runsforcelery wrote:I needed a shoal to do the trick and, as I've pointed out, it's not unrealistic for one to be there, nor were the Charisians acting foolishly or recklessly given what they knew. But this is exactly the sort of shoal mariners would name and talk about . . . a lot.
You're right that most of the sailors talking about it would be in local coasting craft, not somewhere the ICN would be likely to hear about it, but jgnfld's right about the way mariners have historically acted.
I'm sure this has made a serious impression on the ICN in the Gulf of Dohlar. While they don't have Harchong's charts, pilots, or buoys to use now, there are the occasional fishermen tapped for information and smuggling. Maybe the ICN can start tapping them for navigational data - if they could trust it.
They may be able to get charts from the "local" seijins, to the extent they exist, and to the extent they can store and effectively reference them, an issue that's been brought up before up-thread.
Not that any realistic arrangement is going to eliminate all possibility of running into something underwater.
In another case of burned hands teaching best, it's likely motivating more work to reconstruct the Royal College's old charts from copies distributed to ships.