[Dragaera] Teleport Shipping

[Ken Koester]

Bryan Newell wrote:

>I think Whitehall is probably around 320 miles north of Adrilankha, which,
>incidentally, puts it very near to the meadow where Orlaan found Aliera's
>soul (and met a band of road agents, so presumably this area has been beset
>by banditry for quite some time).
>
>I'm not sure how long "more than a month is", but a month (17 days) at that
>distance works out to be about 18 miles a day, which is fairly slow as far
>as travel times in Dragaera go (which average around 50 miles a day,
>excluding the post system).
>
>Down river, that works out to a little over 100 miles per day (I don't know
>enough about barges and rivers to say whether that is reasonable or not).
>

Eminently.  Horse-drawn barges in the 19th century could maintain 6 mph 
indefinitely, as long as you used relays.  You could easily work up 1-4 
mph of current in a big river; you might not even have to travel at 
night to push 100 miles a day.  But with a 30 hour day, 100 miles is a 
snap.  Even if you depend on Teckla polemen, not horses.

The efficiencies of water-borne transport on planet Earth are enormous.  
If you live in the US, you've probably seen/heard ads for the rails 
boasting of 100 tons of load transported for a gallon of fuel.  They're 
true.  But ships get anywhere from 250-400 tons for the same gallon of 
fuel.  Again, the cost to produce a ton of aluminum is about $200, of 
which $197 is electricity.  Even if digging it up & loading it is 
gratis, that means a transport cost of no more than $3/ton & that 
transport is almost certainly by ship, given the sources of ore & the 
plants doing the smelting.  Again, why did the Roman Empire have only 
about a dozen "industrial" complexes, for all its size?  In part, 
because the output coud not be cheaply distributed through most parts of 
the Empire.  Rome didn't get its wealth through overland transport, but 
through the sea--all that grain from Egypt wouldn't have gone anywhere 
if it had to travel overland.  There are plenty of other examples:  what 
was the maximum effective range of a 17th-18th-19th century army from 
its magazines?  50 miles, using overland transport; beyond that, the 
wagons were only carrying fodder for the horses drawing them, no 
payload.  But thousands of miles by sea.

It would take something for teleportation to approach the efficiency of 
water transport for bulk transport of goods.  You'd have to get 
sorcerors who could pitch tons of goods for coppers, I'm betting, before 
it would pay off on most items.

Snarkhunter