I think a discussion on the airships may be required at this juncture. The picture I've been building from Terrance's post quoted above is that the engines they run on are mysterious, powerful technology that is far beyond what the inhabitants of the world are capable of producing. The engines therefore would be the basis of the global economy and as such would be considered inviolate, even in times of war, and the airships would not carry much armour as they would only need to be defended from poorly aimed small arms fire.
Ah. I suppose this would be in order. What I meant when I said "nobody understands them" was that we, players, do not have to know how they work at all, except that they do.
I pictured any size of airship, fishing sloop to
Bismark sized, flying.
I suppose poorer backwaters might use balloons or propellers/traditional flight instead.
Examples of what I thought of (I had ideas in my head but artistic skills are sadly lacking):
this but flying
this but flying too
this sort of thing, maybe less bulbous though
this
this too
That sort of thing.
Anyway:
THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
A dense layer of dark clouds marking the lower limit of the skies. No one has descended through them and lived. What lies below.... Only the gods know that....
However, a daring recent expedition brought back samples of these clouds for chemical analysis and discovered interesting phenomenon. They appear to be rather acidic, and flammable. They are also fairly dense, and traces of unknown and unnamed elements can be found in them. Their density suggests that the atmosphere below may be of different elemental composition than the one of our islands.
THE TOWER OF THE GODS:
Aeons ago, perhaps more, some ancients built a tower. The tower. So high it penetrated into our heavens. This is the Tower of the Gods.
Though it is surrounded by a rather dense archipelago of islands extending about 30km out around it, besides these there are none within hundreds of kilometers.
The tower is extremely tall, so tall, in fact, that it extends through the Bottom of the World. It is circular in construction, and about a mile in diameter. The material of construction in a mysterious greenish soapstone found nowhere else in the sky.
Dominating the flat top of the structure is a massive statue of a monstrous creature, unknown in origin and with no related art styles found anywhere in the sky.
There are entrances to the interior of the tower - a maze of cavernous rooms and claustrophobic passages. Indeed, some parts of it are well mapped.
Others, however, are not. Countless intrepid explorers have been killed attempting to explore it.
The tower may be a possible way to penetrate the Bottom of the World.
THE SKAIAN LEAGUE
A civilization centered in the neighboring islands of Derse, Prospit, and Skaia. Led by the charismatic, ferocious, and utterly insane Lord English, they are famed for their battleships.
In times of peace, however, the Skaians are eager and talented merchants, journalists, PI's, and spies.
EDIT:
Just saw your post terrance. I was thinking the islands did not have engines, but were kept afloat as some quirk of this world or nature.
