Design: Phoenix [6, 2, 6]
It's fucking glorious.
Designed from scratch rather than relying on our out-dated ship designs (because honestly, flying is really nothing at all like sailing), the "Phoenix" is primarily a giant oblong tank of chilled Adamantium. This tank is filled to the brim with Alnnar, making the construction monstrously heavy. A turret on the bottom of the ship is the most complex component and takes the majority of the year to perfect; we have little experience with complex machinery, so it's rather low-tech. A set of rungs leads from the top of the ship to the scroll, where an Apprentice will sit next to it. The Apprentice controls the angle, direction, and flow of the WPAS, whether the WPAS is active. This system is used to spew the Alnnar from the tank above onto targets below. The turret is controlled by a pair of rather crude hand-cranks to control rotation and angle, and the station is mostly open with a few bars to prevent the Apprentice from falling out. The tank rests on a set of giant skids, leaving just a small amount of ground clearance for the turret when grounded. Care must be taken when landing to prevent hitting to hard and breaking the skids, as it will damage the station and likely cause a leak.
The tank is made of an Adamantium skeleton with giant Adamantium plates bolted on. There are four armored scroll "clusters", which are two dozen WPAS's each. These are spaced even around the sides of the tank, and each must be attended to by a pair of Wizards (as controlling so many at a time is beyond what an Apprentice would be capable of). The angle at which the scrolls can be pointed can vary by up to ten degrees, but they are primarily pointed downward to generate the incredible lift required to get the enormously heavy craft off the ground. The craft requires all four to be operational in order to lift, and if one "lift engine" were lost then the entire craft would go crashing to the ground. We elected not to enchant the entire craft, as the extra work would have provided very little gain for the amount of work going into it; the WPAS are more efficient.
A small "command" station at the fore end of the craft gives the captain of the Phoenix a wide viewing angle of the battlefield below. A set of Teletalk wands at the command station communicate with the turret and each of the engine clusters, to allow the captain to easily give orders.
Early tests show that lighting the Alnnar early means the craft must be very low to reach the ground, and billowing black clouds of smoke will wash up over the craft and asphyxiate the crew. The crew instead sprays Alnnar on the ground below until the target area is sufficiently soaked, then moves away. A stash of Wands of Thunderbolts in the turret allows the gunner to ignite the ground below from a safe distance.
There are no obvious bugs, but the Phoenix is inherently a giant floating bomb that moves very slowly, meaning it is a target for enemy artillery much in the way our previous airships were. It does not have enough lift to get up over their range, nor is it fast enough to dodge incoming shots, nor is our Antichronic Reverbramancy good enough to detect incoming fields of fire. The armor is thick enough to withstand HAC-1's at Medium Range.
Despite my better judgement, the Phoenix is merely Very Expensive.
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Topic: Wands Race - [Moskurg] {COMPLETED} (Read 199727 times)