One of the more prominent complexes of buildings in Port Tranquil are the Shipyards and their collection of ancillary industries and warehouses, clustered around the northern edge of Port Tranquil and its shining quays. Lhavit is not, it has to be said, a particularly maritime city – focused more on the skies and the arcane heavens than the seas, it has never really been drawn to the water.
That said, the silver bounty of the seas is a powerful draw nonetheless, and whilst Lhavit itself might have a shipbuilding and sailing industry in its infancy, other maritime cities still come once in a while to trade, and their ships still require repairs and maintenance, if not full rebuilding, thanks to the dangers of the Ahger Ocean and all its caprices.
Thus, the Port Tranquil Shipyards were created, originating out of a collection of lesser yards that originally served the fishermen of the bay. Agglomerated into one, larger enterprise, the new Shipyards were then up to the task of servicing and maintaining the brave vessels that made it round the unforgiving coast to safe harbour in Port Tranquil. And, perhaps, one day, they might provide a springboard for the starry city to send its own ships out to trade, provided they could be made strong enough to withstand the battering of the ocean and whatever leviathans dwell within its depths.
Towering over the complex, the most immediately prominent and noticeable feature are four enormous wood and skyglass cranes that rise around a wide rectangle of turquoise water, used for loading and unloading crates of goods from the cavernous holds of the great merchant ships that take the long and risky journey to the remote city; pouring out exotic goods and ideas and taking, in return, fine tea, skyglass trinkets, and news of Lhavit’s most valuable export: ephemeral knowledge.
Whenever one of the great galleons docks at Lhavit’s welcoming Port Tranquil, an event that is often the talk of the city, the Shipyards leap into action. Workers are recruited and drafted in to serve under the regular staff, casting hundreds of feet of rope, cutting wood, and fashioning it into everything from critical strakes to decorative detailing, measuring cloth for sails and much else besides.
Cranes dance through the air at the behest of their operators, crates are distributed by a small army of stevedores, whilst a few Charoda frolic and play in the tranquil waters, checking the submerged portions of the great ships for damage and prying off all the flora that can accumulate over a long journey and slow a ship down.
However, trading vessels come but rarely, and so the Shipyards of Port Tranquil are mostly focused on small, coastal vessels – fishing sloops, in the main, used to skim around the great sweep of the bay, checking on the traps and nets that form the fish weirs over the rich currents that swirl around the shallow coastal waters.
The Shipyards have become something of a social hub for the fishermen and women of Port Tranquil, too, a warm place to gather and chat whilst working; the ropery is a long, low building, blindingly white in the sunshine and with a near-transparent skyglass roof, and is always a hive of activity, full of fishermen making and mending nets and traps as they talk. Wide canals accompany the alleys and covered hallways between buildings, and shallow pools are commonplace, both inside and out – adaptations to help the valued Charoda integrate more fully with their more landbound bretheren.
The Shipyards, however, have a far darker history than the current amiable state of affairs suggests; secret passages lead from many of the warehouses up through the granite rock of the peaks to emerge in the rambling cellars of the Ethereal Opera House, where slave markets were held and citizens bid for the lives of others as though they were property. There are still piles of chains and manacles in the farthest, darkest corners of the warehouses, if one knows where to look, and bones crunch underfoot in the tunnels. The bay, too, is littered with the rotting hulks of slaver vessels, summarily sent to the bottom in an awe-inspiring display of magical might from Lhavit’s humbled Towers after the Day of Discord, although only the Charoda workforce now see the decaying timbers on a regular basis.
On the surface, though, the Shipyards have returned to their original purpose – crafting the striking fadeong-wood coracles, fashioning nets and traps for fishermen, producing current maps of the ocean, and repairing the occasional grand trading galleon that makes the perilous journey to the remote city.
Location credit: Alses
Name: Lyel Ceari
Race: Charoda
Birthdate: 453 AV
Birthplace: Charbosi
Occupation: Dockmaster at the Shipyards
Skills: Carpentry - 67, Carving - 40, Negotiation - 51, Shipbuilding - 65, Singing - 81, Swimming - 100, Weaving - 46, Writing - 33
Languages: Common (Fluent), Char (Fluent), Fratava (Basic)
Lyel is one of the Elders of the Charoda population living in Port Tranquil and a widely-respected figure on the bay. Fishermen and traders alike know to be on good terms with the Master of the Yards, not least because of the enormous hytera that has been his companion for as long as anyone can remember.
Lyel himself is an imposing specimen of his race, with skin that glitters like a dolphin’s back at dawn, a richly living, subtle gray colour that always seems to shift and change with even the slightest motion. He is a swimmer of surpassing natural skill, often found effortlessly combing the bay – as much for salvage as for his own enjoyment of the element.
As a consequence of his close bond with the sea, his immersion and delight in the liquid medium, he is very sensitive to the shifts and changes in currents in Port Tranquil and the Ahger Ocean beyond. Often, he can sense the approach of danger meteorological or monstrous long before it makes its presence otherwise felt, simply by the disturbances in the water.
Kind and gentle, soft-spoken and possessed of a sublime singing voice (according to other Charoda, anyway), and filled with a deep love of the water and the sea, Lyel has turned his hands to building ships of all shapes and kinds. He has become one of the foremost craftspeople of Lhavit, despite not being able to enter the city itself, and one of the few able to work with fadeong wood to the degree needed to craft Lhavit’s iconic, unique fishing coracles and the flexing, changing framework of the fishing weirs that provide the starry city with the bay’s silver bounty.
Despite a fine living from such endeavours, Lyel yearns for more, knows that it can be done. Champion of the shipping industry – such as it is – in Lhavit, he itches to understand how to put together the greater vessels that sometimes visit from other cities, behemoths that dwarf his usual commissions and creations of skill that far surpasses his own.
A chance to inspect one down to the gunwales is something he always seizes eagerly upon, and his repair work to such vessels is meticulous and precise down to the finest of detail, since it means he can spend the maximum amount of time on, and gain the greatest understanding from, the ship itself, in the hope of one day creating such a vessel for Lhavit.
That said, the silver bounty of the seas is a powerful draw nonetheless, and whilst Lhavit itself might have a shipbuilding and sailing industry in its infancy, other maritime cities still come once in a while to trade, and their ships still require repairs and maintenance, if not full rebuilding, thanks to the dangers of the Ahger Ocean and all its caprices.
Thus, the Port Tranquil Shipyards were created, originating out of a collection of lesser yards that originally served the fishermen of the bay. Agglomerated into one, larger enterprise, the new Shipyards were then up to the task of servicing and maintaining the brave vessels that made it round the unforgiving coast to safe harbour in Port Tranquil. And, perhaps, one day, they might provide a springboard for the starry city to send its own ships out to trade, provided they could be made strong enough to withstand the battering of the ocean and whatever leviathans dwell within its depths.
Towering over the complex, the most immediately prominent and noticeable feature are four enormous wood and skyglass cranes that rise around a wide rectangle of turquoise water, used for loading and unloading crates of goods from the cavernous holds of the great merchant ships that take the long and risky journey to the remote city; pouring out exotic goods and ideas and taking, in return, fine tea, skyglass trinkets, and news of Lhavit’s most valuable export: ephemeral knowledge.
Whenever one of the great galleons docks at Lhavit’s welcoming Port Tranquil, an event that is often the talk of the city, the Shipyards leap into action. Workers are recruited and drafted in to serve under the regular staff, casting hundreds of feet of rope, cutting wood, and fashioning it into everything from critical strakes to decorative detailing, measuring cloth for sails and much else besides.
Cranes dance through the air at the behest of their operators, crates are distributed by a small army of stevedores, whilst a few Charoda frolic and play in the tranquil waters, checking the submerged portions of the great ships for damage and prying off all the flora that can accumulate over a long journey and slow a ship down.
However, trading vessels come but rarely, and so the Shipyards of Port Tranquil are mostly focused on small, coastal vessels – fishing sloops, in the main, used to skim around the great sweep of the bay, checking on the traps and nets that form the fish weirs over the rich currents that swirl around the shallow coastal waters.
The Shipyards have become something of a social hub for the fishermen and women of Port Tranquil, too, a warm place to gather and chat whilst working; the ropery is a long, low building, blindingly white in the sunshine and with a near-transparent skyglass roof, and is always a hive of activity, full of fishermen making and mending nets and traps as they talk. Wide canals accompany the alleys and covered hallways between buildings, and shallow pools are commonplace, both inside and out – adaptations to help the valued Charoda integrate more fully with their more landbound bretheren.
The Shipyards, however, have a far darker history than the current amiable state of affairs suggests; secret passages lead from many of the warehouses up through the granite rock of the peaks to emerge in the rambling cellars of the Ethereal Opera House, where slave markets were held and citizens bid for the lives of others as though they were property. There are still piles of chains and manacles in the farthest, darkest corners of the warehouses, if one knows where to look, and bones crunch underfoot in the tunnels. The bay, too, is littered with the rotting hulks of slaver vessels, summarily sent to the bottom in an awe-inspiring display of magical might from Lhavit’s humbled Towers after the Day of Discord, although only the Charoda workforce now see the decaying timbers on a regular basis.
On the surface, though, the Shipyards have returned to their original purpose – crafting the striking fadeong-wood coracles, fashioning nets and traps for fishermen, producing current maps of the ocean, and repairing the occasional grand trading galleon that makes the perilous journey to the remote city.
Location credit: Alses
Lyel Ceari
Race: Charoda
Birthdate: 453 AV
Birthplace: Charbosi
Occupation: Dockmaster at the Shipyards
Skills: Carpentry - 67, Carving - 40, Negotiation - 51, Shipbuilding - 65, Singing - 81, Swimming - 100, Weaving - 46, Writing - 33
Languages: Common (Fluent), Char (Fluent), Fratava (Basic)
Lyel is one of the Elders of the Charoda population living in Port Tranquil and a widely-respected figure on the bay. Fishermen and traders alike know to be on good terms with the Master of the Yards, not least because of the enormous hytera that has been his companion for as long as anyone can remember.
Lyel himself is an imposing specimen of his race, with skin that glitters like a dolphin’s back at dawn, a richly living, subtle gray colour that always seems to shift and change with even the slightest motion. He is a swimmer of surpassing natural skill, often found effortlessly combing the bay – as much for salvage as for his own enjoyment of the element.
As a consequence of his close bond with the sea, his immersion and delight in the liquid medium, he is very sensitive to the shifts and changes in currents in Port Tranquil and the Ahger Ocean beyond. Often, he can sense the approach of danger meteorological or monstrous long before it makes its presence otherwise felt, simply by the disturbances in the water.
Kind and gentle, soft-spoken and possessed of a sublime singing voice (according to other Charoda, anyway), and filled with a deep love of the water and the sea, Lyel has turned his hands to building ships of all shapes and kinds. He has become one of the foremost craftspeople of Lhavit, despite not being able to enter the city itself, and one of the few able to work with fadeong wood to the degree needed to craft Lhavit’s iconic, unique fishing coracles and the flexing, changing framework of the fishing weirs that provide the starry city with the bay’s silver bounty.
Despite a fine living from such endeavours, Lyel yearns for more, knows that it can be done. Champion of the shipping industry – such as it is – in Lhavit, he itches to understand how to put together the greater vessels that sometimes visit from other cities, behemoths that dwarf his usual commissions and creations of skill that far surpasses his own.
A chance to inspect one down to the gunwales is something he always seizes eagerly upon, and his repair work to such vessels is meticulous and precise down to the finest of detail, since it means he can spend the maximum amount of time on, and gain the greatest understanding from, the ship itself, in the hope of one day creating such a vessel for Lhavit.
Prices
Ships
Catamaran: 1,000 kina
Fishing Boat: 7,500 kina
Rowing Boat: 100 kina
Ship's Boat: 300 kina
Repairs
Repairs (Ship under 80 tons): 45 kina/day
Repairs (Ship over 80 tons): 100 kina/day
Ship Weapons
Ballista: 500 kina
Harpoon (Light): 10 kina
Harpoon (Heavy): 50 kina
Sundries
Ballista bolts: 1 kina/bolt
Grapple pole: 15 kina
Mooring (Light mount): 500 kina
Mooring (Heavy mount): 1500 kina
Netting (Large): 50 kina
Netting (Huge): 150 kina
Ropes: 2 kina/meter
Sails: 75 kina
Sextant: 250 kina
Tar: 3 kina/liter
Catamaran: 1,000 kina
Fishing Boat: 7,500 kina
Rowing Boat: 100 kina
Ship's Boat: 300 kina
Repairs
Repairs (Ship under 80 tons): 45 kina/day
Repairs (Ship over 80 tons): 100 kina/day
Ship Weapons
Ballista: 500 kina
Harpoon (Light): 10 kina
Harpoon (Heavy): 50 kina
Sundries
Ballista bolts: 1 kina/bolt
Grapple pole: 15 kina
Mooring (Light mount): 500 kina
Mooring (Heavy mount): 1500 kina
Netting (Large): 50 kina
Netting (Huge): 150 kina
Ropes: 2 kina/meter
Sails: 75 kina
Sextant: 250 kina
Tar: 3 kina/liter
