Relative size of combatants

We were told that the Portal to Karys is about 1,000
Traisum-miles from the one from Salym, compared to
more than 10,000 T-miles Salym-Kelsayr including 6,000
water miles along the Mediteranian and across the
Atlantic.
Now we are told that, while TTE construction crews
were running the railroad to Karys and cutting thru
the mountain, other TTE crews were building the:
1 railroad from Salym-Gate to the Med;
2 shipyard at the East End of the Med;
3 ships to cross those 6000 miles to America;
4 railroad to the Kelsayr Gate;
5 railroad across Kelsayr into Lashai;
6 railroad across Lashai to Resyn.

It looks to me as if Weber & Evans were using the
word "bottlenecked" to mean "stopped" not
merely slowed down.

HTM

bkwormlisa wrote:{snip - htrm}
One thing that puzzles me; the books say that serious exploration was bottlenecked until the Traisum Cut was finished. I'd think it would have been impossible.
{snip - htm}
bkwormlisa

Actually, what this means --

bkwormlisa

I think I found the textev to prove you right and us wrong:


HHNF Prologue wrote:
There was a two-hour time difference between the two sides of the portal, which, fortunately was also one of the older portals which had so far been discovered. It must have been… lively around Fort Salby’s present location for the first century or so after the portal formed, Kinlafia reflected. The altitude differential was less than that of some other portals, but it had still been sufficient to channel a standing, unending, twenty-four-hour-a-day, three-mile-wide hurricane through from Karys until the pressures finally equalized. There was ample evidence of the sort of sandblasting erosion portals at disparate heights tended to produce, although none of it was very recent. And there was still a permanent, moderately stiff breeze blowing through the portal, even now, which made it unfortunate that Zaithag was about as dry (and hot) as Narshalla. Fort Salby could have used a little rain, if Karys had had any to spare

.

Is that the Karys side of the Ft Salby portal had a standing hurricane not unlike the "Great Red Spot" on Jupiter for most of that 100 years, as the biggest low pressure area of the Karys side was planetary atmosphere venting into Triasum.

And on the Triasum side, the biggest air conditioning compressor in the history of Sharona's know Multiverse history caused a permanent cold spot from expanding air.

IOW, the Triasum side was undergoing a "Little Ice Age" as the atmospheric expansion cooled, high pressure center stagnated over Ft Salby for 100 years.

Whether or not the areas around the portals are deserts now, for the majority of those 100 years, both sides of the Ft Salby portal were damned well wet, Wet, WET!

The other side of the portal into Karys intrigues me. Was it more completely blocked by the mountain? If so, the force of air pressure beating down on the mountain from Traisum trying to flow into Karys must have done something. If there are some openings from that side into Karys but narrower/smaller, those openings would have gotten magnified effect of the atmospheric transfer.

As to the water condensing in Karys. The wind likely blew it into Traisum like snot through a violently blown nose. The freezing water did its own number on the mountain. The broader area in Karys would have gotten drier as atmospheric water was transferred into Traisum for a century.

Mil-tech bard wrote:Actually, what this means --

bkwormlisa

I think I found the textev to prove you right and us wrong:


HHNF Prologue wrote:
There was a two-hour time difference between the two sides of the portal, which, fortunately was also one of the older portals which had so far been discovered. It must have been… lively around Fort Salby’s present location for the first century or so after the portal formed, Kinlafia reflected. The altitude differential was less than that of some other portals, but it had still been sufficient to channel a standing, unending, twenty-four-hour-a-day, three-mile-wide hurricane through from Karys until the pressures finally equalized. There was ample evidence of the sort of sandblasting erosion portals at disparate heights tended to produce, although none of it was very recent. And there was still a permanent, moderately stiff breeze blowing through the portal, even now, which made it unfortunate that Zaithag was about as dry (and hot) as Narshalla. Fort Salby could have used a little rain, if Karys had had any to spare

.

Is that the Karys side of the Ft Salby portal had a standing hurricane not unlike the "Great Red Spot" on Jupiter for most of that 100 years, as the biggest low pressure area of the Karys side was planetary atmosphere venting into Triasum.

And on the Triasum side, the biggest air conditioning compressor in the history of Sharona's know Multiverse history caused a permanent cold spot from expanding air.

IOW, the Triasum side was undergoing a "Little Ice Age" as the atmospheric expansion cooled, high pressure center stagnated over Ft Salby for 100 years.

Whether or not the areas around the portals are deserts now, for the majority of those 100 years, both sides of the Ft Salby portal were damned well wet, Wet, WET!

Peter Z,

As for this --

The other side of the portal into Karys intrigues me. Was it more completely blocked by the mountain? If so, the force of air pressure beating down on the mountain from Traisum trying to flow into Karys must have done something. If there are some openings from that side into Karys but narrower/smaller, those openings would have gotten magnified effect of the atmospheric transfer.

As to the water condensing in Karys. The wind likely blew it into Traisum like snot through a violently blown nose. The freezing water did its own number on the mountain. The broader area in Karys would have gotten drier as atmospheric water was transferred into Traisum for a century

.


You are making the same mistake I did earlier.

The atmospheric gas flow is from Karys ===> Traisum.

Condensation air wouldn't occur until the higher pressure Karys air entered the higher elevation on Traisum.

The issue at hand is whether the condensation was cooled enough to form ice.

If it was, and it did so for 100 years, we are looking at a local glacier field that would have pulled a lot of rock from the cliffs in Traisum onto the Karys plains beneath the cliffs -- at a minimum -- if not significantly obstructed the portal.

Mil-tech bard wrote:Peter Z,

As for this --

The other side of the portal into Karys intrigues me. Was it more completely blocked by the mountain? If so, the force of air pressure beating down on the mountain from Traisum trying to flow into Karys must have done something. If there are some openings from that side into Karys but narrower/smaller, those openings would have gotten magnified effect of the atmospheric transfer.

As to the water condensing in Karys. The wind likely blew it into Traisum like snot through a violently blown nose. The freezing water did its own number on the mountain. The broader area in Karys would have gotten drier as atmospheric water was transferred into Traisum for a century

.


You are making the same mistake I did earlier.

The atmospheric gas flow is from Karys ===> Traisum.

Condensation air wouldn't occur until the higher pressure Karys air entered the higher elevation on Traisum.

The issue at hand is whether the condensation was cooled enough to form ice.

If it was, and it did so for 100 years, we are looking at a local glacier field that would have pulled a lot of rock from the cliffs in Traisum onto the Karys plains beneath the cliffs -- at a minimum -- if not significantly obstructed the portal.

I know. I tried to edit and the site kicked my edits out.

Mil-tech bard wrote:Peter Z,

As for this --

The other side of the portal into Karys intrigues me. Was it more completely blocked by the mountain? If so, the force of air pressure beating down on the mountain from Traisum trying to flow into Karys must have done something. If there are some openings from that side into Karys but narrower/smaller, those openings would have gotten magnified effect of the atmospheric transfer.

As to the water condensing in Karys. The wind likely blew it into Traisum like snot through a violently blown nose. The freezing water did its own number on the mountain. The broader area in Karys would have gotten drier as atmospheric water was transferred into Traisum for a century

.


You are making the same mistake I did earlier.

The atmospheric gas flow is from Karys ===> Traisum.

Condensation air wouldn't occur until the higher pressure Karys air entered the higher elevation on Traisum.

The issue at hand is whether the condensation was cooled enough to form ice.

If it was, and it did so for 100 years, we are looking at a local glacier field that would have pulled a lot of rock from the cliffs in Traisum onto the Karys plains beneath the cliffs -- at a minimum -- if not significantly obstructed the portal.

Wouldn't the consideration be cool enough to keep Winter ice frozen over the Summer? If it is, then a glacier would form without summer temps getting cold enough to form ice. The ice formed in a winter exacerbated by the multiverses' biggest AC unit might form enough ice that some will survive the Summer. This would build quite well over a century.

Again, the play of ice and wind would do a number on the mountain. Getting back to the other side of the portal, is it completely blocked? Did the wind-ice storm knock down parts of the mountain that had completely blocked it at formation? The only textev I recall is something about the other side opening up into the heart of the mountain. That implies the other side is completely blocked.

PeterZ wrote:Getting back to the other side of the portal, is it completely blocked? Did the wind-ice storm knock down parts of the mountain that had completely blocked it at formation? The only textev I recall is something about the other side opening up into the heart of the mountain. That implies the other side is completely blocked.

It can't be completely blocked. There's this bit from the middle of the fight for Fort Salby

Hell Hath No Fury wrote:"They're coming back," Janaki repeated in that same otherworldly tone. "They're using their dragons to circle around the other aspect of the portal in Karys. Then they're going to use the western aspect in Traisum and swing wide, try to keep us from seeing them while they put cavalry on the ground."

So at least dragons can use the 'other' side of the portal.

But

Hell Hath No Fury wrote:the westernmost cliffs were quite a bit higher than those to the east. Wind erosion had softened and grooved the tops of those sheer walls until the pressures between the two sides of the portal had equalized, but the palisade of stone remained steeply and starkly unscalable.
 
Facing east into Traisum, from the opposite side of the portal, the cliffs were much shallower, and the wind screaming down the slopes beyond the cliffs' edges had carved deep ravines. The Sharonian construction engineers had taken advantage of that when they cut their road and "railroad" routes

So they're "unscalable"; which probably isn't literally true, but quite a bit harder to use that the approach used to make the Cut.
But still a penetration route for Arcanan aerial, or air-mobile,
raids. And the Arcanas still have to keep an eye on them because given motivation and enough explosives even unscalable cliffs can have breaches blown in them.

And Janaki compares the Aracana floaating transport pods to hot air balloons, so Sharona has at least that tech. You might be able to use balloon to drop troops and supplies down from those unscailable cliffs. Or if you've got balloons it's a small side-step to parachutes. But either way I don't think I'd care to try it.

And Janaki compares the Aracana floaating transport pods to hot air balloons, so Sharona has at least that tech. You might be able to use balloon to drop troops and supplies down from those unscailable cliffs. Or if you've got balloons it's a small side-step to parachutes. But either way I don't think I'd care to try it.

Why bother with hot air balloons when you can put in a cable car?

Cableway technology was used for excavation in railway right of ways from the 1860s onward.

A tramway cable car system to move men, equipment and draft animals from the top to the bottom of the cliffs would have been an early part of the Traisum cut engineering effort.

Once the Cable car was expanded to large capacity in the middle of the cut engineering effort, the exploration up-chain would have continued. Albeit at a limited, live off the land, pace.

As the cut neared completion, the cliff top to bottom cable car system would have had a great deal of excess capability to devote to the exploration effort up chain.

Once the cut was complete and the railway was building rail line up-chain, the cable car system would have been disassembled by the Trans Temporal Authority (TAA?) for possible use elsewhere.

There are significant story possibilities in terms of this equipment being available to the Sharonan's at Traisum.

Mil-tech bard wrote:

And Janaki compares the Aracana floaating transport pods to hot air balloons, so Sharona has at least that tech. You might be able to use balloon to drop troops and supplies down from those unscailable cliffs. Or if you've got balloons it's a small side-step to parachutes. But either way I don't think I'd care to try it.

Why bother with hot air balloons when you can put in a cable car?

Cableway technology was used for excavation in railway right of ways from the 1860s onward.

A tramway cable car system to move men, equipment and draft animals from the top to the bottom of the cliffs would have been an early part of the Traisum cut engineering effort.

Once the Cable car was expanded to large capacity in the middle of the cut engineering effort, the exploration up-chain would have continued. Albeit at a limited, live off the land, pace.

As the cut neared completion, the cliff top to bottom cable car system would have had a great deal of excess capability to devote to the exploration effort up chain.

Once the cut was complete and the railway was building rail line up-chain, the cable car system would have been disassembled by the Trans Temporal Authority (TAA?) for possible use elsewhere.

There are significant story possibilities in terms of this equipment being available to the Sharonan's at Traisum.

Cable car systems work when you can put in support towers at reasonable intervals, so the cable doesn't have to support the weight of the load plus the entire weight of the cable.

So they'd work fine for moving people and equipment up the slopes of the mountains on the Traisum sides of the portal.
But for moving people and goods down the roughly km high vertical cliff on the Karys side is a different matter. Only today, with carbon fiber rope, is anyone attempting to make a mine elevator cable capable of handling a single km-long shaft.


Without that advanced materials you need an indefeasibly thick cable to support the weight of the load plus the substantial weight of the free hanging cable. (Space elevator problem writ small)

Now you can do what most deep mines do, have you switch elevators part way down, to limit the total length of any one elevator's cable. But that takes some substatial engineering on an exposed cliff face - where you're vulnerable to magic from the Arcanan's in Karis. (Plus of course it's a length install job).

Hot air balloons (or zeppelins; if they come up with those) are a crummy long term solution. OTOH long term your military secures the Karis side and you can use the railroad with it's existing cut, to move supplies and troops forward. But in the short term they might be a way to sneak in troops to scout or harass the Arcanan forces.
But honestly I suspect that if railway artillery doesn't blow open the path through the cut that we'll see both sides dig in around that portal. Then the action would switch over to hte parallel Keysayr to Thermyn chain.

Once the Sharonan's can threaten Thermyn from that direction any Arcanans in Karis or Tailcham would have to retreat or risk getting cut off.

Fortunately, we are not aware of a portal that formed, say, 30 miles up. It would happily have sucked much of the air out of the multiverse for a long distance.