Wyvern communication relays for Empire of Charis

DennisLee wrote:Have you considered a relay of wyverns? For water crossings you select two ports where there is already steady traffic and just ship the wyverns that way. On each side you set up wyvern stations at reasonable distances along trade routes. Rather than having to ship a wyvern from the heart of Charis to the center of Siddermark, as an example, you have several wyverns that each just need to be sent back to the relay post they came from.

DrakBibliophile wrote:First of all, the Charis-Emerald sea gap isn't that large so use of Wyverns isn't that hard.

The "problem" IMO with your idea is that its so obvious that if it was possible, the Church would have been doing it already.

So IMO, either there are problems that we aren't seeing with your idea or your idea is already in use.

Also, IMO an aspect with Wyvern communications is that the message size is small because it has to be written on the amount of paper that a Wyvern can carry.

While use of "code groups" can cut down on the size, "code groups" depend on the sender and receiver setting up the meanings of the "code groups" before hand.

JeffEngel wrote:I was re-reading HFAF and the information on wyvern ranges and speeds made me think about communications using them for the Empire of Charis.

Granted, the Empire's communications are already secretly linked by Owl and SNARC's much of the time, among the inner circle, but that still needs at least cover stories for "officially" finding things out. Semaphore chains handle things overland quickly, but the Empire consists of seven main islands/continents (Tarot, Old Charis [including Margaret's Land], Silverlode, Emerald, Chisholm, Zebediah, and Corisande) and lots of smaller ones, connected only by courier ships.

Wyvern's, however, are a lot faster, and you can get a two-way relay with each of two stations keeping wyverns that home in on the other station. Range may be something of an issue, but the sea crossing distances (Tarot-Margaret's Land, Charis-Silverlode-Emerald, Zebediah-Silverlode [including an intermediary island], Zebediah-Chisholm [also including an intermediary island], and Zebediah-Corisande [possibly including intermediary islands, but those are very small ones]) are none of them all that great, so one or another of the wyvern breeds ought to suffice to make those crossings. I had some concern about how well they would take to making those crossings in terms of how well they may be able to hunt for food or go without it at sea, but then Nahrmahn was using them for Charis-Emerald communications without trouble and that's a sea gap as long as any of them.

This does assume also a good semaphore network across northern Silverlode, which may be overly optimistic. But in a pinch, more wyvern relays could work there, or possibly a longer distance Zebediah-Emerald one.

So - is there any reason they can't set up stations to use wyverns to make those crossings for (granted, low-bandwidth) communications? Should we assume they do by now?

Incidentally, the Tarot-Siddermark sea gap is also not much longer than some of the rest of these, but the southern Siddermark semaphore communications themselves are a hash by now. The Chisholm-Trellheim and Tarot-Fallos gaps are also modest, in case of future Charisian expansion, or at least making inroads for better relations with those parties than the Temple would care for. (The Temple has not much ability to prevent Charisian contacts with Fallos, Trellheim, or the handful of people on the Barren Lands, though Charis hasn't the spare means to do too much coercion in those parts either.)

lyonheart wrote:Hi Drak,

From OAR we learned wyverns could even carry small packages, so message length isn't such a problem.

RFC is downplaying the wyvern potential given the short distances needed to connect the empire and the continents perhaps for some effect when the alliance takes Silkiah and thus cuts off Howard, as we can currently only guess.

The Tarot Channel averages 400 miles wide yet it narrows to ~200, while Tarot-Margaret's Land is 300, Charis-Emerald is 150, Zebediah-Corisande around 220, the longest directly being Emerald-Chisholm just over a thousand miles, though via Treskoe Island its less than 170 and 80 miles respectively, or 400 slightly further east. all within a few hours at 60-70 mph.

Faster communications are so important to business let alone government that these few connections might be privately operated, and given how rapidly sailing ships could return them if they were Baltimore Clippers at the 200-300 miles a day that's been given for Safehold sailing ships, in only a day or two on average, which considerably reduces the wyverns 'down time', NTM reduces the number of wyverns required and lowers costs etc.

Of course the steam dispatch boats I've suggested before might be faster or more reliable still.

So a combination of the semaphore and wyverns could get messages from Siddar City to Tellesberg in ~17-18 hours one way, and using the Emerald-Chisholm ~1050 mile route over the sea in around a day and a half for under two days to Cherayth, or just around 24 hours via Treskoe Island.

While the short range types should work at these locations, the known long range types of 2500-3000 miles or so are quite limited by the return time in a society when land distances might be only 60-70 miles per day on a high road for a one horse cart carrying the wyvern cages assuming its a direct route to the ports and wyvern stations, even though 2 or 3 2500 mile range wyverns might easily connect Tellesberg and Cherayth or Manchyr etc, the return trips could easily take a month or more depending how much was overland.

Then there's the question of how many or how often are messages sent; once or twice a day, every 6 hours?

Until we know more our guesstimates are going to be way off.

So while I'm still very curious what RFC has up his sleeve regarding wyverns, I'm not going to hold my breath till I turn blue.

L