Elves, Shipbuilding and Forestry

In my homebrew world I have my elves thriving on a continent they have to themselves. In order to protect it, there is a substantial navy. I read an article about the USS Constitution needing 60 acres of forest to be clear cut to build her (different types of wood for different purposes of course).

Oviously that’s in mid/late 18th century on Earth; in my game, there are only three greatships (think Santa Maria) in various levels of construction and those need rather less wood to build.

That being said, in a magical society that reveres the forest, how would you handle the balancing of the need for vast amounts of wood vs keeping lush forests?  I asked this question in an online forum and here is a post discussing all the answers that came up.

Forestry (with Magic)

By and large, the most common response was some variant traditional mundane forest management supplemented by magical spells available in whatever game system you’re playing in.

Cut to thin, not to clear-cut

The general concept is that some trees are removed to allow nearby trees to flourish. The remaining trees get more of what they need to grow because they are no longer competing for them with the removed tree.  It can be a bit harder to pull out full trees between other trees than clear-cutting but nothing that competent foresters can handle.

Plant as you cut

As you cut trees, plant more.  It isn’t out of the question for some societies, especially those who revere forests, to have their own tree nurseries. Planting young trees as others are cut is a good way to ensure the forest continues to thrive.

Forests grown for harvesting

If thinning isn’t going to provide sufficient wood, or the wood isn’t near where it might be needed, plant forests just for the sake of harvesting. In my campaign, there is such a forest not far from one of the shipyards.  It has a number of different types of trees in it because different parts of the ship need different types of wood. The elves plant them in certain  arrangements beneficial to all the species inloved. I didn’t feel the need to really to think out that arrangement myself, I mean, they’re the elves and they know better than I do, right?

This type of arrangement is very beneficial as it leaves the homeland forests untouched, at least for the potentially great needs of the ship builders. The ship builders, having the forests close at hand, can select the trees they need personally without straying too far from their shipyards.

Magically-enhanced forestry

All of the methods described above can benefit from spells that enhance the growth of plants and trees.  In many fantasy settings and rule systems, there are classes or professions that can enhance the growth of plants, usually something akin to a druid. With spells that enhance the growth of plants or affect the weather, many plants and trees can see exceptional growth, perhaps taking decades off their growing times. Often, these spells have an effective area that increases the more powerful the spell caster is leaving those casters in great demand, possibly even having their training sponsored by families, clans or companies that require large amounts of wood.

Don’t use wood cut from elven forests

The general ideas presented along these lines were about trading for the wood from other cultures and/or using deadwood branches or trees that fell on their own to make whatever is needed. There are more than a few permutations, like anything else really, how this could work but primarily elves have things other races want and could use that to trade for wood they could use to build things without having to despoil their precious forests. Fallen deadwood could then be used to make smaller pieces of the ships such as things in the interior.

Treesingers, Sungwood, and Shaped Growth

Many people pointed out that some fantasy cultures from books and games have those that could ‘sing’ wood into being something useful for building ships. This could be as simple as urging a tree to extra tall, broad, or straight or as complex as asking the tree to grow a specific piece of a ship. Such a piece could be a curved rib that goes between the keel and the deck, to which the hull planks are then attached to.  Communication between the shipwrights and the singers would be crucial as the ribs wouldn’t all be the same size and would vary depending on where they were along the hull.

Depending on what the need is, the singers could use different songs. A simple song of health and strength could be used for accelerating growth or promoting strength or breadth. However, a song asking for a specific part would likely need to be far more complex, needing to describe the details of the needed part. Alternatively, telepathy could be used; the singer could link with the shipwright and the tree to convey the need to the tree in a more exacting way.

The ultimate extension of such techniques would be the entire ship being ‘built’ directly from trees. This would likely entail many singers, perhaps orchestrated a ‘grand master’ singer who guides all of them and is the interface with the shipwright, or is the shipwright themselves.

The ships would likely be built in the middle of, and from, a group of trees of varying types. Evergreens, for example, have been prized over the centuries for masts and could be sung to grow the necessary spars and such as branches in the proper places.  Several ironwood could be persuaded to grow low and parallel to the ground to lay the keel, and so on. Your world could have special woods suitable for such a purpose, or maybe they will after you’re done reading this article.

Magical items intended for ships could be incorporated into grown ships. Something like having vines grown out of a tree to hold such an item in place until the trees assimilate them into the overall ship entity, which would then gain the benefits from the item. If this were to be in my own campaign, I would probably have extra, and higher, difficulty checks to do this kind of thing, probably scaling with the power of the items to be incorporated. To avoid this check, the items themselves could be created with this kind of melding in mind, and the extra difficulty is on the item being made, and not the incorporation into the ship.

Ships as a Living Being

Another popular suggestion was to have the ship themselves be alive, which doesn’t automatically mean sentient. There wasn’t a lot of input in how it exactly became alive although some attributed it to the above process of outright growing the ship.

Alternatively, various rites and rituals by druids and elders of the elves could be used, imbuing the ship with Olde Magicke or some such. This could be done as each piece is harvested or grown, if it is an assembled ship or if a grown ship, periodically during its growth.

An extreme example would be an elf willingly giving up his or her life and having their soul bound to the ship. Some cultures could have such elves identified in prophecies, at birth or in childhood, by means of some desirable trait and thereafter the elf is raised with the purpose of being bonded to a ship. Special training could be imparted on the elf that could be transferred to the ship like self-healing or direction sense, allowing the ship to repair itself or never be lost.  Something less drastic would be an elf, tired of living, could choose to bond with a ship willingly and thus escape the (im)mortal coil yet with a new purpose.

Captain Bonds with Ship

A related idea that I really liked was that the captain bonded with the ship, Likely would need some sort of blood ritual or other significant means to do so. This would then allow the captain and ship to ‘feel’ each other. This might allow the ship to wake the captain if it detected, say, a skiff with a boarding party in the dead of night trying to sneak aboard or, perhaps, the presence of large or unnatural creatures nearby as it traverses the boundless ocean, far from shore.

Such things are not without a cost, however, and the ship and captain cannot be separated by too much distance or each will suffer ill effects. If the captain dies (especially suddenly), the ship will surely suffer deep mental anguish and perhaps its own soul will perish as well unless extreme measures are taken. If the captain wanted to retire, the captain would have to find a replacement that would have to be approved by the ship. The bonding rituals for the new captain would need to be performed and, perhaps, some for the separation of the retiring captain from the ship. There are so many possible situations that the GM would likely need to make it up on the fly (which is, of course, what GMing is all about).

The Kitchen Sink (or the Galley Basin)

There were many other ideas/concepts that were tossed out that I thought deserved a mention as they may spark ideas for your campaign so here is where they’re presented.

What’s the Hurry?  Elves and trees can live centuries, so what’s the rush? In truth, there’s a lot of merit to this concept and definitely there are elven cultures that would definitely do this.

Trunks Grow Anew  One idea I thought was interested that a trunk of a cut tree could be coaxed into growing a completely new tree. In theory, since the root structure was already in place, the tree could devote most of its energy in growing up rather than some up and some down as a tree normally does. Likely, this concept would need some special care during the harvesting of the tree to allow the trunk to do this, and then further encouragement for a year or five to get the process going.

Crystal Ships/Don’t Use Wood  A number of people mentioned various game systems and rule sets that had ships made of crystal or other substances.  Other substances mentioned included silver or a light stone.

I protest!  Several people mentioned protesters that were objecting to, or trying to protect, various facets of the discussion. Reading the topics above, there are a number of them that could easily be the subject of protests. The binding of souls to a ship, making a ship living in the first place, even the use of trees from the sacred forests in armed ships – all of these could be grounds for a protest of some sort.

Carve It / Enlarge It – There were a couple of people who suggested some sort of a carving/manufacturing of a small version of a ship and then using spells to increase the size of it.  There’s only so much one can do with a something so small so likely some refitting would be necessarily once the correct size was achieved.  Multiple spells may be needed, if allowed, to get it to the proper size.

Polymorph / Fabricate / Something? – The suggestions for this idea were basically take something else and magically transform it into what you needed. Nothing fancy but the scope of a full-sized vessel might be a bit daunting for these spells.

Use in Campaign

For me, I was doing some fictional writing and that’s where most of what I came up with will be used. One of the elven characters in my campaign knows the family who runs the shipyard I was writing about but that’s about the extent of it.  For you and your campaign, it could be a similar thing; a small blip of background but it could also be so much more if the bent of your campaign(s) were more aligned.  A couple of thoughts on that are:

The party encounters an adolescent teen who is running away from her family and culture. as she doesn’t want to endure her destiny of being the soul of a ship

The party encounters trees of seriously bizarre shapes. As they examine them, they encounter a tree signer who explains what she does and then mentions an odd magic blight, and maybe you can help?

The party is asked to sail on a ship bound for elven lands to protect its cargo of wood.

The party encounters some druids distraught over some trees in the forest that they claim are too precious to be cut, and are putting their lives between the trees and those who would harvest them.

Wrap Up

The information in here, like so many other gaming material, can be used in so many ways. Nothing above has to be used as is, and I’d be honestly shocked if it was. I have this premise in my mind that there are very few truly new ideas/concepts. Rather, it is which ones you choose to use, how you combine them, and how you implement them in your game. So take the ideas above, toss them into the wondrous pot known as your brain where you have all your gaming stuff, the books you’ve read and smoothly mix it into your campaigns, stir gently and then let it simmer and see what comes out.