Have I screwed myself? Please help with medieval mail service!

[Jon_Dahl]

In the previous session of my D&D 3.5 campaign, a noble gnome invited the PCs to visit the Gnomish King. The King resides in an almost impassable region something like 650 miles away from the PCs’ current location. A written invitation was given to the PCs by a messenger and it was accepted verbally. The messenger left and the session ended. The PCs are now sitting in a tavern and they have 39 days to travel to see the King, either by flying (takes about 9 to 12 days) or by land (which can take over 30 days).

For some reason, I had thought that messenger pigeons travel almost instantly from place to place. I got this image from various sources, such as the Game of Thrones and its ravens. The continent is huge, but a raven always arrives the next day. However, if you have 650 miles to cover, the pigeon will travel forever!

Now the problem:

If the PCs accept the invitation, the gnomish lady is prepared to offer the PCs a flying mount, but she wants to know if they have more flying mounts available, so they can all fly together to see the King. The discussion over the details might require a few pigeons, and it will take several days until the flying mount can actually arrive.

How should I handle the logistics if you need negotiate with someone and you cannot see each other and there’s not that much time?

[Yuki Akuma]

Messenger pigeons are in fact not instantaneous.

Magic, however, is.

Sending, for instance.

[eggynack]

What kinda resources do the PC's/gnome lady have access to? I'm thinking mostly about casting resources here. You can pull some pretty efficient long distance communication with spells.

[Maginomicon]

It's a gnome king. He probably has a master gnome artificer (Magic of Faerun) that uses a device with a Sending effect (Sending isn't on their device list but that's easy to hand-wave for a "master" gnome artificer that has the research backing of a king).

(EDIT: My point is, this "device" could be fluffed as looking like a carrier pidgeon.)

[Kudaku]

Gnomish messenger pigeons (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8spH2jX9zg0/TXBMirO15nI/AAAAAAAAAUk/svhX4RABx5Q/s1600/00Intant%2BMessanger%2BPigion.jpg) are not like other messenger pigeons...

[Mnemnosyne]

The problem with your point of view is you're probably thinking of a single bird that flies the entire route and is thus limited to the daily movement speeds listed in the PHB for overland travel. Most routes would instead have multiple pigeon stations along the route, and the message would be swapped from pigeon to pigeon at those stations, thus negating all need for resting time for the pigeons.

A little checking on Wikipedia tells us homing pigeons can fly at 50 miles per hour or so. For 650 miles, that's a 13 hour trip. A single pigeon wouldn't make the trip without resting, but assuming there are pigeon stations in between, it can very easily be said to take no more than 14 hours to send a message one-way, or 28 hours for a round-trip message.

So, let them take a few days to communicate via pigeon and arrange the flying mounts; it doesn't sound like they lack the time.

[Fouredged Sword]

No, you see messenger pigeons are actually a special breed of pigeon that can cast teleport once per day as a SLA, carrying no other creatures and equipment weighing less than 2lbs. They can get within the ballpark of their intended destination very quickly, and spend approximately one day flying to the nearest messenger station that spends all day burning sage, which attracts the expertly trained birds by scent.

The system was set up by the archmage conjurer Rasputin Von Bismarch, and has since become a backbone of commerce and inter kingdom communication.

Anchor Hawks can be a problem though, they prevent teleportation as they strike. Buggers evolved to prey on the pigeons. Durn druids!

[(Un)Inspired]

Gnomish messenger pigeons (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8spH2jX9zg0/TXBMirO15nI/AAAAAAAAAUk/svhX4RABx5Q/s1600/00Intant%2BMessanger%2BPigion.jpg) are not like other messenger pigeons...

If that's a rocket attached to a pigeon then it's the greatest picture ever.

If that a firework attached to a pigeon... Well it's still pretty good.

[Jon_Dahl]

The problem with your point of view is you're probably thinking of a single bird that flies the entire route and is thus limited to the daily movement speeds listed in the PHB for overland travel. Most routes would instead have multiple pigeon stations along the route, and the message would be swapped from pigeon to pigeon at those stations, thus negating all need for resting time for the pigeons.

A little checking on Wikipedia tells us homing pigeons can fly at 50 miles per hour or so. For 650 miles, that's a 13 hour trip. A single pigeon wouldn't make the trip without resting, but assuming there are pigeon stations in between, it can very easily be said to take no more than 14 hours to send a message one-way, or 28 hours for a round-trip message.

So, let them take a few days to communicate via pigeon and arrange the flying mounts; it doesn't sound like they lack the time.

Maybe I'm getting things confused here (I certainly feel confused now!), but I think that a creature can travel 10% of its movement speed in miles per hour. A human being can travel 3 miles per hours (movement speed is 30 ft.). If a pigeon can fly 50 miles per hour or so, it would mean that its movement speed is 500 ft. per round.

I'm not really trying to argue here. Actually, I would love it if you were right! It would solve this whole thing in a heartbeat!

[Fouredged Sword]

In game, no. In reality, yes. Birds get up into wind currents that move them in the directions they want to go. Flight speeds of 50-95 miles an hour are recorded on some birds during long migrations.

[Slipperychicken]

What level are you?

What classes do you have available?

How much money do you have?

[Mnemnosyne]

In-game movement speeds aren't really well set up for this kind of thing. They work okay for land-bound creatures, and movement distances for humans are actually relatively accurate to what a human can march in a day if they're used to walking all day, but they fall apart pretty quickly when trying to calculate flying movement over long distances. This is the kind of place where I just tend to say common sense and realistic behavior trumps the exact rules, since they aren't really designed to account for this.

For reference, Wikipedia on Homing Pigeons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon):

Their average flying speed over moderate distances (about 800 km [500 mi]) is around 80 km/h (50 mph),[citation needed] but speeds of up to 94.5 km/h (58.7 mph) have been observed in top racers for short distances (160 km [99 mi]).[4]

Also checking a little more into it there are other websites devoted to racing pigeons; apparently, it is possible for a pigeon to even make a 650 mile journey all at once, contrary to what I initially suspected, and some racing pigeons have won awards for such journeys. Granted, we're talking champion pigeons here, but it makes it clear that with relay stations, it would be no major challenge to get a message one-way across that distance in less than a day.

[Flickerdart]

Also checking a little more into it there are other websites devoted to racing pigeons; apparently, it is possible for a pigeon to even make a 650 mile journey all at once, contrary to what I initially suspected, and some racing pigeons have won awards for such journeys. Granted, we're talking champion pigeons here, but it makes it clear that with relay stations, it would be no major challenge to get a message one-way across that distance in less than a day.
Champion mundane pigeons are probably easy enough to manufacture or surpass when you have things like Magebred and Air Heritage to produce truly exceptional birds.

[Fouredged Sword]

The army also can employ war-pigeons. Just magebred and warbeast can increase the move speed +20ft. Air heritage adds another +30ft.

Assuming a pigeon has the stats of a raven, that makes for a 100ft fly speed.

Or the service could hire tiny air elementals. Those have a 200ft move speed and can run without end. That means 600ft per round.

[Jon_Dahl]

What level are you?

What classes do you have available?

How much money do you have?

The PCs are a cleric 3/psychic warrior 2/pyrokinetisist 3, monk 2/rogue 5 and barbarian 1/ranger 3/fighter 4.

They have about 2000-3000 gp.

One interesting option would be to rule that homing pigeons worked realistically, but everything else would work within the game mechanics (including spells that imitate homing pigeons, such as animal messenger). I don't if that would get out of hand, though...

[Berenger]

No, you see messenger pigeons are actually a special breed of pigeon that can cast teleport once per day [...]

Pure. Awesome.

[Flickerdart]

It's a lot easier to breed and train pigeons than try to get your hands on air elementals, since 1st level commoners could be employed to do it. If tirelessness is an issue, effigies of the pigeons would go for about 1000gp a pop - expensive, but reliable.

[Solophoenix]

On a non-pigeon note, semaphore lines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line) can transmit messages faster than the speed of sound, weather permitting.

[Flickerdart]

I believe we broke the speed of sound somewhere using stacked dragons riding other dragons, but this would be very expensive to transmit a single message. Stacking is only really beneficial when you have only 1 round in which to do things.

[eggynack]

The PCs are a cleric 3/psychic warrior 2/pyrokinetisist 3, monk 2/rogue 5 and barbarian 1/ranger 3/fighter 4.

That's some limited casting, but it could potentially get you there. Whispering flame (5N, 155) is a second level cleric spell that's pretty efficient for long distance communication. You'd need some way of getting one of the enchanted candles to the gnome, but that only requires one bird trip instead of a sequence of them. Include a message that tells the gnome when to light the candle, and success is yours.

[Dawgmoah]

On a non-pigeon note, semaphore lines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line) can transmit messages faster than the speed of sound, weather permitting.

As a teen I used to race pigeons. We'd start training them at a mile, then five, and work up from there. Some of the longest races were 2,000 miles. The club would contract with a trucking firm to send the birds off. A good flier can make a 650 mile trip easily in a day.

But of course there were always problems or losses suffered. You never sent one bird but usually two if not three. One pigeon returned home from a 300 mile trip seven months later...

So for a real world example: pigeons were used on the battlefield up into the 20th century.

And like Solophoenix said, semaphore stations can relay information (at a limited rate) quickly and efficently in the day. David Weber uses them extensively in his Armageddon Reef stories.

And birds are cheap; like another poster said, and even a 1st level commoner can care for and move the birds as needed. You would have that traffic either on the waterways or roads: people bringing birds to various locations that will fly back to their point of origin with messages.

You could run into a situation where there are no means of communication. Let's run to the next station and hope they can get word out sort of thing.

[Maginomicon]

On a non-pigeon note, semaphore lines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line) can transmit messages faster than the speed of sound, weather permitting.

Heliographs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph) travel at the speed of light and have an operating range of 30 miles (more if you used a spyglass, which relaying stations would certainly use despite their 1000gp cost). A simple dancing lights display arranged in a digital-esqe tunnel system similar to a traffic light could convey a message very quickly in basic code.

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1-jNg4gKtBCLF2Tdu_xYCal1GZzNW2qXh0VmnjWijYlE/pub?w=131&h=131">

[(Un)Inspired]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255489

Dragon mail delivery service. Fast, efficient*, and stylish.


*not actually efficient. Limited time offer. Recipient may be eaten or exploded on delivery.

[avr]

Never mind David Weber, Terry Pratchett has the clacks to demonstrate semaphore lines in a fantasy setting.

In Eberron, on the continent of Khorvaire at least there is a commercial service using Whispering Wind and items which extend its range to send messages. Provided by gnomes oddly enough.

Summoned creatures with teleport without error are the fastest way to get messages or small packages around in D&D though. A lantern archon (SM III) is the lowest level IIRC.

[Captnq]

No, you see messenger pigeons are actually a special breed of pigeon that can cast teleport once per day as a SLA, carrying no other creatures and equipment weighing less than 2lbs. They can get within the ballpark of their intended destination very quickly, and spend approximately one day flying to the nearest messenger station that spends all day burning sage, which attracts the expertly trained birds by scent.

The system was set up by the archmage conjurer Rasputin Von Bismarch, and has since become a backbone of commerce and inter kingdom communication.

Anchor Hawks can be a problem though, they prevent teleportation as they strike. Buggers evolved to prey on the pigeons. Durn druids!

That is among the most surreal ideas I have heard in a long time.

Good job.

[Kerilstrasz]

The king wants to meet the group.
The queen wants to help the group reach the king.

They are Royal! that means they have money & connections...

They (the royals), call the royal wizard, who teleports to or near the group.
He meets em & teleports himself & the group to the king!

and that would take just a few hours

[Deophaun]

Heliographs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph) travel at the speed of light and have an operating range of 30 miles (more if you used a spyglass, which relaying stations would certainly use despite their 1000gp cost).
Why bother with stuff like this when you have the Commoner Railgun Express?

[Gemini476]

I believe we broke the speed of sound somewhere using stacked dragons riding other dragons, but this would be very expensive to transmit a single message. Stacking is only really beneficial when you have only 1 round in which to do things.

With a DC 100 Sleight of Hand check, you can move an adjacent creature up to ten feet as a free action. Not only did those two Rogues break the speed of light, they robbed everyone in the continent while doing so.

Oh, and can't you get infinite move actions with Celerity nested in Sanctum Spell Arcane Fusions? Or am I thinking wrong here?

[Flickerdart]

With a DC 100 Sleight of Hand check, you can move an adjacent creature up to ten feet as a free action. Not only did those two Rogues break the speed of light, they robbed everyone in the continent while doing so.

Oh, and can't you get infinite move actions with Celerity nested in Sanctum Spell Arcane Fusions? Or am I thinking wrong here?
The thread in which this was accomplished required that no magic be used, and once you can make a DC100 skill check then all bets are out the window anyway.