A Setting based on Airships

Let's build a setting based on widely available (say on the same level as the 18th century with regards to ships) airships.

Since you said the setting is BASED on the Airships, IE they are the most important thing in the setting and everything revolves around them in the way that Mass Effect revolves around... The Mass Effect... you need to start by setting the ground rules about how they work and why they are so central to the universe.

So... do that.

1. The planet has a denser atmosphere than Earth but also lower gravity
2. The oceans are toxic and corrosive
3. Tectonic forces are stronger resulting in extensive mountain ranges
4. The climate is best at the highest elevations

Not OP but this is exactly what I needed. Thanks!

the earth cracked/flooded/got poisoned
only sky arches survived
Noah was name of a shipbuilding company

So, what do they eat? The implication of what you're saying is that most civilization is up on mountain peaks like Tibetan Monestaries or European Alpine ski country villages because those areas are the most temperate and away from the toxicity and earthquakes. Have they developed technology to grow food on mountainous terrain, or is there some kind of class divide between those who live in shittier conditions down below because thats where the fucking soil is, or are there food resources in the sky and thats another reason people use so many airships, or... I dunno, just throwing ideas out.

What if you replaced the mountains with enormous vines that grew beyond mortal sight (to heaven say) and plentyful and varied fruit hung from their bodies and flying grazers ate them and predators ate those animals?

>The planet has a denser atmosphere than Earth but also lower gravity
That would imply the planet is a LOT colder. Look at Titan (yes I know it's not a planet) as the classical example.

Hmm, that's an interesting notion. It's been a while since I managed to stop thinking of a fantasy setting as "a planet," while coming up with it, so I would have never considered this. It brings to mind the great kelp forests off the California Coast, lonely spires of verdant life with no top and no bottom anyone can see surrounded by empty lifeless ether that the animals dart between or sail through as the case may be.

I could absolutely see that as an Airship World. Cool idea user.

I've always liked the float stone method. Float stone is a semi rare material much like the large trees used for the warships were for the British empire. You can get Float stone anywhere but finding chunk the size fore large ships takes some effort and sourcing.

At the heart of every airship is the Float stone core which is why the shits developed like they did big and bulky. Its because they have to build away from the Float stone core and also that they have to protect it. If it cracks to much or worse becomes dislodged from the ships haul its over the ship is "sunk." The rest is just for maneuverability and speed. The Float stone keeps you in the air but that's it if the wind is dead you are either fucked or in like OP's pic you gotta row that shit.

This is also why the nations developed the way they did and why ships have frequent contact with each other. There are major air currents and huge dead zones. Otherwise the sky is just to fucking big and vast. If a ship goes into a dead zone its out of desperation or because they have a very good reason to like smugglers. This also lets the nations exert their power as the currents twist around mountain tops which can have huge fortresses built on them. Pay the toll or get blown out of the sky.

I really like the air currents idea. What if the float stone is just that? Floating in giant chunks in the middle of the sky like clouds? The first float stone was collected from mountain peaks and the rest are mined in the air.

Are we talking that this world always had giant floating rocks in the sky, so that Cavemen evolved intelligence while looking up at the sky and seeing floating rocks and dreamed of reaching out and taking them? Because instead of anything as mundane as mining some, I think it'd be more interesting if man just spent a lot of time and effort developing civilizations that were capable of living high enough on mountains to capture rocks while they floated by. And all through history they used what little flyrocks they could snatch because they were lucky enough to have one fly close enough to capture for a variety of inventions, until finally somebody managed to invent a machine that could use the flying rocks to fly itself, thereby creating a flying rocks boom and an industrial revolution as flying rocks resources went from rare to common.

Titan is also a lot farther from the sun than Earth is.

Basically yeah that is how it is. You want the stones to be "easy enough" to obtain but not to the point every family has one. The only groups that can actually truly field them are national militaries. Everyone else has to deal with the scraps that they don't take much like what happened in the American colonies. Crown officials would constantly walk the forests marking the best trees for the crown and everyone had to deal with it and use the lesser trees to build local ships.

This also opens up different classes of ships based on the size of t he stone that the ships is built around. A trade barge can easily get away with a smaller stone since they don't need to reinforce the hull. Small resistance ships or pirate ships may just be a bunch of Float stones tied together and held in place with a combination of sweat, tears, and prayers.

There was a book series called "The Edge Chronicles" that had airships that functioned via a large stone that was so light, it could carry ships easily through the air.

I can't exactly remember how they made it stay in the air at the exact height they wanted, but I'm sure Google would know.

If I remember correctly, the stones also grew like plants and they had a giant city of "rich" folk who lived on top of one of the giant rocks attached to the ground via a huge chain.

>giant rocks attached to the ground via a huge chain.

>airships that functioned via a large stone that was so light, it could carry ships easily through the air
This is also how it works in Vision of Escaflowne.

Can't go wrong with flying islands.
Hell you may even have nothing but flying islands.

>You can get Float stone anywhere but finding chunk the size fore large ships takes some effort and sourcing.
So you could have a lot of small ships for traders, pirates and such, but capital ships are military assets.

>Titan is also a lot farther from the sun than Earth is.
Yes. That's why it can support a denser atmosphere despite having vastly weaker gravity.

what about the world. is it all just a bunch of floating islands or simple a normal world like ours with continents and oceans. I case of the second option, why are flying ships so important? what dangers are there other then other hostile ships that a sky captain could encounter during his journey? do nations play a big role or is the world made up out of smaller collectives and nation states?

that is perfect!

not him but. what if:
they fish for bird / flying fish like creatures with giant nets like normal fisherman but also have a very solid Agriculture. They have a country side full of farms all around the mountain. it is harder to breathe there but life still is mostly pleasant. the big cites all are around the top but thanks to the lower gravity they are able to build multi layer cities.

The further down you go, the stronger the wind is. An airship that "sinks" too far down will get broken up by the powerful winds. Still, if you're desperate enough, you can try and dive down into it, and hope for the best. There are rumours of naval ships that are designed to withstand the winds and pressures beneath the calm zone, allowing them to rapidly move about, attack enemy ships, and then dive back into the tempest to escape.

Think plateaus or high up valleys, more like.

Skyfishing and sky-whaling as food/resource stuff sounds like a pretty good reason to have a bunch of airships running around, but I dunno about the biological plausibility of that shit.

Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan

I'd rather have a SYSTEM based on the airships, since every game with 18th century boats that I've played so far has been shit.
And forget about finding a game about modern ships

The stones reacted to heat. If they were hot they sunk, cold they rose. So you had a Stone Pilot who would heat or cool the stone depending on what you wanted.

>You will never chase the starry Cetus far beyond with mad captain Ahab and the mighty Stubb

I really like this. Their mythology could be influenced by this too. Use the "Tower of Babel" trope. Then, in modern times when skyrocks are plentiful and almost mundane, the religious aspects begin to fade

There's an anime Last Exile, where all the airships are actually lost technology that one civilization(The Guild) that still controls it will lend it to the other nations on the planet so they stay in perpetual war, which keeps them weak and serves and entertainment for the decadent guild

All the advanced tech comes from a huge spaceship that colonized the planets hundreds of years ago. The Guild doesn't control the ship itself, just the most advanced shit already loaded off of it, all those years ago. The ship is guarded by multiple password passed down separately through different noble families.

I'm running a game in an airship setting now. The world mostly massive flying islands, the largest congruent section being about the size of the UK, but other "continents" are collections of Rhode Island to Vermont sized islands. Sometimes there is such a small space between them that ancient engineers tethered them together artificially. Other areas are a constant "earthquake" at the islands crash into each other.

The world's crust was filled with a material that acts as both a remarkable arcane battery. Millennia before the game's time, a massive war fled the world with such an intense amount of magic that it near permanently charged every fragment of the material in the world. The epicenter of the blast was so great that an entire continent shattered into thousands upon thousands of shards. The rest of the world now charged so thoroughly began to crack and split, lifting away from the world underneath.

A thousand years or so later, the world below is covered in a thick miasma of magic rock shards, choking smoke, and toxic belching smog.

Airships were common enough in the precollapse world, but swiftly became indispensable. Mining the material can be dangerous as it can cause land falls, so small free floating boulders are often brought into port to be carefully stripped.

The intense magic that coated the land mutated many species, including humanoid. The few surviving elves and half elves staving in the ruins of their forest home, turning to pica to stave off hunger being an notable example. Ingesting so much of the material inadvertently changing them. Elongated and lithe to the point of being nearly a parody of their former selves. The Tayaran have long since forgotten their heritage, but still they are masters of the hunt, and of cultivation in the wild untamed Shatter. Hunting the deadly leviathans of the air in canoes made from a specially cultivated tree that absorbs the magical material into itself, they are a deadly force. Standing at 7 feet tall while fully erect, with hollow bones, additional joints on both their arms and legs to further compound their wiry power, and a specialized gizzard that grinds and refines the trace amounts of the magical material "Volantium" into a polished stone that allows them to jump as of untethered by gravity. They can draw bows that would make an Englishman wet himself, firing javelin sized arrows. When throwing spears, their extra joint causes their arm to act like an atlatl. They may seem gangly, but they move with the same unnatural grace as their ancestors. It's as if you were to describe a master ballerina to a blind dwarf.

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