A wild boat appeared!

[outtahere]

Banzu has discovered blueprints for a ship in the Old City. Once the ship's built he'll be making it available for hire, allowing characters to reach the tropical island without needing a rideable Pokémon, explore the nearby coastline, and search for any more islands out there. If and when this service becomes popular (which vacationing NPCs will likely ensure), he'll be looking for one or more people to train how to use the ship so he can have some time off. Those characters would split any revenue they made with Banzu, with Banzu taking the smaller half.

First though, once he's confident that he understands the ship enough to build it, he'll be making a post telling people about it and looking for help gathering materials and doing the construction. He'll also be suggesting the construction of a permanent port and associated settlement beyond just the docks that he'll need to build anyways. While he won't involve himself too much with most of the port construction, he'll certainly encourage it and try to get people hashing out ideas. The port suggestion is partly to provide more security to his docks, but he'll give reasons why it would benefit Union too: a safe place to fish would bring Union more food, a permanent research facility would let researchers find out more about Pokémon that live in the sea, extra protected space would let Union grow its population, and a settlement close to Union would be good practice for building settlements a lot farther away. Regardless of what characters decide about the port, he'll be building the ship and docks; anything else characters decide to do is gravy. Unlike Banzu though I'm not going to suggest an idea and just leave it for everyone else to do all the work, so I'll coordinate the port-building as needed.

So with all that in mind, this post is to make OOC arrangements and answer some questions.

1) Would players prefer that the blueprints Banzu finds be for a sailboat or a steamship? I can't decide which it should be, so I'm putting it up for a vote. Either way it's going to be a small ship. This is more for what tone and style people like best. Looks like it's going to be a steamship.

2) Banzu can't gather materials or build the ship on his own, so will anyone want to help him? At minimum, resources from the Verdant Forest, the Iron Mines, and the Tropical Island will be required. Banzu will be paying people for their work.

3) What should be at the port, if anything? The initial suggestions that Banzu will toss out if people show an interest are a watchtower (with barracks for guards and a space set aside to coordinate activities in the port if it gets busy), a research facility to study ocean life, a medical clinic, a place for visitors to sleep if they don't want to walk back to Union the same day, and a place where people without Warp Bands can contact Union (someone please have their character suggest combining those last three and calling it a Pokémon Center ;D ). He'll also raise the question of whether they need walls (since Team Evolution has mentioned that Gigas has no walls so maybe Unionites can skip them too) and suggest clearing a route from Union to the port so people who aren't trainers can travel there relatively safely. Note that Banzu won't actually be helping build any of those things aside from suggestions regarding the watchtower (and a workshop for himself); he'll be trying to enable everyone else to do that stuff. He'll have plenty on his plate with just the ship and the docks. It's possible that not everything that's come up with will be doable, but you don't know until you try.

4) What should the port be called? In the grand tradition of Union citizens not naming any location that isn't a forest, Banzu will just refer to the port as "the port". Someone needs to suggest naming it. Maybe give it an emblem or something.

5) Is there anything that I and/or Banzu haven't thought of?


tl;dr - A boat and port are on the way, come help, and come vote for whether it should be a sailboat or a steamboat.

Comments

[crimson_pinnacle]

Red and Sync would help gather materials, Sync especially since he feels like Banzu cut him a deal on the mask and gloves.

I am up for either/or on the style of the ship. If it's a sailboat I also can't help but think that Banzu will eventually say, "I can make it better, faster, stronger." and make one steamboat anyway.

As for working for him...That may happen with Sync if nothing else comes up after a while, and building, sure they might help if he doesn't mind teaching while he's building because they are not Engineers and most of it will be over their heads beyond nailing wood.

[outtahere]

And this is why Banzu tries to deal fairly with everyone. ^.^

Making a steamboat out of a sailboat would only happen if Banzu found an engine later. Banzu's not a "giant leap forward" type, more of an "improving on what someone else has made already". Not to say that it can't happen, but I'm going to assume for now that whichever style it is it'll be more of the same for the foreseeable future.

He doesn't expect all of the help to know what they're doing (he'll wish they did after a while, but...) so teaching is likely. Even for a ship this small, there are huge parts to move around, and Banzu's only Pokémon with hands will be a baby Smeargle, so even unskilled labor is better than nothing.

[notthatjason]

Jason wouldn't mind helping gather materials. Don't ask him to name anything though cause he sucks at that kind of thing. Although personally I think it'd be funny if they happened to name it the S.S. Anne or the S.S. Minnow.

And doing this out of order, but as for type of boat I think a sail boat would make more SENSE to start with...but honestly I don't have a preference.

[outtahere]

There will be plenty of materials to gather, so help with that is good. I'm leaning towards making a different reference, myself.

It would if this was starting from scratch, but since Banzu found blueprints it doesn't actually need to follow logic. Which makes the decision harder in a way.

[second_destiny]

Asemu is a ranger, and will therefore be more than willing to help gather materials while he's on duty. As for type, I vote for steamship.

[outtahere]

That's one vote.

Out of curiosity, what makes you say steamship?

[second_destiny]

I love studying technology history, and in fact am writing my master's thesis on a subject related to it (aircraft in this case). One of the things I enjoyed learning about was the evolution from sailing ships to steam-powered ships, so I've got a bit of a soft spot for them. In fact, sitting on my bookshelf is a book about the SS Savannah, the first ship with a steam engine to sail across the Atlantic.

[outtahere]

Oh I came across the Savannah while I was researching on Wikipedia. The Turbinia is the other one that caught my eye, mainly as a design reference since it's one of the smaller ones. I actually haven't seen any that are much less than 100' long, so I'm kind of just assuming that a much smaller one is possible here.

Technology history is pretty interesting, yeah. I've certainly gotten stuck in Wikipedia reading about it. But then, I have that problem with a lot of topics...

[indy_wannabe]

Ezreal is up to help out, especially if the pay's decent.

[outtahere]

Banzu isn't rich, but he does have a nice stack of money set aside (most of which will be drained by this project), so it's safe to assume that that the pay's reasonable. Not exceptional, but pretty much what you'd expect for each job.

Any vote on sail vs. steam?

[lifeissuffering]

Almost forgot to vote, let's say steam.

[makeitquick]

Personally I'd vote for sail but I think that steam would fit into the setting more but only if you had to have the furnace run by like slugma or something because mining a ton of coal doesn't seem to fit here.

Other than that, Melaka would love to help for decent pay. Plus Banzu seemed legit.

Also voting for a secured pathway there.

[outtahere]

Steam would be run with wood to start with; Banzu isn't a huge fan of having to take care of Pokémon. Fuel is the big downside to steam; the equivalent for sail is that if the wind ain't blowin' you ain't movin'. Neither method's perfect.

The pathway (which unless someone intervenes would be called "Route 1") is one of the few things that Banzu might work on himself, simply for his own benefit, but at this stage he'll try to leave it to everyone else to deal with.

My thought for the pathway is that it would be a marked trail with trees and bushes removed and a Scyther brought in every so often to keep the tall grass down. If bikes ever exist here you could ride them, but it wouldn't be a paved road or anything like that. If Melaka had (a lot of) time to kill she could probably make it herself, but help would be ideal. If needed I could throw Apollo at it to plot out a route that didn't run straight through every predator's territory.

[makeitquick]

Rofl no, not quite enough time to solo it. But she would be part of a team for making the path happen. She's a Ranger, but a relatively newly instated one. Same for putting herself out there to help with running a guard tower or something.

[outtahere]

Assuming there's enough interest in building any of the optional extras, at least. I'm quite aware that Banzu not ICly leading that effort makes it less likely to happen. One of those times where you just want to smack your character upside the head until they do what you want them to.

[makeitquick]

AHHA yeah I've sort of had that issue where Mel is a brand new Ranger so I can't arrange a planned mission even if I sort of want to (I might do it anyway)

[nighttimegps]

As long as someone brings the project to her attention, Renko would be very willing to help out however she can!

[carrotandrod]

as done icly, Dylas will help with the hauling and ship building.