How long does it take from Weldyn to Elensefar?

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skeptical_troll
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How long does it take from Weldyn to Elensefar?

Post by skeptical_troll »

I'm not posting this to discuss public transportation in Wesnoth, but rather to ask: is there an established 'scale' in the map of the continent? I looked around but did not find anything.
In other words: how big is the kingdom of wesnoth? Like China? Like France? It is not easy to guess from the map itself, as features like river, mountains, forests etc. have 'fractal' properties and can be of any size.
Also, I don't remember any reference in the campaigns, and I don't even know which kind of units are used. Miles? Leagues? Days of marching?

This question could be relevant in making a campaign story line more 'realistic', but also to understand how much freedom there is in adding small-scale features. If the scale is large, it is likely that there are many rivers, cities, forests which are not marked just because they are too small for a large map.
Whiskeyjack
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Re: How long does it take from Weldyn to Elensefar?

Post by Whiskeyjack »

That is an interesting (and important!) question.

Only clue that comes to mind on the spot is that there is a couple days travel between Weldyn and the Fort of Abez on horseback (though about one third of that way is wilderness (the rest on the other hand is a developed trading route) in the prologue of HttT). I´m neither have the time to research the proportions nor the the immediate knowledge required but my rough guess would be that France is by far the better comparison than China.
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zookeeper
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Re: How long does it take from Weldyn to Elensefar?

Post by zookeeper »

There's not really any exact canonical scale. However, I think Wesnoth feels rather small, as in the distance between Weldyn and Elensefar being at most similar to, say, Paris and Berlin (although it could be a lot smaller too). Maybe a fast messenger that can switch horses often could make it in about a week. I can't really see Wesnoth being anywhere near as big as China, for instance. Messages and people clearly travel reasonably fast, even if we don't have much concrete measurements.

I think it's safe to say that the scale is large enough that individual scenario maps can (and obviously do) have rivers, lakes, smaller towns and forests or almost anything else as needed.
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Re: How long does it take from Weldyn to Elensefar?

Post by gnombat »

In "The Bay of Pearls," Delfador mentions the length of time it takes to travel to Elensefar, but in one place he says 3 days, and in another place he says 6 days ... possibly he means 6 days by land, 3 days by sea.
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skeptical_troll
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Re: How long does it take from Weldyn to Elensefar?

Post by skeptical_troll »

Thanks for the replies, comparing Wesnoth with China was a bit of an exaggeration to get the point, it makes a lot of sense that people should be able to travel across it in a reasonable time.
zookeeper wrote:I think it's safe to say that the scale is large enough that individual scenario maps can (and obviously do) have rivers, lakes, smaller towns and forests or almost anything else as needed.
rather than scenario maps, I was thinking of elements in the stories. Just as an example, in the map there are just an handful of cities marked. If the scale if of the order of France-Germany, I'd say it is safe to assume that there are minor cities ruled by local governors (is the political structure of Wesnoth discuss anywhere?), or small swamps where small communities of saurians may leaves, or woods where elves roam from time to time. Which is different of course than elvish provinces within Wesnoth, which wouldn't make much sense.
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