Travelling by Road
Most travel between regions is by road. The area around the region’s capital and its towns and villages has well maintained roads which are generally patrolled on a regular basis. However, as you travel away from centre, the roads become less well maintained and the patrols are less frequent.
Once you are a couple of miles past the last village the ‘road’ degenerates in to a sort of track that keeps you on the right route, Occasionally you will see areas where work has been done to maintain the surface, however this is where successive caravan masters have poured a couple of handfuls of stones into a pothole or muddy section. The patrols also fall off dramatically, while there is the occasional patrol it is well recognised that anyone who relies on that for protection is playing a very dangerous game. Realistically, travellers are expected to protect themselves until the come to land that falls under the next regions authority and patrols.
Most travellers, therefore, choose to travel with a trade caravan. Caravans mainly consist of traders with carts, wagons or pack donkeys/mules laden with trade items for the next ‘town’. On there own, they would be a prime target for bandits, so they travel together and pool their resources to hire mercenary guards to protect them in the wild lands between the main cities. Individual travellers may join these caravans but they are expected to make a contribution towards hiring mercenary defenders. In general a trade caravan expects to make between 12 and 15 miles per day - depending on the particular route, time of year etc … Anyone travelling on foot moves at this rate.
However, some people choose to travel independently, and if a party is mounted and are prepared to use horses or lightly loaded ponies as their pack animals, they can manage between 20 and 25 miles per day. This type of travel is favoured by adventuring parties that can look after themselves, the wealthy or minor nobles who can bring along their own mercenary or military escort, or for normal (mounted) military travel.
Really experience riders mounted on light horses can manage 30 to 35 miles a day - BUT that is the exception rather than the rule, and is normally only achieved by elite cavalry units or other very experienced riders.
River Travel
About the only river that is really navigable between regions is The Great River that runs from Dingon up to the great forest - and even then it is practically impossible to travel upstream of Versair by boat.
Down stream the journey is easy – great rafts of Elven Timber make their way downstream to feed the Dingon ship building industry, and while there are piloted through the Great forest by one or two elves, they take on extra crew as soon as they reach Versair, and someone with boating skill nearly always find a way to ‘work passage’ down stream. These rafts can travel huge distances down stream, something like 40 to 50 miles a day - so long as there are enough crew to steer the vessel through the hours of darkness. For a small fee they will often carry hardy passengers and small cargos.
Keel boats make the same journey at about the same speeds, and they will often take both passengers and cargo as well.
Upstream is a different matter. Keel Boats can only make about 10 miles a day upstream, so journeys take much longer.
Most people travel upstream using the road that runs parallel to the river.
(Interestingly there are large horse markets at Carford, Dinblack and Versair and some experienced travellers buy horses at Dingon, ride them up upstream and try to take a profit from them inland)
Sea Travel
Travel by sea is quite rare, although it is possible to cover forty to fifty miles in a day – depending on the weather.
Most ships are cargo carriers with no special facilities to carry passengers. Occasionally, however, a cargo ship will take a small number of passenger along with their cargo, but it is ‘rough’ passage sleeping with the crew, eating crew meals and staying out of the way. This type of passage normally costs about 1sp per mile.
A very few ships have a passenger cabin, and transport on these is expensive. There is little space and a cabin that is seven feet by seven feet square and five feet high might be expected to house four passengers. Passage of this nature costs something like 5sp per bunk per mile.
It is possible to charter a boat or ship although the cost will vary depending on the journey required. It will never cost less than 1gp per mile and will generally cost much more than that – depending on both the vessel chartered and the voyage undertaken.
Military vessels can often travel faster than pure merchant vessels, although it is not normally possible to take passage on a military ship. Sometimes, if they expect to do a lot of sea travel, wealthy merchants, adventurers or nobles buy a ship of their own and then have it converted to provide more comfortable accommodation.
