Airship

An **Airship** is an aerial transport vessel commonly used in the post-Industrial Isles of Aradia. Created under the banner of the Blackthorne-Rookwood Corporation, the dirigibles stay afloat through calfgut-based ballasts fitted around a rigid steel structure & filled with helium gas, propelled in flight by diesel-powered engines. They can measure up to seven hundred feet in length and are capable of reaching speed in excess of eighty miles per hour, allowing traversal from one side of the mainland to the other in only two days--superior timing to the older & cheaper rail system. Most Airships are manufactured under the Blackthorne-Rookwood subsidiary company Urquhrt Aeronautics in the Thunderlands. They have seen application as weapons, used for aerial bombing campaigns during the Pirate War and the Brecilidian Rebellion. As of 1086AE they are more often used as high-class luxury transport for wealthier patrons, and less frequently as carriers for high-priority goods.

The origin of the modern Airship lies in the discovery of large pockets of Helium gas dormant beneath the Thunderclap Mountains circa 1040AE. The mining teams worked for House Rookwood and their Count Caradoc, who was the realm's Coinmaster; at a council meeting, he managed to raise Queen Talia's interest in the potential applications of the gas, and the Crown agreed to fund the research which earned the Count's fledgling companies a handsome influx of income. Caradoc charged the dwarf engineer Frgos Urquhrt with overseeing the production, and Crown-Princess Valoria took special interest in the military usage upon being told that the helium could be used to create a large balloon that could be used to transport her soldiers through the air. Frgos' team did indeed manage to create several airborne vessels, though he chafed under the increasingly fervent orders of the Princess. Airship production hit a significant snag in 1042AE when Valoria rushed into production on a troop-carrier named after herself; the *Fair Valoria* was unfit for flight and crashed to the ground at its grand unveiling, injuring nearly a dozen of its crew. Furious, the Princess chased Urquhrt up and down the airfield with her Misericórde until he wrongfully admitted that the crash was his own fault, whereupon himself and his entire engineering team were imprisoned by the Crown.

However, Valoria did not abandon the project completely, as she remained transfixed by the idea of flying her armies around as easily as she herself flew on her griffin Morrigan. Secretly working with Urquhrt in exchange for his jailer's leniency, she ordered construction of a second prototype. The *Wings of Liberty* saw its unveiling at the Battle of the Three Titans in 1050AE, where the Princess used it to fly over enemy defenses in a bombing run and land her men inside the castle. While the *Wings of Liberty* was destroyed by enemy gunfire with most of its crew killed in the crash, its military application was demonstrated and it recieved rapturous acclaim from the public, soon becoming a key figure in Crown propaganda that encouraged further usage of the vessels. After the destruction of the Royal Armada at the Battle of Motter's Spiral, the Queen ordered preferential reconstruction to airship contracts and Crown's sea ships soon become sky ships. Most of the Royal Fleet was not destroyed after the 1077 Rebellion but reclaimed by the parent company Blackthorne-Rookwood Industries & repurposed to their modern use as transport vessels.