My carrier pigeons have been replaced by spoons: how can I send messages?

Question

Yup. All my pigeons are now spoons. I knew my court alchemist was a sore loser, but I still think it's inappropriate to do that for a chess game. He vanished and I no longer have any means to communicate.

Horses can also send messages, and are useful for long ones, but I still want a way to send short messages quickly.

How could I send short/quick messages without my pigeons?

P.S.: I now have plenty of spoons, so bonus points if you use them to send messages.

Update: on the message note he left, this bloody alchemist said that all pigeons of my kingdom are spoons, not only my castle. My kingdom is quite large (something between your England and France), so I need a long term solution. The sooner the better, but at least my horses aren't forks so I can wait something like one month, but no more.

Messages I sent with pigeons were Short Message Swearing, AKA SMS, to send short classical orders ("besiege this castle", "gather your army there", "betray my brother"...), usually when it would take more than a day with a horse.

Answer 1

Inspired by Hosch250's comment

1- Carrier pigeons don't actually go to a any given location, they really just return to their nest.

2- Spoons have an annoying tendency to fall into soup bowls.

Take advantage of these two facts. Your pigeons are spoons on the outside but they're still pigeons on the inside, only very confused. Get another alchemist (surely you don't only have one) and have them transmute pigeon nests into soup bowls. Their instinct will catch up to their new body and they'll develop a strong desire to fall into their own bowl. Then dispatch messages by horse explaining what you did and ask for the bowls to be filled with soup. Your carrier-spoons will now gladly "fall" back in their bowl. People might need some time getting used to this though...

Answer 2

Polish them to a mirror shine. Put one spoon with one operator on a tower within visible distance from another one. Invent coding that uses "long shines"-"short ones".

Important messages would still be sent by horse (because it's harder to stop a messenger on a fast horse) and frivolities can be sexted with Morse code.

EDIT The use of a horse is to secure delivery of important message. First you avoid the message to be stuck down on the road due to "some" conditions. Second - you avoid many people learning about the message (the Shiners should know the code, not just repeat shines to avoid a game of Telephone where messages mutate over time). Third - using towers means your messages go through well known route. Messenger can go off the beaten track or disguise himself to protect the information.

Answer 3

Get another alchemist, convince him to use Sympathetic Magic to bind pairs of spoons together so that what happens to one happens to the other. They're already identical and infused with magic from the transmutation, so this should be technically easy to accomplish.

Now construct a pair of Ouija style code-boards covered in words and letters and place the bound spoons on them.

When you move one spoon, the one on the other board will move to match. So you can use this to send instantaneous messages at any distance.

Send one of the paired board/spoons to another castle and assign someone to keep a close eye on the board at each end for messages.

Repeat the process and you'll have a network of instantaneous text-communication devices across your whole kingdom.

A great improvement over the carrier pigeons!

Answer 4

Crows.

If you don't have pigeons anymore, your other simple option is to use crows. They are very intelligent, great memory, longer life span, stronger etc ...

Some would argue to use ravens because they are stronger, but they are less sociable and less comfortable around humans. But you can train them anyway.

Answer 5

Being in the medieval period I assume your mines are mostly producing copper, tin and some low quality iron.

What your alchemist did was turn your pigeons into high quality stainless steel, or possibly even sterling silver spoons.

Sell you spoons for a hefty profit and buy some more pigeons. Spend the rest of the money finding that alchemist!

Edit: collect all the other spoons as property of the crown. You are RICH!!!

Answer 6

One solution could be semaphores.

This require no special technology, and was used before the telegraph was invented.

Chappe's semaphore towers is one historical example, used in France. Just separate towers by 10km each (or use already existing castles, churches...), and write a code.

bonus point: You can use some spoons to make semaphore arms more shiny

Answer 7

Hire another fickle Court Alchemist.

Provoke them after mentioning how the work of their predecessor was amazing - he turned all your pigeons into spoons.

Finish another victorious chess game with 'I guess that's it! Just like those spoons, it's not like you can turn them back. But, hey, I suppose it's good to admire the work of your betters, right?'

Profit!
_{(I hope.)}

Answer 8

I don't see the problem.

Surely, you can find someone to enchant wings into your spoons? And engraved flying spoons are a clear improvement over pigeons.

Make sure to keep the fancy golden spoons for important messages or favored minions - standard dinnerware is good enough for your average flunkie.

Answer 9

You could use the spoons to make a sort of medieval LRAD. Bind the spoons together to make a very large parabolic satellite dish. Turn the chamber towards the place where you want the sound to focus, stand in front of the parabola, and shout loudly into it.

The shape of the parabola will determine the distance between itself and the focal point, which is where the sound will be most audible. So, I suggest that you construct this parabola by attaching each spoon to a geared tuning mechanism for adjusting the parabola. You have your engineer turn a crank which moves hundreds of small spines along fixed paths, with the goal of effectively driving the focal point farther and farther away.

Now, if it gets too far away, then even though you shout very loudly, the sound might just not make it there. So, to complete this design, you need to hire a large chorus to loudly sing all your secret messages into the parabola. If the chorus is good and large, and the parabola is shaped precisely, then you should be able to send these messages remarkably far, and they would be most audible at their focal destination.

Granted this only works with line of sight, but if you have enough spoons, I see no reason why you can't have acoustic spoon-satellites with large choruses in several locations around the empire.

Answer 10

Pneumatic tubes

It not only allows to send messages, but smaller items without interruption with speeds up to 40-90 km/h. The system is from a mechanical viewpoint absolutely doable in mediaeval times, it is just that nobody had the idea to actually do it.

My current hometown Hamburg had several long pneumatic lines to avoid transporting letters with cars. The diameter was 45 cm, the length of a transport pipe was 1.6 m, so approximately 1000 letters could be transported with ease. It was quite a modern system, it was constructed from 1962 on. What needed half an hour with a postal car was now done in few minutes. Unfortunately the vibrations of the roads caused misalignments and damages, so it ran only until 1976. Many of the old systems are still buried under the ground. All in all the lines had a length of approximately 50 km.

Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, Prof. Dr. Nemo Klein, 2006-09-20

Answer 11

Use your horses to go to someone else's kingdom and import pigeons back to your kingdom.

You specified that you have a big kingdom and not that you have the only kingdom in existence ;-)

Answer 12

Spoon catapults! Place the spoon over a branch (or similar), put your message around a small stone, place the stone in the scoop, take aim, and whack the handle!

You'll have to whack quite hard to get the range of a pidgeon, but that's what sledgehammers are for...

Answer 13

You will want to play those spoons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhggIC0D--4
I think of the fantasies in which there are a series of towers on which bonfires were set to be lit in time of need. The next tower along to line would see the fire and light their own, and so the signal propagates.

So too with your spoons. The spoon player would sit in front of a large parabolic dish many meters across, and play the message. Atop the next tower the next spoon player listens in front of his own dish pointing to the first tower, which captures and amplifies the distant clicks and clack. He then walks around the tower to the transmitting dish and sends the message on.

Answer 14

Two methods I can think of off the top of my head:

• Semaphore. Using a pair of flags in various positions, they are best used with relay towers and can send messages for miles. Reusable.
• Fire signals. Using the smokes of bonfires and blankets to produce a crude form of morse code. Needs fuel to be used though.

Answer 15

Use Kites

Kites can be used to send messages. They are cheap, can be easily flown with little expertise, you don't need to build expensive towers, they even work at night by flying lanterns along the string.

The combination of size/shape/pattern/color of the kite can convey the message. A network of kite flyers throughout the country can convey messages over long distances.

Rotate the phrase-book every few weeks to stop the enemy from decoding your intentions.

Cons: You're out of luck if it's raining or very very still weather (no wind)

Answer 16

As the ruler of a great kingdom, surely you have multiple options:

• Sell all your spoons to a neighbouring kingdom that does still have pigeons to buy them

• Commence a nation-wide manhunt for the court alchemist (reward: spoons) and 'convince' him to fix the situation

• If there's powerful magic in your world, have your court mages send 'long-range fireblasts' set to explode at given intervals akin to morse code (obviously you'll need a code book so the enemy won't decipher the message)

• Start experimenting with turning birds into enormous, mountable monstrosities / combining bird and man into one body

• Appoint volunteers who will attempt untested teleportation magic with ancient, recently discovered runes or transmute them into pigeons

Answer 17

Drums and communication by sound

With drums you can encode short messages as a unique pattern of sounds and sound travels really fast (>300m/s) and a chain of drummers situated at suitable distances can transmit the message on and on.

If you are worried about the drummers making mistakes inventing some form of error correction code might be a good idea.

Only drawback: That constant drumming in your castle and in all areas around it will drive you crazy.

Alternative: Try Didgeridoos or Alphorns.

Answer 18

Create a minor catapault network using only spoons and branches. You can probably launch a short message several dozens of meters per spoon. Assuming you have many hundreds or thousands of spoons now, you should be able to link your communication network up.

It's a bit vulnerable to high winds, but then again, your birds kind of were too.

Answer 19

Shine them up and trade them to crows in exchange for delivering your message.

Answer 20

In this answer, I assume you have metal spoons.
Melt the spoons together end to end and transmit an electrical signal down the long conductor, with earth ground as a reference point. It's relatively crude, subject to interference, and only useful for relatively short distances over preplanned routes. You might need error correction codes or a second line of spoons for a ground. Depending on technology and heat available, you could even melt the spoons down to wires to cover a longer distance.

While my initial thought was the mirror/sun reflection answer, this one works at night and on cloudy days and doesn't require adjustment for angle of the sun.

Answer 21

Melt and/or beat the spoons into rockets, with the message in a fireproof nose cone.

If your kingdom has strong magic, a little alchemy to create gunpowder or V2 fuel shouldn't be too advanced.