Yrthrian Naval War

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I have not heard them called chasers. The purpose of the guns on the bow was to smash enemy ships and fortifications and clear their decks before boarding. That was the main armament of a galley, whereas the main armament of a roundship was in the broadside and any guns firing fore and aft were specialized. See Guilmartin's Gunpowder and Galleys for the details.

There were lots of war and pirate galleys in medieval and 16th century Europe.

Yeah that's the book I used. I had to re-read it on line (it costs as much as a chemistry textbook at amazon).

"Chasers" I just used as a generic word for guns mounted on the bow and stern because they were used in a chase. That is a word often used in Hornblowerian narratives. However in galley battles it is a bit of a misnomer.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Sam Baughn

There's going to be a break-point at which it isn't worth packing more powerstones onto a ship, but yeah, you can probably afford something like 100 FP worth to act as a force multiplier for a ship with a six-figure price tag.


Megalos doesn't have any more mages to work with than anyone else, already has strong commitments to supporting its land forces with them, and doesn't seem that interested in naval power compared to Araterre and Al-Wazif. Only flagships seems likely to carry more than one serious (Magery 1+) mage, although they may have a bunch of Magery 0 dabblers.


Bear in mind that the Battle Mage template in Banestorm probably represents a fairly gifted mage (IQ 13, Magery 2; he's maybe 1 in several thousand people just for his magery, at least top 10% for intelligence, probably rarer even with generous assumptions about what is possible from education) and he's got 18 spells, only 4 of them at skill 15. Most ship-mages are going to be worse than that.
Fortunately, many useful spells have low prerequisite counts and don't require more than Magery 0! For example: Purify Air, Create Air, Shape Air, Windstorm, Wind, and Predict Weather are all at least somewhat useful aboard a combat vessel and form a simple prerequisite chain that anyone with any degree of magery can learn.
Seek Water (not terribly useful at sea), Seek Coastline, Purify Water, Create Water (again not great if you are at sea and already have purify water), Shape Water (good for managing leaks), and Destroy Water together give you enough to get Current, which isn't quite as good as the Air/Wind chain but still very handy. If you know both, you can easily pick up Breathe Water, which has obvious utility. EDIT: Shape Water also leads to Ice Sphere, which is one of the few missile spells learnable by those with Magery 0, and well suited to naval combat, doing decent amounts of crushing damage with reasonably good range.
Fire spells tend to be a bit demanding in terms of FP, but a handful of magery 0 casters can keep Fireproof going over a whole ship, effectively protecting it against both fire spells and mundane fire.
Keen Vision, Hawk Vision, and Night Vision all help with spotting hazards, as do Air Vision, Bright Vision, and Water Vision. Various light spells are good for this too, as well as signalling.
Tell Time is a zero-prerequisite spell which solves a major problem in low-tech navigation. If you have Magery 1, you can learn Find Direction, but I imagine that Yrth compasses are good enough that you don't necessarily need it. Know Location bypasses basically all navigation technology, but competent mages are rare enough that it probably isn't standard.
Now that I actually look into it, it seems that serious long-distance information gathering is pretty hard. There isn't a simple 'just see things over the horizon' spell, requiring the use of Mage Eye and the like as scout aircraft. There are spells which allow communication at great distances, but you need amazing skill for something like Mind Sending to call back to port reliably (and just casting repeatedly in the hope of success eventually leads to critical failures, which could cost you your ship). It's mostly useful for ship-to-ship communication within a fleet.

EDIT: the plant college offers some excellent spells for seamen. Seek Plant is almost as good as Seek Coastline if you know what kind of plants grow in the area. Shape Plant is amazing for ship repair (or destruction during a boarding action). Identify Plant tells you if it is edible (a lot of age-of-sail explorers died from not knowing that).
The food college gives the handy chain of Test Food, Decay, Preserve Food, and Purify Food. If you're willing to invest a lot of training in it, you can add Ignite Fire, Create Fire, Cook, Seek Food, Create Food, and Essential Food.
A more specialised mage might learn Sense Foes, Sense Emotion, Persuasion, Beast-Soother, Beast Summoning, Fish Control, and Repel Fish (I believe that under the default magic scheme counts barnacles count as 'fish'; get Vermin Control and Repel Vermin, or whatever, if they don't).

I never thought of Wazifis as naval. I shall have to check on that. Cardiel is however.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Yeah that's the book I used. I had to re-read it on line (it costs as much as a chemistry textbook at amazon).

"Chasers" I just used as a generic word for guns mounted on the bow and stern because they were used in a chase. That is a word often used in Hornblowerian narratives. However in galley battles it is a bit of a misnomer.

I wish I knew of a book on Atlantic naval warfare in the age of cogs. Someone in Denmark is writing on early gunpowder warfare on the Baltic Sea.