Lyrandar Airships

AIRSHIP SYSTEMS

HULL AND DECK

An airship is made using a Soarwood hull. Soarwood is effectively weightless, though it’s not lighter than air. So a piece of soarwood will naturally float in the air, but it won’t rise. But an airship is more than its hull. Cargo, crew, and the elemental engine all do have weight, and these are sufficient to pull an airship to the ground. It is the elemental engine that provides lift and keeps an airship in the air; if the ring is shut down, an airship will crash.

ELEMENTAL ENGINE

The heart of it is the elemental core, an engraved sphere of brass and mithral with a Kyber Dragonshard at the center. A raw elemental is bound to this dragonshard—”raw” in the sense of “general” elemental, not an anthropomorphic entity like an efreeti or azer. The elemental is absolutely anchored to the core and can’t be easily released; what the engine does is to pull it out from the core, stretching it out across the ship’s systems and the ring. This doesn’t release the elemental; it’s still anchored to the khyber shard, and if the engine is fully shut down, the elemental snaps back into the core. The elemental engine provides both lift and motive power. As long as the engine is active, an airship can hover or move forward.

ELEMENTAL BINDING

An elemental engine is formed engine is the binding is the spell Planar Binding and Summon Elemental. The more powerful the spell slot used the more pure the elemental is for the process. The elemental is summoned into a Magic Circle to hold it in place while Planar Binding is cast. More advanced organizations also have magic users who will be prepared with Hold Creature and even Dominate Monster to ensure the process is safe. This is used in conjunction with a Kyber Dragonshard which is enchanted to mimic the elemental's plane of origin and who's powerful magic amplifies the power of both the elemental inside and the binding spell. This removes the normal time limit of planar binding and makes it persist as long as the magic of the kyber crystal holds and it is combined with the additional warding magics of the airship.

ELEMENTAL VEINS

The elemental engine uses engraved strips of metal to channel the power of the elemental through the vessel and out to the ring. You can think of these as the veins of the ship, channeling power through its body. In addition to directly connecting the core to the elemental ring, these channel the secondary enchantments of the focusing nodes and the wind wards. There is a great deal of redundancy to the patterns of the veins, so severing a single line will have minimal impact on the ship such as causing section to lose heat or create a gap in the wards, but it would take massive damage to cause the ring to break down. The metals used in the veins vary based on the type of elemental involved.

FOCUSING NODES

These are metal polyhedrons, typically 8 inches in diameter, engraved with sigils and inlaid with Eberron Dragonshard/Stone . They’re superficially similar to the conductor stones used in the lightning rail and serve a similar role; they are placed at critical vein junctures and help to draw out and stabilize the power of the core. Focusing nodes also maintain an enchantment that maintains a consistent temperature within the vessel, even at high altitudes that would typically be bitterly cold. As with the veins, the loss of a single node generally isn’t disastrous, but the crew needs to monitor and maintain them.

WIND WARDS

An airship is an open-deck vessel that moves swiftly through the upper atmosphere. What keeps people from being blown off the deck? How can people breathe at high altitudes? How does an airship handle turbulence? The wind wards are the answer to these questions. An airship is enveloped in a ward that shunts both wind and small objects (such as birds) around the vessel, as well as maintaining air pressure within the wards. The wind wards also play a role in maneuvering the ship; the ring provides forward thrust, but the envelope of winds helps the vessel turn. While the wards are controlled by the Wheel of Wind and Water, they draw power from the focusing nodes and have their own system of “ward wings” that must be maintained and adjusted by the crew. In the current design, the wind wards suffice only to ensure the safe operations of the vessel and don’t provide any special protection in combat; projectiles can penetrate the wards.

THE WHEEL OF WIND AND WATER

This is the dragonmark focus item that controls the ship. It has two purposes: it allows the captain to interface with the elemental, helping to calm it and to direct speed and thrust; and it also allows the captain to maintain the wind wards, and use them to direct fine maneuvering.

MAINTENANCE AND ELEMENTAL BURNOUT

Elementals bound to airships aren’t entirely aware of their condition. While technically sentient — possessing Intelligence and even language— “raw” elementals are extremely alien beings that don’t perceive reality or the passage of time in the same ways that creatures of the material plane do. More than anything, a raw elemental wants to express its nature. A fire elemental wants to BURN. When an airship is operating at peak efficiency, that’s what the elemental experiences; the fire elemental in the ring doesn’t even realize it IS bound, it just knows that it’s BURNING. The challenge to the pilot is essentially to keep the elemental calm. The more excited it gets, the more energy flows into the systems. While this might seem like a good thing, it actually runs a risk of overloading the focusing nodes and burning out the elemental engine—initially causing the loss of secondary systems, and eventually causing the elemental ring to collapse and the ship to crash.
The brings us to the ongoing costs of maintaining an airship. “Many powerful tools—such as the lightning rail and elemental airships—require an ongoing expenditure of Eberron dragonshards to maintain their enchantments.” The key phrase - maintain their enchantments. Dragonshards don’t function as FUEL for an airship; again, the motive power is provided by the elemental, and that movement doesn’t directly require any expenditure of dragonshards. However, dragonshards must be expended to maintain the elemental engine—both periodic infusions of Residuum to the main engine node and replacing focusing nodes that burn out (new shards can be implanted in a burnt-out node).

COMMON QUESTIONS

How volatile is an elemental core?
The elemental core itself is quite stable. The elemental CAN’T easily be removed from the core; it’s stretched out of it, but if the engine breaks down, it snaps back into the core; when not engaged, it lies in a dormant state. So more often than not, an elemental core can actually be recovered from a crashed airship. On the other hand, there can be effects that target the core itself.
What’s the difference between different kinds of elemental rings? Why do some ships have more than one?
Different types of elementals provide different benefits and drawbacks. In general fire elementals are faster, but place more strain on the airship and are less agile and air elementals are more maneuverable, but not as fast and tend to be more impacted by the state of the weather. Multiple rings can be added for speed, but generally only large ships have multiple rights and often one ring is devoted to LIFT and the other to THRUST.

It is important to understand that airships are a recent development. Lyrandar’s first airships went into service in 990 YK, which was approximately 10 years ago.

PILOTING AN AIRSHIP
The Mark of Storms gives its bearer a general affinity for elemental forces that is enhanced by the wheel of wind and water. However, that’s a secondary aspect. It’s the wind wards that are specifically tied to the Mark of Storm, and every airship relies on these WIND wards, regardless of the form of elemental that provides thrust. As noted above, the wards both protect the ship and its crew and play an important role in maneuvering. An airship without the wind wards would have to operate at lower altitudes and slower speeds, and couldn’t maneuver as effectively as a Lyrandar vessel. The wheel of wind and water serves both purposes: controlling the elemental and drawing on the pilot’s mark to maintain the wind wards.
While a wheel of wind and water typically LOOKS like a classic ship’s wheel, the pilot doesn’t actually steer by turning it; instead, the pilot enters into a trancelike state where they commune with the elemental and wards. It’s not that they issue specific orders to the elemental, it’s that they experience the ship as an extension of their body.