Airships

Airships the most ingenious invention of the third age, after great funding and effort The Baharuth Empire finally realized this project. The empire pushed for an invention like this for a long time now because this would solve the greatest obstacle in cross continental trade on Arkion. The reason for this lies dead in the center of the continent, namely The Great Plains this large patch of grassland is populated very scarcely and poses many dangers for merchants, monsters magical phenomenon and bandits frequent the plains. Many solutions were proposed for this problem, large scale settling supported and funded by the empire, a secured road frequented by soldiers. However one student of Einsamkeit proposed an idea so unique and with applications to more than just this one problem, a new vehicle capable of flight. Since the line of baharuth always held close ties to the magical academy of einsamkeit and the universal application of an airship pushed the empire to go in this direction.
Since the first proposal to completion of the first prototype it took 7 years. Large funding and recruiting of the best engineers from all over the continent sped the project along and so it was 8 years after the initial proposal that the first airship set out from einsamkeit to Luthadel and did so with great success. This signified the discovery of the century, merchants gave everything to get a piece of the action, even the Black Moon Merchant Guild approached the inventors trying to secure a contract. But the empire monopolized the design at first and said with time it would be revealed to everyone at the same time in order to keep the influence on the local markets to a minimum. Despite this the shift in focus was already underway many merchants abandoned their fleets in The Chimera Islands having enough of the regions unpredictable income pattern and shifted their focus to securing trade deals with the Duchy de Venture. Through this sudden change many more settlements sprung up around the great plains, in anticipation of the influx of trade routes.
Fortunately the empire soon passed laws to regulate the airship traffic and limit their routes to set cities, this was also done to limit the disturbance of Wind spirits who attacked a few airships that passed through their kingdoms in the clouds. Many merchants soon began to diversify once more and contrary to expectations the airship did not eclipse other forms of trade by much and it became a great addition in trade when dealing with difficult terrain. And some even began offering it as a tourist attraction renting out tours for the Wyvern Mountainrange or the Oceanic lagoons to the east.

~ Noble Airship