Which makes it interesting how it looked like. My favourite picture is how Jeset took a giant beetle carapace, turned it upside down and floated it away, a trollish version of the dugout, the bitout.
I have been thinking a lot about primitive Gloranthan watercraft. There are only a few basic models, IMO.
The best documented of these is the reed boat used both by the (Zola Fel) newtling bachelors and the Suvarians. It is effectively a raft which can be directed more easily along the long side, a bundle of reeds which may have started out as a swimming help.
The earliest multipart wooden design will have been similar in function, maybe two logs held together to transport something bulky across some water. This may have produced a more permanent raft, which may even have received some sort of lining to keep water from sloshing onto the vessel. IMO that's how the Kralori flat-bottomed barges originated, but the design is quite widespread. There are European archeological finds of river barges which consist mainly of a sewn bottom of several planks with a comparatively low railing around, though already a design "heavier than water" (not really, but relying on empty space below the water line to float effectively, unlike rafts or reed boats).
IMO the discovery of "heavier than water" craft marks the invention of the boat, like the carapace dugout model I postulate for Jeset.
Humans will have used tree trunks for dugouts. The dugout survived in ship-building as the keel of the vessel, and there are many finds of dugouts with added (sewn on, or later also nailed on) planking. Note that a dugout can be widened considerably if the outer part of the trunk is used to almost its full circumference. This is where the earliest ribs inserted into a ship hull come into play, to keep the hull in that widened state. Western Genertelan boats are quite likely built like this. Later models purely based on planks still were built shell first, ribs later, like most of the classical ships of the Mediterranean. IMO one of Dormal's achievements in ship-building was to start with the ribs and add the planking, implying that all sea-going vessels up to the Closing were built using the shell method. The shell-built ships were quite sophisticated, sufficiently so that serious science cannot absolutely exclude the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenicians.
The last primitive type is that using some sort of soft, watertighted material (silk, sharkskin, bark, leather) spanned on some kind of frame, like baskets, rib cages, etc. Coracles, canoes, and similar designs, IMO including the Waertagi fastships and city ships made from Sea-Dragon hide and Sea-Dragon rib-cages, perhaps including magically strengthened dugout "soft" parts of those beasts. They can very well be used for seagoing vessels, as St. Brendan and the Eskimoes prove.
>Therefore, Jeset was the first
>toolmaker. Troll craftman have few iconic figures, possibly Gustbran the
>sorceror/smith, but this developement of craftsmanship seems like it comes
>very late in troll history. Fire and its corresponding rune heat came way
>after darkness and water.
Do the trolls know that? To them, everything there is (to be afraid of) is or was hidden in the deepest recesses of Subere. Yes, this even includes Chaos, and the Void, although both of these could be dubbed "Too Deep".
IMO the trolls equate fire and death. Their version of the Sword Story might well tell how Trickster (Eurmal?) stole the unquenchable torch for that other deity who became Walking Death, rather than the unbreakable blade. Certainly Zorak Zoran stole it back.
> I imagine Jeset must have seemed very silly, or to wiser darkness powers,
>dangerous and anti-status quo sitting in that boat, which is what all those
>gnarled smith figures are like in the real world. Something sort of
>dangerous, or mistrusted, Smith gods of craftsmanship manipulate powers few
>can understand. "Beware the geeks," because they are cutting edge.
Jeset braved, and mastered, a foreign element, by keeping the water outside of his own element within the vessel - quite similar to the art of the smith, who also manages to keep the fire contained and separated from the darkness.
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