Airmarines

Airmarines are aerial vehicles that use buoyancy to keep themselves in flight similarly to airships such as Zeppelins and Blimps. Most airmarines don't use mixed methods to achieve flight however certain airmarines use a combination of scilophen tanks, engines and wings to help them gain or maintain altitude.

The envelopes airmarines use to hold their lighter-than-air gas may be separated into two possible categories - dead or living.

* Living land clouds as their scilophen containers which allows for easier construction and cheaper maintanence at the cost of additional weight and logistics complexity.
* Dead airmarines utilise a lightweight container filled with scilophen to keep themselves airborne. For the additional saved weight there is a maintenece drawback as the container's leaks are harder to fix and the tank is harder to change post-construction.

Airmarines are separated into several classes for easier differentiation:

**Fogskiff**

Fogskiffs, also known as airskiffs are amongst the smallest, cheapest and by far most common of all airmarines. They are usually near the low limit of how small an airmarine can get (30 meter length) and they play all kinds of non-combat roles.

**Wandergarden**

Wandergardens are airmarines of varying size with large top decks that house plantations for growing various plants. They often have retractable greenhouses on top to allow them to travel through colder weather. To compensate for limited space and nightmarish logistics these vessels often chase good weather to maximize crop growth. Their purpose is to supply the Broadheart with crops while avoiding Surface sabotage attacks and boarding crew raids that stationary farmland is normally susceptible to. They often land at specifically built harvest ports to have their crops harvested and replanted.

**Aerostat**

Aerostats are large airmarines of various non-combat roles. they are often incapable of reliable locomotion with their most common method of movement being other airmarines which tow it. Aerostats may be used as trade posts, dedicated command posts or simply temporary storage along with a few other things.

**Highport**

Highports are large airmarines designed to be moored steadily in place to accommodate as many other ships as a mobile port. They most often have little crew for their size as their purpose is mainly structural.

**Floating Hamlet**

Floating hamlets are Massive, often unpowered airborne structures that are most often classified as a subtype of aerostats. They are designed to as mobile residence for housing lots of people and function as a small town that can be towed and moored to a fitting location. Floating hamlets are towable by airmarines and some rely purely on this for locomotion between mooring points, but just as regular aerostats they most often have some sorts of engines built onto them.

**Cloudfort**

Cloudforts are a class for all larger combat airmarines built, armed and armoured with direct combat in mind. They are most often quite agile and armed with several additional anchor cannons over most non-combat ships. Their primary purpose may vary but it can be combat, patrol and even early warning duties as cloudforts may be built as moving commandposts.

**Theatral**

Theatrals are a general class for all combat airmarines over 700 meters in length. These are almost always fleet flagships that can fit a cloudfort's, flighttop's and even a floating hamlet's role.

**Gunskiff**

Gunskiffs are small combat airmarines used for various roles including recon, patrol, combat, rescue and similar. They are limited in the armaments they can carry though are generally more agile.

**Platform Ship**

Platform ships are small airmarines built with the intent of maximizing the size of the open top deck. They can be used for parachuting practice or maintenance of larger moored airmarines but they are by far the most often built with the intent of allowing easy boarding onto any vessels below it.

**Breaching Engine**

Breaching engines are airmarines built with the intent of ramming as their main offensive weapon, which is often paired together with boarding. They are often lightly armed and heavily armoured in the front to allow for minimal damage to be taken in combat. Breaching engines are rarely used by the broadheart as they have a generally low survivability.

**Cloudwarden**

Cloudwardens are airmarines designed to store, move and deploy combat aircraft much how a flighttop would, though at a smaller scale and in a more compact manner. Cloudwardens most often use trapeze claws instead of flight deck runways to deploy and take aircraft and are also often armed more fittingly for their size then their more standard counterparts.

**Hollowgate**

Hollowgates are a nieche yet useful type of wareships designed to carry odd shaped cargo and aircraft in their hulls.

**Wareship**

Wareships are airmarines of varying sizes that contain large empty areas fit for storage of bulky cargo as well as specialized dead scilophen tanks designed to act as a sort of buoyancy ballast. These ships are almost always armed with light armaments to defend against boarders and often posses a sloped top deck that prevents boarders from having solid ground to stand on.

**Flighttop**

Flighttops are large airborne aircraft carriers designed to carry multiple planes, helicopters or even stallships. They often have similar deck setups to traditional aircraft carriers, but with the bottom deck commonly being situated under the scilophen tank for balance purposes. To compensate for their limited deck space they may use rotating turntables for internal aircraft navigation.

**Stallship**

Stallships, also known as tetherbirds are hybrid aircraft that are composed of an armoured hull designed to withstand lots of stress, a highly armoured cockpit with heavy ballistic glass and a dead flexible scilophen tank with high-power flight bladders in it. They utilise scilophen to manipulate their buoyancy and increase their altitude at a speed that most fighters have trouble competing with. After the altitude has been gained stallships can lower their buoyancy again to rapidly lose altitude in trade for speed. These ships are used almost exclusively for fighter hunting or personal transport as their capabilities do not suit other roles.

**Wireframe**

wireframes are a type of heavy communication relay/aerial outpost used by the Surface to compensate for the lack of airbases in the Overgarden and neighbouring countries. Wireframes are most often built with standard carrier decks as well as complex communication systems. These ships are exclusive to the Surface.

**Stormbird**

Stormbirds are small closed-deck airmarines used for meteorological data gathering. They are made to fly well in wind and stay stable when moored. Stormbirds are often built to rely on differential thrust to steer as a redundancy for bad weather when rudders may not be enough. Stormbirds often have mixed cycle reciprocating engines or heavy rotary filters designed to keep engines working in ironclouds.