The Good Ship Sea Lynx: Her Looks, Layout, and Many Quirks

The Sea Lynx is referred to in-game as a galeazza, which in Italian (or in our case, Cateni) basically just means a big galley. But as explained in the earlier Sea Lynx Chatter Thread, she isn't really just a simple galley, and in fact doesn't conform exactly to any particular real world ship. However she is essentially a blend of the Venetian galea grossa, the large galley that was used primarily for mercantile purposes; and its more militarized offshoot, the galleass.

Like the galea grossa, the Sea Lynx is designed to be able to hold more cargo than a standard galley, and is also meant primarily to be sailed, with the oars used only in long calms or when extra maneuverability might be called for. Our galeazza is a taller, slower, and less maneuverable ship than the plain galley, but boasts improved stability on the open sea and is better able to take advantage of favorable winds. As a hybrid, it may not be the ideal ship for any single situation, but can perform competently in a wider variety of conditions than the galley.

Like the more martial galleass, the Sea Lynx features rowing galleys set somewhat beneath the level of the main deck (and, uniquely, also fully enclosed, because RL galleys/galleasses didn't have to deal with mistmonsters), and as a whole she is a little more built up than a regular galea grossa. She has three masts (main, mizzen, and fore), and also three full decks (maindeck, lower deck with cabins/bunkrooms and mess, and cargo hold), along with forecastle and aftcastle decks. There is also of course a bilge, but for the moment at least this isn't built in as an accessible level like it was on the Greenest Dolphin. The Sea Lynx's cargo hold is more spacious than that of a regular galley, but still relies chiefly on transporting a significant quantity of high value-low volume merchandise in order to turn a good profit.

The Sea Lynx is the first and only of her kind, though based on an earlier prototype briefly produced in a partnership between St. Loomis and the Cateni city-state of Marpagna. She also has some quirks more specific to Yehani ships (even besides the eyes). Ultimately she is a very fine and innovative ship for the Adelantean, being expressly designed for long distance trade and travel and built to weather open seas sailing, and she will likely be the main transport between St. Loomis and Omrazir for quite a while (inshannur).

Since the Chatter post that I've largely summarized here, I've found an image that I think is the closest thing yet to what the Sea Lynx would look like!

ca. 1600 Galleass

Reposted here is the room map of the Sea Lynx:

This does leave out a very few rooms, such as the ship's chapel to aft. But overall it's accurate.

And yes, the Sea Lynx is considered the brand-new principality of Innithel's brand-new flagship! So that is partly why she is fancier than most other ships, and has had such a great deal of care put into her design and construction. She is there to stand in for Innithel itself, and is in some sense its sovereign's floating residence and embassy.

Because this is definitely a detail that should occupy everyone's minds, and one which should not allow them to rest until they have gotten an answer to it, and since people have certainly been wondering in still greater preoccupation and concern ever since reaching the end of Inaya's list of shipboard chores, it is now time to answer the question: Where is the head on the Sea Lynx??

Technically, as it happens, the head is not actually the head onboard the Sea Lynx, because it isn't located at the bowsprit (the "head" of the ship) like it would be for most ships. So why not?

There are two reasons for this! The first is that it is taboo to a Yehani to relieve yourself "in the gaze of" the ship, i.e., directly forward of the eyes, so despite being the classic fully upwind location it's off-limits for this purpose. Instead, Yehani tend to prefer the railside toilet "chairs" like on the Dolphin. Except... the Sea Lynx doesn't have these either! WHAT GIVES.

It turns out that the Sea Lynx's facilities actually consist of little enclosed toilet spaces at the aft ends of both rower's galleries -- so people can still easily do their business even if the ship is on lockdown due to mistmonsters. :D  Just because the upper decks might be infested with roving bellowing creatures of horror, still there are to be no furtive visits of necessity to stray corners of the hold or to shadowy lengths of corridor aboard this ship!! (See the next post on CLEANLINESS below.)

The choice of the rower's galleries in particular is because they overhang the sides of the ship to a small degree, so everything deposited therein can drop directly down into the water, and also because rowing is not really meant to be employed except in cases of really critical need, so there might as well be some other benefit derived from these spaces.

In addition to this option there are chamberpots for the use of passengers in the nicer cabins and bunkrooms. It's mostly up to the passengers to empty these themselves though, if they make use of them. This is why you travel with servants, apprentices, younger siblings, etc.

I was actually going to build the toilet spaces in the galleries as extra rooms (plus a climbable foremast to go along with the mainmast) buuut, I started getting tired and forgetful and didn't get to these places before I had Pilgrim run the code to convert all the rooms to proper ship rooms. :<

But hey, you can always ask for a key to the brig and use the pail in there.

Per Inaya's List, everyone will have duly noted that cleaning and scrubbing and swabbing and polishing are a definite part of crew duties aboard the Sea Lynx. This would be the case on any well-run ship, though, alas, the end result is still not necessarily a very clean ship. Most ships sailing the Adelantean don't have a chance to become quite such filthy squalid cesspits of desperate malnutrition and disease simply because they're not out to sea for all that long in between stops at different ports, but keeping ships clean(ish) is still not easy and standards of cleanliness differ.

Happily for the sandrats of the Sea Lynx, despite her transoceanic purpose she is a rather cleaner ship than others they might have occasion to sail. First off, she is new! There has not been time for the disgusting filth of humanity to roll off them and seep into her every plank. But she has two other things going for her as well.

Firstly, the Sea Lynx is in many ways a very Yehani ship, and the Yehani not only build but also treat their ships differently from most other peoples. Yehani have very peculiar attitudes towards their ships, thinking of them as living beings deserving of respect and honor and in fact a little deference. It is not only disrespectful to the ship not to keep it as clean as possible, but cleaning it is something of a ritual task that continually strengthens the bond between crew and ship, and if a ship is not cleaned it is not only dirty, but unclean in a more spiritual sense. Some Yehani will clean even during off-duty hours, or as passengers, because of the spiritual benefit and peace of mind it supposedly brings. Wow, those guys are weird.

Of course, the whole crew is not Yehani, but there are a fair number of them. Due to its history St. Loomis has a significant and well-integrated Yehani population, so it would be natural to see a fair number aboard the Sea Lynx just on account of numbers alone. But also, since Yehani in general prefer to be on the sea, there were certainly an even greater proportion of them who signed up just because they were so desperate to be sailing again. So while the crew of the Sea Lynx is a mixed one, it's a safe bet that a pretty fair percentage are Yehani -- and of course the Navigator is too.

The other thing, of course, that makes the Sea Lynx cleaner than average is that it belongs to Demetrius, who is an absolutely obsessive neat-and-clean-freak to the point of being thought of by his peers as a little touched in the head on the matter. Normally the brunt of this fanaticism is reserved for his own person and immediate surroundings and possessions, but as he seems to have placed the Sea Lynx within one or all of these categories there is even more pressure to CLEAN EVERYTHING.

So again, while "clean" aboard a ship is very relative, there are some powerful influences at play putting a somewhat abnormal emphasis on keeping things clean and tidy by shipboard standards.

There is probably some grumbling about this from some quarters. :)