My understanding is that a person can walk about twenty miles in one day. True?
If so, is that sun-up to sun-down travel? What about if they traveled well into the night as well? What about if they were on horse back? Would they cover more ground then? How much ground can one cover on horseback if they were in a good trot or run?
Also, would a kingdom that measures about 160 x 220 miles seem large or small or normal?
FInally, say we have a tower measuring over a thousand feet in height. From how far away, assuming it lies in the middle of a very large plane, would it be visible to an observer on the ground.
How about someone looking towards it from a cliff high in the mountains? Would they still see it from sixty or seventy miles away?
And just how far might someone standing on the top of said tower be able to see? fifty miles? Eighty? (I know that from the top of the Empire State building one can see for almost eighty miles on a clear day)....
Okay...that was more than one question. Sorry. But any input is greatly appreciated.
Z.
Your kingdom is about more than a third of the size of the current United Kingdom, about one-sixth the size of current France, but more than 2.5 times the size of the Netherlands. That would make it medium-sized, I guess.
It also helps me determine how far one could expect to see from the tower I referenced which is a fairly important object early in the book. If 20 miles is the limit per day but I want a large kingdom, then it's going to take many, many days to get across it.
Just looking for feedback....
Horseback at a dead run, you travel about 25 miles per hour. This pace is not sustainable for more than eight hours or so, and you will have to trade out a horse at a post. If you're not horse-swapping, you should only travel about 15 miles an hour. This would allow you to travel all day, but the horse would need about 15-20 minutes of grooming at the end of the day and a lunch-break in the middle.
Visibility (as far as seeing a giant tower) would generally depend on visibility. On a clear day you could probably see the tower at 20 miles tops. From a mountain top or high in the air at about 40 miles. Also, in a hilly kingdom you wouldn't be able to see it more than 5 or 6 miles.
From the top of the tower, you can expect to see large landmarks (mountains and such) from anywhere between 40 to 80 miles.
[This message has been edited by JBShearer (edited March 24, 2004).]
quote:
Horseback at a dead run, you travel about 25 miles per hour.
However, because the aerodynamic properties of their horns decrease air resistence, unicorns can travel at up to 30mph for extended periods.
But then, all of this is just details. Details are only really important when they have a direct effect upon your story - like the others have mentioned, if this isn't some matter of precise time management, it's probably best to just say that it's "XXX days of travel" and be done with it. You don't ever have to give exact figures about the size of your kingdom if you don't want to (and in fact, they probably wouldn't have exact figures in a typical fantasy world), so people can't really jump on you for realism.
But then, you can do a lot of interesting things with events that occur on trips from point A to point B. For example, OSC's "Red Prophet" (very slight spoilers) wouldn't have happened if Alvin hadn't run into a group of Reds on the way to Hatrack River, and its events have had far-reaching effects on every book in the Alvin Maker series.
[This message has been edited by AeroB1033 (edited March 24, 2004).]
A person can follow any pattern of travel whatsoever, traveling at night, traveling all day, using time travel to travel for the same day about a dozen times, using psionic powers to freeze time and or make it run backwards...you can have sun-up to sun-down travel if you like, or during the night, or on horseback.
A kingdom of any geographic size will have a population of some size and a given amount of wilderness area. Whether the cultivated land in the kingdom is sufficient to feed the population, the availability of transportation systems for all that food, and how much untracked wilderness is left over after both these have been subtracted will affect how large the country seems to its inhabitants.
If you have a tower that is in the center of a plane, then it will be visible from any distance, because you will not have a finite horizon.
However, you must take into account the difference between "visible" and "some joker just looking in that direction being able to spot it." Scale down the problem for a minute and place a one inch tall tower-shaped object about 27 feet away. How easy is it to see? Now try this in a smoke filled room to simulate atmospheric haze. You'll quickly find out that how wide the tower is matters quite a bit, as does the color and whether or not the tower is brightly lit.
Sitting at the bottom of a well at night, a human can see stars that may be hundreds of light-years distant. If one of those stars happens to be another galaxy...well then (in a well, no less)! You can't do much better than that from the top of any tower that doesn't poke out through the Earth's atmosphere.