Descent into darkness: oversight?

[GrandSage]

Allright, as far as I understand it, the main characters home is in the northern estmarks, just south of the great river, and far east of the Ford of abez. Now, the Ford of aber is the easternmost point where the river can be crossed. So why does the village have problems with orc raids from the mountains?

[doofus-01]

I can't say one way or the other, but I had a couple of thoughts:
1. Wesnoth has been (sometimes slowly) evolving for many, many years, so some campaign dialogues are surely stale. Even if there turns out to be some logical explanation to your question, thank you for reporting a potential problem. It's the only way these things will get fixed.
2. Map images in the https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Geography_of_Wesnoth wiki page would be helpful. Only a few people can include images (as far as I know), so this will probably not happen since it would be a big pain the ass for one person to do, but never the less...

[zookeeper]

Now, the Ford of aber is the easternmost point where the river can be crossed.

Is that really stated anywhere? I don't see or remember any mention of that.

[Andrettin]

Allright, as far as I understand it, the main characters home is in the northern estmarks, just south of the great river, and far east of the Ford of abez. Now, the Ford of aber is the easternmost point where the river can be crossed. So why does the village have problems with orc raids from the mountains?

One possibility is that if the orcs live near a tributary, they could have sailed downstream to the Great River, and then to the other side of it. Considering orcs have in the past sailed through the Great Ocean, they are probably capable of navigating through rivers.

I don't think the Ford of Abez is the easternmost crossing of the Great River, though. As zookeeper, I don't recall any mention of such. The Ford of Abez is (AFAIK) the narrowest part of the river, making it particularly apt as a place to cross over with entire armies, but that's all.

[GrandSage]

from https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Geography_of_Wesnoth

Ford of Abez: Easternmost point at which the Great River can be crossed without ships. A traditional invasion route for armies crossing in either direction.

now, i dont know who wrote that wiki, and I admit now having played all the wesnoth mainline campaigns through (I play them deathrun style...), but thats were I got my info from. I am not quite sure why the river would get wider to the east though, it it flows into the ocean to the west of wesnoth....

[Eagle_11]

The orcs can build rafts or dragon ship like vessels, or loot the ships of another race to cross the river.
It may be possible that warbands of daring, adventreous orcs may try to ride the stream of Listra flowing southwards, only to disembark at wesnoth side of the great river attacking the humans in a surprise raid, similar to how vikings in history did.

[GrandSage]

aye, but there was no mentioning of that anywere in the first scenarios. another thing i noticed is that the first map has a river on it, which may or may not be the great river. On the map is a ford through it, so if it is the great river, one of my sources needs to be updated.

[zookeeper]

from https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Geography_of_Wesnoth

Ford of Abez: Easternmost point at which the Great River can be crossed without ships. A traditional invasion route for armies crossing in either direction.

Right, yeah. I think the way I'd reconcile the problem is by saying that that bit of the wiki refers to the part of the Great River west of its tributaries. Parthyn lies between the forks, so it's possible there are other crossings there. The river in the first DiD scenario isn't even necessarily the Great River, but a smaller one that just doesn't show up on the maps, and the orcs could have crossed the Great River even further east.

[GrandSage]

completely logical solution, if the devs agree and the wiki gets updated. There are several things on that page that are broken anyhow.

[Eagle_11]

An even more logical explaination would be that due to ebb and flow cycle of the Great River there can be other, temporary crossings happen throughout the river's length, yet as Ford of Abez presents the only point of the river that is permanently accesible throughout all seasons and of significant width to offer an whole army the means to cross the great river only that crossing point is worth to be taken into consideration during the strategic planning. As such any other smaller, temporary ford that may occur to the east of Ford of Abez gets ignored in account due to being unreliable and hard to use, yet this does not stop the brazen orcs from using them, ofcourse.
This explaination may also shed some light on why Wesnoth had not any significant military presence in the town of Parthyn.

[GrandSage]

The town of parthyn is not within wesnoth, but an eastmark frontier town. While i guess it technically falls within the law of wesnoth, It does not usually get protected by it. As for your explanation about the ebb and flow of the great river, the town always get raided as the mountainpasses melt, making it possible for the orcs to cross them, so there would be a lot of meltwater at that time.

[GrandSage]

I'll have to make an addition here. Playing DM, there was something called the Ford of parthyn. So the Ford of abez is only the easternmost point where you can cross into wesnoth, I'd suppose.

[Shiki]

That remind me of...
There was quite some time between when I played HttT and DiD, months or years.
In my mind the maps from the first DiD scenario and and crossing of the furt ob Abez were more or less the same.