Four Ways Out of Halarahh: Routing and Freight Cost to Waterdeep
The route ledger will quote four different ways to move a hundred pounds of goods from Halarahh to Waterdeep, and the cheapest of them costs 8.30 FSD. The dearest costs 141.48. Same origin, same destination, roughly the same distance. One takes 44 days and the other takes 15.3.
Halruaa sits behind a ring of mountains, and the Company’s main cargo out of it is peaches, which do not travel well by any road. So the choice of route is not a clerk’s formality. It decides whether a crate lands at a profit or at a loss, and the ledger will not make that choice for you. The figures below are route ledger quotes taken on 23 Eleint 1492 DR.
What It Is
A routing is the chain of legs a shipment follows between two hubs, with a carrier mode on each leg. The ledger prices each leg by weight and distance, multiplies by a factor for the mode, and adds the legs together. Mode is what drives the bill. Sea lanes carry at 0.3 times road freight rates. Skyships and gryphons carry at 3.2 times. A teleportation circle carries at 8 times road rates, and it covers 5,000 miles a day doing it.
Asked for the cheapest routing, the ledger sends goods by sea. Asked for the fastest, it opens a teleportation circle. Two more routings sit between those answers, and nobody asks for them by name.
Why It Matters
Freight is the largest cost on anything the Company imports from Halruaa. The Company’s earlier costing of the peach trade found carriage and preservation eating 86 percent of the landed cost of a fresh crate. Pick the wrong routing and the carriage line does not creep up. It multiplies.
And the routings do not scale evenly. The circle-and-sea routing costs 11.74 times the all-sea freight to save 22.8 days. The fastest routing costs 17.05 times as much to save 28.7. Whether those days are worth buying depends entirely on what is in the crate.
The Four Routings
The Halarahh to Waterdeep routings in the route ledger table lists all four, with the route codes the Company uses on purchase orders. Freight is the ledger’s carriage charge only. Preservation wards and the Waterdeep duties are billed on their own lines.
TABLE: HALARAHH TO WATERDEEP ROUTINGS IN THE ROUTE LEDGER
| Route Code | Routing | Modes | Miles | Days | Freight per 100 lb (FSD) | Worst Leg Hazard |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTE-HAL-WDP-1 | All sea | Sea lane | 3,135.4 | 44.0 | 8.30 | 1.08 |
| RTE-HAL-WDP-2 | Circle to Nimbral, then sea | Teleport, sea lane | 2,861.7 | 21.2 | 97.41 | 1.08 |
| RTE-HAL-WDP-3 | Circle, sea, then gryphon | Teleport, sea, air | 2,922.6 | 15.3 | 141.48 | 1.03 |
| RTE-HAL-WDP-4 | All air by way of Innarlith | Air | 3,339.5 | 30.4 | 79.18 | 0.96 |
The ledger returns the first and third as whole routings. The second and fourth are built from its leg quotes. The second is the circle hop to Nimbral plus the cheapest sea routing onward. The fourth is the Halruaan Skyroad to Innarlith plus the gryphon chain north.
All sea (RTE-HAL-WDP-1). Coasting runs down the Halruaa-Chult coast to Delselar, across to Tashluta, along the Shining Sea to Lantan, then north past Caer Corwell and Mintarn into Waterdeep harbor. Seven legs. It is slow. It is also about 0.26 FSD per hundred pounds per hundred miles, which nothing else in the ledger comes close to.
Circle to Nimbral, then sea (RTE-HAL-WDP-2). The circle carries goods 1,441.8 miles in 0.4 days for 93.66 FSD per hundred pounds, and a ship does the remaining 1,419.9 miles in 20.8 days for 3.75. The circle is 96.2 percent of this routing’s freight bill.
Circle, sea, then gryphon (RTE-HAL-WDP-3). The same circle to Nimbral, a short sea run to Lantan, then gryphon flights to Athkatla and Waterdeep. This is the ledger’s fastest answer. It carries two changes of carrier, at Nimbral and at Lantan, and the ledger’s day count includes no handling time at either.
All air by way of Innarlith (RTE-HAL-WDP-4). The Halruaan Skyroad north to Innarlith, then gryphons through Arrabar, Saerloon, Arabel and Silverymoon before turning west for Waterdeep. It is the longest routing by 204 miles and still beats the all-sea routing by 13.6 days.
Worked Example: One Hundred Crates of Each Peach
The earlier peach costing ordered 100 crates of fresh peaches at 30 pounds each and 100 crates of dried at 20 pounds each, 3,000 and 2,000 pounds of fruit. The Freight for 100 crates of peaches by routing table prices that same order on each routing and sets the freight per crate against the posted Waterdeep retail price, 9.46 FSD a crate for fresh and 5.50 for dried.
TABLE: FREIGHT FOR 100 CRATES OF PEACHES BY ROUTING
| Route Code | Days | Fresh, 100 Crates (FSD) | Fresh per Crate (FSD) | Dried, 100 Crates (FSD) | Dried per Crate (FSD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTE-HAL-WDP-1 | 44.0 | 249.00 | 2.49 | 166.00 | 1.66 |
| RTE-HAL-WDP-2 | 21.2 | 2,922.30 | 29.22 | 1,948.20 | 19.48 |
| RTE-HAL-WDP-3 | 15.3 | 4,244.40 | 42.44 | 2,829.60 | 28.30 |
| RTE-HAL-WDP-4 | 30.4 | 2,375.40 | 23.75 | 1,583.60 | 15.84 |
Only the all-sea routing leaves the freight on a crate below its retail price. On every other routing the carriage alone costs more than the crate sells for in Dock Ward, before the fruit is paid for and before Waterdeep takes its tariff. The fastest routing puts 42.44 FSD of freight on a crate that sells for 9.46.
So the speed on offer is not a peach service. It prices days, and the Cost of each day saved against the all-sea routing table shows how much.
TABLE: COST OF EACH DAY SAVED AGAINST THE ALL-SEA ROUTING
| Route Code | Days Saved | Extra Freight per 100 lb (FSD) | Extra Freight per Day Saved (FSD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTE-HAL-WDP-2 | 22.8 | 89.11 | 3.91 |
| RTE-HAL-WDP-3 | 28.7 | 133.18 | 4.64 |
| RTE-HAL-WDP-4 | 13.6 | 70.88 | 5.21 |
The circle-and-sea routing buys days most cheaply. The all-air routing buys them at the worst rate of the three, and it saves the fewest. Going from circle-and-sea to the fastest routing buys another 5.9 days at 7.47 FSD per hundred pounds for each one.
Realms-Aware Considerations
Fresh fruit and skyships. The Company’s standing practice keeps fresh peaches out of skyship holds. That rules out the third and fourth routings for fresh crates regardless of price, and the ledger’s router does not know about the rule. It will still recommend gryphons for fruit if a clerk asks for the fastest route.
Gryphon speeds are optimistic. Both air routings are timed at 110 miles a day on every air leg. A fully laden gryphon manages closer to 48, by the Company’s own proposed planning figures. At that pace the fastest routing stretches to roughly 29.7 days, which is slower than circle-and-sea.
The Waterdeep approach. Every routing’s last leg into Waterdeep rates at 0.96 or worse. By sea it is Mintarn to Waterdeep at 1.08. By gryphon it is Athkatla to Waterdeep at 1.01, or Silverymoon to Waterdeep at 0.96. Paying for speed at the Halruaa end buys no safety at the Waterdeep end.
The 34.7-day market chain. The earlier peach costing followed the fresh crates on a 34.7-day chain of caravan and hull across 2,675 miles, billed at 6.79 FSD a crate for carriage and preservation together. That chain does not match any of the four routings here, and the ledger’s router never proposes it. The two figures come from different parts of the ledger and should not be compared line for line until someone traces where the caravan legs run.
Final Thoughts
For peaches, the ledger’s cheapest answer is the only one that pays, and it costs 44 days that fresh fruit may not have. Dried fruit rides the all-sea routing at 1.66 FSD a crate and does not mind the wait. The circle-and-sea routing is the one worth watching for goods light enough and dear enough to carry 97.41 FSD per hundred pounds. Nobody at the Company has yet drawn up a list of what those goods would be.
Go Deeper
- Gamifying the Enterprise: Tabletop Mechanics for ERP Training, Continuous Education, and User Proficiency Rating, https://www.amazon.com/Gamifying-Enterprise-Mechanics-Continuous-Proficiency/dp/B0GY3VWLVX/
- Advanced Dungeons & Dynamics 365 Bare Bones Configuration Guides (7 book series), Kindle Edition, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYLPFKCF
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