I'm probaly nitpicking but... on savage seas.

[Persell]

Savage sea's says that "a unexalted captain is all but unheard of"


And says that the realm has something like 5,00 ships.


"how big a percentage of the realms dragon blooded are navy officers?"


since it would mean something like half of them were officers, more if we forget some of them take positions of proerus.

 

[Vanman]

Savage sea's says that "a unexalted captain is all but unheard of"
And says that the realm has something like 5,00 ships.


"how big a percentage of the realms dragon blooded are navy officers?"


since it would mean something like half of them were officers, more if we forget some of them take positions of proerus.

Actually, if you add up the ships listed in each of the Realm's fleets, the number is more like 6356. I agree that that's an awful lot of ships to have all Exalted captains. I was going to say that only warships have Exalted captains, but if you just take the percentages of biremes and triremes listed in the book, that still leaves 4377 warships. And that's not counting the First Age ships. So I think that statement must be erroneous. Or it was written before they decided how many ships they were going to use.


The only possible explanation I can think of is that only Exalted attain the rank of captain, rather than a captaincy of a ship, similar to the US Navy (wherein a captain of a ship doesn't necessarily carry the rank of Captain). But even that seems weak. There's very little talk of actual rank in Savage Seas. They talk about the ship's positions but not about rank. So that explanation seems invalid.


If the number of Dragon Blooded is around 10,000 (and I'm not sure where I got that number, that may be totally fictitious), then that means about 45% of them are captaining ships. And that's not counting, as you said, Dragon Blooded who hold other officer positions. So Savage Seas appears to make a statement that seems highly improbable at best. Once again, the sterling editorial acumen of White Wolf has sewn confusion and uncertainty, as is their wont.

 

[Flagg]

It's a valid nitpick. Exalted writers CONSTANTLY fuck up the numbers.


-S

 

[Silence In Daylight]

I'd suggest that a reasonable retcon would be that 'A mortal captain is all but unheard of.' And it sorta keeps both the letter and the spirit of the original...

 

[Kyrn]

Is it just me or is the entire concept of the Realm's Navy totally fucked?  I mean, triremes?  Thousands and thousands of triremes?  A stupidly, incredibly vast navy of totally ineffectual ships?  All in support of a horribly small army?  I don't get it.  Am I alone in this?


Oh, right, the topic.  I think the sentence should in fact mean entirely the opposite.  I don't think many exalts would want to be captains in the Realm's navy.  Especially not captains of triremes.  These are individuals used to the heights of luxury, with servants, feasts, and beds.  I can't see many of them jumping at the oppurtunity to live in a cabin smaller than their closet at home, and sleep in a hammock, all on a vessel that will sink at the merest hint of a storm.  Now, for First Age vessels, or any of the larger vessels armed with essence powered weaponry I think it more likely that exalts will be posted.  But your average trireme squadron will be lucky to have even a single exalt fresh from the House of Bells.

 

[Flagg]

Didn't the Athenians conquer the entire Peloponesus with triremes?


-S

 

[Kyrn]

Yes they did, and for that sea they were wonderful vessels.  For patrolling a vast ocean without the possibility of putting ashore every night to sleep, they are somewhat less wonderful.  I mean, galleys in ancient Greece didn't even room for the crew to sleep.  How, then, are such vessels to patrol an ocean as vast the Inner Sea, much less make patrols to the west?

 

[Silence In Daylight]

For a while; they eventually were defeated by the Spartan navy, composed also of triremes.


 The benefits of triremes are that they're cheap to build, don't require harbors, have a very shallow draft, are highly maneuverable, relatively sturdy, and when supported by charms, suffer less from most of the weaknesses of their real-world counterparts--vulnerability to storms and rough water.


 Now, against any First Age or Shogunate warship, they're toast. But against any regular non-magical Age of Sorrows ship...think school of sharks.

 

[Silence In Daylight]

Yes they did, and for that sea they were wonderful vessels.  For patrolling a vast ocean without the possibility of putting ashore every night to sleep, they are somewhat less wonderful.  I mean, galleys in ancient Greece didn't even room for the crew to sleep.  How, then, are such vessels to patrol an ocean as vast the Inner Sea, much less make patrols to the west?

 See 'Imperial Trireme Tender,' SS p. 60.

 

[Kyrn]

Unless that Age of Sorrows ship ranges more than fifty miles from shore.  I can't think of many charms that arrange it so that your crew of two hundred rowers don't need to eat or sleep for weeks on end.  The whole trireme tender concept just doesn't work either.


However, under the wolf pack rules in Savage Seas, even a First Age vessel can't escape a trireme squadron.  They're fast.  There just wouldn't be any way to maintain that speed.  Unless you use the walking dead or demons to row.  Which I had an Abyssal pirate do.  It was fun.  So the Skullstone Archipelago's navy isn't stupid.  Everyone else's still is though.

 

[Silence In Daylight]

Unless that Age of Sorrows ship ranges more than fifty miles from shore.  I can't think of many charms that arrange it so that your crew of two hundred rowers don't need to eat or sleep for weeks on end.  The whole trireme tender concept just doesn't work either.

 Care to explain why?

However, under the wolf pack rules in Savage Seas, even a First Age vessel can't escape a trireme squadron.  They're fast.  There just wouldn't be any way to maintain that speed.  Unless you use the walking dead or demons to row.  Which I had an Abyssal pirate do.  It was fun.  So the Skullstone Archipelago's navy isn't stupid.  Everyone else's still is though.

 The 5-dot speed for triremes is, as far as I can tell, the regular sustainable speed for triremes. Combat speed is much faster. Though why a First Age warship is that slow is beyond me.


 That brings up a point: what exactly is the trireme wolfpack going to do to said First Age warship when they catch it? First off, the warship likely has weapons that outrange the light implosion bow on the triremes (assuming elte units); second, how will the triremes get past the 50L soak!?

 

[Kyrn]

1)  Because the trireme tender couldn't keep up with a trireme squadron doing extended operations very easily, storms would likely blow them apart, and the whole idea of a mother ship just bugs me.


2)  As a former collegiate rower I really, really don't see how that sort of speed is possibly sustainable.  Every account from modern war has sailing vessels easily outpacing galleys unless they becalmed.  


3)  Moon them?  Honestly they can't do shit unless they board it.  I find it odd that no canon weapon can harm those beasty Dawning Sun Indomitable class vessels.  That irks me a bit.  I'd like a shore cannon to at least cause some degree of concern for the crew of a First Age vessel.  Have we ever gotten stats for a First Age weapon heavier than a lightning ballista?

 

[Silence In Daylight]

1)  Because the trireme tender couldn't keep up with a trireme squadron doing extended operations very easily, storms would likely blow them apart, and the whole idea of a mother ship just bugs me.
2)  As a former collegiate rower I really, really don't see how that sort of speed is possibly sustainable.  Every account from modern war has sailing vessels easily outpacing galleys unless they becalmed.  


3)  Moon them?  Honestly they can't do shit unless they board it.  I find it odd that no canon weapon can harm those beasty Dawning Sun Indomitable class vessels.  That irks me a bit.  I'd like a shore cannon to at least cause some degree of concern for the crew of a First Age vessel.  Have we ever gotten stats for a First Age weapon heavier than a lightning ballista?

1) They don't need to keep up; they dictate the patrol area of the deep-sea patrolling triremes. Not quite a carrier and its planes, but...as for storms, you've seen the DB Sail charms, right? A thaumaturge skilled in weather working can play a similar role.


2) Modern sailing vessels take advantage of innovations in sails and rigging the Age of Sorrows apparently no longer retain from the First Age. Plus, most sailing vessels were designed more for durability than speed. Not the best defense, I know; apparently, the writers were in love with ramming and boarding actions.


3) Well, you could always borrow from the Five-Metal Shrike and Brass Leviathan...

 

[Kyrn]

1)  That's true, but one of my points is that there's no way every squadron has a DB.  


2)  This is also true.  Advantages like more than one mast.  A logical notion that should have occured to someone by now.  Anyway, the only rowing vessels that were used for long range expeditions were viking drakkars and knuts.  These had small crews that slept in miserable conditions on deck.  I have yet to come up with an idea for where these 200 strong crews slept.


3)  Me borrowing the 5-Metal Shrike is a very bad idea.  But part of what aggravates me is the fact that heavier arms have been hinted at but never nailed down.  It's like the staff at WW has no idea how much I obsess over minutiae.

 

[Persell]

just curious


what artifact rating do you think the dawning sun indomitable or the other artifact ship listed, would be?

 

[Silence In Daylight]

1)  That's true, but one of my points is that there's no way every squadron has a DB.  
2)  This is also true.  Advantages like more than one mast.  A logical notion that should have occured to someone by now.  Anyway, the only rowing vessels that were used for long range expeditions were viking drakkars and knuts.  These had small crews that slept in miserable conditions on deck.  I have yet to come up with an idea for where these 200 strong crews slept.


3)  Me borrowing the 5-Metal Shrike is a very bad idea.  But part of what aggravates me is the fact that heavier arms have been hinted at but never nailed down.  It's like the staff at WW has no idea how much I obsess over minutiae.

1) Only the deep-sea patrol squadrons would absolutely need a DB (or thaumaturge); the shore patrol triremes can beach their ships every night. Then again...what is Imperial naval doctrine? If the Realm uses triremes for primarily shore patrol, and deep-water tours only when escorting merchantmen...if the Guild has around 100 First Age light warships, the Realm must have enough light and heavy warships to spare some for the occasional deep-sea foray.


2) On the tenders, though to say that the dimensions given for the tender can supposedly fit quarters for 500-600 men and their provisions for, oh, two to three weeks is a bit of a stretch for me.


 I'm starting to think that comparing the Imperial Navy to a real-world navy is counter-productive. Instead, why not treat it as an amalgam of a souped-up Coast Guard (the Age of Sorrows ships) and a bonafide Navy (the First Age and Shogunate ships)?

 

[Kyrn]

I look on heavy First Age vessels as artifact N/A.  Light warships from the First Age would be rating four without any essence armament.


Savage Seas actually lists the exact number of First Age vessels each fleet has access to.  I believe they average around 12-15 per fleet, I'll check later.  But that does bring up an interesting idea.  I've been viewing the numbers of vessels in the Realm navy as recockulously high, but thinking of it as one or two hundred First Age vessels supported by a thousand or so trireme squadrons is much more palatable, as well as interesting.  The heavy First Agers even sail at the exact same speed as the large merchant ships.  So most convoys would have a single First Age vessel riding shotgun for them.  The Lintha suddenly seem much less problematic.

 

[Solfi]

... "recockulously"?!... that's one silly-ass word modification you got going there...

 

[Kyrn]

Thank you.  It's like re-dick-ulously, only with more emphasis on the genital nature of the word.

 

[Bodhisattva]

Getting back to numbers, I seem to remember reading somewhere that there were originally 300 Solar essences, half of which were captured by the Deathlords and 50 were paid to the Yozis in exchange for the secret of corrupting the Solar essences.  Yeah, this is all old hat, right?  Go through the Caste books alone and there are no less than 50 Solars mentioned by name.  More than that, I believe.  There's a third of all the Solars in the world right there.  It doesn't leave a ton of room for non-canonical Solars, particularly considering the fact that there are other Solars mentioned in other sourcebooks, cutting down the number of "player Solar Exalts" in creation.  The more supplements that come out, the more Solar Exalts that get listed, the fewer there are available to players, although there isn't a huge need to have lots of room in your own games considering that you're probably not likely to run into tons of other Solars anyway.  It's just a thought I've been having for a while.  By the way, is there a list anywhere of all the canonical Solars that have been mentioned in the books?

 

[Flagg]

I don't particularly care, becuase few, if any, of those canonical Solars even exist in my games.


-S

 

[Persell]

I look on heavy First Age vessels as artifact N/A.  Light warships from the First Age would be rating four without any essence armament.

Im curious.


Does that mean you dont think the solars could rebuild a Heavy warship AT ALL?


just curious.

 

[Kyrn]

Huh?  What are you talking about?  Oh, that silly rule that people seem to think exists about crafting limitations, like DBs being limited to rating three artifacts based on some fluff text from Bo3C.  Well, if the DBs of Lookshy can build an artifact N/A skyship (the Skywolf) then I see no reason why a couple of Solar artificers couldn't build a heavy ship.  Of course, the PCs won't be doing so any time soon, seeing as how none of them have been Solars for more than a few years.  But in time I could see a single Solar capable of creating N/A level artifacts.  It might take a campaign to do so however.

 

[Flagg]

Oh, that silly rule that people seem to think exists about crafting limitations, like DBs being limited to rating three artifacts based on some fluff text from Bo3C.

Doesn't S&S explicitly state this limitation?


-S

 

[Kyrn]

Don't know, didn't purchase it, as I'd already paid twenty bucks for a sorcery book.  If it does state that it is, surprise surprise, in direct contradiction of canon, as the DBs of Lookshy can produce artifact N/A rating warstriders, airships, essence cannon, and most likely First Age style sailing vessels, as is implied by the secretive enclosed drydocks at one of the redoubts.  That limitation never made sense to me, as one doesn't have to be an exalt to craft artifacts.  Is channelling essence a set in stone requirement?  I believe so, but I'm not sure.