Abandoned Project Application: Maidenpool

Veggie

The Old Bear
Hi all,

Mercifully, Duskendale was a server build, and as such I am able to apply for my own project whilst Duskendale is subject to post approval.




As such, please click the sigil below to be directed to my Maidenpool application!




I don't like putting pictures directly in my applications, so this might not be the most exciting read having to click the links. I also know I write in a way too overly wordy fashion, so you'll just have to forgive me on that front.



All the best,

Veggie
 
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DutchGuard

Shadowbinder
Staff member
Pronouns
he/him
Great app, and I love the inspiration for the castles you've chosen. Just wanted to drop (as bloody usual) two cents here. I'm not a mod, so take it or leave it.

Timeline stuff:
I fully support your ideas for the town preparing itself for a raid, I think it would make for some interesting storytelling (maybe Lord Mooton is only half-heartedly preparing?). I think we're at the point in the discussion now that our server is generally speaking between when the comet appears on 1/23/299 and around 5/19/299 which is around the time Robb leaves Riverrun to begin his attack on the Westerlands. These dates (MM/DD/YYY) are based on this timeline. In terms of actual book chapters this is between (Dany 10, ch. 72 AGoT) and (Bran 4, ch. 28 ACoK). If we choose to acknowledge it, I would expect our server to be set on 3/3/299, the day Stannis burns the Seven, because we have chosen to depict this at Dragonstone. Nothing else we have built ties our server to another specific date. This date falls neatly in the middle of the aforementioned range. This is just over a month since Tywin sends his lackeys out to terrorize the Riverlands, which by that point it is possible they have not reached Maidenpool, especially considering Tywin's express orders are that he wants "to see the riverlands afire from the Gods Eye to the Red Fork", an area which the town does not fall into. So, for what it's worth, you get the all clear from me (though you can bet I would've headcanoned the shit out of whatever you wanted to do to justify it regardless ;)).

Map stuff:
Maidenpool is always shown as being on this little peninsula of the Riverlands stretching out eastwards. While it appears that the town you are proposing hugs the Bay of Crabs more closely which helps with this, I would still warn against having sprawl which extends too far south, though I'm aware you mentioned you want to to keep the sprawl to a minimum anyway.

Moat stuff:
I know it's a rough plan, but are you indicating there will be a moat around the town? If so, I have a few concerns:

There is no mention in canon about there being a moat, despite everything else being described quite carefully.
I have my doubts about how vulnerable a town with a moat and stone curtain walls would be to multiple raids.
The Bay of Crabs is tidal, I don't know if a moat of that design would work with tides, there aren't really any I can find irl. Kalmar Castle in Sweden is the closest I've found, but its renaissance, and isn't the "traditional" medieval moat. It's nitpicky, but yeah, thought I'd mention it anyway.

Terra stuff:
Great to hear you are giving the southern shoreline of the Bay of Crabs a much needed facelift. Would it be possible, at some point, for you to create some instructions for whoever decides to take on the northern shore so that they could try and replicate it accurately?

Other stuff:
Love the tests, love the limewashing, love the canon research, love love love <3
 

Veggie

The Old Bear
Moat stuff:
I know it's a rough plan, but are you indicating there will be a moat around the town? If so, I have a few concerns:

There is no mention in canon about there being a moat, despite everything else being described quite carefully.
I have my doubts about how vulnerable a town with a moat and stone curtain walls would be to multiple raids.
The Bay of Crabs is tidal, I don't know if a moat of that design would work with tides, there aren't really any I can find irl. Kalmar Castle in Sweden is the closest I've found, but its renaissance, and isn't the "traditional" medieval moat. It's nitpicky, but yeah, thought I'd mention it anyway.

Interesting, I hadn't considered that approach! My inspiration when I think of the Riverlands is firstly Wales, and the rest of the UK subsequently. Both Beaumaris and Flint castle, both in Wales, have tidal moats so I had taken inspiration from them.

I'd visited Flint when we'd had bad rains a few years ago and its tidal moat often breaks it's bank, am sure there are some good pics online. It's something I'm not insistant on so if I were to do it and didn't think it looked good I'd probably make the moat dry.





Terra stuff:
Great to hear you are giving the southern shoreline of the Bay of Crabs a much needed facelift. Would it be possible, at some point, for you to create some instructions for whoever decides to take on the northern shore so that they could try and replicate it accurately?

Of course! :)
 
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DutchGuard

Shadowbinder
Staff member
Pronouns
he/him
Wow Flint castle looks crazy. Yeah as you say I would imagine it would overflow and destroy earthworks and wreak all kinds of havoc due to erosion. Beaumaris is more what I had in mind as a follow-up suggestion. It looks to me like its not actually connected to the sea, but is separated from it by a chunk of land. Tilbury Fort which I mentioned recently does a similar thing but is even closer to the river. If you blocked, gated, or dammed these areas (circled in red) it would would fine I think, though I'd still question the failure of canon to mention a moat.

1597795817790.png
 

Veggie

The Old Bear
Hi Dutch,

I'd actually forgotten to link my model, which does have what I referred to as 'sluice gates'-- a phrase GRRM uses to describe Riverrun's moat flooding system.

This is all taken from the medieval layout of Southampton too-- a coastal town with a moat.

V
 

DutchGuard

Shadowbinder
Staff member
Pronouns
he/him
Southampton, excellent! The God's House Tower which housed the sluice gates for controlling the water into the moat would be the perfect model. Might be useful for Riverrun as well, though I'm sure Arkilstorm has already seen it.

Apparently it only worked if it was high tide (which the server is afaik), and apparently there was a water mill under the tower? I'm sure you've seen this map already but it's pretty cool. I love that there is an island in the moat. It's worth pointing out though, that the moat doesn't empty into the sea on the other end, it only ever defended the east side of the town. I don't see why you couldn't just have another sluice gate tower on the other end, but there you have it.
 
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EStoop

Knight of Fairmarket
Sept(s)
The lack of plural in reference to the town's sept would not neccesarily mean there is just one sept, especially since it would be rare for a town of that size to have a single place of worship. An explanation could be fairly simple. Torrence Teague, the first of the Teague kings of the Rivers and Hills, is crowned at Maidenpool even though the Mooton's are known to be it's rulers since forever. This indicates the town had at that point the most prominent sept in the kingdom, as coronations were often held in either prominent churches/septs or at places with a strong traditional tie to the kingdom. A cathedral-like sept fitting for such ceremonies would be THE sept of the town.

Castle
Are there plans for a godswood? The Mootons are a first men house and are noted to be fairly wealthy, as well as being amongst the primary bannermen of the Riverlands. A godswood would make sense.
 

Veggie

The Old Bear
Sept(s)
The lack of plural in reference to the town's sept would not neccesarily mean there is just one sept, especially since it would be rare for a town of that size to have a single place of worship. An explanation could be fairly simple. Torrence Teague, the first of the Teague kings of the Rivers and Hills, is crowned at Maidenpool even though the Mooton's are known to be it's rulers since forever. This indicates the town had at that point the most prominent sept in the kingdom, as coronations were often held in either prominent churches/septs or at places with a strong traditional tie to the kingdom. A cathedral-like sept fitting for such ceremonies would be THE sept of the town.

Castle
Are there plans for a godswood? The Mootons are a first men house and are noted to be fairly wealthy, as well as being amongst the primary bannermen of the Riverlands. A godswood would make sense.

I agree with the above on both counts. The town will have a major sept, attached to the bath house complex, but I'll be dotting a couple more across the town.

I will certainly put a godswood in the castle-- whether ot not it'll have a weirwood I'm not sure. I know there was some canon to suggest that those who complied with the Andals didn't have their religious sites razed, however the Mootons did fight against them with Florian V falling in battle. I tend to concur with your assessment on another post that Godswoods would have been a source of prestige, and as such Weirwoods would've likely been regrown.
 

SeapunkPeaches

Cersei's Left Bob
I have to agree with Dutch on the moat making the town more defensible than it actually is, although this isn't a deal-breaker and can be discussed and debated before the town is layed out. On the other hand, I love the inspirations and the shape of the town.
I approve on the conditions that you nail the terra first and then further develop the house style (DD has some nice techniques ;) ).
 

Arkilstorm

Dowager Countess of Grantham
Staff member
I'm on board! I agree with the others re. the terraforming and I'd quite like to see a bit more of a plan in the lands beyond the town walls, small farmsteads / minor industry etc. akin to the Flint Castle supporting 'sprawl', interspersed between the farmland. Other than that, this is really lovely. Looking forward to the house style development too!

Approved from me. :)
 

Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
I'm very interested in the coastal terra around Maidenpool, since I've been working on the Bay of Crabs to the north (also pinging Nomorefun_ here, since he's been doing work to the south). I'd like us all to be consistent as far as realism is concerned. Some of this probably merits its own thread, but I'll mention it here first so you can keep it in mind when starting terraforming.

Like Dutch said, the Bay of Crabs is tidal, and moreover, seems to have a pretty large tidal range - with the ebb and flow of the tides creating a marsh as inland as the Saltpans area. This is moreso than many of the coasts around our current map, which have very small beaches at most. However, this actually seems plausible from the research I've done - open bays and estuaries often act as geographical funnels, amplifying tides, whereas enclosed bays and seas often disperse tides. This explanation also seems to accord with some of the other choices we've made around the map: Uffering having large tidal flats, Blackwater Bay (a sheltered bay) having a rather small tidal range, etc. Nonetheless, it would be nice to map out the tidal ranges of Westeros so we can be a bit more consistent with it. Here's a map of Earth's tidal ranges for reference.

In my work at Wickenden so far, I've tried to represent a tidal range of about 4-5 blocks (i.e., 4-5 meters). For comparison: this is about the tidal range of Cape Cod, MA (one of my terra insps). The largest tidal range in the world is in the Bay of Fundy, about 13 meters. The world average is about 1 meter.

As far as the instantaneous tide itself, I've tried to represent Wickenden as being just about mid-tide, as I thought it would be easiest to enforce consistency if I avoid extremes in either direction. Tides don't need to be globally consistent around the whole map (think of them as macroscopic waves), but they should be locally consistent - so everyone working in the Bay of Crabs should take care to represent the same tidal range and the same instantaneous tide.

The main implications for Maidenpool: when creating the harbor, you should take care to reflect the tidal range somehow. Your docks should be built to be above the water at high tide (slightly above that to safeguard from storms, actually - though less of an issue if you have a harbour with a breakwater). Since the tide is at mid-tide, there should be a ~2-3 block gap between your docks and the water/boat level. I recommend looking into IRL harbours in areas with larger tidal ranges. Secondly, for whoever does the wetlands, these should also be depicted around mid-tide. I found a nice GIF of the tidal range in a salt marsh here (this is from the Bay of Fundy, so the variation in the MP wetlands would be less extreme). The salt marsh I've created at /warp emotesaltmarsh shows one at low tide.

As far as the coast itself (other than the wetlands), what exactly are you intending? To the NorthEast, I've been creating some more elaborate coastal dune landscape. My reasoning is that the area Wickenden is built over would be largely glacial sediment left over from glaciers to the north, which would get eroded by storms, waves, and tides from the bay. Northwestern coastal winds would blow the sand and create parabolic dunes. To the SouthEast, near Dyre Den, the beaches would probably be a bit muddier and the coast more vegetated (so not as much dune landscape) due to the rainer micro-climate of the Cracklaw peninsula, but should still show the tidal range mentioned above. I believe this is what Nomorefun_ is planning.

This still leaves the areas to the West, near Maidenpool and Saltpans. In their current state, these are unrealistic as they don't show the tidal variation necessary to create the wetlands west of Maidenpool. The Saltpans coast should probably be somewhat marshy as well, though this is beyond the scope of your project obviously. Something that's bothered me about the current wetlands is how the border seems so "clean", despite a lot of the land around MP and the wetlands being similarly flat. Trying to find maps for the wetlands though, I did find something rather similar in the Scheldt Estuary. The border around the wetlands seems to be manmade to make way for agriculture. Something similar might work for around Maidenpool - a manmade coast/levee with some mud flats (shown at mid-tide) at the base, transitioning to the east to the muddier natural beaches along Cracklaw. This would also give a nice point of transition to the wetlands rather than the current tree barrier.

Anyways, I'm happy to help with the wetlands/salt marsh to the extent that I can, when you get to that point. It's one of my favorite ecosystems, and I've done a lot of hiking in them, so I know them pretty well and have lots of inspiration images.
 
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Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
Also, I have some minor points about the town tests. First, I don't really like the various stone arrow slits mixed in with the daub & wattle blocks. It looks messy and I feel like it's going to age badly in any build which does it. I'm not really sure why a timbered house would have ornate arched windows in the first place - these don't seem to be present in your inspiration pictures at all. Second, you mentioned to me a while ago that MP inside the walls should have a bit of a "fallen from wealth" vibe, and (based on that discussion thread IIRC) may also have been sacked in the past. I'm not sure this comes across from the current test as much as it could. If the test you made is meant to be a wealthier/better maintained part of the town that's no problem, just something to keep in mind overall.

I know you already have two approvals, just my 2-cents to consider or not :p
 

Veggie

The Old Bear
Have a cool idea for a mini which could go in the treacherous Maidenpool woods? A bandit camp? The suggestion of the ruin of an old Holfast?

Show me, and I'll find a place for it. Alternatively if you find a spot you think would be a great locale for a mini, let me know too!

- Veg
 

Antony

Printmaker
This indicates the town had at that point the most prominent sept in the kingdom, as coronations were often held in either prominent churches/septs or at places with a strong traditional tie to the kingdom. A cathedral-like sept fitting for such ceremonies would be THE sept of the town.
A cool little idea for the Sept in MP, maybe have some kings of the Trident burried in it? Some Justmans and Teagues? Just a suggestion
 

Veggie

The Old Bear
A cool little idea for the Sept in MP, maybe have some kings of the Trident burried in it? Some Justmans and Teagues? Just a suggestion

Been toying with a long forgotten barrow of an ancient Riverlands king, a Justman, Mudd or Teague in the woods somewhere. Something like the below,

Weston-Kennet-long-barrow-rocks-b0a804a-scaled.jpg

1598723873625.jpeg


Let me know if Antony Justman wants a Justman barrow! :)
 
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Antony

Printmaker
Been toying with a long forgotten barrow of an ancient Riverlands king, a Justman, Mudd or Teague in the woods somewhere. Something like the below,

Nah, no Justman Barrow, the Justmans were Andal Kings, rules almost 1000 years ago, a time, that in Westeros would correspond most likely, to the 9th, 10th century Europe. So basicaly, not that long ago, in Westeros standarts.
While the Teague kings, were 100 years after them, so basicaly same era.
A Mudd, or Fisher or even ancient Mooton barrow would be acceptable.
A Justman or Teague king, would most likely be burried in a proper grave.
But do what you want.

Edit: what you could do, in the woods connected to some Royal House of that period, would be maybe... some ancient battle memorial, after all, MP, was the last riverlands petty kingdom, to fall at the hands of Benedict I Justman.
Edit no2: I must also add, that until the kings of House Justman, the Riverlands was a land of constant warfare, and it is less likely, that such a great sept, would be built before their time, as all recources, would have been channeled to war preparations, like repairing fortifications, and less likely to a grand sept, which would also need time to be made, something that wasn't really available, in times of war. So it would be most likely to have been built or enlargened in their era.
 
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Veggie

The Old Bear
Hey folks, I'm in a position where if people want to test for houses on their plots, to be pasted in I'd be keen for that.

As I'm keen to maintain cohesion between shared spaces like yards and frontages, I would rather just get houses themselves, so that I can do the yards in one fell swoop afterwards.

Reach out to myself or Nuggets to see if your houses are appropriate.



All the best,

V