I intend to write a
minimum of one story a day this week. I think I'm going to be a novelist when I grow up - better get some practice in!

Also, the war has gotten personal.
Notes on Elgovian Shipbuilding and Navy
The Elgovian naval base of Sicotan is possibly the only major naval base to lie on an inland lake. This is made possible by their close friendship to Hyperborea and the fact that all Elgovian ships being produced at the moment are moved directly to Rhodes, the
true naval base for Elgovia in the Karthaginian War.
At this moment, five galleys are under construction at Sicotan, another five are comitted to the defense of Rhodes, and twenty-five are in the Mediterranean on various duties. Many of the Elgovian ships have been sunk over the past few decades. But the managers, by order of the Chaos Throne, have recently begun to ramp up production drastically...
Wood for the ships is harvested from the vast forests that cover much of Elgovia. In the west, trees are cleared as a necessity so that new settlements can be founded and more trees are cut to create the beginnings of a road towards Dashiv; in the east, the forests are smaller, but the woodcutters have managed them for hundreds of years and so the wood is of better quality. (OOC - remember this is America before the settlers arrived! Until I hit 10M pop, forests will grow
faster than I can cut them.)
The lumber mills are mostly situated in or around Tynno or Nevatak
(the cities north-east of Dashiv,) due to the confluence of rivers at these cities. After the wood is processed, five out of every seven logs are transported to Sicotan on wagons made out of the sixth. The remaining one-seventh is considered waste product of too low a grade to be worth using for construction. Often mages claim it and let it rot as a study in chaotic decay, or rot it themselves to extract small amounts of Trafe; sometimes commoners take it for firewood.
One standard warship weighs in at a little over a hundred Ordbos*, 112 to be precise. Building such a ship requires 570 000 footfeet of wood, although cutaways, scourings, joinings, replacements and the like generally result in the loss of one-hundredth of the original materials in the form of shavings, sawdust, and cracked planks.
The warships are not fully assembled at Sicotan. As soon as the hull has been caulked and is seaworthy, the substructure is towed by rowing boats to the Hyperborean Warp Portal on the north end of the lake, leading to Rhodes. Here the oarlocks are readied, the mast is set upright, (completed or not, all ships lower their masts during a translation) and the crew finish readying the ship for war. This takes about a(n Elgovian) week, after which the ship joins the Rhodos garrison for the time being. Orders to the ships are generally passed through Grandmaster Meremmor, who has for some reason taken an intensely personal interest in the Karthaginian War; however, since Rhodes is a Hyperborean outpost, the Hyperborean
Lord in Green technically has superior command of any ships stationed there, although this right is not usually exercised.
Lurkers: 1 Ordbo = 100 kg. Now work out what the density of Elgovian wood is!
