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On Friday, March 26, I started preparing for my weekly Ironfang Invasion game by posting a map and some details about Longshadow in our Discord group. My wife noted that some descriptions did not fit the environment. Due to my health problems, I cancelled that game session, so the discussion continued. The geography of Nirmathis contradicts a major industry in Longshadow.
A similar issue has been brought up in Marideth River and major map disparities by Fenrick Talon in April 2018 and revived by erucsbo in August 2020.
Pages 62 to 71 of Assault on Longshadow have an informative gazeteer article on the city. Its main industry is smelting. It receives ore from the Hollow Hills, refines it into useable metal, and ships it out via its docks.
Where do these shipping routes go?! According to the maps on the endpapers of the modules, Southern Nirmathis and Ironfang Territories, the Marideth River has a major waterfall halfway between Longshadow and Phaendar. No-one can take a boat from Longshadow downstream past Phaendar to reach the major trade routes at Tamran on Lake Encarthan. Upstream lies Ecru, which is a village with no trade routes mentioned, with the impassible Mindspin Mountains west of that.
Do the boats instead cross the Marideth River and transfer the refined metal to wagons traveling south on the Nesmian Plains? The Mindspin Mountains reach further east south of Longshadow, so the route would go through foothills, a burdensome path for heavy metal.
The docks in Longshadow are the Gorenheim Ferry and Migrant’s Welcome Dock. Their descriptions tell of the shipping industry.
6. The Gorenheim Ferry: For a single silver piece, passengers can catch a ride on one of three ferries traveling across the Marideth River. These especially spacious and sturdy wooden boats remain equally spread out, with one near the center of the river while the others dock and resupply at the respective ends of the waterway. It’s not the passengers that make Gorenheim Ferries its money, however; the business makes most of its profit from significant industrial hauling across the river in the lower holds of its large ships.
10. Migrant’s Welcome Dock: Longshadow’s docks received their rather contentious title in the aftermath of Jordish Redcliff’s death. Disparaging those who partook in the boom of immigration as word spread about the discovery of minerals in the Hollow Hills, Longshadow’s residents often declared those first workers migrants, despite them being loyal citizens of Cheliax—and the dock where they disembarked took its name after them. The name stuck for years, and even when people flooded back out of Longshadow for Canorate, the townsfolk still used it, more out of familiarity than for any other reason.
Numerous wooden landing piers stretch out from the southwestern edge of Longshadow, extending like greedy fingers onto the Marideth River. Poor planning has resulted in a haphazard arrangement of docks, with new piers routinely added with little regard to proper shipping routes or ease of docking for larger vessels. ...
The maps at the beginning of each module are not the only maps with the waterfall. The Nesmian Plains map on page 66 of Trail of the Hunted puts the waterfall close to Longshadow, only 15 miles downstream. Its text describes the river as:
Marideth River: Stumbling down from the Mindspin Mountains and along the southern border of the Fangwood, the Marideth is easily the largest river in Nirmathas, but also its least navigable. Long stretches of whitewater mark its course, and several picturesque waterfalls dot its length as it passes through the Hollow Hills. Various fey claim stretches of the river, including nuckelavee and kelpies, but the annual spring floods often cause the river to jump its banks and find new paths to follow, leading to constant territorial disputes between its various residents. ...
At the beginning of the module, the river is described as:
The adventure begins in the town of Phaendar, nestled along the southern bank of the Marideth River, a stone’s throw from the Southern Fangwood Forest. Trade comes through the town over Phaendar Bridge, the only suitable place to traverse the swift, rapid-coursed river for 50 miles in either direction.
The map on page 8 shows that the Marideth River is 65 feet wide at the Phaendar Bridge.
The map of the Chernasardo region of the Fangwood on page 7 of Fangs of War copies the endpaper maps. The waterfall is visible on it.
The map of the Hollow Hills on page 8 of Assault on Longshadow draws the Marideth River flat, without waterfalls or tributaries, though the artist did try to shade it as if it had rapids. The river appears a mile wide, but that might be the drawing style rather than literal. (The endpaper maps are way off scale, using a pictoral representation rather then a literal one.)
In contrast, the text on the same page says,
The Hollow Hills lie just west of the Fangwood, and control much of the region’s mineral wealth. Relatively isolated thanks to the Marideth River’s waterfalls and rapids, its communities are every bit as independent and proud as those of the Fangwood.
And page 20 says,
Built along the turbulent Marideth River to power its mills, Longshadow is the largest town in the region—and the Ironfang Legion’s current target for conquest. Its foundries and forges offer fuel for the hobgoblin war machine, while its population will provide the slave labor to maintain that steady flow of supplies.
Page 39 describes an upriver section of the Marideth River as 120 feet wide. The Ironfang Legion hopes to use a nuckelavee to Control Water to make a walkable crossing. She can lower the water level by 18 feet under Pathfinder 1st Edition rules.
The map of Longshadow on page 64 includes the northeast bank of the Marideth River. I see no waterwheels. The river is at least 500 feet wide with the southwestern bank too far away to include in the map. Perhaps the river widened into a lake at Longshadow?
My wife says that the different images of the Marideth River remind her of the Fraser River in British Columbia, Canada. Its width varies drastically because it goes through many different terrains.
In theory, the exact industries of Longshadow do not matter while the city is under siege. In practice, my players like to explore the places their characters visit and interact with the common people. They care a lot about the people and often find jobs for the people they rescue. And their concerns change the plot. They got word of the destruction of Redburrow while they liberated Fort Nunder in Fangs of War, so they rushed off into the next module and stopped the conquest of Radya's Hollow (they were ahead of schedule, so Radya's Hollow was not yet invaded).
I sent the question to my players of where does Longshadow ship out its refined metals. I will talk about one answer in a comment. I am curious about other answers. What is your opinion?
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My elder daughter, the player of the goblin liberator champion Tikti, responded:
There should be a portage town by the waterfall, if you look at real world trade routes. Whole lot of cities and towns get built by waterfalls just because "the spot where you have to unload goods and haul them downstream to load on another ship" makes a great spot for commerce. Buffalo still has a Portage Road right near the falls, heavily used until they built the ship canal. Which would be another possibility, but the upstream section's not long enough to justify the expense. As for Skelt, I'd assume that they compete with Longshadow not so much on a local scale but on the larger scale of the whole Lake Encarthan basin.
As for why there isn't a portage town there in the module, well, the obvious answer is just that the map developers didn't realize one was needed. It takes actually studying Human Geography and some history as well to realize just how many cities are built around waterfalls and why. If you want meta reasons, it could have been destroyed by the hobgoblins, or is so small it's just a temporary camp that only pops up when Longshadow sends a yearly shipment downstream. How much ore does the region produce?
My family used to live in Savage, Maryland, which is on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line. Savage Mill was built there to take advantage of the drop in the Little Patuxent River for a mill run, but that river is too small for navigation.
I like the idea of a yearly shipment downstream. Some historic seasonal river shipping via flatboat had waited until the springtime rise of the river. I had set the beginning of my campaign in early spring, so the current time about five week later is mid-spring. I can claim that the early spring run-off is too chaotic so Longshadow waits for mid-spring.
The lack of a permanent portage village at the waterfall could be explained by not needing as much manual labor due to magic. Perhaps Longshadow built a canal to bypass the waterfall but the canal is dry unless filled via a Control Water spell.
From 500 to 2000 flatboats went down the Mississippi River each year in the early 1800s. That is about 200 years later than the technological level of Golarion, but flatboats are simple. An average Mississippi flatbook could carry 50 tons, maybe the Marideth flatboats are smaller. The big problem with a one-way trip by flatboat from Longshadow to Tamran is that the crews of the flatboats would have to walk back to Longshadow. If I limit the Marideth flatboats to only 25 a year, that would be only about 100 people walking back. The trade route associated with Phaendar can handle that.
Nevertheless, some year-round shipping would round out the industry. Where else can the refined metal go?
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Nevertheless, some year-round shipping would round out the industry. Where else can the refined metal go?
While most would go to Tamran, given the nature of Nirmathas, I expect that there would be smaller but perhaps more regular trading routes to the towns and villages scattered thereabouts. Before the Ironfang Legion attacked Phaendar I'm sure Kining would have had to get her metal from somewhere, and Longshadow is the obvious candidate.