Nor would I have expected that. I have started to write some first and second-hand accounts of that battle. My current opiniion is that the Holy Country fleet had sailed through the strait between the island of Fanzai and the jungle of Fethlon, avoiding Kahar's Sea of Mist because of its hostile mermen as much as its treacherous winds (or absence thereof). (The Holy Country expedition ships were primarily sailed, not rowed. The fleets were following Dormal's original designs more closely than the interior seas warfleet of oared vessels, which were dependent on Choralinthor's dampening influence on the wave action.) Coming out of the strait between Lur Nop in the province of Wanzow and the continental province of Boshan, the fleet had sailed inland seas for several months, and had no "Open Seas" rituals active when the Kralori navy sallied forth and engaged the Kethaelans with their zombie-rowed warbarges.
The prevailing wind must have blown mostly from the south that day, given the fact that the Kethaelan sailors were able to enter the Suam Chow (Kralori inland sea). The Kralori barges, combining oar and sail, were able to maneuver without regard for the wind or unknown shallows, since they were on their home turf (well, surface) and had tireless rowers. The Kethaelan fleet lost most of their ships in the first contact, unable to evade the attack. They lost more than an Orlanthi "all" of their vessels to the towering, stronger crewed, unfatigued and magically superior ships of the Kralori. The few ships which managed to avoid ship-to-ship contact with the first wave turned east, towards the open sea, using what wind they had.
Of the surviving dozen ships, I suppose half ran aground and was taken by the pursuing Kralori fleet. Four or five vessels may have made it through the strait between the islands of Fanzai and Zon Am into the open Sea of Kahar.
With the Kralori navy almost in their keelwater, I wager that the captains did not really drop anchor and perform the correct rites of the Opening. At least not the complete and gospel version... They knew that their only chance for survival was the open sea, and even an incomplete Opening ritual gave them better chances for survival than a journey southward along the coast of Fanzai against the wind, or north into the direction the terrible fleet of swimming castles (a Kralori Warbarge has a freeboard of 4 metres at least, with the highest castles (!) of an above-average Kethaelan sailing vessel of this time reaching up only 6 metres or so). To be driven upon a rocky shore is better than to be reanimated as a zmbie, isn't it?
As a result, the remaining Kethaelan vessels managed to disappear into Kahar's fog. For dramatic reasons, two or three should have survived to be wrecked (catastrophically) somewhere along the shore of Fanzai. For yet more dramatic reasons (aka MGF) some of the survivors may have found shelter with friendly tribes either in the jungle or on the Sofali islands, and a few might have found their way to Dosakayo years later, around the Amazon islands (or through captivity with them) and in small, native vessels.
(I have a mini-campaign or a couple of cameos in mind with some Kethaelan citizens outfitting an expedition into the jungles of Fethlon and Fanzai to find a few surviving relatives, or at least find their graves and reunite them with their ancestors' spirits. It might turn out as part of the Freca stories I still haven't given up to continue.)
Unlike Columbus, I believe that the Admiral's expeditionary fleet had started out with about 80 to 100 vessels. Can anybody on this list provide numbers for the Portuguese exploration/aquisition forces which sailed along the African coast into the Gulf of Guinea? If I remember correctly, this was a large scale expedition (a lot larger than that of the madman Magellan) fully supported by the Portuguese king who, having lost the race for dominance on the Iberian peninsula, had established a naval academy and started the single most organized and successful naval expansion in history.
[Earth parallel digression:
Other multi-vessel exploration/conquest/trade fleets of history or legend
include the sons of Mil on their journey from Spain to Ireland, a Phoenician
expedition from Ghades (Cadiz) into the Biscaya (for Cornish tin), another
one circumnavigating Africa, the Sea People's barely defeated invasion of
Ramses' Egypt shortly after the falls of Troja, Mykene etc, the Vandal
conquest of Carthage, Eric Bloodaxe's invasion of Northumberland, the Viking
Great Army's invasion into the Mediterranean, Eric the Red's settling of
Iceland (with IIRC more than a dozen ships), the "real Sindbad"'s travels
along the East African coast to Zanzibar and Zimbabwe. While some of these
examples are migrations rather than explorations, they have in common that
they were carried by more than a handful of ships into largely unknown
waters, unlike the heroic explorations or migrations of Iason and the
Argonauts, Aeneas, St. Brendan (the IMO closest earthly parallel to Dormal's
First Journey), Leif Ericsson, Columbus, Magellan, Drake, the Mayflower,
Cooke, the Bounty, or the Arctic Sea explorers like Barents, Baffin or Nansen.]
>>IMO, the Ludoch have lost in this game. The Holy Country fleet was
>>manned mainly with Islander fisherfolk, whereas the replacements
>> have less respect than
> You just aren't taking the long view of things. Pain must
>come before the baby. The people who are suffering most from the lack
>of a fleet aren't the Islanders -- it's the protein-starved and
>isolated cities of Esrolia, Heortland, and Caladraland.
Heortland is protein-starved, with all that sheep- and wool-production in the backlands, and coastal fishing still going on? The presence of Wolf Pirates won't make the Islander-descended populace of coastal Heortland stay on the shore. Rather they'd make pacts with Wolf Pirate captains and finger those merchants still making the runs across Mirrorsea.
Esrolia is the great loser, I agree. That land has practically no pasture left in its river valleys, and what little it has on its borders won't support the urban populace. The same goes for Caladrian-ruled Porthomeka, and even more the free city of Rhigos. If the horticulture of Caladraland has a protein-deficite, I wonder why. They don't have real cities...
>It's now much harder to get a message from one part of Kethaela to another.
Yes, it has become quite hard to manage a hypothetically united Holy Country effectively. Merchants have lower profit margins now, with all the extra guards or safe passage vouchers they have to finance, and run a greater risk, but trade still goes on on a considerable scale (compared to other regions of Glorantha). The Grain Convoys from Nochet via Handra to Noloswal receive a high number of tag-alongs. Given the estimated size and draft of the Quinpolic grain ships (like the Roman ones coming from Egypt), I suppose they must use the Troll Strait to leave the Mirrorsea, and provide a regular safe passage between the western and eastern Sixths.
>All the Sixths are becoming more paranoid. No doubt soon it will be time to
>introduce a new Unifier, and all will be ready to receive Her.
Her.
You seem to know something, unless this is a cheap repetition of the Convulsion 3D heroquest party conclusion...
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