Travel

Internal

Travelling around a clan’s fragment is an important business. Many fragments contain a single extended family, with a settlement positioned centrally surrounded by the fields of the clan. In this situation the edges of the fragment can be reached in a day, although with the dangers associated with the edge, there is little travel towards them, unless another fragment is inbound. On slightly bigger fragments, 2 or 3 clans may be supported; simple tracks are normally built between the major settlements to aid the goods flowing between the various clans. These inter-settlement distances can create a trek of many days on foot. However horses are not uncommon on these fragments which have more space for them to roam. Wild horses can be trained to act as mounts to shorten these journey times.

External

When fragments collide

When two fragments meet, the interface between them is rarely coherent; normally you won’t be able to walk directly from one fragment to another. To tackle this problem various types of rig have been developed to allow travel between fragments. The simplest method of moving down to a fragment that is on a lower plane is by scramble nets. Clans manufacture these nets out of rope constructed from dried fibres which are then wound. The advantage of these is that they can be quite long yet still sturdy. Pegged down securely to the upper fragment, they are thrown off the edge, and then can be climbed down. Moving to a problem on a higher plane proves more difficult, Clans have tried building ladders, but keeping them straight over quite large distances proves tricky. More complicated still are the intricate structures some clans have developed. These range from gangplanks anchored firmly to the home fragment, to large towers with lifting mechanisms contained within, so a clan can arrive in style.

Flying between separate fragments

Moving between fragments when not in contact is a dream for many people in the broken world. There have been many failed attempts at flight between fragments. Whether trying to design a flying machine, or taming the larger birds, the lucky entrepreneurs are the ones which never leave the ground – the rest were lost to the mists. Even so, there are always those that try, as the wealth and fame found in the invention of such a device would be beyond imagining.

game1/travel.txt · Last modified: 2008/03/06 14:36 by gm_james