Random Blades in the Dark Question:
Can I just say, one initial impression about the Doskvol city map that makes me feel slightly itchy?
The lightning towers around the edge maintaining the lightning barrier. I’ve no idea if this is on purpose or not, but there are big dots and little dots, and I’m assuming that the big dots are the big towers described in the description of Barrowcleft: “The largest towers are over 200 feet tall and include their own internal generators to provide power to the lightning barrier that keeps the ravenous spirits of the deathlands out of the city.” So the little ones are sort of conduits, and the big ones are power sources? And it kind of makes sense, every time the lightning barrier crosses a body of water, the North Hook Channel, the Doskvol River, the little delta branch in Barrowcleft itself, at all of them, the gap is bracketed on either side by the big towers. All of this makes sense. My issue is …
There’s a huge section along the east side of the city, across the river from Nightmarket and the Gaddoc Rail Station, where there are no big towers. And it’s a section where, because of the rail station, the barrier is also pierced in two places by the electrorail lines. The book doesn’t go into detail on how either the lightning barrier or the rail lines work, so maybe this is fine, maybe the lines themselves can function as part of the power supply for the barrier, but just looking at the map for the first time …
It feels like a great big open flank to me? Like a place where the barrier is very precarious. A long stretch of barrier that is being purely conducted by smaller towers, and the nearest power generation towers are down at the split of the Dosk River and half way up Six Towers. The south side of the city also goes a bit of distance between big towers, but if you hold your fingers to the map to measure distance, the south side still has four big towers across the same distance where the east has two.
It just makes me wonder, is all. If this was on purpose. If the electrorail lines interfere in the barrier. The lower of the two big towers is right next to the southern rail line, so probably not? It doesn’t look like there’s a problem putting big towers right next to rail lines, so there doesn’t look like there should have been a problem putting another big tower north of the northern rail line to just even out the power distribution a bit more. Possibly there’s a terrain issue? I’d love to know if there’s an in-world explanation here. But it feels like a potential weak spot in the barrier to me, a place where it’s possibly more vulnerable and tenuous.
It’s also slightly baffling to me that the north shore of Whitecrown, which faces out to sea where ghosts tend not to hang out, has more defenses than the entire east side of the city, which faces directly out onto the deathlands. Or. Okay. Whitecrown is rich person central, so actually I’m not too surprised there. (And there’s also demons and leviathans out to sea). But still. Given that Nightmarket and Gaddoc are the trade links out to the rest of Akoros, you’d figure they’d want to protect that too.
Is it the electrorail? Does it necessitate a weaker barrier to run the rail through it? The two rail lines are the defining features of this section of the barrier.
Sorry. I just. I have questions?