The issue here is that a wizard risks miscasting if they do MoD a lot. One imagines an enchanted item would run into issues of some sort as well.
Also, rather than being purely useful only for transporting food in living animal form, it'd also be useful for transporting horses and monstrous mounts by ship.
I suspect normal armies much prefer the transportation method of "having the cows walk on their own." We only need MoD because steam wagons move much faster than cows do. For a normal army this technique is useless. Why make a cow into unconscious luggage that needs to be carried by something when you could just have it transport itself?
No, an enchanted item can be more easily counterspelled, but it can't miscast. The risk is front-loaded into the enchanting process.
Ah, hmm. In that case we haven't particularly solved any issue with such an item, I feel, unless there's a reason whatever group needs MoD can't just hire a Grey Wizard to do it, but can order an enchanted item.
Well, yes. You can buy an enchanted item and be done (for a steep price), but permanently employing a wizard would be ruinously expensive. Their time is valuable!
Why would you need to permanently employ a wizard for such a niche task? This seems like it'd be useful for a very specific thing like, again, transporting mounts to Sudenburg/Lustria/wherever.
The goal seems to have slipped from "transport cattle to somewhere within a week's distance", then.
Because the death-like state last several days only if not ended, and trips to Sudenburg/Lustria take longer than that, so the spell would need to be reapplied in the middle of the voyage, likely multiple times. A magic item makes that easier, since you don't have to take a grey wizard, who's at risk of exploding into daemons from multiple casts, with you on the trip.
Alright, I guess this makes sense. Such an item (or bunch of items) might be impractically expensive, but if it isn't, it can be viable. And of course once whatever expedition is done, they can potentially resell the item(s) to someone else that needs them.
Not even mentioning just a barrel enchanted with Ferment. Running out of drinkable fluids is usually of greater concern on ocean voyages.
If we ever do the Fliying Ship Thingy, we should totally commission that as an enchanted room/item.
Also this...
Just be careful who you send out to buy the barrel, or they'll bring you back something that makes navy-proof rum instead of the light beer you wanted. Sailing drunk is probably not the best plan.
Duly noted. I was seeing those as two distinct activities the thread was engaging in at the time you said that, so I thought that was just ruling out the "burrito in the sky" fantasies of creating an actual literal flying road. But now that's been clarified for me I'll abide by it.
@BoneyM Since all three of the inventor, the likely location of the invention, and the ammunition are no longer available to appear in the story, can you tell us what Gotrek's solution for delivering Slayers from the mothership to fights would have been?
There is a reason the Trappings of the Seaman Career in the RPG include a bottle of rotgut.
My bet is still some sort of variant of a cannon or a catapult, something along those lines.
There's still ship-travel. I'm not sure how often the forces of the Empire travel by river, though.
