The first hot air balloon carrying people was in the mid-18th century. Almost immediately, hot air was replaced by hydrogen. What do you need to produce gases lighter than air? Well, one of the most common ways to produce them at first was to use coal gas - the gas produced when making coke. Fletnern has coke producing facilities, so it they wanted to, they could produce coal gas and float a balloon. I’m not 100% sure how they would capture and hold the gas, but if the balloon “ports” were at coke producing sites, then they could fill the balloons to make them ready for the next flight. Hydrogen gas can be produced, but this seems a lot harder than magic.
Worried that coke is an anachronism? Well, the Chinese were producing coke back in the 4th century and floating balloons (those sky lanterns) as a means of military signaling back in the 3rd century. Yeah - the years around 275AD.
You see, that’s the problem with world building. It’s too easy to say, well, Earth didn’t develop X until the Renaissance, so it is too modern for my fantasy world. But the truth is that Asia had technology that we choose to forget far earlier than Europe. And in Fletnern, there is global travel and global trade. So if one culture develops something, it is vastly more likely that the idea will get out - out to other folks who might take that idea and develop more.
So why can’t Fletnern have balloons and zeppelins? Well, it could. But at least at this moment in time, they are finding it easier to use ships that have been enchanted to fly. That is a decision I made for Fletnern a long time ago - They prefer to think of magical ways to solve problems instead of scientific ways. Alchemists could produce hydrogen or even helium gas that could lift some pretty massive zeppelins, but for an alchemist to create that much gas would be difficult and incredibly time consuming. So they find an easier magical way of doing it (enchantment) instead of trying to find a scientific way.
A lot of this is due to the Titan Civil War. Titan enchanting (somewhat similar to what we might see as technology) actually tore a hole through the crust of the planet and literally blew up a continent. When that is the established history of a world, maybe some guy making hydrogen in his lab also blew up. Now the world is convinced that studying hydrogen is a good way to die in a fiery explosion. Yeah - Not the career path for too many guys.
This is just one small factor in why you need to have some of the core principals of your world’s history figured out. If on Fletnern technology were not treated as dangerous and in and of itself a weapon of mass destruction, then some of these concepts might have produced results during the last couple thousand years of technological stagnation. But because I know my world’s history, I can make intelligent explanations of why things are the way they are. Not only does that make the world make more sense, but quite often, it leads me to mission ideas that involve those historic items.
This post was written as
part of the upcoming The Circuitry of Magic aka All About Magitech, the
latest in our Small Bites editions. Each Small Bites book
looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of
questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject. This one is showcasing all sorts of ways to
use magic in different ways, including some that might resemble technology
and/or machinery.
We
hope we’re getting you interested. If you want to see the World Walker
edition for FREE!! click the link here. If we’ve hooked you and
you want to get the full 62 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition,
click here.
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