Final Quest #11

If I were Picknose, I'd tunnel under the pole, and hopefully hook up with the old cavern from Guttlekraw's day. You'd really only have to tunnel under the *ocean * in that small "ice bridge" area connecting IceHolt to Junsland - but still yeah, that's one crazy feat for guys armed with hand pickaxes. Did Two-Edge leave behind some of those steam powered thingies behind after the Shards War. Maybe they repurposed some of that.

Uhm, our seas are like really, really deep, and a tunnel needs be more than a few meter even deeper (otherwise the weight of the ocean will crush through the tunnels and flood them. I call this bullshit

Well... yeah!

Miss Gillespie wrote:

So the elves went to Drub's as well as Picknose's kingdom to get them to the old lair (at least Picknose got there). Since both kingdoms were on under the new continent, Picknose seems to have successfully tunnelled under the vast deep ocean. In an astonishing short amount of time  

This is not an inconsistency, it's a feat!

I don't think they went to Drub to ask her to return to the Holt, but to tell her that there'd be a vacancy in Picky's old kingdom. Seems the rest of Picky's trolls had gotten so lazy none of them cared about claiming the throne themselves.

As for the tunnel; I'm pretty sure Two-Edge made that during the Long Wait - how else would he get from the rubble of Blue Mountain to the Citadel Mound? Pretty sure he didn't inherit any Glider traits from his mother - giving him plenty of time to build it.

No matter how much of a mad genius Two-Edge might be, I find the notion, that he all on his own dug a tunnel through the vast "deep" ocean even harder to swallow than a 'blitz'-tunnel by Picknose. Sure, fantasy needs a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, but one person can't do that even if s/he is immortal and has 10.000 years on hand.
Two-Edge not only didn't know where the wolfriders are, he had absolutely no way of knowing the geographic features of Abode. He couldn't have possibly known to dig for how deep, for how long in which direction and when to head for the surface again. Even if he somehow developed the machines and devices for deep surface underground digging (takes much time to design, construct and master). And had the necessary supplies (food and oxygen).

I'd rather assume he built a ship (didn't he dredge up his mother at some point?)

It's possible that he tunnelled overland, isn't it? Tbh, the continents on the abode according to the map show a land bridge between the frozen mountains and the new land hemisphere, similar to the theorized landbridge to North America in the Bering strait(a possible migration pattern for Indigenous Americans, but only one of many, tbh).

kathleen3.0 wrote:

It's possible that he tunnelled overland, isn't it? Tbh, the continents on the abode according to the map show a land bridge between the frozen mountains and the new land hemisphere, similar to the theorized landbridge to North America in the Bering strait(a possible migration pattern for Indigenous Americans, but only one of many, tbh).

That's the only possible explanation.

How would he be able to do that though? I can't figure it out. I wonder if any rock shapers were involved....

Miss Gillespie wrote:

Uhm, our seas are like really, really deep, and a tunnel needs be more than  a few meter even deeper (otherwise the weight of the ocean will crush through the tunnels and flood them. I call this bullshit

I know when i lived in San Francisco that you could take the subway from there to Oakland (the east bay) and the subway cut UNDER the bay. Your ears would get all plugged up as the train went under. So I think it's possible... but to be honest, i have no idea how deep it is...it's right on the Pacific Ocean so it can't be very shallow. Who only knows how long it would take in vast deep waters to have such an expedition. But the trolls are quite industrious and I would imagine by now they MUST have SOME technology. Didn't Drub and her group have some steampunky device in Widlhunt?

Zadzi wrote:

Miss Gillespie wrote:

Uhm, our seas are like really, really deep, and a tunnel needs be more than  a few meter even deeper (otherwise the weight of the ocean will crush through the tunnels and flood them. I call this bullshit

I know when i lived in San Francisco that you could take the subway from there to Oakland (the east bay) and the subway cut UNDER the bay. Your ears would get all plugged up as the train went under. So I think it's possible... but to be honest, i have no idea how deep it is...it's right on the Pacific Ocean so it can't be very shallow. Who only knows how long it would take in vast deep waters to have such an expedition. But the trolls are quite industrious and I would imagine by now they MUST have SOME technology. Didn't Drub and her group have some steampunky device in Widlhunt?

Yes, but they knew how long and how deep they would need to make the tunnel in SF. It's pretty obvious neither trolls nor elves have any idea of how wide the Vastdeep ocean is. Also oceans can have deep trenches and they would have no way of knowing about anything like that. And we're talking thousands of miles if Littletrill couldn't fly over it. It's a logistical impossibility. Even with modern technology we couldn't build a tunnel from, say, the U.S. To Australia.

And how did they contact Picknose? His kingdom is near the capital of the Angrif's kingdom (or at least the city where the old Djun used to reign) and the forest where the elves used to live is chopped down...
The trolls there have even to cope with the fact, that the humans know there is something down there. It's easy to imagine they would like to explore the mystery.

Mender and Dart say, they went there on wolfback...

Miss Gillespie wrote:

No matter how much of a mad genius Two-Edge might be, I find the notion, that he all on his own dug a tunnel through the vast "deep" ocean even harder to swallow than a 'blitz'-tunnel by Picknose. Sure, fantasy needs a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, but one person can't do that even if s/he is immortal and has 10.000 years on hand.
Two-Edge not only didn't know where the wolfriders are, he had absolutely no way of knowing the geographic features of Abode. He couldn't have possibly known to dig for how deep, for how long in which direction and when to head for the surface again. Even if he somehow developed the machines and devices for deep surface underground digging (takes much time to design, construct and master). And had the necessary supplies (food and oxygen).

I'd rather assume he built a ship (didn't he dredge up his mother at some point?)

Maybe he actually had some of the old Frozen Mountain Trolls with him. Would also explain how it could go from only three trolls in the New Land; Picknose, Oddbit, and Maggotty - Trinket having been taken away in the Palace - and then just 500 years later: giant troll clan!
But of course that'd mean they'd arrived within those 500 years...

I always figured Trolls in general had been digging since the beginning, smaller soft tunnels at first (as they were small and had no tools), and progressively made larger, straighter tunnels through harder materials as their technology improved.  Rockshapers were also known early on (as the tunnel from the Palace/Frozen Mountains to the Father Tree Forest was created before the 2000 year-after-crash mark, and that tunnel was LONG).

While the smaller, softer tunnels would more than likely not exist anymore (except perhaps in sandstone, or those that were useful enough to reinforce, but they wouldnt be recognized as such), later tunnels would remain throigh rocky areas.  There doesnt appear to be much plate tectonics on WoTM (indeed, the only activity we see is near Sorrow's End), so other than flooding and mineralization, there wouldnt be a reason why old tunnels couldnt be reused in an ever expanding network that would eventually cover the world.

Shoot, I look around the area I live and see how vast of a network of tunnels the "gravedigger" ground squirrels have made in a decade.  Without tools more than claws they have dug an uncountable thousands of miles of tunnels as far as I can see in all directions, and they are tiny and unorganized. They werent even here at all a few decades ago when I grew up, now Im falling into their pits everywhere.

Tunneling underwater is industrious, though. Id assume they (or an original earlier group) would have followed the shallow bedrock of a land bridge or archepeligo (sorry, no spellchecker). These would be the lease risky routes with the lease distance underwater, but most potential areas like this would be "up north" if I recall the globe map right.

Of course, we are talking about Picknose, right? He's braved the elements before, he might have found or made a boat (or since they are Trolls, a submarine? Lol) crossed the vastdeep (perhaps many times) and only had to dig tunnels from the coast.

I think they went across the one land passage