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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rhialto" data-source="post: 2135042" data-attributes="member: 630">Nistadeen's naval superiority rests in its ships--true galleons and galleases, with multiple masts, capable of incredible speed and seaworthiness.  With them, the Nistadeeni reach in weeks what the Eyrosians with their cumbersome galleys, and the Xal with their even more combersome dromonds can only reach in months of hugging the coastline, and sometimes cannot even reach at all.  Ironically, Nistadeen's greatest strength faced heavy opposition from religious and political forces, and almost was never built at all, and its creator would die penniless, and be buried in a pauper's grave.Elthias Delystas was a brilliant shipwright who wished to abandon the designs of the Xaleris Empire, and create a new, more distinctly Nistadeeni method of shipbuilding.  Studying the halflings' techniques, he combined them with the more worthwhile aspects of the Xals' ships, and created the first plans for a caravel.  However, he faced severe opposition from many Nistadeeni who felt that such a ship would offend their trading partners.  (Which, in many ways, it did, but truth be told, Xaleris and Indracca both had bigger matters on their minds.)  More severe, ironically, was the persecution for his ideas based on his religious beliefs--Elthias was a Hythatian, a set of beliefs that the more religious Nistadeeni hold in greater suspicion then the Eyrosians.  Denounced as a foreign infiltrator (Elthias's paternal grandfather was Eyrosian-born), and accused of impiety, Elthias faced constant persecution, and was unable to recieve any funding for his project.  Finally, selling and mortgaging all his possessions, Elthias was able to build his ship, which with typical Hythatian defiance, he called Transcendent Truth.   He then set out on a voyage to Xaleris, vowing to make it in a month.  The voyage was difficult.  His crew consisted of a handful of desperate elvish sailors, many of whom were looking to avoid difficulties at home, and quite a few halflings, who he'd hired for their expertise in ocean matters, and few of whom spoke the elvish tongue with any fluency.  They faced storms, at least one mutiny, and pirates.  (Ironically, their first encounter with pirates proved to be their last, when the halfling captain who boarded their ship discovered, with some delight, that his brother was the first mate.  Afterwards, the Transcendent Truth sailed with a small accompaniment of halfling skiffs, who provided fish and other victuals to the larger ship.)  But finally, the ship came to Xaleris.  It had taken them in two and a half weeks.  Elthias had in fact, beaten his own estimate.The return voyage was one of triumph for the shipwright, who now rested assured that his innovation would at last be appreciated, and set to work on making even more advanced plans for ships.  However, on his return, he was arrested on a variety of charges ranging from heresy to insolvency, and his papers were seized by the government, who promptly commisioned the building of a new fleet.  Elthias spent three decades in prison, and when he emerged, it was as a bankrupt, ruined man.  He died two years after gaining his freedom, of drowning.  It may have been a suicide.These days, Elthias's birthday is a national holiday, and Nistadeeni shipwrights regularly raise their glasses to man who in life, was deemed too dangerous to be relied on, and too foolish to be believed.</blockquote>

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