Fish Roads of Kethaela

[Joerg Baumgartner]

I have a couple of scenario and campaign ideas for the fish roads, but while formulating these I came up with this catalogue of questions:

What is the extent of the fish roads on dry land?

How high do they arch up?

How do the boundaries of the fish road manifest? Do they look different from the inside?

Where is the Nochet terminus of the fish road – edit: At the Golod temple in the southeast.

What parts of Nochet are accessible for merfolk?

Does the road extend to Necropolis and/or Ezel?

In Backford, does the road extend to the temple of the Godking?

(unrelated, but also Backford: did the Godking’s bridge end here, or in Durengard, as shown on the map?)

Is all of Seapolis and the City of Wonders part of the fish road effect?

What other surface places would be part of the surface fish road effect for swimmers?

What happens if you stray out of the boundaries of the Fish Roads? Do you regain the ability to breathe normally once you return into the boundaries, or do you have to return to one of the termini to re-enter? Is there an abrupt boundary, or do you experience a gradual lessening of the effect?

Do the termini allow dry land access from the water, or do merfolk have to enter the fish roads at the Wonder Transfer in order to swim over dry land elsewhere, and travel the length of the fish roads?

If the termini allow crossing over from water onto dry land, would non-merfolk be able to dive through the termini and float/swim over land? Would they still have to resort to water-breathing devices while swimming? (The ludoch obviously don’t, or they would drown…)

Is/was there an organization (a magical order?) responsible for maintaining and repairing the fish roads? (Like exchanging boundary markers?)
The Syphon is the only river that possesses a Fish Road. Is this due to its salty water?

[Niall]

Can you explain what a fish road is please?

[Joerg Baumgartner]

All official information is in the Guide to Glorantha, most of it on p.254. (There is a small mention in the Nochet map pdf). Get the pdf in the shop for the map and the full description.

Fish roads are magical roads in the Holy Country, established by Belintar, the Godking. Basically they manifest as areas of sea bottom that can be walked by air-breathing land dwellers as if walking on dry ground (while being wet and fish and merfolk able to swim through or across them normally), and corresponding areas of dry land where sea dwellers can swim as if in water. There used to be four surface termini of the fish roads – in Nochet in Esrolia (at the temple of Golod, the fish god, in the southeastern part of Nochet), in Seapolis in the Rightarm Islands, and at Backford in the Syphon River. A central terminus was in the City of Wonders, or rather below it. From the Fish Road between Seapolis and the City of Wonders a branch goes off through the Troll Strait to Deeper, and onward to the deep ocean.

There is no information on how traveling on a Fish Road looks like. I expect that travelers who pass through one of the termini enter something similar to the shark tunnels in aquariums. The main difference is that the sharks (and other sea dwellers) don’t have to stop at the boundary but are able to swim right through the tunnel. as if it wasn’t there – because to them, there is no such tunnel.

For mermen or intelligent fish who want to visit the land there is bound to be a similar effect. The entire city of Seapolis appears to be under this effect, but only if a sea dweller enters through the terminus. Simply swimming into the canals of Seapolis doesn’t enable fish or merfolk to swim through the air.

An entire portion of the City of Wonders used to be like this, or (more likely) the entire dry area of the City of Wonders could be swum by sea dwellers entering through the central junction of the Fish Roads, the Wonder Transfer. I believe that the Wonder Transfer was an underwater city inhabited by humans and merfolk.

We don’t have a map of the dry parts accessible for sea dwellers using the Fish Roads.

[Harald Smith]

The terminus in Nochet, as you discovered, is the Temple of Golod. However, I believe the entry/exit extends slightly beyond that into the Fish Market and allows the merfolk to trade there.

As for Heortland, the Fish Road goes through Backford as it runs up the Syphon River. It was Belintar’s Rainbow Bridge that ended in Durengard.

I haven’t thought of specific aspects such as boundaries and appearance yet.

[Joerg Baumgartner]

I’d be disappointed if all the aquatics can visit is the fish market. The Guide explicitely says “When the God-King ruled it was not unusual to see a merman swimming through the air, as if it was water, alongside wagons creaking to market.” In the City of Wonders, this wouldn’t be special, and in Seapolis likely neither, but neither of these places is as likely to have its markets serviced by wagons as is Nochet.

As for Backford, I always pictured it occupying the south side of the Syphon only. Having a city on both sides of the river without at least a bridge would create what’s basically two twinned cities.

[Niall]

This is great. I’d never heard of this before.

[Author]

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