wherry
1 · What I want to see here
At Wherry the road comes down to the river from the south and goes on again from the far bank, and there is nothing between the two ends of it but water. On the near side the ferryman's house stands by the landing with its door on the road; one boat is tied at the landing and a second is out in midstream. The far landing has a hut, a post and a stack of barrels waiting to come over. The river is wide and slow and on its way round a bend: it comes in low on the west side of the map and leaves high on the east, and the crossing is on the one straight reach between. The two banks are different countries: cleared and trodden on the south, where the house is, and woods down to the water's edge on the north.
2 · How to show it
- A crossing with no bridge: the same road, the same width, at the same columns, on both banks, each end widening into a landing at the water and stopping. The eye joins them and finds nothing there.
- A ferry and not a ford: boats, one of them caught halfway over.
- Somebody makes a living at it: a kept house on the near bank with its door to the road, goods stacked on the far bank waiting.
- Two countries: the south bank is stumps, a haystack and open grass, the north bank is trees with their feet nearly in the river.
3 · What it needs
- a river right across the map, wide enough that it could not be jumped
- boats, at least two, one in mid-river
- mooring posts at both landings
- a lived-in house for the ferryman
- a hut on the far side
- barrels and covered goods
- stumps on the cleared bank
- a haystack
- a well
- dense trees on the far bank
- Not in the pack: The rope. A ferry like this is hauled along a cable strung bank to bank and that cable is the picture of the thing; nothing in the pack can be stretched across water.
- Not in the pack: A landing stage. Both landings are bare earth running to the bank. The plank flooring on the water sheet would do it, as a ground layer the renderer does not have.
- Not in the pack: A ferry. The only boat is a rowing boat; a cart is not crossing in it.
- Not in the pack: A river that bends like a river. It bends now - inside corners, 2026-10-09 - but in steps of one square every four, so both banks are staircases with their corners rounded off. No shoal on the inside of the bend, no undercut on the outside.
- Not in the pack: A bell or a horn to call the ferryman, a signboard with the fare, people.
4 · The arrangement
A road cut by a band. The river is the band, east to west; the road is the line it cuts, north to south, and everything that matters is where they meet. Each bank has a landing at the road end. The near landing is the bigger one and has the house. Away from the road the two banks are filled differently on purpose.
5 · What that means in (x, y)
40 x 30 squares. The river is seven squares from bank to bank all the way across. On the straight reach, cols 10-27, it is rows 12-18. West of that it steps down a row at a time - rows 13-19 for cols 6-9, 14-20 for cols 2-5, 15-21 at the edge - and east of it steps up: rows 11-17 for cols 28-31, 10-16 for cols 32-35, 9-15 for cols 36-39. Every step is one row and every tread at least two squares, which is as tight as an inside corner can be written. The first and last rows are bank, so there are five of open water, and a river narrower than that reads as a ditch beside a three-square road. The road is cols 18-20 on both banks so that it lines up across the water. The north landing is rows 9-11, cols 15-23; the south landing is rows 19-21, cols 14-25. One boat is on row 17, the last row of open water, beside the south landing; the other is on row 14 and off to the east of the road line, because a boat exactly on the line would look like a bridge with a piece missing. The ferryman's house is at cols 22-25, rows 21-23, and the earth is carried round under its door on row 24.
7 · What it looks like
Read this against the paragraph at the top. That comparison is the only check that catches a map which is perfectly valid and is of nowhere.
6 · What was actually written
The same two grids as flat colour — earth, grass, and a block for every footprint. Anything in the render that is not here, the translation invented.
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What is in it
| 15 | tree_pine | tree living conifer large |
| 11 | tree_small | tree living small |
| 10 | tree_green | tree living broadleaf large |
| 5 | barrel | prop goods barrel |
| 5 | stump_cut | prop stump felled |
| 4 | stump | prop stump |
| 3 | tree_small_dark | tree living small conifer |
| 2 | mooring_post | prop post boat |
| 2 | boat | prop boat |
| 1 | hut_clay | building ruin clay doorway |
| 1 | goods_covered | prop goods covered |
| 1 | house_orange | building intact window doorway |
| 1 | haystack | prop hay work |
| 1 | well_clay | prop well clay landmark |