Sea Travel in Duskwall/Blades
I was looking at the Smugglers Crew playbook, thinking about how interesting it looked, especially for the larger possibility of travelling beyond the walls of Duskwall than other groups when I started musing on the state and nature of sea travel in this setting.
The most likely vehicles for Smugglers, IMO, are a ship of some sort, since I presume private vehicles on the ghost rails are an exceptionally rare or near unheard of thing and that other ground vehicles like wagons aren’t exactly suited for long-distance travel between cities.
What does everyone think ships are like in the setting? Given the electroplasmic technology I figure most are of a similar technological style and level of complexity as mid 1800s steam ships. Ships larger than jolly-boats and fishing boats typically employing steam/electroplasm powered paddle-wheels or screw propellers, though possibly with classic sail rigging as backup against breakdown or fuel issues or for additional speed. In fact sails would probably be useful for a smuggler ship because of their quietness compared to mechanical propulsion.
I could see a Smuggler crew sized ship being something sized and looking like this paddle steamer here. Not big, not well suited for long journeys, but just big enough to carry a modest cargo, get into trouble, and be a right pain to manage.
I also wonder about navigation. Depending on how one perceives the perpetual twilight that the world resides in this could be fairly normal or exceptionally difficult. If the skies are sometimes clear and the sun is just a dim disk in the sky, then standard navigation with things like sextants isn’t too hard. But if the world is dim because of a constant thick overcast, than navigation by star and sun sighting becomes near impossible. All you’ve got is the compass and rough estimates of speed and heading to do math off of (while worrying about stuff like slippage).
In the later case I imagine most ships stick very close to shore and rarely venture more than a few dozen miles to sea. Journeys between islands are mostly just following a specific course as best as possible to hit the target island and then just figuring out where along the coastline you are once you finally sight it. Woe to those that somehow miss their target island. They could sail for ages and get totally lost even if they reversed course. Of course, some of that depends on just how big the scale of the map at the end of the quickstart is. Is Akaros small like the size of Hawaii or Puerto Rico? Medium sized like Iceland or Ireland? Continental sized like Australia? Like everything else, this is probably up to the group, of course.
I imagine the large rail bridges crossing between islands are a popular navigational assistance. Just follow the bridge and no worry about getting lost. Of course, this means such places would likely be well patrolled, not very good for smugglers.
I had some more thoughts, but I’m starting to ramble at this point, so I think I’ll leave it at this for now. Anyways, what thoughts did some of you have regarding Sea Travel and/or a ship crewing group of Smugglers?
What you says about coastal navigation remind me of the journals captains wrote back in the day, describing the coastal landscape, reefs, and unmoving navigational hazards to know where they were.
This kind of manuscripts were well kept secrets. Really, I cannot imagine what sort of thing smugglers did to get their dirty hands on this.
Now this is pretty freaky because I’m currently working on a playset that takes place in a fictious version of 1830s New Orleans, and there are steam powered paddle boats! Watching this thread with interest.
A couple other things I forgot to include; Do you think ships of sufficient size (whatever that might be) carry some sort of Electroplasmic lightning field similar to the walls that protect cities? It could be possible, but given the Ghost Rails need Line Bulls to protect them from Spirits, this is maybe either unfeasible or restricted to only the most massive ships. That does mean any respectable ship will need Whisperer(s) or their own versions of Line Bulls for protection though.
Another thing I considered was armament. When you have ships and scoundrels, you’re eventually gonna have fighting on and between ships (especially given the scoundrels’ Reaver ability). If figure most ship weapons are fairly traditional cannons and carronade thar might typically be found on early 1800s ships. A smuggler ship of the size I imagine would probably count itself lucky to have even a couple genuine “great guns” but would probably have a small battery of swivel guns (say 1 pounders) mounted at various points. Then again, having full-size guns could be a bad thing, depending on how frequent piracy and civilian ships carrying heavy guns is, heavy armament would just draw attention at ports. “Why does this beat up coastal courier have two 6 pound longguns for bow chasers?”. However smugglers couldtry to be clever and hide them somehow.
Of course cannons also give us the opportunity for something fancy like “Ghost-Shot”, cannonball sized version of The Hound’s electroplasmic ammo, to join standard round and canister shot. Perhaps it is something kept around for the dire emergency of Leviathan attack?
Coastal navigation can’t be easy because without real daylight you have trouble to make out the landmarks.
But at least you don’t need lighthouses; the lightning walls of the cities should be visible for, I don’t know,100 miles?
I imagine the leviathan-hunters have to go far out onto the open sea, so they need a sure way for navigation. The map section mentions that you can see star constellations, but far BELOW the surface of the ocean instead of in the sky. So if the sea is calm enough, you should be able to navigate by these 🙂
For movement of ships you have also the magical options like manipulating currents in the water or getting towed by demons or water-walking ghosts. Although I wonder if ghosts can even cross water… they certainly can’t dive, because I can’t imagine that the lightning walls around the city go below the water surface.
This is great stuff. Exactly how I imagine it!
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The ghost rails and leviathan hunters are of such size, make enough noise and use sufficient energy to occasionally attract spirits so Line/Sea Bulls are required for protection, yes.
Both also have to go where the rails/leviathans go and so have no or limited flexibility to avoid known “cold spots”.
But smugglers use quiet enough vessels and circuitous enough routes to perhaps travel without a whisper. That or they’ll hire an “ink plotter”, sometimes known as a “squidder” or “voidswain”.
They navigate by the lights of the inky black Void Sea. No other stars for ages. When the ink gets choppy the better equipped smugglers and all leviathan hunters lower a bathyscaphe to view the lights and so continue to navigate. This can get a bit dangerous and a whisper adept is recommended. If not that a portable lightning cage surrounding the bathyscaphe might be enough assurance. Of course that method has its own hazards if your oil buoys aren’t shipshape.
The highest paid voidswains are both navigators and whispers and the best of these trained at the prestigious college in Sunfall. The Iruvians astrology whispers invented bathyscaphe astronomy. They can plot a safe course and know best how to avoid or find sea spirits and leviathans as desired. If you’ve the coin they’ll tell you what the constellations of the ink mean for your future as well. They claim in Sunfall to be able to trace the name, history and meaning for each fallen star that plunged into the inky void long ago.
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The lightning barrier around the city includes the port, so how do ships get out?
The Leviathan hunters might use their iron hull as faraday cage and simply go through the barrier, but this would be no option for vessels made of wood or sailing ships.
Also, we all want the lightning barrier to be something big, dangerous and scary, don’t we? So nothing you can simply walk through by wearing a metal armor 🙂
Therefore even a Leviathan Hunter should be damaged by the lightnings, because the heat would deform or even melt the metal, would destroy the harpoon cannons, burn everything not metal on deck etc.
So the parts of the lightning barrier that block the port entrances need to shut down to let ships through; or, maybe cooler, the lightnings are made to arc upwards so the ships can go through below.
Surely, this is a service for which one expects the city to charge a hefty fee.
But this would make the port a playground for the rich only; and from a storytellers point of view, we want the port to be a place of bustling activity, a security nightmare, a hive of scum and villainess.
I suggest that the barrier opens at the hour of dawn and dusk for everyone for free (when the sun at least provides some scarce light).
But you can still pay for the barrier to open at other times, a service that rich merchants and nobles use as status symbol to separate themselves from the riff-raff. Of course this is also an opportunity for small ships to slip through, too; neither the city nor most captains mind this behavior. It’s not without danger, though: a big ship might not care for the little one, or might even feel annoyed and tries to ram on purpose.
What kind of ships are in the harbour?
Fisherboats: they try to stick near to the city.
Small steam powered tugboats: big ships are extremely awkward to steer, so the tugboats are used to pull them into the harbour.
Maintenance ships: small ones to repair the lightning towers in the harbour, big ones to repair the railroad bridges.
Small merchants: they live on their ships and travel from port to port to buy and sell goods.
Big merchants: they try to compete with the railroad by:
– being faster because they take the direct route
– being cheaper/more efficient because their cargo hold is bigger
– transporting cargo that would be spoiled by the electroplasmic energies on a train (e.g. delicate alchemistic equipment, rare wines)
Treasure Hunters: the islands are all that’s left after the continent sunk. But because it was possible to connect them with railroad bridges, the sea between them can’t be that deep. In other words, the treasures of the sunken civilisation are in reach of nineteenth-century diving technology.