I keep coming up with more questions...

Dilandu wrote:Simply speaking - because one or even a few destroyed ships wouldn't really mean anything for the situation. Dohlar have dozens of galleons in comission, and the pretty capable of losing a few without real damage to their navy fighting force. And if there was too many "smutaneous explosions", it may start to look supernatural - and this is definitely NOT what Merlin want.

All you have to do is wait till they are docked, set off one or two in the middle of the night... many more burn, along with dockside installations.

That would leave the explanations of "accident" or "sabotage"... and being as it is in Gorath, not a lot of sympathy if the inquisition goes off on them.

speaking of semophore stations...

The recon skimmer can create illusions, so if you had hold of the command cypher you could send false messages using the system. Clyntahn would assume that the semophore station in question had enemy agents lurking within and then it would likely lead of inquisitors stationed at every semophore station or far more verification of messages. both of these outcomes would make it harder for the church's forces as a whole.

JeffEngel wrote:Do you suppose that causing sudden fires would suffice for removing specific semaphore stations from operation at critical periods for the Great Canal Raid?

In that case, what Merlin did have to do was kill a bunch of people who weren't especially offensive - they were just prepared to do a job that would have made the Raid fail. But fires in the stations would have rendered them inoperable at the time, while letting some or all of those people get away safely.

Sudden fires would, of course, be a bit suspicious, but the sudden slice-y dice-y death of entire station crews was a bit suspicious too.

It looks as though this may have been a point where "fires wherever on command" was a forgotten capability. If they would have done the job, then Merlin would have had less blood on his hands and that was troubling him quite a lot after that particularly.

Also, somewhere along the line you are going to stop, and strangely enough, smoke has been used for signalling before. Thus, seeing smoke might lead the next remaining semaphore to go "oh my whatever is happening there, I see smoke and no semaphore signals"

JeffEngel wrote:...I don't take the crews to be oblivious, but if one of those SNARC's goes off with enough force to destroy one of those supports outright, or start a fire that's large enough suddenly enough that you've got a choice between fighting it or getting out, firefighting either won't do the trick fast enough or won't have a chance to stop the damage from being serious enough.

I get the impression from the textev that the SNARCs themselves are pretty large (relatively). Perhaps a meter or more tall. They survive through their cloaking. I think you're referring to the SNARC's remotes. I've got this picture in my head of a (relatively) small number of SNARCs controlling clouds of tiny individual remotes.

As I interpreted RFC's words, I thought of several of the individual, tiny remotes flying into the magazine of a ship and, just at the point where a battle is getting ready to get underway (with lots of bags of powder being moved around) igniting some of the powder dust and causing a broader conflagration.

I've been aboard US Naval vessels, and I am completely aware of how clean the magazines are - clean enough that you can eat off the floor. But on an older, wooden sailing vessel? In a dark, poorly-lit powder magazine? On a ship that's rolling, pitching, yawing, and heaving? With lots of "powder monkeys" entering and exiting to get bags of mealed powder to the gun deck for the impending battle?

One spark. Just one spark...

From ONE invisible remote...

BOOM!

Anyhow, that's the picture in MY head...

Isilith wrote:All you have to do is wait till they are docked, set off one or two in the middle of the night... many more burn, along with dockside installations.

That would leave the explanations of "accident" or "sabotage"... and being as it is in Gorath, not a lot of sympathy if the inquisition goes off on them.

Oh how true... I'm reminded of (then) Captain Yairley's "cutting out" expedition in Emerald... Sneaking in and firing a bunch of shore-facilities.

This might be similar - except that you'd never need to worry about your own forces having to come ashore and potentially get injured. Eliminates most (but probably not all) of the "mass killing" issue as only the anchor watches would be aboard.

WeberFan wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:...I don't take the crews to be oblivious, but if one of those SNARC's goes off with enough force to destroy one of those supports outright, or start a fire that's large enough suddenly enough that you've got a choice between fighting it or getting out, firefighting either won't do the trick fast enough or won't have a chance to stop the damage from being serious enough.

I get the impression from the textev that the SNARCs themselves are pretty large (relatively). Perhaps a meter or more tall. They survive through their cloaking. I think you're referring to the SNARC's remotes. I've got this picture in my head of a (relatively) small number of SNARCs controlling clouds of tiny individual remotes.

As I interpreted RFC's words, I thought of several of the individual, tiny remotes flying into the magazine of a ship and, just at the point where a battle is getting ready to get underway (with lots of bags of powder being moved around) igniting some of the powder dust and causing a broader conflagration.

I've been aboard US Naval vessels, and I am completely aware of how clean the magazines are - clean enough that you can eat off the floor. But on an older, wooden sailing vessel? In a dark, poorly-lit powder magazine? On a ship that's rolling, pitching, yawing, and heaving? With lots of "powder monkeys" entering and exiting to get bags of mealed powder to the gun deck for the impending battle?

One spark. Just one spark...

From ONE invisible remote...

BOOM!

Anyhow, that's the picture in MY head...

A competent navy has a clean magazine regardless of the era. The costs of getting it wrong, if anything, have gotten lower with more stable powders but the tradition persists. Sailing ship magazines (and ones on shore) made a point of no lights in the magazine - they were lit through windows with lanterns on the outside. Bagged charges became popular very early for the same reasons (no loose powder).
That said magazine explosions on war ships occur with monotonous regularity with one ship or another blowing up in most fleet actions in combat.
As for having a shore installation or installations blow up - the Germans made it happen in the US in 1916, not particularly hard and even harder to pin down as to a cause. (Look up Black Tom & Kingsland)

In my mind, there is no doubt that blowing up gunpowder reserves is mass-murder. For example, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion . A collision at 1 knot of 2 ships levelled a huge chunk of Halifax, and killed or maimed about 8% of the city population. An explosion on safehold is not likely to ever be as big as this, but you get the idea.

MTO wrote:In my mind, there is no doubt that blowing up gunpowder reserves is mass-murder. For example, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion .

That example is irrelevant to blowing up black powder magazines. There are historical examples of large blaack powder explosions -- like the "battle of the crater" in the Civil War -- but the Halifax explosion isn't one of them,

MTO wrote: An explosion on safehold is not likely to ever be as big as this, but you get the idea.

Actually, now that Charis is deploying high explosives, a disaster like Halifax becomes very possible. It's not likely that the CoGA forces will be transporting high explosives, especially in large quantities.

Charis and her allies, otoh, are going to be packing galleons, barges and dragon-wagons to the gunwales with high explosive shells...

You'll be waiting a long, long time, then.

Not to mention getting no more than one or two at a time.

Ships dock only when there are loading/unloading operations underway. For sailing ships, even more so, since setting sail from a dock is at best a major pain. Safehold is very much in the age of sail, and the situation in Ferayd harbour when the Inquistion went after the Charisians is a perfect example: some ships tied up - and easily boarded - while many others rode at anchor, able, if they were warned in time, to cast loose and move out of the roadstead even under unfavourable conditions.

Warships would only dock when there are major stores being loaded - spars, guns or the like - primarily when being put into commission. All regular provisioning, including powder and shot, will take place from lighters out in the roads. Since you never know when some drunken fool will drop a lantern, or, more importantly, when the Admiral will decide that the _you_ are setting sail _now_, fleets space their ships as widely as possible to provide safety and maneuvering room. Given the size of Gorath Bay, I think the RDN would be a tad surprised if an explosion on one galleon caused more than minor damage to its neighbours.

Isilith wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Simply speaking - because one or even a few destroyed ships wouldn't really mean anything for the situation. Dohlar have dozens of galleons in comission, and the pretty capable of losing a few without real damage to their navy fighting force. And if there was too many "smutaneous explosions", it may start to look supernatural - and this is definitely NOT what Merlin want.

All you have to do is wait till they are docked, set off one or two in the middle of the night... many more burn, along with dockside installations.

That would leave the explanations of "accident" or "sabotage"... and being as it is in Gorath, not a lot of sympathy if the inquisition goes off on them.

I KNEW I'd find it if I kept re-reading!

LAMA, October 896, Chapter IV: Sarkyn, Tairohn Hills, and Archbishop's Palace, City of St. Vyrdyn, Princeton of Sarkyn. "A shiver ran through the carefully stowed cargo. The powder was Saladin casks, stacked on their sides and carefully chocked to prevent them from shifting, with each layer of casks cushioned from the ones above and below by a layer of woven straw. It was no one's fault, really, that one. cask in the bottommost tier had a cracked barrel stave. It had been damaged in loading, but the crack was so small no one had noticed it at the time... just as no one knew about the dusting of gunpowder which had sifted through the crack to gather between the damaged cask and its neighbor over the course of the thirty-five-hundred-mile journey from Lake PEI." (emphasis mine).

So back to the original point I was making in the thread... Yes, ship magazines are kept clean. Makes sense. But given the darkness of the ship magazines and their close quarters with only the "powder monkeys" entering them regularly; and given the inherent movement of the ships as they sail, I think it would be "logical" to assume that powder would "sift through cracks" in barrels or sift through the weaving of bags. Other textev suggested to me that this was pretty common and was one of the inherent hazards of the original mealed powder.

An incendiary remote detonating this "spillage" in even a few ships would devastate the ship.

Yes, I know Merlin might not countenance wholesale destruction of a fleet in this manner, but 5-10 percent of a fleet? Perhaps with the senior commanders on board?