About 100 miles/day.

Quote:

The distance here between the lands is some 525 miles, making his [Bjarni's] average sailing speed 150 miles per day. Both the great geographer Ptolemy and Marinus of Tyre had stated that average ship speeds in their time were in the range of 100 miles per day. In checking Norse speeds in the North Atlantic, this author found four old records of time elapsed while travelling between two points; dividing these by the distances involved gave speeds ranging from 73 miles per day up to 151 miles per day. We know Bjarni had been at the high end. . . . A side wind can propel a square rigger, but at a slower speed. This leg for Leif was some 170 nautical miles. In the two days stated, he averaged 85 miles per day. [http://www.ensignmessage.com/archives/vikings.html]

Quote:

Here are examples of the different kinds of speed: When Ottar (Skuldelev 1) sailed to Eastern Norway in the summer of 2003, the ship could, over part of the voyage – a distance of 147 nautical miles (Anholt-Lyngør), maintain an average speed over ground* of 4.5 knots. This corresponds to 108 nautical miles per 24 hours and gives a good impression of the ship’s potential speed with a light to gentle breeze from the stern.[http://vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/index.php?id=1308&L=1]

* "Speed over ground: Distance over ground/time" (does this mean "as the crow flies"?).

But overall speeds are slower because of delays:

Quote:

The whole voyage from the coast of Northern Zealand to the coast of Eastern Norway took in all seven travel days as it was necessary to seek shelter in Anholt Harbour due to a strong headwind. The resulting travelling speed overall, over the shortest possible distance of 189 nautical miles on the route from Hundested-Anholt-Lyngør was on average only 27 nautical miles per day or 1.3 knots.[http://vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/index.php?id=1308&L=1]

think we can afford a team of dolphins or sharks to pull us, or maybe if we pray real hard Cirda will give us a pair of 1000hp inboards?

buy slaves and make them row?

since we have the $ to hire resonably capable henchmen, perhaps we should get psi boy to find us someone who can control the wind as one of his specialities.

Zombies. But we'll call them something else, like, volunteers.

Now your talkin'

An undead crew of rowers... never tiring... 24/7 rowing... Useful for defense... and they don't drown either...

Ok so who has an animate dead spell and access to materials - to avoid this being perceived as an evil act, I suggest we animate orcs and the like...

this is one of those ethical quandires that always get in the way of game play. Ulthor who has never minded our practice of taking no prisoners, or robbing graves got all uppity when we mentioned taking orc or ogre babies as slaves to do grunt work. I also suspect he would get bent about raising the dead too, which when you get down to it really is a victimless crime on a much lower scale than the killing and robbing of graves we specialize in. I think the prohibition against this may be more about the dark powers that must be accessed to achieve such things rather than the mere desecration of the dead

Now if the object steve has was used to simply round up zombies that were plaguing someone else , we would actually be doing a good thing and a public service. If we simply cagged them for later use would that be evil?

I don't know if zombies are controlable enough or coordinated enough to row a boat as sncyronization is required lest you tangle orrs . However if we built a stone lined pit about a Km or two from the main fort with some form of remote triggered door, we could just keep them caged until an unsuspecting army moved over them then let the lose to create chaos.

They would also be good shock troops to use on more anti piracy missions.

We kill zombies because they are perversions of life, rotting corpses that have been animated--horrors. We must not create them; we cannot use them.

Would not driving a small army of zombies into the spears of a orc army not be an efficient way of killing these abominations?

It's the old dilema, can you use the medical data accumulated by Nazis who tortured prisoners to get it? Is the greater good of saving future lives worth the bad karma of using information tainted by evil?

In the long run even if we could rationalize it for our person use the stigma accquired would ruin our diplomatic gains.

Perversions of orc (or other evil) life are ok aren't they?

I have had good characters (LG paladins even) desecrate orc things without issue.

Desecrating an altar or animating a corpse, if they are all orc what's the diff in the grand scheme of things?

I agree it's a weird argument

why is killing an orc or descreating its tomb less evil than turning it into undead? How are live orcs less evil than animated ones?

I think the purists argument would be that the act of animating uses such dark forces that those involved are incapable of NOT being effected by these magics. The dark energy is innately evil and will damage their souls and/or shift their allignment.

For you to use your item which does not directly tap into these dark powers you should propably remain untainted and personally I could rationalize almost anything as the ends justify the means.

However the masses are neither accustomed to nor educated about the finer side of philosophical hairspliting and would consider those who make or control undead for any longer than it takes to seize and destroy them EVILLLLLLLLL!! Keeping ourselves on the moral high ground is probably imperative for our purposes of creating this town, unless we want to be thugs and force compliance rather than earn loyalty and trust.

I guess raising the dead also places the burden of their actions on the raiser. Should 10% of them escape the battle field to kill innocents civilians their deeds would be on you.

I can see lawful gods not likeing undead because
1. they prevert the normal order of things
2. they mock their creations
3. the enegies they use warp the souls
4. undead kill innocents.

Its amazing that good gods handicap their followers so much they cannot strike back, and use the same tools.

Of course how can we know the mind of the divine, until jonathan tells us.

No

Using them is not fine.

Taking advantage of a favourable tactical situation (driving one enemy into another) is not "using" them in the sense you seem to mean.

I don't even like the idea of taking control of zombies to have them attack an enemy. And certainly disapprove of using them as slave labour. It is evil.

So apparently your alignment is lawful good/anal and you definately don't suport the zombie thing, fine.

I figure Ulthor also won't and I'll probably be told from on high its unseemly for a Paladin and I can see the point, but on a purely rational level I still don't see the issue of taking something inherantly evil and making a GOOD use of it as long as we make sure they don't get loose and kill innocents, creating them I would definately frown apon.

It's also not a good image for our town or band of intrepid adventures so I can see not using the power accept in an immediate combat situation. Of course this leaves Doug who does not care and
Rotox?
harrison?

Steve could always use part of his year off as rogue zombie hunter and I'm sure he and Doug could find uses behind our backs durring the hiatus period. the ideas just bubble out of me when I think about what I could do with them.

A deralict ship full of them left for bait in pirate infested seas, wait till their engaged , close with another ship and pelt them will arrows till dead. Few if any of the zombies would be killed by arrows so indiscriminate fire would not matter.

use the same ship and direct it into the orc port, just to cause mayhem.

lead them to the edge of orc farming territory or a town and strap each zombie with a leaking barrel of oil and a couple of buring torches and send them walking through the crops or into town.

Risk free attacks on garrisons.

What I don't know can burden me with bad karma