Airships are very important in this world. They single handedly won the previous war for the Empire. Everyone has them now. Sailing ships have been converted to airships. They land and take off from water in this world.
That last bit is important. The water is flat, not much sticking up out away from the port. Mistakes put you close enough to the water to be survivable. It's just a safer place to land and take off Also, it's just plain cool! Flying ships! (Thank you Stardust!)
The details:
The airships fly by the use of 'lift gas'. Can you tell this isn't a world with established chemical sciences? Steam engines drive propellers to push the ships though the air. The propellers have to be above the waterline to work right. My stupid physics brain tells me the stress on the propellers as they strike the water would be enormous.
I'm thinking about making a minecraft map of the Valkyrie (our crews ship). I'll probably do it even if I don't hear anything, since my current readership is vanishingly small... ;-)
That last bit is important. The water is flat, not much sticking up out away from the port. Mistakes put you close enough to the water to be survivable. It's just a safer place to land and take off Also, it's just plain cool! Flying ships! (Thank you Stardust!)
The details:
The airships fly by the use of 'lift gas'. Can you tell this isn't a world with established chemical sciences? Steam engines drive propellers to push the ships though the air. The propellers have to be above the waterline to work right. My stupid physics brain tells me the stress on the propellers as they strike the water would be enormous.
I'm thinking about making a minecraft map of the Valkyrie (our crews ship). I'll probably do it even if I don't hear anything, since my current readership is vanishingly small... ;-)