Waertagi Dragon Boats
The waertagi are most famed for their gigantic city ships made from the bodies of sea dragons. However, their smaller craft are also worthy of admiration. These various small craft are remarkable for their speed, man?uverability, and sea-worthiness. They are also remarkable for their beauty.
The boats have a number of features that are peculiar to the waertagi. Most of these would cause a sane and sober seaman to refuse to ever go to sea in such a contraption. Only those who have lived their entire life at sea can be comfortable with these strange designs.
The most peculiar feature of waertagi ships is the rigging. The sails are constructed of a black fabric which is made from certain varieties of seaweed. They are stiffened with battens to control their shape. Battens are unknown to most of Glorantha's seafarers except for Kralorela and Vormain. The most peculiar thing about the rigging is the masts. These are secured to the deck by a flexible joint which allows the mast to be swung around to any angle and direction. The position of the mast and sail is controlled by an arrangement of stays and booms. This arrangement allows the sail to be adjusted to the very optimum position to catch any wind. (In many ways it resembles the sail used on a windsurfer but there is a team of men using ropes and poles to position the sail instead of one man using only his own body.)
The sail can be lowered to the deck, furled, and stowed in a matter of seconds by a well-trained crew. Thus the waertagi can keep their sails up until the last moment when they engage for battle, unlike other nations who generally will take down their masts long before an engagement begins and use oars for the battle.
Different sizes of boat may use one to four sails. The sails can not be reefed easily. If the weather is too extreme then the normal sails may be replaced by smaller ones.
Needless to say, any conventional seaman looking at this arrangement would be appalled. It looks like sheer madness to try to handle a large sail on a flexible mast, and it would be if the waertagi did not have millenia of development behind their seamanship and an almost instinctive feeling for wind and ships.
The dragon boats are long and narrow for speed. This would normally limit the spread of sail they could carry without fear of being overturned. The waetagi use outriggers to prevent their sails from toppling their craft. The outriggers can be removed and shipped inboard in a few minutes at need.
Outriggers on a normal penteconter would be in the way of the oars. The waertagi have a peculiar style of rowing that avoids this difficulty. Their oars enter the water at a steep angle close to the ship. The oarsmen stand at their oars, rather than sit as in a conventional warship. They work their oars in a side to side sculling action that never raises the oar-blade from the water. The waertagi have perfected this peculiar motion so that the man behind can draw a little extra energy from the vortices generated by the oar ahead of him. Each oarsman follows the stroke of the man ahead but lags him just slightly. This means that the oars move in waves down the side of the ship, rather than in the synchronous motion of normal rowing.
These waves undulating down the sides of the ship make it look like the entire ship is wriggling, like a dragon lashing its body side to side to drive itself through the water.
Again, a conventional seaman would look at this style of rowing and conclude that the stroke was inefficient and that no crew could maintain the staggered timing needed to keep in stroke. The waertagi have found that with the right oar design and correct motion, this stroke is more efficient than the conventional; and they have proven that their crews can keep in time.
Under the prow of the boat is a ram. The waertagi do not rely on ramming as a tactic as highly as other seafarers, their hulls are lighter and less strong than most. The ram is mainly there to reduce the bow wave which reduces the resistance of the water and so makes the ship faster. The ram does function as a weapon though, and is used as such when circumstances dictate.
Dragon boats are made in the likeness of small sea dragons. The rearing prow will be carved and painted in a fearsome likeness of a dragon's head. The hull is painted to resemble the scales of a dragon. The black sails with battens look like dragon-wings raised to catch the wind. The oars undulating rhythmically down the sides make the hull appear to writhe like a living thing. This combination produces such a resemblance to the real thing that they are frequently mistaken for sea dragons.
A waertagi dragon boat is the finest small craft afloat on the seas of Glorantha. It is faster than any comparably sized ship under oars, sails, or both. Under sail, it can lie a point nearer the wind than any other craft afloat. It can weather storms that no other seafarers would think of trying (it has to, the waertagi live at sea and have no ports in which to shelter). The price for these advantages is the level of training required for a crew. Only a race born to the sea, with millennia of heritage behind them, each man with a lifetime of practice, could hope to handle such a ship in any but the most ideal conditions. In a battle or storm, any lesser skilled crew would be doomed.
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