Changing the Armun Ashes buffer zones (ANT South Merge)

[Yeti]

We have these sections open in order to polish them to 100 percent completion (or as close as reasonably possible) before moving on and opening new sections. That means retooling the exterior until we as a project are satisfied with it.

And no, We have made tons of progress in the past year, completely changing the structure of our workflow and developing compelling concepts and plans for what were before major road blocks, such as the identity of House Indoril. Virtually every single thread posted in Master Planning and each of the Sections was created in the last year - a testament to an explosion in organizational progress. I too would like to see these plans translate into more CS progress, and we are trying to move in that direction.

[Gnomey]

I hopped into the CS and took stock of the terrain, and figured I might as well post my initial thoughts. I mostly made the following maps to establish a sort of internal logic and plan for my changes, so they're not terribly legible. Hopefully, taken together, they get the point across.

Here is an overview of Andothren-Thirr incorporating my idea for the buffer zone:
[url=http://i.imgur.com/Y58vEqY.png][img]http://i.imgur.com/Y58vEqYl.png[/img][/url]
Ascadian Isles rock (pale) - some low cliffs, but mostly mountains and ridges
Ashland rock (black) - ridges; hard to see on the map but unimportant
Beaches (slightly darker than AI) - more or less looks like vanilla AI coastline
Grazeland rock (light brown) - mostly cliffs

Here is the map with a few annotations:
[url=http://i.imgur.com/HJI7DMs.png][img]http://i.imgur.com/HJI7DMsl.png[/img][/url]
A - AI rock bridges
B - GL rock pillars
C - OM ruin of former Indoril castle-estate? Edit: I just realized this location is right next to a Dwemer ruin, so disregard; I'll find another spot for this.
D - tunnel
white box - rough area I will be working on for this proposal
red lines and numbers - rough analogues to sasquatch's images, as far as I understand them
blue lines - small network of paths leading to the OM ruin

The last map shows the important geological features of Andothren-Thirr as dictated by the aforementioned internal logic:
[url=http://i.imgur.com/R6mRcjx.png][img]http://i.imgur.com/R6mRcjxl.png[/img][/url]
-pink is a (mostly dried-out) drainage basin whose waters drained into the Thirr. Currently the only planned remnants of the watershed are the long, shallow canyon stream, a small pool and a short stub of a Thirr tributary.
-blue is a plateau within the drainage basin consisting mostly of a fairly long canyon. This is what I will mostly be working on for now.
-pale blue shows a series of weathering-resistant rock formations which dictate the flow of the Thirr where it opens up into the Inner Sea, hopefully somewhat explaining the odd shape of the Thirr River Delta. (Keeping in mind that the delta looking halfway natural is more important than it actually making geological sense).
-white lines represent deep, narrow channels through which most of the water from the Thirr empties out into the Inner Sea.
-cyan represents the slower arm of the Thirr River Delta, whose waters are shallow and slow.
-light brown represents the mountain range which mostly consists of hard AI rock over soft GL rock. Where the GL rock has been removed through weathering, the AI rock either forms large rock bridges or has collapsed. At its southernmost point it descends into rolling foothills.

Edit: just to avoid any misunderstanding, the only actual changes to the terrain in the above map are limited to the buffer zone and Thirr River Delta. Some limited changes to the rest of the GL drainage basin could be considered, but I'll only get into that after I complete the buffer zone, and the changes are not strictly necessary. Everything else would remain as it is now.

[Yeti]

Ascadian Isles rock (pale) - some low cliffs, but mostly mountains and ridges
Ashland rock (black) - ridges; hard to see on the map but unimportant
Beaches (slightly darker than AI) - more or less looks like vanilla AI coastline
Grazeland rock (light brown) - mostly cliffs

I don't know if I'm colorblind or if the fault lies with my computer monitor, but I can only discern two distinct colors on your map, Gnomey: gray and tan. From what you've written, however, your plan sounds good to me. Are you using Ashland rocks for the bulk of the buffer zone, or Ascadian Island rocks?

[sasquatch2o]

Nice work gnomey!

[Gnomey]

I don't know if I'm colorblind or if the fault lies with my computer monitor, but I can only discern two distinct colors on your map, Gnomey: gray and tan.

I seem to be rather bad with colours when it comes to my maps. I tried to keep to the accurate colours when making the above map, to give an idea of how the region would look like. It's little surprise that the colours ended up blending in too well.
I did manage to find some time today to make a more legible map, though:

[url=http://i.imgur.com/LAqAPOU.png][img]http://i.imgur.com/LAqAPOUl.png[/img][/url]

White outlines: Ascadian Isles rock. As you can see, most of the buffer zone would consist of a range of AI mountains. The probable locations of the highest peaks are shown on the map.
The dashed outlines indicate the rough location of overhanging rock; they are naturally in the same locations as 'A' in the earlier post.
The locations where the outline is replaced with parallel strokes represent more gradual slopes.
Yellow outlines: Grazeland cliffs. The side with the small strokes is the clifftop, or more generally the higher elevation.
Purple outlines: Ashland rock.
Brown lines: The foothills in the south. I'm not sure if I'd do anything, here; they belong more to the Othreleth Woods heightmap.
Red outlines: An outline of the Thirr River Delta, to give a clearer idea of its shape.
Blue strokes: As with the third map in my last post, these show how the elevation around the delta affects the flow of the Thirr and the shape of the delta.

[Yeti]

Cool, I agree with all of your suggestions. I look forward to seeing how it ends up looking in the CS.

[Gnomey]

I got around to working on the file again. I started in the North and am moving southwards, just sorting out the basic layout and large statics. As I'm lazy, I'll just link to [url=http://imgur.com/a/3eSmW#3]an album[/url] with a top-down view of (most of) the area I worked on, as well as some rather dull screenshots.

I also added some pathgrids to some of the narrower paths; this map shows their approximate routes:

[url=http://i.imgur.com/AwqljsE.png][img]http://i.imgur.com/AwqljsEl.png[/img][/url]

I'm thinking of putting the OM ruin just out of frame in the AI range and northwest of the Oran Plantation. It would command a view over most of the Thirr River Valley, and would by extension be clearly visible from the Oran plantation (with distant land); I'm hoping to create a nice contrast between the withered husk of Indoril power and the newly established Hlaalu power, but it could just end up looking silly.