How do airships work in a fantasy setting? Are they magical?

using gun recoil

>In my setting, balloons ate balloons

So you're saying it's a balloon-eat-balloon world

Depends on the setting of course. In mine, the ground is inundated with particals of material that when exposed to enough magic has all sorts of weird properties. The most blatently useful is that when channeled properly it's energy can be used to cast levitate. It takes a lot of the material, and mining it can be exedingly dangerous as you are liable to disrupt the distribution of the material in the ground and go rocketing into the sky and into low orbit/ plummet into the abyss.

The airships of the world either use wood from special trees that uptake a lot from the ground to make floating canoes, it is inlaid into the ship's hull like a wire frame radiating out from the engine that is fed more of the material to maintain lift but still use sails, or in the case of more recent and advanced ships you have one giant reactor that is both levitating the ship and powering engines and even weapons.

Short answer, yes.

Long answer, yes, but they pretend it's some form of pseudo-science, which is functionally fucking magic.

And some of us Luthor, would prefer not to live like balloons at all.

Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeees

>live like balloons
I have heard about this fetish.

Not in a way that's recognized in setting.

Yes ?
Also depends on the setting.
Unless you have some mountains/islands on not!Venus, where the atmosphere gets ridiculous thicc if you go down .
Definitely magic.

Also now I want adventures on not!-venus.

No, they're just fantastic.

are there settings where airships are not magical?

Which still means that they are plot powered.

Nearly all of the dieselpunk settings.

SeeA more sense atmosphere means that is easier to keep up something.
After all you only need to achive a lower average density than the stuff you want to stay on top of.
That's how Zeppelins and ships work.

Magic if the setting has magic. Pseudo science if the setting has the word "punk" anywhere in it's name. Or good old helium/hydrogen if they're basically just blimps with guns strapped to them.
But it really doesn't matter. People put airships in their setting because airships are cool. They'll justify them however they want.

Arcanum, some Final Fantasies, Golarion, warcraft, and Warhammer.

Yeah, more or less. I just stole the name and look from a game i play. Suspendium.

>Golarion
How does the setting solve anything without
"It's magic" ?

Mundane alchemy on Golarion is pretty advanced. They have working combustion engies, but they're limited to curiosities.

As for your question, same way we do. You just don't solve anything of import, and a lot of the advanced stuff is cordoned off to Numeria(reverse engineered from spaceships) or the Mana Wastes(legitimate technological advancement).

My world has a crystaline mineral called levimite which creates an anti-gravity field when an electrical current runs through it. Basically there is a spine through the hull of every ship with levimite inside and the whole ship hangs on that. The world is all floating islands and continents, so the tech progression went hot air balloons with sails > Zeppelin's and conventional aircraft > massive ships held up by levimite.

>hot air balloons with sails
Why?

You really don't have any more control

irl

generally, there's always going to be some demi-magical explanation for about any airship*. I mean the weight to lift ratios of any engines we presently know just make it impossible.

I usually default on a blend of sci-fi and fantasy with the hell of good old Mr. Welles and usually use Cavorite as the explanation, how it functions will differ from the original novel, and how it works depends on my setting and mood.

I also feel cavorite can free up designs from gas-bag-centric airships.

Because it looks/sounds cool.

If your boats aren't lunar powered, you're doing it wrong.

No, they're psionic.

I digress. It depends on the game and the setting.

Could be big ass balloons and steam punk science. Could be floating rocks that occur naturally with big hand or mechanically cranked wings or fans for momentum. Could be elementals bound to stones to create lift. Could be born aloft on the backs or undersides of flying sea life through clouds of aether...which raises further questions because why are there clouds of anesthetic gasses in a place you are.

Just roll with it.

I wonder how many of you know about Spelljammer ? Man I miss the TSR settings of 80s-90s

Yes, but the level of magic depends on the ship.

Some use magically treated balloons for lighter-than-air gases (which might have been magically extracted) and have weather mages to help with the wind and stuff.

A handful of very old craft have no balloons and instead work using mostly-lost and barely understood magitech.

Do not conflate spelljammers with Airships.

That said, I see you are a gentleman of fine tastes and integrity.

No they're realistic.

Crystals

I liked the airships in Barbarians of Lemuria.

They're small craft made from an alchemically created metal that's lighter than air.

So, more alchemical than magical.

I feel like this creates more issues then it solves.
If you just stopped at " makes it float" thats hand wavy enough to just ignore.
But when you make the metal lighter then air, trying to make it scientific, you just create problems for your self.
How is a solid lighter then air, but still retain hull integrity and blunt force resistant?
If a setting is trying to be scientific, it should also aim to be internally consistent. Because everything else in most settings still act like we expect.
Going with something like "The metal is treated with so that it reverses gravity" is better. Because it doesn't fuck with other parts of the logic of the setting.

I rely hope you have events where lightning strikes a hill and the hill just floats away.

Dragon Wing Leather.

The airships are hydrogen lifted but because dragon skin is such a tough and fireproof substance it's about as safe as a helicopter.

Main issue is propulsion as nobody is brave enough to use combustion to move the things.

So...cavorite?

Fuck that's a great idea. It wouldn't float indefinitely because it need a continuous current but it could definitely fling a large amount of rock and dirt all over the place.

I lifted the idea of huge magnetic rocks for my setting from Keith Thompson's laputian temple.

They're called lodestones because earlier scholars thought they worked on the same principles as natural magnets, but no one is really sure how they work or why they behave the way they do. You need to find a suitably sized one that floats consistently, can bear a load and doesn't just up and quit working for a time as some are known to do, and chisel it to shape so it can serve as the airship's core. The most plentiful sources are in dragon country, and they liked roosting in the big ones.

the Leviathan Trilogy, they're either mechanical or genetically altered whales.

ebberron had the best airships. bound elemental is the way to go.

Wouldn't a hot air balloon be pretty easy for any magic user with a flame creating/controlling cantrip?

...

prestidigitation can heat/cool things in D&D, so yeah