Proposal: Will You Marry Me?

ChinDoGu's right. If Poseidon's going to have a speed advantage (which still needs to be mitigated), Athena's morale advantage has to mean something. And it's time to revisit the victory condition anyway.

Create a new Ailment:

Suitor: Mariners with this Ailment are said to be Suitors. They are exempt from the requirement that all Mariners must belong to a Ship. Suitors may not use any abilities which refer to their Ship; nor may such abilities be used on them. At the end of the Lacuna, Suitors gain 5 Morale. Suitors who transfer to or are transferred to a Ship lose this Ailment immediately; for the purposes of transferring between Ships, Suitors are considered to be on a Ship with Distance 0.

In Rule 20, replace "If a Ship has reached Ithaca and has a Captain, then that Captain may declare Victory." with:

When a Ship reaches Ithaca (defined as having Distance 0), its Captain gains 20 Morale and the Ship ceases to exist. All Mariners formerly aboard the Ship get the Ailment "Suitor" and are considered to be aboard no Ship.

When at least one Mariner first has the Ailment "Suitor," a contest begins at Penelope's estate. While the contest is occurring, every post by the Poet declaring the end of a Lacuna must state how many Lacunae the contest has been going on for. When the Poet declares in such a post that the contest has been going on for 5 Lacunae, the Suitor with the highest Morale (other than the Poet) wins and may Declare Victory.

I'm prepared to have to repropose this a couple times to hammer out any kinks -- or not, if you feel it's a bad idea in the first place! The idea is: The sooner you get to Ithaca, the better, since you've cemented yourself Suitorhood and begin gaining Morale for being a Suitor. You can arrive later than someone else and still be eligible to win -- but you've missed out on one to five end-of-Lacuna Morale bonuses for Suitors, so you'd better have high Morale for other reasons!

Passed 9 to 2 by Cayvie at 17:33 GMT, 04.06.2004. +10 to Satyr Eyes, +2 to Cayvie.