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Thread: January/February 2014 Lite Challenge: Town of Leak

  1. #1
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Default January/February 2014 Lite Challenge: Town of Leak

    Here's a circle, and a square, and a triangle. This will get a bunch more details - I'm shooting for a style like that of circa 1900 Sanborn Fire Insurance Company maps... start rummaging among those at your own risk - Perry-Castañeda alone has hundreds, and many other US states have online archives.

    A bit of story, that I'll elaborate on as I go - in some land on some planet, a major city had to import its water with a truly massive aqueduct. No big deal - any major empire with hundreds of thousands of forced laborers over a hundred years could construct such a project. Thing is, one part of the aqueduct route was subject to quakes, and had to be repaired every so often. The location of this trouble area was up in the mountains above a desolate desert plain. Nobody lived anywhere near, nor was there much of a way to support a community to do repairs. For a while army camps sufficed, since one can order one's army into really crummy conditions at will. But eventually an administration with some engineers and some civil ambition set up a permanent solution: an oasis town watered by a fraction of the flow of the very aqueduct that needed servicing.

    Hardy pioneer types (i.e. unscrupulous ruffians, profiteering entrepreneurs, jailbirds, and persons of low repute and less opportunity) were set up downhill from the typical area of fractures, and masons were hired to provide the expertise. A land route was needed through the area, so the town doubled as a waypoint on a desert highway, and the officials permitted a defined fraction of the flow to be diverted, in return for perpetual responsibility for repairs. The place and the people were mostly left alone, so long as water continued to flow.

    Fast forward a hundred years or two. The setup has matured to a prosperous town. The desert highway is gone - bypassed by a better automobile route to the east. On the other hand, a trans-desert railroad has a need for a water stop, and wells don't flow here. Leak, though, has a dependable flow from uphill, and constuitutes a sort of civilization, so the railroad has been filling locomotives here for a good forty or fifty years. If you want a rough equivalent in technology and tone, picture the American southwest, maybe between 1880 and 1910.

    Desert means dry, not necessarily hot, and the area indeed suffers bitterly cold winters. This frequently ices over the flow from the diversion station uphill, so the town has an ample reservoir to store months worth of their needs. Once the top freezes, the depths tend to stay liquid, so trains and townspeople never lack for a drink.

    A large water tower or three would have been good enough circles for this contest, but this freezing bit tends to solidify aboveground tanks. Plus they're teeny, compared to a town plat. So I gave the railroad a turntable. Any locos needing maintenance park in a nice square engine house. And there's a big triangular city park around the reservoir - the only green for hundreds of miles in any direction. What you see below is just a street layout, and the required elements. Tracks will come later, since I'll have to lay them out carefully.

    ### Latest WIP ###

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  2. #2
    Administrator Facebook Connected Diamond's Avatar
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    Nice work on the names.

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    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Yeah, the astute viewer will recognize the names of some of the streets of this town. I took most from references right here in the CG. If you doubt that, here's the mentions:

    Ascension Alley

    anomiecoalition alley

    Aval Penworth Alley

    Blaidd Drwg Alley

    Eilathen Alley

    both references to Gidde Alley - ratcatchers

    Vellum Alley

    su_liam alley

    Lukc Alley

    Nighthawk Alley

    torstan street

    ravells street

    jtougas street

    Ramah Street

    Redrobes Street

    :-)

    Now, if any of the worthy Guildspeople who seem to have been memorialized by these roadways perfer not to be a part of Leak, I'll be happy to scrounge up some mundane substitute. On the other hand, if anyone wishes to propose appropriate businesses along 'their' street, I take requests. The stores and such only show up named on the various zoomed-in area views, so any such requests might influence which detail views I decide to work up.

    Gidde - ratcatchers? In the desert? I guess there's kangaroo rats ...

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    Ascension alley ought to have a couple of sages/teachers/wise men (for all Big A's tutorials...).

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    Guild Journeyer rgcalsaverini's Avatar
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    I love maps, but nothing beats a map with a great story, I have great hopes for this one!
    I'll be following this thread with a bucket of popcorn

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    Guild Expert Jalyha's Avatar
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    *steals popcorn*


    Me too

    I'm all jealous now. Great idea... great story...

    Side note: I tried to open the link in IE and it wouldn't open. It worked in Chrome and Firefox, though

    PS: I want to be a street name ... maybe an alley? "Jalyha's Ramble" ? the kind of thing everyone avoids? *tries to bribe you with cookies and "likes"*

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    Community Leader Bogie's Avatar
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    What? No Bogie Byway? The Bogie Block? I shall go to my room and sob.......

  8. #8
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Town this size should have room for all sorts of businesses. Named businesses :-). What emporium, office, or edifice would be appropriate?

    Which link did IE not like?

    The swiveling assemblies of wheels under each end of a railroad car are 'trucks' in US parlance. Europeans call them 'bogies'... With a railroad in town I'm sure I can devise some thin excuse for bogie labels on SoMeThiNg :-).

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    Guild Expert Jalyha's Avatar
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    Appropriate for me or for bogie? For me.. I'm annoying AND new, so something no one else wants... y'know... tar pits... outhouse... landfill... something...

    IE wouldn't let me open the *map*. Everything else worked fine.

  10. #10
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Jalyha, things & people that have been around for a long while are 'old hat', right? You haven't been, so you must be 'new hat', ergo your shop must be the milliner in town :-). Which in a desert town with trains servicing a betimes-crumbling mountain aqueduct probably includes steel hard hats, straw coolie hats and other sunshades, Stetson-equivalents, pinstriped engineer-caps, conductor officer-type headgear, and bowlers. And whatever degree of frippery or practicality the ladies in town go for - I haven't thought that far. As well as general dry-goods merchandise - I understand period small-town milliners seldom dealt only in hats.

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