Sketching out the Rivers - Vagar River

Dwimmermount Mapping

I’m going start by fleshing out the existing rivers of the Dwimmermount setting. It feels like a good place to start before I start adding additional rivers. I think that I’m going to be adding a lot.

Proofreading Harrowed: I was right

Down in the SW corner is the Vagar River. On the setting map it starts as a forked river in the plains and makes its way NE where it meets Yethlyreom in Hex 1918. Further NE it’s labeled as the Makrono River and joins up just above Yeth with a third river out of the Murklands.

So I’m going to label the Vagar River as everything south of that junction out of the Murklands that seems to be unnamed, I’ll have to get to that as well. After the junction it’s Makrono River all the way up … or down river in this case. IRL when rivers converge the larger of the rivers keeps its name while the smaller loses out at the junction. Which is an interesting little fact that I didn’t know.

Looking at the setting map I see the Vagar river coming from the unnamed plains in that SW pocket without an obvious source. Planning for this I added a few raised areas down in that pocket. Elevated terrain for the rains to drain off of and get the rivers started. I also will stretch them out and take them from off map. That adds to the river and justifies their existence.

Oh, small point. You’ll notice that the background is black for the 1000’ layer. I’ve set it that way to make the rivers more visible. It looks a little strange but its much easier on the eyes.

I’ve added a few branches off the Thunderhome Mountains. It’s a perfect setup for that western slope and I feel that it would have at least one good run across the Oggo Forest to join up.

So the upper courses of the Vagar will start out of the southern side of the Oro Mountains making their way north around several elevations. The tributaries will start to really be felt as it gets through its middle courses before turning north. Finally it will flatten out and slow as it slides into the lower course before meeting the Makrono River and confluencing … the fancy word for merging. Smarty pants word.

Searching the text of the Dwimmermount book the Vagar is referenced only twice in the book. Both times on page 60. An entry under Mercantile Trade mentions that the ‘upper Vagar River is not navigable’. I’m going to take that to mean that the lower is ‘navigable’ and that something along that upper stretch likely starting in 15.28 or 15.29 doesn’t allow for boats bigger than a large canoe.

I’m going to go with rapids for the reason for that lack of navigability. A stretch along those hexes, and infrequently to the north of them, is riddled with rapids that with their frequent changes in elevation just doesn’t allow a vessel to traverse. Plus rapids are cool.

The second mention is under the Civilized entry that says that ‘Civilized areas are found primarily on the banks of the Makrono, Vagar, and Lanis Rivers and in the fertile plain west of the Ogga Forest.’ When I get to the part where I map out the domains I’ll have to make sure that I extend the domains to cover the Vagar river. Which shouldn’t be hard.

Now when pulling the streams out of the Oro Mountains I’m keeping most of the flow into the Vagar from the southern side of the mountain range. The prevailing winds cut almost straight on to the mountains from the SW so the rains will dump pretty deep into the range especially considering the height of the Oro Mountains. The majority of the flows I’m going to dump off the other side into the Murklands. It’ll be interesting having the rain shadow split like that. There’s a few instances of that on Earth so google before the emails start.

Looking at the general area as well I’ve got some text from the Ogga Forest that would let me stream some water from that area to the west. That would help justify the ‘fertile plains’ comment in the text. I’m going to leave that for the moment and come back to adjust it later. It’ll be easier to sketch in afterwards.

Back to the Thunderhome Mountains. I’ve got an interesting lake very near the base in the Ogga Forest. Which was easy to feed from that elevation just beside it. Pretty damned decent sized lake as well.

It also has this neat little feature that I drew in. To be honest I yawned as I was drawing and went the wrong way around the elevation. Once I looked at it I rather liked it. Any GM worth his dice can see that would be an interesting place for a Point of Interest.

Finally here it is. The entire Vagar River cutting off just north of Yeth …

These river articles are more work than I originally thought. Next up is going to be the other side of the Oro Mountains. I’m going to detail the Murklands and related rivers.

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