Question: What was the decision on the bridge debate? I guess it looks like you're keeping the bridge on the main road to Pela, but what about these other two south and northeast? (Sorry if I missed this in the project post somewhere.)
Question: I'm also a little confused about the scale of the planning. How much bigger (or not) is the city planned to be than the current one? How large are these things I assume are docks?
Opinion: I'm sure the little island things in the southwest corner are realistic for river formation, but I feel like it makes it make less sense for the corsairs to attack the city when they can't even bring their ships up to it.
Answer to question one: The main problem ppl often have with the bridges is that it is referred in lore that
"And there men of Lamedon contested the fords with fell folk of Umbar and Harad..." [Return of the King - The Last Debate], but it is very illogical that the main crossing connecting the east and west of Gondor dose not have a bridge and just cus there are references to fords dose that not invalidate a bridge. Bridges and fords are not uncommon to run hand in hand. So we will be going with that for the main road. To compensate this we will be having quite a few fords as well, which is those other crossing you saw. The dark blue are fords and the gray are bridges.
Answer to question two: In terms of scale so is it quite similar to the current one, the other walls of the panning and the outer walls of the current Linhir more or less match. And as far as in terms of docks so at the moment is that something we wont have and i elaborate more on this in my next point.
Response: So, Linhir itself dose not have a lot of lore. We do on the other hand get quite a bit in terms or the surroundings, especially the rivers. First lets establish somethings: as said before, one of the things we know specifically about Linhir is the abundance of fords used to cross the river. But another very imortant quite to take into consideration is:
“Though Serni was the shorter river, its name was continued to the sea after its confluence with Gilrain. Its mouth was blocked with shingles, and at any rate in later times ships approaching Anduin and making for Pelargir went by the eastern side of Tol Falas and took the sea-way passage made by the Númenóreans in the midst of the Delta of Anduin.” [Unfinished Tales - Index]
From this we get some quite interesting information; the Serni is super clogged up with shingles, so much that boats and ships dont even go on the northern side of Tol Falas. The rockiness caused by the Serni and the mentioning of many fords in crossing the same river makes it seem like Linhir was most often if ever reachable by boats. If you now are wondering how a merchant rich city (as Linhir is made out to be in the project post) can succeed without the use if a water trade connection then a perfect example of this is Florence, hence why we've used that for inspiration in how we want to construct Linhir.
In regards to the corsair point. I feel like it's worth noting that the men of Lamedon were
"contested the fords" which makes it seem like they either they tried crossing the river (which seems weird if they sailed up it), or that they could not sail further up because of the fords and now the fighting takes place where they essentially got stopped. This point gets even more confusing when we introduce the fact that when Aragon and crew arrived
"But defenders and foes alike gave up the battle and fled when we came, crying out that the King of the Dead was upon them." [Return of the King - The Last Debate] and that the gray company together with Angbor pursue these deserting attacker, meaning that they fled towards Pelargir. With all of this, to me, it makes sense that no major docks should be present at Linhir, there is so much in lore that makes it seem like Linhir was near or closer to impossible to reach with ships. We do tho on the other hand have smaller fishing villages planed to be places along the river seeing as we are quite close to the the Ethir where we know fisherfolk lived:
“[Listing of captains of Gondor who have come to defend Minas Tirith] Fisher-folk of the Ethir" [The Lord of the Rings - Minas Tirith] so it is not quite the leap in logic to think that they may have lived some closer to Linhir as well.
Hope this spread a bit of light on the lore situation and our planning and consideration around it. There exist some more points on the rivers and Linhir, but a bit more theoretical and more in the realm of: "That's interesting" more then accuracy useful here.