Okay, that's a pretty good explanation of why they didn't know about the surface. I like it, it's nice and thought out.

But I still don't know about the ship; bone may be stronger than wood (though I'm not sure if it's stronger than all types of wood). But I'd imagine that the hull of a ship is rather thick wood, while the spears would be relatively thin bone.

A ships hull for ocean travel is usually extremely thick and tightly fitted for the strong ocean waves, currents, and pressure. Also a thicker bottom is used for keeping water from finding any cracks and stabilizing the vessel.

Even before ocean travel sized vessels the romans and greeks needed heavy metal spikes propelled by dozens and dozens of rowers to piece the hull of an enemy ship.

Solution is to make a fantasy-version of a torpedo. Create a large anti-ship battering ram from suitable bone mass or rock, attach handles to the ram and then have the ram driven directly into the underside of the boat by a host of merfolk.

Ship hull is optimized to deal with water, not massive merfolk-powered rams.

Easiest compramise would be a simple grapple and raid.

Flippers and fins aren't going to do so well on the deck of a ship.

The easiest thing is to somehow use tools and bend the wood open. However, I will not argue further because I believe that plot goes above all others, to a certain extent, of course, but still. I will personally accept this without any further questioning.

I mean, if Feigling says it's fine then I'll go with it. I know plot is important, but things actually being realistic is important too. And it's not like them trying to crack open the ship and realizing they can't would be the end of it, and there wouldn't be any interaction between the two groups.

Hatchets. That is all.

But hatchets or spears of bone would be remarkably brittle as a substance. And as a whole bone tends to soften easier when exposed to excessive amounts of water, which would be in the ocean. Microorganisms would find their way to and eat at the bones far faster than they would on land where you could bury skeletal remains in the sand or a more organic-matter enriched substance like peat-moss in swamps or tar swamps (though the former may still have an effect on the nature of decomposition).

The solution then might be to utilize chunks of hard rocks broken off from undersea mountains or whatever, or perhaps some corals even (which can be viciously sharp). Or as a related-alternative: perhaps utilizing diamonds push up through undersea vents and "farmed" from the porous volcanic rock at the bottom of the sea. Diamonds are naturally hard and you could use one to chip through wood if given time.

Undersea vents may also be a sort of natural forge if you want to go out as far as basic metal-working. Though I would hazard that metals forged underwater may be full of more impurities than metal forged on the surface (due in part probably to the more uncontrollable nature of an undersea vent or volcano in comparison to a land-top forge fueled by coal, charcoal, or simple timber/animal shit). So the strength of a hatchet or spear forged underwater through using volcanic magma would be in question but would be enough to lampshade the issue as a whole.

And if time is also of an issue and keeping pace with a ship without tiring (given I haven't read the post and just reading the arguments) one could latch onto the underside with hooks like with what a butcher or even a logger on the surface would use to grip and manipulate timbers. I imagine mer-folk would need to keep mobile anyways to keep their blood pumped full of oxygen. Unless their mouth breathers.

And despite the thickness of ocean-going hulls they can be easily softened and eaten away by marine life. Straight wooden hulls are subject to damages by worms and barnacles which can compromise the hull of the ship. Every so many years any ship will need to be dragged back onto land to be scraped clean of aquatic wild-life and have their hulls repaired.

In our world the British Empire learned to deal with this through employing Copper Sheathing. The chemical reaction of copper to salt water helped create a chemical barrier that repelled or killed marine organisms and thus greatly extended the ships life at sea as well as lessening the drag on the ship and allowing them to go faster. But this was an expensive thing to use and even develop (they went through a lot of hulls and continually closed and revived the project, the biggest risk they faced being galvanic reaction between the copper and the iron spikes used to hold their ships together which would destroy the copper sheaths). I don't expect this to be really seriously used all things considered, just a fun-fact.

Yeah, that'd work, after all we don't stab trees down, we chop em.

Goldeagle1221 said
Yeah, that'd work, after all we don't stab trees down, we chop em.

You could still chip at the wood. It'd just take longer. Or not so much if the hull was near the end of its life-expectancy. See my edited reply.

I did, thank you.

Hi, hi. It seems my powers of GMing have been called upon.

I'm a very 'story-first' rper, but story must maintain a coherent train of thought. The map defines the edge of the "known world". I don't think, story-wise, there would be any benefits to making more nations further across the map. Also, it hastens communications, so we aren't waiting several years to get a response.

As for the fish-people vs the boats... practically, it is unlikely that bones and wood could pierce a ship's hull. Remember, these boats were designed to ram head-first into other boats, until galleons, schooners and frigates were built, where they were designed to take solid chunks of metal fired at high speed . It would, at best, take a while and be fairly noisy, and at worse be totally ineffective. In reality.
But, like I say, I'm a story first kind of guy, so as long as both attacker and attacked are happy with the story that this attack might lead into, I have no qualms about the weapons being capable of penetrating wood.

Also, sovereign, I like the sig. Who/what is it?

I don't know if there'd be any way someone on a boat could deal with something obviously carving away their boat. If anything they might abandon it for the life boats. But then that just puts them closer to the water and easier to grab by anything with the arms to scrap at the bottom hull of a boat.

So it then comes to a matter of if the means justify the effort. We might as well look at the fish people as being someone so ecologically divided they're pretty much completely isolated from surface affairs. There's not much they can both to do that'd be worth the effort.

Of course, this whole lampshading discussion could be avoided if the fish-people in question were more amphibious than not...

Wait... So Feigling, are you saying that the map is the entirety of the actual world? Because I'm still a bit fuzzy on your meaning. So a question with a simple answer: if you sailed to the western edge of the map, would you be on the eastern edge of the map?

And as for the sig, it's Bloody Marie; the final boss of the fighting game 'Skullgirls'.

1. Yes. It seems to me to be the more practical option. Small world, huh?

2. Can't say I've heard of it. What's it like?

Feigling said
2. Can't say I've heard of it. What's it like?

Heeeeere we goooooooo

The party post will be prepared tomorrow.

OK, I made my nationsheet! So GMs, is it acceptable? Is it too simple? Can I go make a IC post now?

Couple points I want to complain about. Or make a comment of...

On the name: Monsoon.meme

On the flag: could anyone try harder to rip off a existing flag? I mean, the least someone - anyone - could do is write up a description and roll with it.

On unquestionably skinny things: I don't think this could even exist. Even in a fantasy environment it'd be impossible to claim a race is always physically fit. There will always be a breakdown of something biologically that would have someone become fat, or a life-style that would either facilitate characters being "over weight" or even encourage it. And in most medieval societies the only people who would be overweight would be the nobility, due in part they're not working the fields and because they can afford to eat more. In fact, being fat - to a certain point - was considered a good thing as it was a sign of wealth and status throughout much of the pre-industrial world. Being "skinny" and having "tanned skin" was an attribute of the peasants and commoners that didn't change until actually recently.

And having a race of people stated to be physically perfect in that they all subscribe to some ideal body proportion (not being fat) is off putting from my perspective. It's a fairly weak way of making an idealized race to claim most perfect anything. And that's something that shouldn't ever be done. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever. And if they are: they better be god awfully inbred with all those strong beautiful genes being trapped in the population, at a sacrifice everyone's pretty infertile.

And as for positioning, given people are starting to close in on where I am I would like to make a due note that I consider the region around me to be considerably African. And all you pseudo-Europeans wouldn't fit. And at the region NotMemes is coming in at I would appreciate some recognition of this and someone to be culturally more African or even African lite to mark the shift.

Well Caste systems are all the rage in east africa, and phalanx style militaries were a big thing in the north after hellenistic unification.

Those are my only valid comparisons.