M Helsdon

Interesting article. Warships had a much lower cargo capacity. For anyone interested in the topic, good introductory books are: Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times - Lionel Casson The Ship - Bjorn Landstrom Unfortunately Landstrom's reconstructions of the rowing organization of biremes and triremes is out-of-date, (the copy I have is dated 1961 so that's not surprising, as there was a major 'reenactment' with the Olympias being rowed by an international crew in the 80s) but his artwork is superb.

Only coastal ones. No, he leads a fleet mostly of clinker-built penteconters. Seriously different in construction and crew to a Trireme. In the ancient world it was notoriously difficult to keep warships supplied by cargo vessels - different sailing characteristics, which meant that the first storm would scatter the fleet. But yes, having supply ships is the only way to support warships, unless they anchor or beach every night. You are seriously underestimating the water and food requirements. When multiplied by days and weeks, it becomes a substantial quantity. You are seriously overestimating the carrying capability of an ancient warship. As for rainfall or fish - you are surely being facetious. In rain, the crew will be bailing water overboard, and if a ship slows to fish it won't get very far. And how many crew were on his boats? Six on one, eleven on another: not a fighting crew. His stunts had little value, but his vessels were indeed slow. Indeed. Coastal sailing. Still coastal sailing. They were lucky. They got there by accident, not intent. There was a tradition of setting off in these boats and assuming that divine providence would protect them. A few turned up in various places, apparently; the majority would have drowned. Even 'dragon ships' weren't rowed the five hundred or more miles to Scotland or Ireland, but sailed by island hopping, and then frequently stopping to take on supplies. Um, Noah is a garbled version of a Sumerian flood, probably around 2900BC when there was a major river flood in southern Iraq. 'Bird navigation' is decidedly suspect. There are many claims of bird (and cloud) navigation, but it can only work very very close to shore. Life expectancy is most ancient communities was very low. I see you appear to be agreeing with me... Um, no. Look at an atlas. '10 times the diameter of Mirrorsea Bay will get you just about to the New Vadeli Islands. The Athenian war fleet sailed to Sicily, not all in one go, but stopping each night, usually beaching the ships. The Spartans had no war fleet after the Battle of Cnidus but hired merchant ships. If it happened, Dorieus' earlier attempt at setting up a colony lasted barely three years - it was very tiny. Both men had instruments. Shackleton also had charts. Both groups sailed with supplies; Bligh's crew were on starvation rations towards the end. Both groups sailed; they did not row the distance. Shackleton also left most of his crew behind (three died waiting for rescue). Sweet potatoes in Polynesia date to around 700AD, at the earliest, but, like the bottle gourd possibly crossed the Pacific by marine currents; the chickens of South America are so distantly related to those in Polynesia, that they did not originate by Polynesians reaching South America. So the story that there was trade back and forwards is suspect. Everywhere the Polynesians went, they took the Pacific Rat with them; there are no Pacific Rats in South America. There's always the chance of one boat by accident crossing great distances, but that doesn't denote any significant trade. So the sweet potato may have been transported by humans, but the genetic diversity of the plant in Polynesia and Micronesia demonstrates a very low number transferred, apparent despite subsequent reintroductions by Europeans. Most small vessels, on an unexpected long-distance voyage, would end in tragedy.

I seriously doubt that any terrestrial body of water is a good model for Gloranthan seas and oceans. A trireme is a design best suited for inland seas and coastal waters, and then in only a few seasons. No one is going to circumnavigate the Homeward Ocean in a trireme. Unless they are either very lucky or magically very powerful. Even then, it wouldn't be possible to feed a 270+ crew for days or weeks, unless they ate each other (possible, perhaps on a Vadeli vessel...) In the North Sea up into the medieval times, the majority of shipping was effectively coastal. The crossings directly to the Shetlands, Faroes and Iceland were vastly more hazardous, and reliant upon sails, not rowers. In fact travel times were often very long, for the distance travelled, and the sagas and historical accounts are full of journeys in the Atlantic that either took many weeks, or failed to find their destination and had to head home. The ships were only able to do these journeys by not being 'fully crewed' with oarsmen, because of the limited carrying capacity. Viking navigation, for example, was no more accurate than that of their competitors. The sagas are full of poor navigation and shipwreck. Apparently Iceland was discovered by accident by a ship attempting to sail to the Faroes. In fact, all the discoveries beyond the British Isles were mistakes, and it can be assumed that for all those accidental explorers, dozens of ships, probably more, vanished without making landfall. No doubt, Gloranthan mariners have magical devices at least as good as some of those in the sagas to aid navigation, but the fact stands that an open decked ship or boat was a risky venture over open seas. The Vikings did it by island hopping, with the islands no more than 250 miles apart, but that hopping was a hit-or-miss affair. Often people set foot on land to find out where they were, and discovered themselves at the mercy of the locals - including other Vikings. So there's a major difference between coastal vessels and practical sea-going vessels. Neither a trireme nor the Hjortspring boat match the necessary criteria. Simple: logistics. Not wave action. A vessel has to carry sufficient water and provisions. That isn't practical with a full set of oars and rowers, for more than a few days. Polynesian expansion relied heavily on ocean currents and seasonal winds. Several Polynesian colonies became effectively isolated because they lacked the ability to sail counter to currents unless there were useful winds, and even then the journey was impractical because their vessels couldn't carry enough food and water for the crew to survive the trip.

And there's the Return to Rightness Crusade in Volume 1.

Utterly non-canonical - but I've been attempting to explore aspects of warfare in Dragon Pass. One textbox says: Raiding and Warfare It is necessary to emphasize the significant difference between the two. Among most tribal and clan-based societies, neighbors are raided for portable wealth and to gain a reputation, not for killing, because killing fuels a cycle of vengeance and blood feud. Captives may subsequently be rescued or purchased back. Fighting may occur, but often when a raid goes wrong; any deaths will have long-term consequences for both the perpetrators and the victim’s relatives. This may, among some societies be mitigated by putting the matter to legal judgment by a recognized authority, but ongoing violence is always a possible outcome. This distinction does not apply when Lunar slave-raiders, whether independent entrepreneurs or state-sponsored, engage in their trade beyond the borders or within newly pacified territories. Killing is often unavoidable, and undesirable only because it culls the strongest.

Updated to reflect the new Tower Shield design in the latest episode of 'Prince of Sartar'.

Thus the Baltic is not a suitable model for sea going or ocean going vessels. The Hjortspring boat wasn't very seaworthy.

Yes, I'm aware of that, but the descriptions and illustrations of Genertelan ship types tend towards either the late Bronze Age/Iron Age Mediterranean, or middle Iron Age northern Europe. The Hjortspring boat could only take a crew of around twenty, making it suitable for a small raiding party perhaps, if every rower was also a fighter, but it was too small to sail large distances without stopping almost every day for supplies. This was true for triremes as well (and the need for daily resupply and the weird logistics of every crewman going to shore to buy their own rations led to at least one defeat for the Athenian navy - an enemy watched them go ashore every day, saw they had to travel inland to buy food, and so attacked when most of the crew were too far away to stop their beached ships being attacked, with some stolen...) You couldn't sail the Hjortspring boat across open seas for many days as it simply didn't have the storage for sufficient food and water.

Yes, I understand, but, terrestrial Bronze Age defenses, whilst often incorporating some significant concepts, such as multiple 'kill boxes' to slow down or stop attackers, were less decorated than some Iron Age defenses. There are often stone reliefs beside or over important gateways (and I've included a number of examples - which, in Glorantha, might host guardian spirits or focus a deity's powers) but stone statues are rare, and, as at Troy, small. Suspect that it is indicative that the Watchdog of Corflu, even crudely repaired, is treated as special, that in the Third Age, animated statues are rare. As in Niven's 'The Magic Goes Away' (there's a large guardian statue that has just enough mana left to barely react to the presence of its creator) , the Third Age levels of magical entropy make such complex and powerful constructions rare. Even the Mostali appear to have lost the capacity to build large jolanti. Had considered illustrating the Watchdog, but Corflu is unlikely to have much in the way of walls and gateways to be worthy of illustrating.

I don't doubt that guardian spirits are an integral part of the defenses of a city and its gate, but in the Third Age only Mostali appear to have the capability to create tamestone entities, and then at a reduced level, and their price for providing these would potentially be prohibitively high. (And if Boldhome has living bronze constructions, they were made by the Mostali for Sartar). For gates A, B, C, D there are canonical descriptions of the defenses, and for E the canonical illustration of the gates of Nochet lack any such defense - and if any Esrolian city boasts magical statues, it should be Nochet. Harald might confirm or deny. Jeff's sketch of G doesn't show any defending statues, and for H...

And the 'set' as they appear on the page...

With more pondering and looking at Mycenaean, Anatolian and Mesopotamian reconstructions, I've concluded that levels of arrow slits don't feel 'right' for Babylonian-style gateways. But here's a detail of the gate...

Bronze Age vessels in the Mediterranean were larger, and probably closer to the Gloranthan norm for sea and ocean crossing. Paddling doesn't really help move a vessel over large distances - in our world long distance paddlers relied upon ocean currents. As a nearly enclosed sea, the Baltic isn't a good model for long-range vessels.

Likely to vary significantly according to location. Iron is probably relatively 'cheap' in Seshnela, but much more expensive away from any source of supply. Those prices might reflect a given time and place - central Genertela in the very early Hero Wars? Supply and demand apply.

A trained professional slave rower would be entirely different to a captive randomly sent to the galleys... And also be a relatively valuable commodity, almost on par with a slave soldier. 8-)

Regardless of Hollywood epics, rowers were rarely slaves (until the Medieval period when galleys were very different from triremes or penteconters) because rowing is a specialized profession - requiring training to keep the oars all synchronized. Just one rower out of synch can disable an entire bank of oars.

Triremes have little to no cargo capacity. In fact, they would rarely carry enough water and food for more than a day. To make them troop or horse transports, the Classical Greeks had to give up one or two levels of oarsmen, meaning that the ships had no capacity for ram-based naval warfare. It was the older ships that tended to be used in this way; as for animal transports often two levels of benches were removed. Pirate ships preferred to capture a merchant ship, and its cargo, crew and passengers; pirate ships always carry large numbers of crew to not only swarm defenders in boarding actions but to crew the captured ship. They would rarely move the cargo to their own ship, which again wouldn't have much cargo space.

Salt water is a relic of the blood of dead ocean gods. Rivers now depend upon water raining from the Sky, and Heler did not die, and so his waters are not tainted by his blood.

The design is (very) heavily influenced by Iron Age Mesopotamian architecture, though I might add a few extra arrow slits. The lack of these might indicate the century of peace in the Heartlands, and an imperial disinclination to have the two 'ordinary' cities of the Tripolis well fortified given past history (as the Tripolis has rebelled against Lunar rule before, it will, in Cyclic Time, rebel again). These gate towers are occupied by mere warriors, not sages. I have a few ideas about what a Yuthuppa star tower might look like, and it's very different to these...

The Griffin Gate of Yuthuppa.

He returns to the Red Cow and becomes one of the Housecarls in the Thunder Brothers Hall. See Volume 2 for more details.

No ships will be dedicated to providing a passenger service, as was the case in the Ancient World. So a traveler has to either take advantage of a ship which has free cargo space, or pay a trader to make room for them and their supplies amongst his cargo. So the first question to ask is what cargo a trader is likely to be transporting, and how expensive it is, or, how much cargo space is free? If the ship is 'full' then any passenger is going to pay a rate based on what they are replacing; if the ship isn't full, then the price is going to be subject to barter. Note that the passenger is going to have to provide their own food, or pay a premium to partake of the crew's rations... And there aren't going to be any free cabins, unless you pay the captain or one of the officers to make room for you, as a distinct transaction - sleeping on deck is the most likely outcome unless you have a deep purse - and they may not be a wise thing to advertise. On many ships even the captain's 'cabin' may effectively be a tent on deck. And note that in the Ancient World, passengers might carry some things like gold or silver necklaces, so that if anything bad happens, if their body is washed ashore after a storm anyone finding it would at least give it a basic funeral.

The main gate of Red Cow Fort. Whilst the walls are recent, they are built on ancient foundations.

Polyaenus claims that Claudius used a single war elephant to astonish the Britons.

All gates to the same scale.