New Location!

[Bree]

Thanks to a great deal of hard work by Jane, we have a new place for you to play! The Riverboats that travel between Emerald Falls and the coast have been fleshed out and there are 2 ships (one looking for a captain!) ready for new recruits.

You can find information on the Riverboats here: http://www.triadweyrs.org/faq.php?fq_id=746

I will let Jane give the details.

Thanks, Jane!

[Jane]

Wheee!  I love navigable rivers and the one flowing past Emerald Falls was already noted as navigable ... already had riverboats mentioned.  How lucky was that?  And Triad is a post-Aivas club that can include things like paddlewheelers!

As well as the details on the link Bree gave, there are a lot of notes I made while working on the proposal.  (Schedules, etc.)  For the moment I'll post them in here and try to figure out where I *should* have included that information in the FAQ.

This is probably the most useful overview:

The 'crew' of a riverboat are a large extended family who lives onboard, making the boats more like trader caravans than workplaces.  With an ever increasing population and a limited crew room, many young people on the verge of adulthood are placed in work ashore or at sea.

The boats themselves are usually inherited within families, rather than bought or sold.  This gives each riverboat its own individualised sub-culture in the form of different levels of wealth, female repression, honesty, etc.  

Riverboat names are thematic and from among the plant names of Pern.

With plant names and family ownership the riverboats are decorated to greater or lesser degrees in the colours suiting 'their plant' (or the flower of their plant) making them easily identifiable, and are a colourful addition to life alongside this particular river route.

I'll be writing for Lineal, the Captain of the 'Sungazer' (eventually – a long lead-in plot!) and his family and Bree has put the 'Wintergreen' up on the website in case anybody else wants a riverboat to play with.  Grab a couple of friends and PC the 'Wintergreen' or PC somebody on the 'Sungazer' with my crowd!

[Jane]

Look!  Questions and Answers already.


[Q] So what sort of crew positions are there?

[A] Four main ones that will be listed on the Triad website as 'open'; Captain, Pilot, Engineer, and Headwoman.  But everybody will be working at something.  There will be stokers when underway, and cargo handlers for when they are tied up.  Cooks too - most likely the women.  Stewards when they're carrying passengers.


[Q] Engineer sounds interesting. Sort of like the technicians craft? Take care of the engines?  Make sure nothing mechanical goes wrong?

[A] Yep.  Responsible for all technical things onboard.  Runs the engines from boilers to paddlewheel.  Has staff from among the crew.  Not necessarily a technician, but may be if he had left the riverboat during his young adulthood and apprenticed.  But I'm working on the theory that the engine system is fairly reliable after 1200 Turns of perfecting it!


[Q] Where'd you get the idea from?

[A] I like riverboats and reading EFH location information saw that it had riverboats mentioned so it wasn't completely outside canon to make them 'real'.


[Q] What about the pilots, what do they do? Wouldn't the job get a bit boring if it's continually the same routes?

[A] Well, yes, a little boring, which is why my character, Lineal, left - because life was always up and down the same river!  Now he's older he sees it differently.  The pilot is the one who knows the river best - and remember the river changes all the time, especially after floods.  In fact, except in the worst of floods, the riverboats keep running, so he's got his work cut out for him.

[Mikel]

Massively Awesome work, Jane.  Makes me wanna make a family member

[Jane]

Makes me wanna make a family member

That would be great!

I do have some NPC names and ages if you're interested, but you're probably going to want to take "paddlesteamer crewmember and/or engineer" and push it through Babelfish a hundred times to come up with something unique.

 :laughing5:

[Mikel]

Makes me wanna make a family member

That would be great!

I do have some NPC names and ages if you're interested, but you're probably going to want to take "paddlesteamer crewmember and/or engineer" and push it through Babelfish a hundred times to come up with something unique.

 :laughing5:

Uhm, me?   :angel12:  mmmm, what is wrong with that darn halo?

[Patrick]

That is totally awesome Jane!  If I don't make a family member, when I do get a character at EFH I'll be sure to post with them at least once or twice.

[Jane]

... when I do get a character at EFH I'll be sure to post with them at least once or twice.

I shall hold you to that.

Here's another snippet I should have included in the FAQ somewhere:

The riverboats (and this is the IC term for them rather than steamboats, paddlesteamers, or paddlewheelers) have an average speed of 15 miles per hour so a full river trip would take 50 hours underway.  Working on an eight hour sailing day (plus loading / unloading time and not sailing during the hours of darkness) this would take approximately eight days downriver and twelve upriver (burning wood at the same rate, accepting the slower speed against the current).

For the technically inclined in the club, I took real riverboat speeds, guessed Triad distances, and averaged everything to *death* to get something with nice round numbers that people could use for guidence - and remember!

I have drafted a schedule for the Sungazer (no surprises there):

m2d23  -- Dawn - Depart EFH d/s
m2d24
m2d25
m2d26  -- Dusk - Arrive way point
m2d27
m2d28  -- Dawn - Depart way point d/s

m3d1
m3d2
m3d3  -- Dusk - Arrive sea port
m3d4
m3d5
m3d6  -- Dawn - Depart sea port u/s
m3d7
m3d8
m3d9
m3d10
m3d11 -- Dusk - Arrive way point
m3d12
m3d13  -- Dawn - Depart way point u/s
m3d14
m3d15
m3d16
m3d17
m3d18  -- Dusk - Arrive EFH
m3d19
m3d20
m3d21  -- Dawn - Depart EFH d/s
m3d22

So this riverboat departs EFH every 27 days and I'm happy to copost with anybody with characters at EFH on the days that Sungazer and her crew are at the Hold.

[Patrick]

... when I do get a character at EFH I'll be sure to post with them at least once or twice.

I shall hold you to that.

I had hoped you would.

[Paula]

That is so neat Jane. *gives her a big round of applaudes*  :hello1:

[Jane]

That is so neat Jane.

Thank you.

Neat enough for Aivorn or Corowal to copost with the NPC Captain of the Sungazer sometime between d18 and d24?  No better time to christen the location and no point in waiting for my slow-plot PCs to get there.

[Paula]

That is so neat Jane.

Thank you.

Neat enough for Aivorn or Corowal to copost with the NPC Captain of the Sungazer sometime between d18 and d24?  No better time to christen the location and no point in waiting for my slow-plot PCs to get there.

Sure is!

[Jane]

Your daily dose of riverboat information!

Lots of adults and kids; not much room.  These people live in cramped quarters when compared with people living at a Weyr, but nearly every person onboard grew up on a riverboat so it's normal life for them.

This is part of the FAQ pages - but the link is new.

Typical accommodation aboard is in small (12ft x 10ft) standard staterooms with each with an entrance door off the 5ft wide balcony that provides the main access anywhere on each deck.

The rooms have two layouts, usually referred to 'double' and 'single' though all staterooms are the same size.

Double staterooms are set up with a lofted double bed beside the entrance door, and one set of two bunk-beds taking up the room from the foot of the double bed to the internal wall. The upper bunk is fixed in place but the lower one may be dismantled and stored against the wall if not required by the resident family.

A single stateroom has two sets of two bunk-beds. These rooms are used for single adults or for children. When used for children the 'adjoining door' between a double stateroom on one side of the riverboat and a single stateroom on the other is removed giving the family one continuous area living with two external doors.

Riverboat Sungazer - Crew Staterooms
    http://www.thirzajane.com/riverboatrooms.html

Of course, each riverboat is its own little world.  What's true of the Sungazer isn't necessarily true of the others.

[Patrick]

You've really thought this out Jane.  I can't wait to get a character at EFH just so they can ride these boats.

[Jane]

I can't wait to get a character at EFH just so they can ride these boats.

When my PCs get there you can just make NPCs whenever you want to ride along!  (Not until my PCs get there, or all we'll have in the post will be NPCs.)