Octhania

[Daos]

In a way, it's kind of apropos that we begin in Octhania, as that was where the first three campaigns were held in the original Amtar.

In the original world, each of the five landmasses represented one of the five alignments (law, chaos, evil, good and neutrality) and one of the five elements (water, wind, earth, fire and the last being magic). Octhania represented both chaos and water, or it was meant to, anyway.

I originally had all kinds of ideas for Octhania, but in the end kind of chickened out and went with a standard monarchy run by a kaiser. I didn't even try using a sea-heavy campaign until the third one. The first two games were all land-locked.

Anyway, attached to this post is a blank map of Octhania. Each hex is 50 miles. The next step here is for me to plot out the terrain, seismology, wind and water currents, and climatology. Which is all boring as heck and not really worth discussing.

So, while I'm working on all of that, I thought I'd toss around some ideas I had for the new Octhania. None of this is in stone, but it gives us something to talk about for awhile. Ideas I had for Octhania are:

*A mishmash of cultures, largely drawn from Hawaii, Indonesia, and the Caribbean.
*Not all of the islands are civilized, with cities and towns. Some are abandoned, some are wild.
*The islands are all city-state like, perhaps part of a federation. I was thinking of having some kind of big guild, similar to the East India Trading Company, that served as a loose central government. However, a number of islands try and fight against their monopoly. Thus, we have a lot of pirates, smugglers, outlaws and so forth. Some are in it for profit, others are in it for freedom.
*The islands trade heavily with each other, and the other landmasses.
*The islands have lots of different races, including the core six, but also lots of other races, as well (including sea races, like sahuagin).
*Voodoo magic is fairly common.

That's all I have for now. We won't actually get to cultures, races, language, and all that just yet, but we can start brainstorming about them now. What do you two think?

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[Airellian]

Well, I'm wondering how these guys are sustaining their trading empires. Trading empires are usually sustained by using stable routes and moving cargo from one place to another place. How are they doing this? Are they using ships? If so, then where are they getting their wood? While there are a lot of islands, it doesn't seem like there would be enough wood in those islands to sustain the number of ships needed to maintain those trading empires, unless they're heavily colonial.

In more temperate zones, you would have oak, pine, larch or cedar as building materials. More tropical woods would be mahogany, teak, okoumé, iroko, Keruing, azobé and merbau.

Anyway, since smuggling and outlawry is rampant, ships have to be in an extremely large supply. Well, actually, I suppose some of these city-state islands would support privateers working against rival islands. But, the case remains that there needs to be a large amount of actual traffic for smuggling and piracy to actually be profitable and supportable. Ships are very expensive, and sailing out to sea is a risky venture, not to mention the inherent risks of taking something that's not yours. That's why there have to be a large number of actual cargoes before piracy becomes an actual problem. And since pirates don't usually have the means to build their own ships, those pirate ships, in turn, have to have been built by either governments or private enterprises (probably that guild you mentioned).

Of course, their method of transportation doesn't have to be with ships. They could be using teleporters, I suppose. Nor does their primary building material have to be wood. Maybe they're moving around in stone ships. Or metal ships. Or ships created from magical force. But help me out here, and illuminate some of this for me.

[Daos]

I have to admit to having no idea how many square miles of forest one would need to harvest to build a fleet of merchant ships. But I figure a handful of druids, at least level 5, could cast Plant Growth to keep those trees coming. As long as they keep replanting after cutting them down, they'd have an infinite supply.

There very well could be an alternate source of material, too. Maybe there's a special kind of coral that can be used with wood-like properties. That could be kind of cool.

Also, they do trade with the other landmasses. I'm sure Gontoria has plenty of lumber to trade.

[Airellian]

Well, would the druids actually cooperate with governments or private enterprises in supplying their needed trees? It doesn't seem like part of their ethos. Cutting down thousands of trees each day in order to fuel their need for ships? On the other hand, doing that would imply a pretty close relationship. Or that worship of nature is sanctioned in some way.

If Octhania is getting most of its wood from Gontoria, then Gontoria has a pretty hefty hold over them. Not only can they set prices, but the cost of transporting that wood back to Octhania's shipbuilding centers would add to the already hefty cost of building ships. Gontoria could withhold the supply, sparking a war, choking Octhania's economy in the long term.

Of course, it would be wiser for Octhania to diversify its sources of wood. Get some from home, from Gontoria, from other places.

Also, the supply of trees wouldn't necessarily be infinite with the help of druids, or at least, not in the way I'm thinking. It would depend on how many druids were above level 5, how many are friendly to the people building the ships, et cetera. Plus, there's only so much surface area on the islands for trees to be planted on. The plant growth strategy would help sustain their tree population in the long run, but the numbers of ships Octhania could build on their own home turf each year would still be limited by several factors. So, while Octhania might have a higher number of ships overall, especially starting out, if they got into a war with one of the nations with a larger land area, they might very well become outpaced in number of ships built per year, especially if Octhania loses one of its critical supply centers, like the Gontoria lumber trade.

Of course, that isn't to say Octhania wouldn't have other factors in their favor. They would have greater institutional knowledge in both sailing and shipbuilding. So, their ships might be the best and most efficiently built. The skill of their sailors means that their shiphandling is also the best. So, it would be a question of quality vs. quantity in the long term. Another advantage is control of the main shipping lanes, since they sit right between any route between the three main landmasses.

[Daos]

Well, would the druids actually cooperate with governments or private enterprises in supplying their needed trees? It doesn't seem like part of their ethos. Cutting down thousands of trees each day in order to fuel their need for ships? On the other hand, doing that would imply a pretty close relationship. Or that worship of nature is sanctioned in some way.

I don't know...we haven't established the religions yet. It's possible the druids do so willingly, are paid to do so, or are enslaved and have no choice. It's possible they do it on their own accord, wanting to restore nature, and then the sailors just cut them down again, causing an endless cycle.

If Octhania is getting most of its wood from Gontoria, then Gontoria has a pretty hefty hold over them. Not only can they set prices, but the cost of transporting that wood back to Octhania's shipbuilding centers would add to the already hefty cost of building ships. Gontoria could withhold the supply, sparking a war, choking Octhania's economy in the long term.

Not if Octhania has something that Gontoria really needs, too. What, I don't know, but it would create a balance if Gontoria needs it badly enough.

[Airellian]

Sept 23, 2011 13:37:25 GMT -8 Daos said:

I don't know...we haven't established the religions yet. It's possible the druids do so willingly, are paid to do so, or are enslaved and have no choice. It's possible they do it on their own accord, wanting to restore nature, and then the sailors just cut them down again, causing an endless cycle.

While religions haven't been established, I don't think there's much difference between druids from different worlds. On the other hand, maybe there's a specialty priest class that oversees the the ceremonies of blessing the trees and cutting them down. Enslavement of the druids is also rife with all sorts of possibilities.

I find the last possibility less likely. Or at least, that the druids would restore the trees forever without taking reprisals on the people who keep cutting them down in the first place. And I have my doubts about a government that would directly antagonize the druids within their own borders if there were a different method available to appease them. So, there might be a few cycles where a group cuts down a lot of trees, then the druids grow them back up again. But after two or three cycles of this, there would probably be unrest and revolt, unless the naval groups work out a deal with the druids or get wood elsewhere.

Not if Octhania has something that Gontoria really needs, too. What, I don't know, but it would create a balance if Gontoria needs it badly enough.

Well, I don't know about that. Trade empires are typically more vulnerable to things like embargoes and what not. So, unless the other nations like Gontoria are completely lacking in materials like iron or wheat and have to wholly import them, they're not as vulnerable to a trade war as Octhania is. Also keep in mind, that because of the sheer surface area of the nations in the main landmasses, most of the trade those nations will be partaking in will actually mostly be interior, i.e., movement from the nation's inner regions to the outer regions, from one coast to the other, up and down rivers, et cetera. Plus, Gontoria has their northern neighbor Cryzza to trade with using the land routes that Octhania has little influence over, unless Cryzza is an Octhanian ally in that particular war.

Consider the British Empire vs France in the Napoleonic wars. Most of Britain's timber came from America and they had a variety of trading partners in America, including their own colonies, the United States, and others. No doubt, Britain was the premier naval power of the age, and they implemented a pretty effective naval blockade. They pretty much had to, because if Napoleon landed on the English coast, they were toast. But despite the blockade, Napoleon was able to wage a land war across Europe with impunity. In fact, Britain being cut off from its main supply of timber would hurt it more than France being cut off from the rest of the world would hurt it.

This is all a very simplistic view, granted, but I think it illustrates an important point. Unless the other nations are lacking in a material or cargo that is absolutely vital to their economy, like food, supplies to build war materials, or substances necessary for spellcasting, Octhania will always have to think about these sorts of things: scarcity, maintaining an economic and military advantage over everyone else, maintaining superiority in number and quality of ships, and other things. That's not to say that this is a bad thing. Perhaps it's a part of their national identity, this sort of "siege mentality".

[Daos]

So I sat down and worked on the ocean and wind currents, and it was easier than I thought it was. Because it's primarily water, and very little land, both move in counter-clockwise circles around the islands (due to the islands being in the southern hemisphere).

The air is primarily humid, due to all of the water, so if I'm reading this right, it means the terrain will consist more of marsh, forests and jungles than say, grasslands or desert.

Now it's just a matter of setting up the terrain. I may need to zoom in closer for that, however.

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[Daos]

And here we have a closer look at the Octhanian isles. Each hex here is 25 miles across. I can't zoom in any closer without leaving islands off the map, so I'm going to work on terrain next.

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[Airellian]

Okay.

[Daos]

Whew, that took forever.

How does this look? Triangles are mountains, red triangles are volcanoes, green spots are jungle, brown spots (ew) are swamps, yellow spots are barren, lumps are hills. (And green lumps are hills with jungle on them).

I tried to have as much variance as possible, to keep things interesting.

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[Airellian]

But, there doesn't seem to be much variation at all. For example, the large cluster of islands in the middle are pretty much the same jungle terrain throughout, with one small bump in elevation, but not in type. I guess by "variance" you meant more along the lines of "this will be the jungle island, this will be the volcano island, et cetera."

[Daos]

Yes, well I did include lots of jungle as you were the one who said we needed a lot of it to justify having any ships.

[Airellian]

Just pointing out that while you said you included as much variation as possible, there's not really all that much variation at all.

And the point I was making about the need for trees was not that the Octhanians need a whole lot of it in their home territory, but the questions of where and how they get it can help answer questions in turn about their culture and mindset. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.

So, in other words, I wasn't saying, "Octhania needs lots of jungles to justify the amount of ships they would need for their trading empire!" It was actually more along the lines, "If Octhania has an abundance of supply of trees, then that means this and this and this. If they don't, then it means this and this and this. Either way would be different, but might lead to interesting conclusions."