The Stockade

MithLuin

MithLuin

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The Haladin will build a stockade at the junction of the Rivers Gelion and Ascar. As we discussed previously, the river Ascar is small and has rapids. The River Gelion is very broad (not as broad as the Mississippi, but not a small river, either), and relatively placid.

Shortly before they meet, there is a crossing to ford the Gelion.

At the junction of the two rivers, we would like there to be some height to the land of Thargelion - bluffs overlooking the rivers, preferably. Can anyone think of (or find) any scenery like that? It needn't be anything too extreme, but 20' cliff faces overlooking the rivers would be nice!

While it is assumed that the stockade is made of wood and painted various colors, designs of the stockade are welcome.
 
My first thought is Iceland. I think that will be the place to find the dramatic riverside scenery I'm hoping for. But I don't have a particular Icelandic river junction in mind, and I suspect many of those rivers are quite small - maybe okay for the Ascar, but likely too small of a scale for the Gelion.

Here's an example of what I think is the issue:
Chilcotin & Fraser Rivers in British Columbia, Canada
stockade river junction 1.jpg

This is a mirror image of the original photo, to show the correct orientation of the rivers if the top of the photo is north. And while there do seem to be some cliffs/bluffs in this photo...they aren't at the river junction, which seems to be rather flat itself. So, not quite what I am picturing.....
 
MithLuin said:
The Haladin will build a stockade at the junction of the Rivers Gelion and Ascar. As we discussed previously, the river Ascar is small and has rapids. The River Gelion is very broad (not as broad as the Mississippi, but not a small river, either), and relatively placid.

Shortly before they meet, there is a crossing to ford the Gelion.

At the junction of the two rivers, we would like there to be some height to the land of Thargelion - bluffs overlooking the rivers, preferably. Can anyone think of (or find) any scenery like that? It needn't be anything too extreme, but 20' cliff faces overlooking the rivers would be nice!

While it is assumed that the stockade is made of wood and painted various colors, designs of the stockade are welcome.
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If you not going after ancient Alesia

then Hrazany

or Staré Hradisko
stare hradisko.png


Most oppida in the Czech Republik are at rivers confluences actually, and the terain is quite mountainous.
 
Alesia was gigantic, lots of Oppida are quite big and real city-type hill- settlements...

I had always been under the impression that the Haladin stockade was an improvised large camp.
 
Haerangil said:
Alesia was gigantic, lots of Oppida are quite big and real city-type hill- settlements...

I had always been under the impression that the Haladin stockade was an improvised large camp.
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How big/small does it have to be? This was usually a loose setlement with room for animals and some fields included - livestock was their most important and trasured wealth after all. It was not like a castle much later where only people hid as there was plenty of cattle around at that time and no enemy could simply steal all of them. Actually the Czech Republic has the smallest available, along with plenty of mountains and rivers.
How many households with how many herds have to be hiding there for how long?
 
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I think it could easily have been as many as 9,000 people, They were already 60 years in Beleriand at the time, but the Stockade was new, they probably lived there for only a few months, certainly less than a year.

So i believe it should be primitive or crude, but huge.

What do you think? 15-16 hectares? I actually quite like Alesia, but not so much the city itself but rather the roman siegeworks.
 
Andersonville_Prison_by_Keystone_Publishing%2C_1890.jpg


Andersonville-Drawing-Color.png


Drummer+Boy+museum+1.jpg

Andersonville prison camp i like...
Wrong time period, but a very classic stockade, and about the right size.
 
Haerangil said:
I think it could easily have been as many as 9,000 people, They were already 60 years in Beleriand at the time, but the Stockade was new, they probably lived there for only a few months, certainly less than a year.

So i believe it should be primitive or crude, but huge.

What do you think? 15-16 hectares? I actually quite like Alesia, but not so much the city itself but rather the roman siegeworks.
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9,000 people? With herds? It has to be huge. Or you would have to make it like Biskupin with terraced/row houses.
 
I doubt they put all their cattle WITHIN the stockade, but yes, i imagine it quite huge, though i don't know how many real permanent buildings they had... judging by the very brief time they had to find and prepare the place.
 
The stockade is constructed 12 years prior to the battle in SilmFilm. The people do not live there, but retreat to this location suddenly during Boldog's raid. There is no implication that the Haladin keep cattle at any point during Season 5. They have goats/sheep. However, their animals are not brought to the stockade in any numbers, because they are starving by the end of the siege. People must have fled to the stockade without having time to gather food, and they make their way through the stored food over the duration of the siege.

9,000 sounds much too large for the group described in Episode 4. The stockade consists of a wooden wall spanning from river to river, and within, a large hall/barn has been constructed. Haleth's family also has a house there. There is a well, and room for penned animals. But it is not a permanent habitation of these people - they live in homesteads scattered throughout southern Thargelion.

We need to discuss two separate items in this this thread. One, we need a geographical location for the two Rivers to meet, with high bluffs. And then secondly, we ought to design the Stockade. We can base that on an existing site, or create art to show what we think it looks like. So, it is not necessarily that the location have a Fort built on it - these can be selected separately. For instance, we selected a mountain for Himring, and then designed the fortress.

More information about the stockade can be found in the Scripts forum under Season 5, S05Ep04.
 
MithLuin said:
The stockade is constructed 12 years prior to the battle in SilmFilm. The people do not live there, but retreat to this location suddenly during Boldog's raid. There is no implication that the Haladin keep cattle at any point during Season 5. They have goats/sheep. However, their animals are not brought to the stockade in any numbers, because they are starving by the end of the siege. People must have fled to the stockade without having time to gather food, and they make their way through the stored food over the duration of the siege.

9,000 sounds much too large for the group described in Episode 4. The stockade consists of a wooden wall spanning from river to river, and within, a large hall/barn has been constructed. Haleth's family also has a house there. There is a well, and room for penned animals. But it is not a permanent habitation of these people - they live in homesteads scattered throughout southern Thargelion.

We need to discuss two separate items in this this thread. One, we need a geographical location for the two Rivers to meet, with high bluffs. And then secondly, we ought to design the Stockade. We can base that on an existing site, or create art to show what we think it looks like. So, it is not necessarily that the location have a Fort built on it - these can be selected separately. For instance, we selected a mountain for Himring, and then designed the fortress.

More information about the stockade can be found in the Scripts forum under Season 5, S05Ep04.
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O.k, if it has been constructed beforehand, it has place for the animals even if they are not there. 9000 people would mean over 1000 single houses. We would need the number of houses given an average family size of 7 persons. Then we can calculate the place needed and then a place can be searched for it, when we know the size that is needed.
 
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Then even with less than 9,000 people a large Oppidum is not too far off, even if a murus gallicus is not quite a stockade.I still think we'd need 16-18 hectars of space.
 
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Odola said:
O.k, if it has been constructed beforehand, it has place for the animals even if they are not there. 9000 people would mean over 1000 single houses. We would need the number of houses given an average family size of 7 persons. Then we can calculate the place needed and then a place can be searched for it, when we know the size that is needed.
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Haerangil said:
Then even with less than 9,000 people a large Oppidum is not too far off, even if a murus gallicus is not quite a stockade.I still think we'd need 16-18 hectars of space.
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A couple of important notes:

As @MithLuin pointed out above, the group described in S05E04 is far smaller than 9000 individuals. Certainly under 1000.

Also, she pointed out that the Haladin do not live within the walls of the stockade, but retreat there in an emergency. A large hall has been built to house the people at need, but few live there until it becomes necessary.
 
Nicholas Palazzo said:
A couple of important notes:

As @MithLuin pointed out above, the group described in S05E04 is far smaller than 9000 individuals. Certainly under 1000.

Also, she pointed out that the Haladin do not live within the walls of the stockade, but retreat there in an emergency. A large hall has been built to house the people at need, but few live there until it becomes necessary.
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That's clear. Most hillforts are that. But they are build to contain the whole population of a tribe in need with all their belongings. Those are not military forts which house mainly soldiers in barracks - those can be quite constricted - but you have very strick rules there and martial law. As such such refuges were build to be spacious even if there were no building at all inside, but they were meant for e.g. for tents.
Even if only 5 people manage to reach it, it has been build 12 years before to house the whole of the tribe. How many were the Haladin then when the place has been build?
 
Odola said:
That's clear. Most hillforts are that. But they are build to contain the whole population of a tribe in need with all their belongings. Those are not military forts which house mainly soldiers in barracks - those can be quite constricted - but you have very strick rules there and martial law. As such such refuges were build to be spacious even if there were no building at all inside, but they were meant for e.g. for tents.
Even if only 5 people manage to reach it, it has been build 12 years before to house the whole of the tribe. How many were the Haladin then when the place has been build?
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The lot of them should be able to take shelter within the hall they've built in our story, which at maximum shouldn't be more than 800 square meters. That'd place the upper limit at 1000 or less. Let's call it 700 just for fun.
 
Here is a quick sketch showing the stockade, looking northeast. As depicted here, the bluffs overlooking the rivers are roughly 20' high. It is asymmetrical; no one measured a perfect triangle when designing the wall. It contains the large hall, the single family homestead (which houses 5 people at the time of its construction), a well, and space for animals, tents, and gardens.
1624319844354-1669706014.jpg


To learn more about how the Stockade and the Haladin will be depicted on SilmFilm, it would probably be best to listen to the podcast focusing on Season 5 Episode 4. Session 5-24 from Feb. 9, 2021
 
Nicholas Palazzo said:
The lot of them should be able to take shelter within the hall they've built in our story, which at maximum shouldn't be more than 800 square meters. That'd place the upper limit at 1000 or less. Let's call it 700 just for fun.
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Understand. But a coomunity hall is never intended to house people. It is a special place set aspart not belonging to aby family. No doubt it could house them. But it is not intended to do so at its construction.
700:5=140 houses + the hall. A starting point.
 
There is one hall and one house and open space for tents or such inside the stockade wall. It is not a town. There are not multiple houses. There are a total of 5 permanent residents. We depict the construction of the stockade wall and the hall. These people aren't going to stick around to build their own individual houses.
 
MithLuin said:
There is one hall and one house and open space for tents or such inside the stockade wall. It is not a town. There are not multiple houses. There are a total of 5 permanent residents. We depict the construction of the stockade wall and the hall. These people aren't going to stick around to build their own individual houses.
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Right, whether or not this matches a particular historical culture, it is the story being told in the episode being discussed above.
 
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