# The RNS Coaltongue



## Morrus (May 18, 2011)

A little art preview. The RNS Coaltongue is Risur's newest ship, a steam-powered battleship and the new flagship of the Royal Fleet. King Aodhan is scheduled to attend the launch ceremony.


----------



## Jan van Leyden (May 18, 2011)

Let's hope the king won't get crunched by this ship! She's mighty high and doesn't look too stable...


----------



## RangerWickett (May 18, 2011)

Riding high for a maiden voyage.


----------



## LightPhoenix (May 19, 2011)

Named after the Emperor of a distant land, perhaps?


----------



## Colmarr (May 19, 2011)

LightPhoenix said:


> Named after the Emperor of a distant land, perhaps?




Glad to know I wasn't the only one who wondered!

As for the RNS Coaltongue, all I can say is "Holy !". That's a level of tech far beyond what I had imagined would be in the campaign. I had imagined something more akin to the Monitor or the Merrimac than to the Queen Elizabeth. 

I'm tempted to try to overanalyse the picture (eg the lack of obvious weapons other than the prow 'cannons' might suggest that magic still holds prime position in offensive warfare, unless all those portholes are in fact cannon ports) but maybe that's holding art to an impossibly high bar. Instead I'll try to wrap my head around how tech at that level will change the genre conventions of a D&D adventure.

Oh, and great picture!


----------



## Jan van Leyden (May 20, 2011)

RangerWickett said:


> Riding high for a maiden voyage.




But she can't ride much lower, what with the portholes.


----------



## RangerWickett (May 21, 2011)

Photoshop's a hell of a drug:


----------



## Jan van Leyden (May 21, 2011)

Now, that's much better!


----------



## Dice4Hire (May 22, 2011)

That is pretty high tech. Way higher than makes me comfortable. 

It is a nice picture, though.


----------



## mort655 (May 23, 2011)

It reminds me of a fantasy version of the Titanic. I'm not sure what the relative technology level is, but the ship seems to be at higher part of it...which, I suppose, could be intentional. 

From what little I have gleaned about the first adventure, isn't the Coaltounge supposed to be the first of its kind? A new modern warship for a new modern nation?


----------



## RangerWickett (May 23, 2011)

mort655 said:


> It reminds me of a fantasy version of the Titanic. I'm not sure what the relative technology level is, but the ship seems to be at higher part of it...which, I suppose, could be intentional.
> 
> From what little I have gleaned about the first adventure, isn't the Coaltounge supposed to be the first of its kind? A new modern warship for a new modern nation?




The tech level is intended to be somewhere around the 1850s/1860s, but when you add in magic, some things go a bit differently. I asked the artist to start with the HMS Devastation --






-- take off the turrets, and give it a higher profile and a gundeck because broadsides are too fun to get rid of, even if they're not _logically_ an ideal design. Then we added in a few fantasy elements. (He did make it quite a bit taller than we needed, originally, but I'm cool with it now.)


----------



## TheAuldGrump (May 24, 2011)

But I _loik_ turrets. (What can I say, been a fan of turrets since first seeing a picture of the Monitor doing battle with the Virginia at the battle of Hampton Roads. In the end over a hundred ships were built on the Monitor's lines.  Only one still remains. And the Virginia _did_ have a broadsides.) The Monitor eventually led to the Dreadnaught, which is, I think, the niche that the Coaltongue is designed to fill?

Does look better lower in the water, but she still looks more like a freighter or a tanker than a warship to me. A high profile combined with low guns is not good. (Standard for sailing vessels, but for steam... not so much.) Perhaps a pair of larger guns, intended for land bombardment, might make it look a trifle less... civilian? 

My reaction to the original was to think that she was on a barge for towing to sea for her launch - that the grey portion was a separate vessel. What's her tonnage?

I am glad to see that she has no side wheels. (I took one look at the side wheelers in Dystopian Wars, and forgot all about buying the game. Exposed, fragile, and slow... yessir, just what _I_ want on a warship... on the other side, that is.)





For comparison - the HMS Dreadnaught - first of her kind.

The Auld Grump, looking at the length of this post... it is obvious that I have turrets syndrome....


----------



## Jan van Leyden (May 25, 2011)

TheAuldGrump said:


> The Auld Grump, looking at the length of this post... it is obvious that I have turrets syndrome....




At first sight I've read Tourette syndrom...


----------



## TheAuldGrump (May 25, 2011)

Jan van Leyden said:


> At first sight I've read Tourette syndrom...



Yeah, well _somebody_ has to use the puns that nobody else will touch. Sometimes that somebody is me, a hard, dangerous job, but somebody has to do it. 

The Auld Grump


----------



## Riastlin (May 26, 2011)

I have to say that this picture (and the rest of the art in the newsletter from today) is gorgeous.  It also has me pretty stoked for the adventure path (so much so that I'll no doubt end up subscribing just for that if nothing else).  I've been toying with the idea of bringing guns into a 4ed campaign (when I start up my next campaign) but am trying to figure out how to balance them with the rest of the weapons (still want it to be fantasy based).  Looks like Zeitgest will cover a lot of this.


----------

