The Fourth Bridge
The Fourth Bridge is Roshar's first airship, which uses hundreds of conjoiner Fabrials to move through the air. Named after Bridge Four, it was built in the first year of the True Desolations by a team of ardents and engineers led by Navani Kholin.
The Fourth Bridge is a rectangular, wooden box; a hundred feet long, sixty feet wide, and about forty feet high, with three decks within. Fans are built into the back to increase speed, though for now, the difference is minimal. At full speed, the ship travels at roughly five knots. The back half of the upper deck is covered by a semi-round roof, while the front half is open-air and surrounded by a railing. Bridge Four's original bridge is embedded into the floor; some of the Windrunners have a habit of kneeling down and touching it before taking off. A command station, composed of several tables, is typically placed in the sheltered section, though in some cases, it might be moved to the front. The furniture is bolted down. The lower decks serve as the hold. The bottom one has a broad door that allows large amounts of people to come in and out at once. It functions akin to a drawbridge; it forms a wall and can be lowered and raised by ropes to open and close. While sparsely-furnished, the holds can accommodate several hundred people. There are numbers painted on their walls, dividing them into sections.
The airship doesn't so much fly as it is held in the air by fabrials. There are hundreds of gemstones forming a lattice of massive conjoiners embedded into the ship. They are connected to a pair of "dummy ships". One of the dummies is hanging off the side of the Urithiru plateau; the other stands on the Shattered Plains. The airship is steered from those two lattices; the Fourth Bridge communicates its needs to them through spanreeds. As they cannot be used for long periods of time due to movement, the scribes use them by turning them on and off, creating a code of blinks.
The conjoiner fabrials are isolated using aluminium so that only certain planes of movement are transferred between the paired gem halves. The Urithiru structure can only convey vertical motion; the Shattered Plains lattice can only transfer horizontal motion. The former is lowered to raise the airship, while the latter is moved around to make it fly and turn in any direction. To allow the ship to continue moving when the space for the lattices runs out, an additional aluminium mechanism is used to reverse the motion while the gemstones are temporarily unhooked. The entire structure requires significant manpower to function properly. In Urithiru, hundreds of people operate the winches that raise and lower the vertical lattice; on the Plains, squads of chulls are used to move the ship horizontally. The Fourth Bridge requires hundreds of gemstones to be perpetually infused with Stormlight.
The Fourth Bridge is a rectangular, wooden box; a hundred feet long, sixty feet wide, and about forty feet high, with three decks within. Fans are built into the back to increase speed, though for now, the difference is minimal. At full speed, the ship travels at roughly five knots. The back half of the upper deck is covered by a semi-round roof, while the front half is open-air and surrounded by a railing. Bridge Four's original bridge is embedded into the floor; some of the Windrunners have a habit of kneeling down and touching it before taking off. A command station, composed of several tables, is typically placed in the sheltered section, though in some cases, it might be moved to the front. The furniture is bolted down. The lower decks serve as the hold. The bottom one has a broad door that allows large amounts of people to come in and out at once. It functions akin to a drawbridge; it forms a wall and can be lowered and raised by ropes to open and close. While sparsely-furnished, the holds can accommodate several hundred people. There are numbers painted on their walls, dividing them into sections.
The airship doesn't so much fly as it is held in the air by fabrials. There are hundreds of gemstones forming a lattice of massive conjoiners embedded into the ship. They are connected to a pair of "dummy ships". One of the dummies is hanging off the side of the Urithiru plateau; the other stands on the Shattered Plains. The airship is steered from those two lattices; the Fourth Bridge communicates its needs to them through spanreeds. As they cannot be used for long periods of time due to movement, the scribes use them by turning them on and off, creating a code of blinks.
The conjoiner fabrials are isolated using aluminium so that only certain planes of movement are transferred between the paired gem halves. The Urithiru structure can only convey vertical motion; the Shattered Plains lattice can only transfer horizontal motion. The former is lowered to raise the airship, while the latter is moved around to make it fly and turn in any direction. To allow the ship to continue moving when the space for the lattices runs out, an additional aluminium mechanism is used to reverse the motion while the gemstones are temporarily unhooked. The entire structure requires significant manpower to function properly. In Urithiru, hundreds of people operate the winches that raise and lower the vertical lattice; on the Plains, squads of chulls are used to move the ship horizontally. The Fourth Bridge requires hundreds of gemstones to be perpetually infused with Stormlight.
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