It only really works to buy time, anyway. Things will still get worse, I can just make it take longer to do it.

Cheliax could totally collapse any day now, I just have to keep giving them chances to do it.

I sure hope someone is using this time for something.

Track Ship: Cleric / Wizard 2

Duration 1 hour/level

Saving Throw Will negates (object); Spell Resistance yes (object)

In order to cast this spell, you must have a piece of the ship you wish to track. Merchants often preserve slivers from their trade ships specifically for this purpose. You also need a nautical chart.

When you cast this spell, an icon of the targeted ship appears on the nautical chart. The icon moves as the ship moves for the duration of this spell. If the ship is not within the area delineated by the chart, the spell fails. If the ship is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points, its icon changes from a ship to a skull and crossbones.

There's a spell called Track Ship?!
Why didn't anyone mention that?

It's not militarily useful?

Firstly, you'd need to steal a piece of the enemy ship you want to track. Not easy.

Then when you cast it, if the ship's attended, the Captain gets a Will save.

Cheliax chooses captains with high Will saves.

If the captain's sleeping, the first mate will be attending the ship, and he'll be an experienced officer too.

If they beat your first attempt, they'll have the Ships' Wizard cast Nondetection, making further attempts much harder.

You could use it to track your own ships, but:
It costs a spell per ship, so if your fleet is spread out it's expensive.
Your own captains will resist it, if they're at all experienced enough to be navy captains at all.
You could ask them not to, to set aside half an hour every morning to meditate on not resisting spells, but then the enemy can do it too, or just do a Demand and remotely mind control your commanders.
You can't do that much with the information, unless you're also using stronger communication magic and then you could just add your location in the Sending reply.

For Cormoth to hunt down an isolated Chelish vessel with some superior force, he'd have to know it was isolated, know where it was isolated, know he had enough forces with him to take it, and then follow it for long enough to prepare an ambush, without it beating an attempt even once, realising it was being tracked, and changing course.

If you wanted every ship to know where every other ship is, for example, you'd need a thousand spell slots, and nobodies got that.

If some command base is somehow tracking the enemy, it has to inform it's own fleet how to move, and that'll give it away quickly what your advantage is.

And once they know the fleet is being tracked, they'll change strategy. If a ship undergoes substantial enough repairs, your stolen sliver from before stops working, because it's not from the new ship anymore.

Look, buddy.
Cheliax knows about all these spells I've been showing you, too.
They don't let anyone who isn't them anywhere near their warships, on the high sea.
They'll fire siege weapons, throw spells, send devils, if you're fighting back.
If you surrender they send a rowboat of marines, to board you.

Outside exceptional circumstances, they dock only in their own harbours, in their own military ports, with guards who get mindread regularly about how so very loyal they are.

Nobody gets close to a warship of Cheliax. Not within hundreds of feet, at least.
And even if you took a sliver somehow, you wouldn't beat their Captain reliably enough to risk using it. Not even if you're an archmage.

The only reason I'm still expecting you to do something clever is that Our Mutual Friend said you could, and He's got an awful lot of credibility with me.

That's not-
That's not how you'd use that spell at all.

Robaldo thinks about information itself, the act of communicating, as a Game.
He tries to add it to his equilibria math, the price per unit fact and the ways by which it can be obtained.
He notices how to Play it right.

He thinks he has enough, now.

GG, I win Golarion, gonna stop watching so I can put all my micro into other planets instead.

The inner sea is much wider than it is tall.
From the Arch of Aroden in the West, to Delenah in Qadira in the East, is 1700 miles in a straight line.
If you imagine it splitting around Absalom, and continuing south to Jalmaray, it's perhalds 3000 miles long.
But North to South it averages only 250 miles across, apart from the ring around Absalom.

A sailing ship can get 5-10 miles an hour, depending on the vessel, it's load, and your willingness to use Control Weather magic.
You can, at a reasonable pace and with favourable wind, cross any part of the Inner Sea north to south in under two days, sailing through the night.
Moving east to west on the other hand takes more like two weeks.

From the top of a crow's nest, you can spot another ship, right on the horizon as far out as 25 miles. A smaller vessel, maybe 20 miles, because it can hide behind the horizon at less distance.
That's through a telescope of course, the naked eye of an unenhanced human wouldn't see either that far out.

Suppose you wish to communicate some information, at a distance of more than a few miles. Let us list every spell known to magic that permits this:

You could use 5th circle Teleport:

It transmits you as much information as you can stuff into a wizard's head, pockets, Bag of Holding, and a few friends depending on the caster, a distance of 900 miles comfortably which is enough to reach Augustana from most of the Inner Sea.
The caster needs to know the location they're going to, to have studied it carefully.
It also moves the wizard, but we're playing an Information Game here.

You could use 4th circle Scrying: (4th for Wizards at least, 5th for Clerics)

It takes an hour to cast and only lasts minutes. You need a big expensive mirror. The target will resist, by default.
It transmits as much information as you can read through the sensor, which is more than you could ever want.

You could use 4th circle Sending: (4th for Clerics at least, 5th for Wizards)

It takes 10 minutes to cast. It only lasts 1 round.
It transmits 25 words or less one way, and they can transmit 25 words back.
If you pick your favourite 32,000 words of traditional Taldane, this represents around 375 "bits" of information.
Where a "bit" is like a single yes or no, as you might get for each question in a Commune.

You could use 3rd circle Mirror Sight:

It takes 10 minutes to cast. It lasts minutes. You need a mirror.
It lets you see out a mirror known to you, near someone known to you, or in a place known to you.
It transmits as much information as you can read through the sensor, which is more than you could ever want.

You could use 3rd circle Minor Dream:

They recieve it in the form of a dream. They have to be asleep. It's only one way.
It's at most 20 words. 300 bits.

You could use 2nd circle Animal Messenger: (Bard, Druid, or Rangers only)

It takes 1 minute to cast, and then potentially days for the animal to reach its destination.
It then waits for someone to read the bit of paper you tied to its leg.
It transmits a page or so, depending on how big a bird you found.
Better rangers will just have an animal companion, no spell slots required.

You could use 2nd circle Track Ship:

It's basically free.
It transmits the current location of a willing vessel, with respect to some nautical map. It transmits this continuously, for an hour per caster level. It does so in real-time, without a delay.

You could use a Crystal Ball:

They start at 42,000 gp and go up from there.
They transmit like scrying.

You could use a Shell of Sending:

They cost 12,200 gp.
They transmit as much as one sending per day.

You could use a Bird Feather Token:

They cost 300 gp per use. It takes as long as it takes the bird to fly there.
They transmit only a small written message.

This completes our list.

Some of these are "push" and some are "pull", in terms of whether the caster is sending or recieving.
But in the important cases, the "transmits" parts of these stories are missing most of the message.

Most of the message isn't the message, most of the message is the timing.

2nd circle Track Ship contains an awful lot of timing information, if for example you ask your Unseen Servant to mark locations constantly against a clock time.

It is, from many perspectives, the cheapest and most high-bandwidth comms spell on Golarion. It scales linearly with the detail of the map, and linearly with the speed of your ship.

If you were cheliax, and you knew all the spells Robaldo knew, how would you coordinate your ships?
Nobody agrees on what time it is, at sea. Not accurately.

Track Ship isn't safe to cast unless you can tell them when you'll cast it. You either want to tell them by short-range, flags probably, that you're going to use it, or tell them by Sending.

Spells of Teleport, Scrying, Sending, simply cost too much for regular updates. You want your high-level spells for battle. Each one counts.

Animal Messenger, physical messengers of any kind, over long distance, take too long and are too interceptible.

You can justify Shells of Sending, albeit as few as required. You're spending hundreds of thousands of gold on each ship anyway.

You can teleport off of a ship if you want, but you can't teleport back without exact knowledge of location. The only way to get that is if you can see it.

The correct choice is this:

The captains' quarters have a mirror. The mirror points at a table.
Senior Command uses their own mirrors, and has a minion familiar with their Captains and their fleet, to cast Mirror Sight.
They can read reports off of their subordinates desk when it suits them to do so, at unpredictable times.

The Warships use Track Ship to track themselves, their nearby allies, or anything they're escorting.
They can ask them by flag to fail their Will saves, when close, and spread out only for manoeuvres.

Each captain has a Shell of Sending, but it doesn't point to Ostenso.
It points only one step up the hierarchy, Captains, Commanders, Commodores, Admirals.
High Command can contact a group, fit all its orders into 25 words of difference compared to yesterday.
Optimise the orders around code-tables, complex commands given simple names.
The leader of the group can add his own decisions, pass it on to his own subordinates.

Orders flow down, by Sending.
Orders are ordinarily by Shell of Sending, to save spells and because the hierarchy is rigid.
Only unusual, additional orders, beyond the expected daily variations, need a wizard's Sending at 10 minutes of delay.
Track Ship happens right after Sending if distant, or after shortrange communication if local, so you know it's them.

Track Ship, if cast, is cast from the superiors office: a table with a nautical map, in front of a mirror. It'll be a local nautical map. Not the whole Inner Sea. No larger than the ship can move before the spell ends.
All their other reports are placed on the same table. Reports from below are copied, and passed up.
If the next level up wants a report, they can take it at their leisure, at irregular times, by Mirror Sight.
If they're unhappy about the report, they can use it to aim a teleport, at no extra cost. You can never know when they'll be coming, so you can never feel safe.

It's how it must work, in an Asmodean Tyranny.

The concept of a "cooperative" board game was invented recently, by a Cleric from Lastwall. Some Clerics of Tet are Gooder than others, and that kind of development comes naturally to them.

Robaldo has heard of it through the writing competition.

Robaldo writes a cooperative game intended for up to 6 players.

The rules are as follows:

The game is played on a hexagonal grid of hexagonal tiles. The tiles have a top side, the same, and a hidden side, with a number of 0 to 5. Most are 0, and most of the rest are weighted towards smaller numbers. There is only one 4 and one 5, in the ordinary deck. If playing with fewer players, remove the too large numbers. The tiles are shuffled and laid out in a hexagon, face down.

The players start from the same corner of the game board, marked by their token. Play happens clockwise. The players play with their eyes closed: Communication is forbidden. No making faces either. 

On your turn, if others are on the same tile, you can poke them. They can open their eyes. You can communicate by sign, pointing out tiles, making faces. But silently, so no one else knows. At the start of your turn, you can peak at only the value of the tile under your token.

If, at the start of your turn, you see it has a 1. You can swap it for a zero, from the spare zero pile. If it has a higher number, you can only be swap it at least that many players are on it, at the same time.

If you do swap it, that ends your turn. Otherwise, you can move to an adjacent hex, close your eyes, and tap the clockwise players shoulder to pass the turn.

There is a finite number of cycles, selected to balance the game given the number of players. At the end, you turn over the tiles and count how many you missed.

The goal is to minimise the score, the number of remaining "number" tiles not yet replaced by zeroes.

Robaldo forces a few of his wizard friends to play it with him.
It's not because he's up to something. Promise.
He's just a cleric of Tet. They do this kind of thing.

After playing once or twice, you learn to communicate with your fellow players by how you move your token.

Any tile a person touches, leaves, and never returns to is clearly a 0.
Any tile a person touches, pauses, and then continues was clearly a 1.
If they touch, retreat, and then return, you know it's a 2. The nearest person should help clear the 2.
If they touch, retreat over cleared space, and pause, you know it's at least a 3. Everyone run over to help clear it.

All relevant information can be communicated by movement.

Track Ship isn't a nice addition, so that the command can know in advance what it'll learn when it Sendings out orders anyway.

Track Ship is the entire command system.

The boat is small. Light. It doesn't claim to be a fishing vessel. Impersonating civilians is a war crime.

But in the common understanding of how war works, it's clearly not military.

There's just one guy on board.

In the belly of the boat, is a strange contraption. Two heavy steel springs, each with a permanent Shrink Item cast upon them.

It costs 7,500 gp to do that, each.

The upside is that they can be made to shrink and grow as often as desired, indefinitely.

The downside is that only the original caster can use them.

The pilot is, necessarily, a 5th circle Wizard. Level 9.

One might imagine Cormoth found him by asking for wizards who hate Cheliax and are 5th circle, and got everyone who's first teleport was to "anywhere but Cheliax" and then didn't go back.

As one spring is unshrunk, it comes under compression, and pushes back against the bar.

The small spring is stretched thin, weak, does not resist compression at all.

The plate moves to a new balanced point. As it moves, it turns a drive shaft.

And then you activate them both again.

The return beat, in a surprising twist, also turns the drive shaft.

Underneath the vessel, the drive shaft turns a propeller.

It can make 40 miles an hour.

It can cross the Inner Sea north to south in 6 hours.

It's the fastest ship in the world.

High above him, flies a Sea-Hawk.

She saw them coming hours ago.

They've just been sitting here waiting.

Abrogail's Fury is on patrol, and Admiral Druvalia Thrune is at the helm.

She is escorted by two more Man-of-War's, Pearl of Egorian and Devil's Pride.

They're sailing a mile out on either flank.

They are not, collectively, a low CR encounter.

They see the boat hours out too. The other ones as well. They've got scouting imps. Obviously it doesn't see them yet. It doesn't matter.

It's not military, it's not even pirates.

Everybody knows, the bigger vessel has right of way. She's not changing course, it can move or it can die.

Nobody's even allowed to get close to a Chelish warship.

The boat sees them, turns, and moves sideways to dodge at a typical pace. An expert seaman, looking close at the sail from far away through a telescope, might notice that that's not the reason it's moving.