Moria - Stage 2: Idea collecting and fine planning

[SKy_the_Thunder]

Mirrors sound like a plausible idea, after all there is a texture Despot deemed a "Mirror Block". What would you make lenses out of? Just plain glass?

Do we have plain glass? The kind without frames would be best for a lense, since it works best when made in one piece.
If we'd go with my glass orb it really doesn't matter though - a polished ball of metal, an array of crystals or even a disco ball would do the job just as well as any kind of (clear) glass...

 

[Finrod_Amandil]

Do we have plain glass? The kind without frames would be best for a lense, since it works best when made in one piece.
If we'd go with my glass orb it really doesn't matter though - a polished ball of metal, an array of crystals or even a disco ball would do the job just as well as any kind of (clear) glass...

As Mandos already did in the Ballroom of the Summer Event theatre, ice looks pretty good for both bigger mirrors and glass things

 

[Beathaven]

Is this discussion for real or is it the most top kek banter i've seen on here?

 

[Fornad]

The whole discussion about food is moot, given this quote from The Peoples of Middle-earth:

"Thus there grew up in those regions the economy, later characteristic of the dealings of Dwarves and Men (including Hobbits): Men became the chief providers of food, as herdsmen, shepherds, and land- tillers, which the Dwarves exchanged for work as builders, roadmakers, miners, and the makers of things of craft, from useful tools to weapons and arms and many other things of great cost and skill."

In essence, the food eaten in Moria all came from the rich farmlands in the Vales of Anduin - there's simply no way you could support a population the size of Moria's without extensive farmlands.

 

[Finrod_Amandil]

The whole discussion about food is moot, given this quote from The Peoples of Middle-earth:

"Thus there grew up in those regions the economy, later characteristic of the dealings of Dwarves and Men (including Hobbits): Men became the chief providers of food, as herdsmen, shepherds, and land- tillers, which the Dwarves exchanged for work as builders, roadmakers, miners, and the makers of things of craft, from useful tools to weapons and arms and many other things of great cost and skill."

In essence, the food eaten in Moria all came from the rich farmlands in the Vales of Anduin - there's simply no way you could support a population the size of Moria's without extensive farmlands.

Awesome find; however is there a clear reference given that this quote applies for Moria and not for e.g. Erebor (It could still be relevant of course, but Im curious)

 

[Fornad]

Awesome find; however is there a clear reference given that this quote applies for Moria and not for e.g. Erebor (It could still be relevant of course, but Im curious)

The quote is specifically about the Longbeards in the early Second Age, and Moria was obviously their capital and chief settlement at the time.

 

[Beathaven]

Snip 1.

Snip 2.

Fornad just single handedly rekt this weird discussion. +1000 for you sir *tips fedora*

 

[Portalrules333]

Fornad just single handedly rekt this weird discussion. +1000 for you sir *tips fedora*

And it's a good thing too.....I would've found extensive farmlands just outside Moria or, god forbid, INSIDE Moria to be a wee bit strange.

 

[Ardelenia]

I would still like to know how the orcs get food? Although it is clear now that they wouldnt have any large scale farming built off of dwarven ruins, like my previous suggestion.
It would still be cool to have "repurposed" or taken-over workshops etc.

 

[Beathaven]

Dude

Dude, dont even start again

 

[Portalrules333]

I would still like to know how the orcs get food? Although it is clear now that they wouldnt have any large scale farming built off of dwarven ruins, like my previous suggestion.
It would still be cool to have "repurposed" or taken-over workshops etc.

I would imagine that some orcs would have the job of leaving Moria for awhile to pillage villages and steal food from farms. Also, some of their diet could possibly consist of dead orc...but that's just speculation.

 

[Bombur8]

Can I suggest a new idea I just had for the Bridge of Khazad-dûm ? In order to get a thinner walkway on the bridge but keep the same general look, I figured we could use the quartz blocks on the upper edge, which would result in this kind of shape :

On the other hand, I'm really you retained my idea for the commercial way, but I noticed some issues in its implementation: I mean, the purpose of this way is to be larger than the bridge in order to manage the passage of carts or animals, but there are some places where the way is thinner than the bridge, which doesn't make sense. Most of the time, it's explainable by collapses, but not when there are arches. I think the arches should always be at least three blocks wide. I spotted some problematic locations :

Spoiler

One last thing, about the new trading hall: I don't understand why there is so much rubble on the floor while the roof is still intact . . .

 

[Despot666]

Arches could be bigger ye.

Not sure about bridge.

About rubble. Presence of rubble from earthquakes, age, enviroment is logical. Now look at the celling. Guess what above it. Stone? Nope, air in many places. You can ask me anything but i won't be doing splatter destrucion of celling in the halls. Because it has to be done by hand, voxel wont help here. Each hall. By hand. Times > 500. Just no.
We can have either weird and clean halls without rubble and with perfect celling (not so realistic) or much better looking halls with rubble and intact celling. I prefer the second one.

 

[Lorcogoth]

Clothing should be done by the dwarven "Ladies" at home, like every medieval society, clothing industry means that they actually had steam power, automatic spinning wheel etc, and tons of coal for make that industry works (steam power uses quite a lot of coal for work, just think about the lungs cancer increased by over 2000% in 150 years in the UK), and the CO2, CO generated by the combustion of fossil fuels in a city built in mountain, will probably wipe them all, since even a dwarven areation system (that doesn't have any type of fan) can't hold a mass production of CO2 already generated by the people, forging and melting, the lighting system (probably that counts thousands of braziers), all the fire in the city for cook and warm the living quarters. And most of all all this combustion you need a lot of Oxygen.

I get what you mean with this but they could have used water to power all those machines and even then what about the expensive clothing the gold embroided mantels, silken scarfs for the ladies and other luxury clothing types.
Those would have a workshop or even a guild somewhere in the center of the city. talking about this there should be a guildbuilding for the different kind of jobs that people had.

I also had an idea, the city was massive both in population as in industry so what if there was a channel system going around the city and the mines with advanced (and now broken) elevator systems for transportation of goods and people.
the channel could currently be mostly dry and used as a way to move through moria because of some breaches in the channel walls where the water spills out into the lower areas which are flooded as a result of this. the water itself could come from an underground river and also solves the problem of having no nearby drinking water in the city.

 

[Despot666]

I wanted to have some steam machines but this idea was torpedo'ed by other staff members .

Flooding halls is problematic because of slabs, stairs and glass panes. Either full blocks or no flood.

 

[Lorcogoth]

so I saw that channels where already suggested but think about how they would work.
you would need three levels, the highest level would be for supplying water to the house holds and workshops and would have the least flow of the three levels. then there would need to a big channel for transportation around the street level this would be very wide a but kinda shallow the rafts that would be used would move by have large chains moving just below the surface so that you could use the power of the water itself (most of this would be destroyed or degraded over time). then the lower level would be for sewage with channels the same size as the highest level but with a faster flow (these would be mostly intact while the highest level would be almost competely destroyed or ran out of water).

One of the things that I found unrealistic after exploring Old Moria was: where did all the food for the dwarrows (dwarves) come from? Sure some would have been imported through the West Gate, but there were hundreds of years before they built that and it would also be hugely impractical to ship it all so far. There are no major settlements near the East Gate to import food from, and no Dwarven farming/ agricultural settlements aboveground nearby. With this in mind, I present the Dwarven Sustenance Production plan:

I have seen some people and lotr games (mostly the total war mod) say that the dwarves breed pigs because they both solve most of the waste problem with underground cities, don't really care about lack of sunlight and don't take a lot of space. Also explains why Gimli is always talking about the roasted pork legs.

Regarding the underground river thing. there are some really big undergound rivers and they go very deep aswell but they are very hard to used at lower depth because most of the time they are under great pressure but it would make sense to put the forge and foundry levels in the lower levels of the cities (because they vaporize water with the cooling) and maybe the dwarves had some kind of big "steam valve" where they vaporized most of the water using natural heat from the earth and sending the steam throught a long chimney like structure which they then in turn used to warm the living area of the city. so channels are an option altough it would take a lot of work making all of this.

 

[Finrod_Amandil]

-snip-

Channels: As said somwhere earlier: The main problem there is how a useable amount of water for channels gets to the higher areas; only from melting snow (which only occurs in summer) and occasional rain you definitely don't get enough water to make channels. This means you would need some kind of pump to get the water maybe from the Silverlode up there. That would make this kind of transportation very arduous to maintain and other ways (carts or animals) would be easier. In areas that are below the ground level it would be possible though.

Main food supply was resolved too somewhere: Men living in the Vale of the Anduin provide tradeable goods (especially crops). To keep some independency surely livestock breeding and maybe even some small farming (light issue is also resolved a few posts earlier) may well still be done.

 

[DSESGH]

Regarding the underground river thing. there are some really big undergound rivers and they go very deep aswell but they are very hard to used at lower depth because most of the time they are under great pressure but it would make sense to put the forge and foundry levels in the lower levels of the cities (because they vaporize water with the cooling) and maybe the dwarves had some kind of big "steam valve" where they vaporized most of the water using natural heat from the earth and sending the steam throught a long chimney like structure which they then in turn used to warm the living area of the city. so channels are an option altough it would take a lot of work making all of this.

The thing is that caves are always around 60 or 65 degrees fahrenheit, regardless of whether it's winter or summer. In real life, people use underground temperature to heat and cool their house (geothermal power). Besides this, the dwarves would probably have adapted to enjoy this temperature (if they didn't in the first place) because they have lived underground for ages.

I have seen some people and lotr games (mostly the total war mod) say that the dwarves breed pigs because they both solve most of the waste problem with underground cities, don't really care about lack of sunlight and don't take a lot of space. Also explains why Gimli is always talking about the roasted pork legs.

In the Middle Ages, meat was extremely expensive; it was so expensive that only the nobility could afford it. Therefore, I don't think it would be logical to raise pigs as the main source of food. In fact, since Gimli must have been some type of nobility (he was a direct descendant of Durin) he probably ate meat all the time. He may have even been showing off his status to the rest of the Fellowship by talking about meat.

Sorry if this post sounds unfriendly in any way; it wasn't intended to be. When I was new on this server, I often didn't mention ideas because I didn't like having them rejected. The fact is, we really want to have new ideas, and rejection of some of the ideas is really just part of the discussion
By the way, welcome to MCME!

 

[Lorcogoth]

In the Middle Ages, meat was extremely expensive; it was so expensive that only the nobility could afford it. Therefore, I don't think it would be logical to raise pigs as the main source of food. In fact, since Gimli must have been some type of nobility (he was a direct descendant of Durin) he probably ate meat all the time. He may have even been showing off his status to the rest of the Fellowship by talking about meat.

Sorry if this post sounds unfriendly in any way; it wasn't intended to be. When I was new on this server, I often didn't mention ideas because I didn't like having them rejected. The fact is, we really want to have new ideas, and rejection of some of the ideas is really just part of the discussion
By the way, welcome to MCME!

no problem I understand that having a construtive argument can be kinda aggresive. And thank you,(did have a account on the mc server before but i lost the account after one of those big leaks due to hackers).
regarding the meat discussion since Moria was considered to be one of the richest cities in middle-earth the whole meat thing makes sense even if just for this city.

back to construction ideas what about multifunctional pillar pillar that are a bit bigger but hollow with things like guild halls and maybe barracks for the city guards. pillar would got up and down several levels so that the city guard could easily get to multiple levels and the guild halls would easily transport materials manpower and finished goods along several level straight from production to the market/living quarters levels.

 

[Tyranystrasz]

Since the lore is not known for this stuff i would make some iphotesis for the food, since khazad dum (as the lore said) was closed to everyone after the fall of eregion. But we know that dwarves drink a lot of alcholic beverage like beer, so they must had crops for wheat opf and barley, i'm not speaking about other dwarven cities since they have open trades like thorin's hall erebor etc. So or they had some field to crop outside (probably not since the city was closed to the others) or inside the mountain (that's also weird because they needed a lot of light, dirt to bring inside etc.) The best ipothesis i have read is that they breed animals like porks or animals that can live without a lot of light and they need tp est for grow anyway(the ipotesis is from third age total war and orzammar of dragon age with their nugs) it's probably true and realistic that they had a water supplies system for forging drink etc.