Ships of Fantasy
Okay, so you're in a fantasy world. The technological level is fairly limited, but there's magic to make up the difference. Now take a look out over the port and start thinking...
Ships are good for getting people and cargo around. Handy, that. They don't require gateways or knowledge of your destination, technically, so you can explore with them. That's awesome! I want one of those.
But why limit yourself to the seas? With magic, you can have a ship that can soar through the air, or cross planes!
The form of a ship, however, is designed with the sea in mind. If you take that out of the equation, you should actually build things differently, shouldn't you?
Let's start with the bottom of the hull. That's really only suited to sitting in water. If you don't want to be limited to seasides, what then? Well, if you make the bottom flat, at least it can sit upright on the ground. Heck, that's a really good place to put some sort of entrance or loading ramp. In fact, you might even want some sort of struts or wheels to hold the hull off direct contact with the ground, making it more like a wagon than a ship.
And what about the sails and oars? Well, if you're thinking about navigating the sky and whatever may be in other realms, you might need something else. Maybe there's aether or phlogiston between the planes, you can't rely on wind. So you may as well drop the sails entirely and replace it with some other sort of propulsion. Magic?
I'm not quite sure what becomes too much of a leap here. Magical thrusters? Elemental "jet" engines that draw material in and eject it out behind? Maybe even instead of physical propulsion, something like a magical "warp" bubble to slide through space.
And if you don't need sails and are going through potentially hostile elemental planes, you may not even want an open deck, per se. It might be better to encase the top with windows in the hull as necessary. You probably want it air tight to keep hazards out, or as close to that as possible, and thus need some sort of (magical) refreshing system so people can breathe.
... And thus with very few leaps of logic and imagination, you've got something that may as well be a space ship - something that resembles a submarine more than a schooner in form and function.
In some settings, I don't mind so much, but often times I'm bothered by this. It starts begging the question of why anyone uses "normal" ships anymore, when other designs are better. And thus, the typical fantasy flavor of the setting begins to crumble.
Ships are good for getting people and cargo around. Handy, that. They don't require gateways or knowledge of your destination, technically, so you can explore with them. That's awesome! I want one of those.
But why limit yourself to the seas? With magic, you can have a ship that can soar through the air, or cross planes!
The form of a ship, however, is designed with the sea in mind. If you take that out of the equation, you should actually build things differently, shouldn't you?
Let's start with the bottom of the hull. That's really only suited to sitting in water. If you don't want to be limited to seasides, what then? Well, if you make the bottom flat, at least it can sit upright on the ground. Heck, that's a really good place to put some sort of entrance or loading ramp. In fact, you might even want some sort of struts or wheels to hold the hull off direct contact with the ground, making it more like a wagon than a ship.
And what about the sails and oars? Well, if you're thinking about navigating the sky and whatever may be in other realms, you might need something else. Maybe there's aether or phlogiston between the planes, you can't rely on wind. So you may as well drop the sails entirely and replace it with some other sort of propulsion. Magic?
I'm not quite sure what becomes too much of a leap here. Magical thrusters? Elemental "jet" engines that draw material in and eject it out behind? Maybe even instead of physical propulsion, something like a magical "warp" bubble to slide through space.
And if you don't need sails and are going through potentially hostile elemental planes, you may not even want an open deck, per se. It might be better to encase the top with windows in the hull as necessary. You probably want it air tight to keep hazards out, or as close to that as possible, and thus need some sort of (magical) refreshing system so people can breathe.
... And thus with very few leaps of logic and imagination, you've got something that may as well be a space ship - something that resembles a submarine more than a schooner in form and function.
In some settings, I don't mind so much, but often times I'm bothered by this. It starts begging the question of why anyone uses "normal" ships anymore, when other designs are better. And thus, the typical fantasy flavor of the setting begins to crumble.
My flying ships also function as nautical vessels, thus have the same contrivances that sailing ships do. >.>
ReplyDelete*chuckles* Yeah, but why? That's really limiting. You pretty much have to set down in the water (or at a specially-designed dock) to be able to get things on and off easily. If you've got a flying ship, doesn't it make more sense to design it to land... on land?
ReplyDeleteI view it in terms of resources (Wind and the tides are free. Is magic (Or lodestone, or whatever)), accessibility (ships are more common unless the magical flying device was developed first) and availability. (ships tend to be cheaper than flying vessels to upkeep and maintain) A flying ship that doubles as a normal sailing vessel, to me, sees more business than one that caters only to those who pay to have it fly about.
ReplyDelete1) Resources are a fair point - depending on the setting. If it's more difficult and draining to make a vessel fly all the time rather than in short bursts, that's a concern. But if it's not really any harder to grant "permanent" flight, there's no reason to not use it. 2) I disagree about business. I think a flying ship has a whole lot more flexibility as far as destinations, safety from interception (by virtue of more possible routes), and is free from the rather brutal physical conditions of sea water. 3) Part of this thought process went into the possibility of planar travel, too. If you want a craft to take trips to the plane of fire as well as across the bay, would you still go with an ocean-going ship design?
ReplyDelete