Climate, how do you have a temperate Rokugan then go north getting increasingly colder, to end up in a desert?

Well, you have temperate China and go north to get to the cold Gobi.

2 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

Then at the same longitude as the temperate zone have a jungle?

Well, Britain is on the same latitude as Labrador, but is more temperate because it's warmed by the Gulf Stream.

1 hour ago, tenchi2a said:

As for Climate, how do you have a temperate Rokugan then go north getting increasingly colder, to end up in a desert?

Then at the same longitude as the temperate zone have a jungle?

I can kind of sort of make some of that work -- for starters, deserts don't have to be hot; they just have to lack precipitation. (The largest desert in the world is Antartica.) But I can only make them work if I'm allowed to change some of the parameters outside Rokugan. I don't think that's been depicted as a cold desert, and furthermore if I remember the broader map correctly, it doesn't include the kinds of mountains that would produce a significant rain shadow, unless you pretend the prevailing winds in this world run north-south.

You can also have temperate rain forests, which are actually my favorite type of ecology . . . buuuuut again, that's not the temperature that I think got described. And for it to be really hot you'd probably need it to be far inland (temperatures are more extreme on the interior of continents) but with large bodies of water around to supply atmospheric moisture. Which is, again, not what I remember the map depicting.

7 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

One Mountains are formed from the collision of tectonic plates. So in the Rokugan example it would have had to be to separate plates that collided north and south with each other then swiped west into another to form the mountains they have. Logic not there.

Earth Kami did it.

7 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

As for Climate, how do you have a temperate Rokugan then go north getting increasingly colder, to end up in a desert?

Fire Kami did it

7 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

Then at the same longitude as the temperate zone have a jungle?

Water Kami did it.

Never underestimate the fickle needs of the kami. They're old, and old people are very particular about controlling the humidity, temperature, etc. of their environment.

Everybody knows Rokugan is east of Mordor anyway.

3 hours ago, HirumaShigure said:

Everybody knows Rokugan is east of Mordor anyway.

Oh man...that would be incredible if Middle Earth and Rokugan were two parts of the same world. like you have the wastes to the northeast of Mordor stretching out into the Burning Sands and such, and Mordor's own influence actually stretches into the Shadowlands. The Haradrim are either close neighbors or are themselves the Ivory Kingdoms. Rokugan is actually centered around the lands that humans first originated in, and the tribes remaining when the Kami fell are those who chose not to wander west. What the Rokugani know as Kami are in fact Maiar or Valar who came to dwell among the humans and formed the empire, and the (lowercase) kami are maiar and lesser spirits who had always inhabited those lands.

23 hours ago, Tabris2k said:

Earth Kami did it.

Fire Kami did it

Water Kami did it.

I'm starting to like Air Kami more and more. They seem to avoid acting like dicks.