Crossing the Ocean

[Aotrs Commander]

The Not-Roman Empire, with a technology level of approiximately 1300AD, is sending a convoy of ships across the Not-Atlantic to its colony oversees.

What sort of ships would it use (I am not sailing ship person), and how long would it be expected to take? (Assume that there is at least one and probably more island re-supply points along the way.) Assume that, while magic exists, mundane technology must do all the work (unless magic absolutely has to be component for this to work at all).



The PCs will be inflitrating this convoy, and the starting point obviusly is to work out these basic sort of details!

[Aeson]

Try something like a carrack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrack) or a caravel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel) (these are about 1-2 centuries ahead of your target technological point, but they're the historical shiptypes in use when the Americas are discovered and begin to be colonized by Spain and Portugal); you could also go for something similar to the Viking longship. If the Not-Romans are a bit more technologically advanced, then galleons might be a possibility; if they're a bit less advanced, there's a theory that Carthaginian sailors reached South America in ships similar to triremes c.200BC. Total travel time would depend on winds, currents, where you departed from, and where you're trying to end up, but if the Not-Roman Empire's Not-Atlantic coastline is similar to the real world European coastline and is trying to cross a Not-Atlantic which is similar in scale to the real world Atlantic to reach something similar to the real world Americas, then I'd expect a total travel time of one to two months, if conditions are not too unfavorable. If you can use magic to make conditions favorable for the entirety of the trip, then you might be able to reduce travel times down to three or four weeks, or maybe two weeks if magic can make conditions very favorable for most or all of the trip.

[rs2excelsior]

Agreed on the ship types, they were the ones which historically made the crossing. Most any deep-hulled sailing vessel that is capable of carrying the supplies and seaworthy enough to ride out storms should do.

The travel time I've always heard for a trans-Atlantic trip in the colonial era was around 3 months for English colonies, so probably more like 4 if you're leaving from the middle of the Mediterranean as well (although part of that will be in the Mediterranean rather than the open Atlantic, with generally calmer waters and more opportunity to resupply). Again, it'll depend on wind conditions--might be worth doing a bit of research into wind patterns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_wind_patterns). The Earth's motion, position of the continents, and heating from the sun create prevailing wind conditions; you can apply the same process to your world map.

I've heard that the Phoenicians made it to America as well but I've always been skeptical. The trireme and similar galleys were very flat-bottomed and not very seaworthy, and tended to never stray out of sight of shore if they could help it even in the Mediterranean, although that was as much for navigation as anything else. Although the Viking longships, which were also shallow vessels, definitely did make the trip, and the Phoenicians were generally more into seamanship than the Romans, so maybe it's not implausible.

[VoxRationis]

The ships that made the Atlantic crossings were from a very different shipbuilding tradition than the Romans had. The Romans were heir to the Mediterranean tradition of smooth-hulled (carvel), shell-first galleys. These, for a particular size of vessel, were fast and maneuverable but not very seaworthy. Frankly, I have doubts that ships of this sort could travel across the Atlantic, even with anachronistic navigational technology, with enough safety and reliability to make a colony even remotely practical.
The caravels and carracks are developments of North Atlantic seabuilding traditions (as practiced by the Vikings and other peoples of North Europe): at least at first, they had clinker-built hulls (so each strake, or plank, overlaps and is overlapped by its neighbors), and were built with the skeleton first. To accommodate the rough seas of the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, ships in this tradition were generally rounder-bodied. The caravel and carrack were developments, more or less, of the earlier, cog, which was a round-bodied sailing ship, usually carrying a single square sail, notable for being high in both bow and stern. The cog is probably more period-appropriate to 1300 AD than the caravel, but that also depends on how your history works (see below).
Lateen (triangular) sails appeared in the Mediterranean in the waning periods of the Roman Empire and became prevalent in the medieval era. These sails allow easy maneuvering across the wind, but are less effective before the wind. In the Mediterranean, where winds are unpredictable and often come from multiple directions, lateen sails were advantageous. In the Atlantic, winds were much more predictable and people often were just fine with square sails (though this sometimes meant people went way out of their way to keep the winds behind them). This was especially true as people started putting more masts on ships, as having two or more places to catch the wind allows you to alter a ship's direction relative to the wind much more easily, but it's notable that early caravels were all-lateen, rather than all-square or hybrids.
It's difficult to talk about this in more depth without knowing more about the history of your setting. Shipbuilding traditions in Europe were heavily influenced by the fact that the Romans achieved near-complete naval supremacy before the common era began, which led to a stagnation (and indeed, regression) in military shipbuilding technology. After the Empire ended up with control of all the Mediterranean coastline, warships only were needed for pirate suppression and a few convoys, so they stripped their navy down to the minimum necessary, stopped building the big ships which had defined the Hellenistic period, and generally let cutting-edge designs fall by the wayside in favor of cost-effective ships that were useful for day-to-day matters. A lot of old designs and technology were forgotten completely. It's telling that when the Byzantines needed to have a navy again, they scaled up liburnians, rather than triremes and others of that ilk, even though, as far as we can tell, the old triremes were just about the epitome of galley speed and maneuverability. So in order to talk about this, we have to ask you about your setting. Is this Roman Empire the sole master of its immediate vicinity? Why did it develop ocean-crossing ship technology? Has it lasted from the setting's equivalent of 0 AD to 1300, or did it start at a later date? Has it had contact with cultures that build ships as the Germans (in the broad sense) did?

[Aotrs Commander]

Okay, with relative brevity then:

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u172/AotrsCommander/Dreemaenhyll%20Validuslum_zpszir2xpqh.png

Validuslum, the Validus Empire, harkens back to about 2750 years ago from a settlement created by a man named Nepitar (from which the current capital takes it's name). Early history is sketchy (both in and out of character), but it was established as an empire approximate 1300 years ago (0 AD) and has remained the largest power of the Northern Nations ever since.

The history of the world is sharply defined by the Dark Lord who controls the lands to the south. The Dark Lord has always been big on knowledge for knowledge's sake, so both he and the Empire essentially stole/copied each other's best ideas (civilian, military or magical) throughout history.

A little less than six hundred years ago, the Dark Lord actually fluffed a ritual badly (happens to even the best and smartest of us) and instead of raising his lands up into plateaus (making them much more difficult to attack), he created a massive explosion that created what is now the Dark Lands (essentially obliterating three of the numan nations under his command). His oldest base of power was untouched in Sokointulo, the land of the reptilan Intulo, whom were his first subjects. (Indeed, what is essentially Evil Common is the Intulo language). This disaster was a major set-back, but due to things he discovered (how to magically genetically engineer, basically) it cumlinated in the 80-year long Dark Wars which started about three hundred years ago. This was a big high magic period, and you had essentially the Northern Nations verses the Dark Lord, with the buk of the battle being essentially Rome veres Evil Rome.

This was ended in a final big battle, during which the Fey used a big ritual to (theorhetically) destroy the Dark Lord, blast down his tower and the Day Was Saved. Except that six months later, the background magic rebelled (metaphorically) against this treatment and basically collapsed. In addition to a poor crop yield, having huge numbers of men (more than was wise) mobilised in the last strike there was a widespread famine (which the magic might have significantly eased). The Northern Nations thus essentially suffered a bit of dark age for the next century or so (ditto the Dark Lands). Validuslum remained in power, but a lot of the egalitarianism that characterised the Dark Wars period (i.e. typical fantasy level) was lost and is only now just being regained. Notably, Nepitar, the capital city of the empire, was razed five years before the end of the war before the scales finally turned, but was still rebuilt steadily during this period. (Basically, the rich (and corrupt) weathered the storm far better than all the good folk (especially since the latter had suffered the most casualties going to war.)

The Empire has in the last couple of decades (aided by the development of the compass a hundred years ago) set out to attempt to expand onto the Great Continent to the west (as opposed to more wars with its neighbors).

There were naval engagements during the Dark Wars (indeed, one of the Dark Lord's favourites was a brilliant naval commander), though as you will see from the map the frontage was much smaller, with only a little bit of "Mediterrainian" in the Illiusan Sea. The navies will have been maintained to a reasonable degree, given that Deshroah (not-Egypt) and Alhara (not-Arabia) as well as Sokointulo remain in control coastlines throughout the period (though the latter is quite far south and past a lot of currently uninhabited land).


Is that a sufficient potted history? As I say, the overall history is quite complicated!



Other pertinent question I forgot to ask: what time of year would be assumed to be the best, or does it matter?

[VoxRationis]

Time of year considerations depend significantly on geography. Prevailing winds often differ from season to season, and different regions have different "too stormy to sail" periods. I'm not really a climatologist, but latitude is a big factor in this, as is the size of landmasses. Landmasses cool down and heat up more quickly than sea masses, which causes big seasonal shifts in temperature in continental circumstances. This causes large-scale air pressure differentials which cause seasonal shifts in wind direction.

As to ships, given your situation... I would guess that from your geography that the navy was generally considered less important than the army, since the Empire's main opponent is land-based and the Empire, unlike Rome, has a high inland-to-coastal area ratio. However, given that the capital is coastal, the navy almost certainly has a significant defensive role there, and probably is important for safeguarding trade and conveying troops to the front lines. Given the small size of the sea, I'm guessing that there's only one major shipbuilding tradition relevant; whatever ships the people of the Dark Lands and the pseudo-Egyptian and Arabian places use, the Empire will use as well. Given hundreds of years of continuity but in a contested sea, I would expect ship sizes to be rather larger than medieval cogs and carracks; ship sizes, particularly warship sizes, tend to increase over time if there are competing states, as far as I can gather. I'm not sure how artillery works in your setting, but the ships will be even larger if it's significant. I also don't know whether there's an ethnicity in your setting with a strong maritime culture (similar to the Greeks and Phoenicians). The historical Romans were mostly land-based and developed their navy as a response to and out of contact with Greeks and Carthaginians.
Unless your ships have fairly advanced cannon, I wouldn't expect multiple-deck structures as a general rule. There might be some of them in fore- and aftcastles, though.

Edit: The book Age of Titans says that the large growth in Hellenistic warships comes from two sources: the need to concentrate mass when fighting pitched battles in close confines where maneuver isn't practical (such as harbors) and the development of large artillery. The use of navies to besiege coastal cities as a key part of grand strategy leads to these circumstances. So consider how battles are fought and cities attacked in your setting.

[Aotrs Commander]

Time of year considerations depend significantly on geography. Prevailing winds often differ from season to season, and different regions have different "too stormy to sail" periods. I'm not really a climatologist, but latitude is a big factor in this, as is the size of landmasses. Landmasses cool down and heat up more quickly than sea masses, which causes big seasonal shifts in temperature in continental circumstances. This causes large-scale air pressure differentials which cause seasonal shifts in wind direction.

As to ships, given your situation... I would guess that from your geography that the navy was generally considered less important than the army, since the Empire's main opponent is land-based and the Empire, unlike Rome, has a high inland-to-coastal area ratio. However, given that the capital is coastal, the navy almost certainly has a significant defensive role there, and probably is important for safeguarding trade and conveying troops to the front lines. Given the small size of the sea, I'm guessing that there's only one major shipbuilding tradition relevant; whatever ships the people of the Dark Lands and the pseudo-Egyptian and Arabian places use, the Empire will use as well. Given hundreds of years of continuity but in a contested sea, I would expect ship sizes to be rather larger than medieval cogs and carracks; ship sizes, particularly warship sizes, tend to increase over time if there are competing states, as far as I can gather. I'm not sure how artillery works in your setting, but the ships will be even larger if it's significant. I also don't know whether there's an ethnicity in your setting with a strong maritime culture (similar to the Greeks and Phoenicians). The historical Romans were mostly land-based and developed their navy as a response to and out of contact with Greeks and Carthaginians.
Unless your ships have fairly advanced cannon, I wouldn't expect multiple-deck structures as a general rule. There might be some of them in fore- and aftcastles, though.

Edit: The book Age of Titans says that the large growth in Hellenistic warships comes from two sources: the need to concentrate mass when fighting pitched battles in close confines where maneuver isn't practical (such as harbors) and the development of large artillery. The use of navies to besiege coastal cities as a key part of grand strategy leads to these circumstances. So consider how battles are fought and cities attacked in your setting.

Right. Checking my notes, they say that while black powder may nominally exist (as of approx 1100AD), guns and cannons as yet do not. Partly this will be due to some of their role is replaced by magic, partly because of the recent dark age, partly because neither of the major military powers (the empire and the re-solidifying Dark Lands) have experimented that option. The empire, many of the Northern Nations and the Dark Lands essentially have trained professional standing armies, so archery is still very much in vogue, because the drive to have less skilled peasants with easy-to-operate guns in not present1. (Dreemaenhyll does have spikes of advancement in other areas (the dwarves can now create actual steel (e.g. masterwork weapon material) as opposed to just natural steel (e.g Damascus steel analogue); otherwise all weapons are correctly called iron) and the wealthy Ciracan nation (which is a protectorate of the Empire and has no military of its own) has some clockwork).

So military ship armament will still be catapults and ballistas and trebuches (albiet probably quite advanced, possibly slightly beyond where Earth technology left off because of the gunpowder weapons coming in), likely supplemented (when they are available) by magic-users. And quite probably by incendiaries, like the plentiful Validus Fire (e.g. Greek fire).

Another point worth mentioning particularly with regard to cannons: anti-air weaponry is an essential. Both sides created flying species (gryphons being the good one, for example) and many dangerous flying creatures exist, so there is very likely to be turreted/pivoted ballistae present for dealing with any potential flying enemies. (Primitive cannons, one imagines, would not be best for this sort of purpose, lacking the sort of responsive mobility and range.)

(No-one after all, wants to be laser-breathed to the bottom by a gagana or by some dragon or something...!)

It is entirely possible that primitive firearms do exist (despite what my initial notes say), but they are likely to be a fringe technology still largely in the experimental stage. (After all, one is allowed to change one's mind occasionally in a decade or so...!)



1And more-typical-Medieval-knight-analogue Galause, the power residues solidly in the hands of the feudal lords who are opposed rigidly to any sort of change. (It is a land of gallantry and chivalry, which means underneath the veneer, it is oppressive, uneducated and sexist.)

The dark age might have some influence on naval build-up as well (so perhaps only slightly larger than cog/carrack or about the same, given, as you say, the lesser influence of naval power).

[Aeson]

(the dwarves can now create actual steel (e.g. masterwork weapon material) as opposed to just natural steel (e.g Damascus steel analogue)
I don't know if you care, but the classic Medieval-period Damascus/Wootz steel is an early crucible steel thought to have been made by mixing carefully-balanced quantities of a carbon source and iron or iron ore in the crucible, which resulted in ingots of a consistent and predictable quality if made correctly. Some modern attempts to reproduce Damascus steel make use of pattern welding or lamination (i.e. layering of differing types of steel to average out the properties), but the process used to produce Damascus steel in the Medieval period is not known.

"Natural" steel, by which I understand you to mean steel produced using a method which does not reliably produce a consistent, predictable grade of steel rather than a naturally-occurring steel, would likely be made using a process which does not isolate the iron or iron ore from the furnace's fuel, which means that the blacksmith has less control over how much carbon goes into the iron and thus less control over the grade(s) of steel produced by the process; such a method could also be used to carburize iron or low-carbon steel, producing a higher-carbon (and thus harder) surface layer in the material. High-quality steel objects could still result from such a process; laminated steel, for example, is produced by layering multiple grades of steel together, effectively averaging out the properties of the steels. The steel used in traditionally forged Japanese katanas is an example of laminated steel, as are some types of modern Damascus steel.

[Aotrs Commander]

I don't know if you care, but the classic Medieval-period Damascus/Wootz steel is an early crucible steel thought to have been made by mixing carefully-balanced quantities of a carbon source and iron or iron ore in the crucible, which resulted in ingots of a consistent and predictable quality if made correctly. Some modern attempts to reproduce Damascus steel make use of pattern welding or lamination (i.e. layering of differing types of steel to average out the properties), but the process used to produce Damascus steel in the Medieval period is not known.

"Natural" steel, by which I understand you to mean steel produced using a method which does not reliably produce a consistent, predictable grade of steel rather than a naturally-occurring steel, would likely be made using a process which does not isolate the iron or iron ore from the furnace's fuel, which means that the blacksmith has less control over how much carbon goes into the iron and thus less control over the grade(s) of steel produced by the process; such a method could also be used to carburize iron or low-carbon steel, producing a higher-carbon (and thus harder) surface layer in the material. High-quality steel objects could still result from such a process; laminated steel, for example, is produced by layering multiple grades of steel together, effectively averaging out the properties of the steels. The steel used in traditionally forged Japanese katanas is an example of laminated steel, as are some types of modern Damascus steel.

From what I gathered from my (albeit google/wiki-based) research some time ago (and the articles even in wiki may be better now than they were then, Dreemaenhyll is about ten-ish years old now! Edit: looking now I'm sure they are.) I was under the impression Damascus steel was made because of a particular deposit of iron with inclusions (i.e. natural in the sense of that's how you dug it out of the ground).

That would appear to be wrong, or I may even just be remembering what I did read wrong.

But anyway, yes, the dwarves will have developed a sort of early crucible steel they can produce consistently about thirty years prior (which is still quite a way ahead of the times), but it's expensive (but the usage has been and will be increasing steadily as the processes become refined and improved). Basically, the assumption is steel (not poor quality steel anyway) is what masterwork weapons are made from. One might imagine in a decade or two, perhaps steel weapons would be the default.

[VoxRationis]

I'm frankly not sure how much more advanced a catapult or ballista can get without modern materials. The Greeks and Romans refined their siege technology constantly, as did the constant warfare of the High Middle Ages. If people are just now figuring out how to make decent steel, I doubt their materials are good enough to improve significantly on historical designs.

What's the flight range of a griffin? I feel as though dedicated carrier ships might be important if aerial mounts are integral parts of a competitive military in your setting. A catamaran-style ship, with two large hulls bound together with a common deck, would offer plenty of space in this regard, as well as provide more space for the anti-air scorpions and the like. This is how the largest Hellenistic ships were thought to be built; advanced sailing technology would probably make the ships better.

[sktarq]

Some of the issues.

Ships that are good at war are not necessarily good at open ocean travel. In fact the two often worked against each other.

The ability to stay flat and level in the waves is a good thing in a galley in the Med. It allows for better ramming, better oar bites, etc. But if the waves get bigger than it can handle the ship has a BIG problem. The ships of the Atlantic (basically the North sea and critically the Basques in the Bay of Biscay whose wrecks show great advancements and whose history has been largely squished) were aimed to riding out the storm. This was easier to scale up to being able to ride out the waves of the open ocean. But on the other hand you could say that trade similar to the Roman-Indian monsoon routes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Roman_trade_relations) has led to better class of ships that could pull off the trip.

The big question in terms of length of time for the trip is a question of the placement of the local trade winds. If they can catch the trade winds they can be carried to the "New World" pretty quick. Say 6-8 weeks. Considering where deserts and trade winds normally form I'd say leaving from West Deshraos would be a good lead off point (like the Canary Islands were a major stop off in our world). With some decent augry spells for storm prediction, a couple control weather scrolls for emergencies, and some serious gold behind it it could be done with lower tech than might be assumed.

Let alone a handful of magically boosted ships to be used to gain the critical information to allow the minimally boosted ships to do the more routine work.

[VoxRationis]

So here's what I see a dedicated war fleet looking like in your setting:

Large carrier/tender ships with deck space for aerial forces to land or take off from (the exact deck layout will undoubtedly depend on the physical capabilities of the aerial mounts themselves). These ships will lack oars; they'll be fighting from behind, anyway. They'll help carry the supplies that the dedicated warships need to keep fighting. It's quite possible that they, or at least some of them, will carry large artillery for sieges (though I think it's unlikely that a ship heading to an overseas colony will need top-of-the-line artillery).


Hybrid cataphract (meaning fully decked) galleys. Oar-ports will be sealable for bad weather, and freeboard will be higher than traditional Mediterranean galleys, with a slightly more rounded hull form. I don't see ramming as going anywhere in this history. Incendiaries are too unreliable to consistently prevent ramming ships from closing and the ability to hole someone below the waterline and swamp/sink them (depending on construction; ancient triremes were too light to sink until the planks were completely waterlogged, but many ships will simply fill up and drop like a stone if you let water in) is devastating. Ramming won't be everything, because of the sophisticated artillery, use of incendiaries, and aerial warfare, but it will still be important. The increased seaworthiness will mean lower rowing efficiency, so there will be more in the way of sailing.


Galleys of light size, quick and maneuverable, for screening the flanks. Large ships will be nearly invincible in frontal ramming, but easy to outmaneuver. Something is needed to defend them, so trireme-type ships will be in use for this purpose. The lightest and most optimized versions of these ships will not be seaworthy enough to make it out to the ocean, so they'll be like patrol boats, only deployed close to shore. Slightly heavier versions will be used in ocean-going fleets, for dispatches, scouting, and flank deployment.

[Aeson]

Large carrier/tender ships with deck space for aerial forces to land or take off from (the exact deck layout will undoubtedly depend on the physical capabilities of the aerial mounts themselves). These ships will lack oars; they'll be fighting from behind, anyway. They'll help carry the supplies that the dedicated warships need to keep fighting. It's quite possible that they, or at least some of them, will carry large artillery for sieges (though I think it's unlikely that a ship heading to an overseas colony will need top-of-the-line artillery).
Masts and rigging are inconvenient when you need lots of open deck space to range your flying monsters and for take-off and landing, and being exclusively sail-powered prevents the ship from sailing directly into the wind to increase the apparent airspeed of anything trying to take off from or land on its deck; depending on how close the design can sail to the wind, the ship's motion may do little or nothing - or even hamper - the ability of things to take off from its deck. A ship with oars, by contrast, can move relatively quickly into the wind, at least for a little while, and if the animals are small enough it may even be better for the carriers to be mid-size galleys than large galleys, carracks, or caravels for the reduced crew requirements and improved acceleration, and for the reduction in the hull's sail area which should (slightly) improve speed when trying to sail into the wind to launch flyers.

Masts and rigging are also inconvenient for artillery emplaced on the deck as they interfere with firing arcs. Oar power may also be more convenient for moving the ship into position to provide artillery support on coastal targets.

[VoxRationis]

Masts and rigging are inconvenient when you need lots of open deck space to range your flying monsters and for take-off and landing, and being exclusively sail-powered prevents the ship from sailing directly into the wind to increase the apparent airspeed of anything trying to take off from or land on its deck; depending on how close the design can sail to the wind, the ship's motion may do little or nothing - or even hamper - the ability of things to take off from its deck. A ship with oars, by contrast, can move relatively quickly into the wind, at least for a little while, and if the animals are small enough it may even be better for the carriers to be mid-size galleys than large galleys, carracks, or caravels for the reduced crew requirements and improved acceleration, and for the reduction in the hull's sail area which should (slightly) improve speed when trying to sail into the wind to launch flyers.
Yes, but a carrier has to actually carry the air forces associated with it. Griffins are generally considered to be fairly large—horse-sized at the least—and most galleys are going to be galleys in name only if they're transporting such animals. That said, the type of ship is very dependent on the limitations of the maneuverability of the things launching from it. A lot of fantasy flying creatures can launch from a standing start and could probably throw themselves from the yard of the foremast. If you're being more restrictive about it, dedicated deck space will be necessary.


Masts and rigging are also inconvenient for artillery emplaced on the deck as they interfere with firing arcs. Oar power may also be more convenient for moving the ship into position to provide artillery support on coastal targets.

True, but that didn't stop bomb ketches from being viable ship designs and key parts of naval strategy.

[Aotrs Commander]

So here's what I see a dedicated war fleet looking like in your setting:

Large carrier/tender ships with deck space for aerial forces to land or take off from (the exact deck layout will undoubtedly depend on the physical capabilities of the aerial mounts themselves). These ships will lack oars; they'll be fighting from behind, anyway. They'll help carry the supplies that the dedicated warships need to keep fighting. It's quite possible that they, or at least some of them, will carry large artillery for sieges (though I think it's unlikely that a ship heading to an overseas colony will need top-of-the-line artillery).


Hybrid cataphract (meaning fully decked) galleys. Oar-ports will be sealable for bad weather, and freeboard will be higher than traditional Mediterranean galleys, with a slightly more rounded hull form. I don't see ramming as going anywhere in this history. Incendiaries are too unreliable to consistently prevent ramming ships from closing and the ability to hole someone below the waterline and swamp/sink them (depending on construction; ancient triremes were too light to sink until the planks were completely waterlogged, but many ships will simply fill up and drop like a stone if you let water in) is devastating. Ramming won't be everything, because of the sophisticated artillery, use of incendiaries, and aerial warfare, but it will still be important. The increased seaworthiness will mean lower rowing efficiency, so there will be more in the way of sailing.


Galleys of light size, quick and maneuverable, for screening the flanks. Large ships will be nearly invincible in frontal ramming, but easy to outmaneuver. Something is needed to defend them, so trireme-type ships will be in use for this purpose. The lightest and most optimized versions of these ships will not be seaworthy enough to make it out to the ocean, so they'll be like patrol boats, only deployed close to shore. Slightly heavier versions will be used in ocean-going fleets, for dispatches, scouting, and flank deployment.

Noted.

Though I would have to say the Empire is actually not hugely likely to have "carriers," since actual aerial mounts are confined to Pegasi and those are... Not great and also in fairly short supply. (These days, there may not be more than a handful of ala of flying troops in the while empire. These would likely be mostly pegasi (which are basically animals, and the very first (long before the Dark Cataclysm) "created" species, and purely by accident.

One does not ride a gryphon, since they are an intelligent creature race, not a mount, and very few now live in the empire (since they basically got kicked out/abused/enslaved/fled during the whole dark age thing. The humans and Galause and Valuduslum in particular did a grand job of sabotaging their relations with everyone else and doubly-especially the Fey). These days, a lot of the monstrous (non-humanoid) races are effectively myth as far as most people know, and even in a cosmopoltian place like Nepitar it would be a bit unusual1. Principally, it is not "aerial cavalry" like in typical fantasy (e.g. Dragonlance or something), but more like the Mage War in Mercedes Lackey's black Griffon books. Carrying a dude on your back, impeding your ability to sharply maneouvre is a very good way to have a Gagana (a large, smarter-than-you crow-falcon that is one of the more agile flyers to start with) to do its trademark impact-resistant stoop attack and splat you mid-air. (Assuming you don't run into one of the variants, like the one that has feathers like X-Men's Archangel, or the one that breathes laser...!) Man-on-flying-mount verses actual-flying-creature (often engineered for the purpose) tends to be a bit of "WW1 aircraft verses WW2 aircraft syndrome." Dragons are obviously an exception, but dragons are very rare, and those that are left tend to be hiding among civilisation, on account of the ones that didn't basically being hunted to extinction by adventuring parties of one alignement or another over the centuries.

Further, the threat of an actual enemy military flying unit will be considered quite low (really, since the end of the Dark Wars, it hasn't happened), but if you don't have some defences, it only takes one Gagana (or warlock...!) to ruin you day!

Again, the Dark Lands might be more likely to have carriers (they were arguably better at naval warfare in general), but at the moment, they are still in the recovery stage and dealing with the long job of getting everybody back under control and it will be a good long time before they are fully ready to start Dark Wars Part II2.




All that said, most flyers are effectively VTOL, though, so they wouldn't need a carrier flight deck (you don't tend to see dragons taking a run up to start to fly, do you?)



First pass thoughts, after doing some wiki reading.

Triemes and ramming are probably out by this point (since they were gone very early (before the 5th century, so about eight hundred years before Dreemaenhyll's present), so we're probably looking at galleys/liburna for coastal operations and cogs for the majority of shipping with a few carracks as the most modern sort of ship.

So, let's say a fleet of seven ships. Two military carracks (most modern design) and four principally merchant/supply/cargo vessels; the seventh, a large (possibly recent) galley of somewhat dubious virtue on the open ocean as a roaming escort. (Also know as "vessel most likely to be sunk in bad weather," which probably shouldn't have been included, but this sort of thing happened AL THE TIME in history!)

Assuming basically carracks due to size; difficult to gauge from history, but gut instinct tells me cogs are probably too small, so let's say something on the order of, I dunno, 30-35m (the military ones being the bigger). This seems within the reasonable historical range (the likes of famous example 100-tonners are probably too small for serious cargo work, so let's say something like 350-400 tons jobs (I dunno!) - the top end (a couple of hundred years later) seem to have been in the thousand plus tonnage range. These ships would be the upper end of the current ship technology.

Say 40m for the heavy galley, since they tended to be about that long (and at a 8:1 width ratio consisently towards the end), so that sounds plausible - lomger but shorter and narrower (and less sea-worthy in the ocean!)

Does that sound sort of reasonable?



Edit: s always when I do this sort of thing, I get a few sentences in and then spend a few hours having to do something else... Context, then.

The following is a rough map of the world (with Earth above for comparison) and with the two continents duplicated outside of the box (the world surface) for ese of clarity with regards to the ocean size.

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u172/AotrsCommander/Dreemaenhyll%20World%20v3%20comparison_zpsmfgfbvlk .png

This is a little messy, since I pretty much missed my scaling originally. The world is actually generated via Civ III (which gave a great basis for randomisation and resources) and was initially painstakingly complied via stitched-together screenshots, before the main continent was basically traced over to form the map you saw before. This has lead to some... issues, because I got the main continent size too small and only recently did things like actually fit the map with latitudes. Thus, the Endless Sands desert actually occupies the equatorial line (in red), instead of (lik it was on the original Civ III map, at the right 30º latitude), which is a bit I can't work around geographically (magical explanation a possibility!) Changing the former ice/tundra to plains and forest south of that was easy enough, when I realised, but I sort of can't get around that so easily!

The convoy target is the north-east end of the Great Continent (I think you can probably figure which one that is!)

The other two continents exist only as their composite screenshots, and so have more room for me to "fix" the climate bands which are not now quite right. As they are largely unexplored (and are the only ones actually KNOWN about) this gives me more room to "fix" them when/if i need to map them properly.

However, some points of note: the climate is warmer than Earth (no ice caps - no continents on or around the poles - no ice ages), and so is as approximately 1 million years ago. The sea level can be assumed to be higher, then (so the smaller-than-anticpated when I started proportion of landmass still makes sense). I'm not even a lay climatologist, so a lot more accuracy thn this is beyond me, especially since it's having to be retrofitted to existing maps.

I needed to have another pass at this because of the aformentioned trade winds, and also to determine roughly the distance (about 7100 miles) the convoy will have to travel. So, less Atlantic, more Pacific...!

I'mma go have a quick look at trade winds, and see if there's any sanity I can apply to this map, but we'll see!


(Actual quest-writing achived today: about a third of a page...!)



1Ironically, the Dark Lord's lands, currently overseen by the mysterious Iron Master, are in many ways more egalitarian than typical humans. (Okay, so the orc-kin (orcs, goblins, hobgoblins and kobolds, all created races) females are treated as little more than breeding stock, but the other races are pretty even-handed/clawed; species division has never been so big a thing, since they were a multispecies civilisation for much longer than the Northern Nations at their most egalitarian phase around the Dark Wars period.)

2It is worth noting that each time the Dark Lord invades the north properly, there is a shorter interval and they get close to victory each time. Part of the big danger in the current-time campaigns is that the Northern Nations (Validuslum especially) have gotten a bit complacent and the Iron Master is not making a big song and dance about things... So very likely, when the next round does kick off, the Dark Lord may have the advantage...