Making a Magical Flying Ship

[TheRealMe]

I am running a campaign set in a Magocracy at TL3 with the maximum Magery level of 10. I would like to introduce a magical flying ship into the campaign. There is a fine example of such a thing in a set of deck plans put out by Dramascape, called The Raven Airship. This ship seems to be built of wood and is about 90 feet long and 24 feet wide, with one internal deck and an upper deck open to the sky.

I would like to be able to show my players how it was made. How could I use the existing GURPS magic to enchant such a thing? Ideally I could enchant it with the Flying Carpet spell.

So how much would this ship weigh? Online I found a medieval ship of a similar size that was estimated to have a Displacement of 55 tons and a Tonnage of 90. While I am no nautical expert, I interpret this as the physical structure of the ship weighing 55 tons, and that it could carry crew, cargo, and passengers of up to another 90 tons. So we need to lift 145 tons.

Flying Carpet can lift 25 pounds per energy point. So to cast such a spell to lift this ship would cost 1160 energy. To permanently enchant it would cost 200 times more. Even with a circle of ten enchanters, that would take some 636 year s to enchant. Since the enchanting cost of a self-powered item increases exponentially with increasing energy, it would probably be more economical to power the thing with massive powerstones. So you would need a series of powerstones, sized at 1160 points of energy each, one for each ten minutes of flight. But at least the thing would move at about 30 miles per hour, assuming a casting skill of 15.

This seems impractical to me.

I glanced at the Tech spell Propel, but it seems designed to move cars around. I don't know if I could use it to get a vehicle to fly. Even so, the energy costs are still enormous.

The Tech spell Draw Power might help, but that seems only useful in Quick and Dirty Enchantments, if it could be used at all. Even so, how much power can be sucked out of a water wheel? Online I found one that puts out something like a horsepower, which equates to 745.7 Watts. But how much magical energy is that?

Could I buy the ship with Flying and Telekinesis advantages and a Focus limitation? Take it as an ally? I could build a vehicle.

I know that as GM I could simply declare that the ship exists, or else fall back on "Secret and Mysterious Techniques of the Enchanting Guild," but I would like to have the ship grounded in the existing GURPS Magic system.

Any ideas that might help?

Thanks.

[weby]

Displacement is the actual amount of water displaced=weight of the ship and all it's contents.

Tonnage is less clear, it has had many meanings though the years but today is used as volume measurement. The tonnage can be any one of the volume things: Gross tonnage, Net tonnage, Gross register tonnage, Net register tonnage or the weight measure: Deadweight tonnage.

But if displacement is used it is best to use it for clarity.

But really many fantasy flying ships are not enchanted to be lighter than air, instead they use some material(like the Etherwood from Spaceships 7) to lift them. Some others use some other way to bypass the things like the Eberron ships using the elemental ring.

For gurps magic based I would likely use the lifting material thing.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by TheRealMe

it would probably be more economical to power the thing with massive powerstones. So you would need a series of powerstones, sized at 1160 points of energy each, one for each ten minutes of flight. But at least the thing would move at about 30 miles per hour, assuming a casting skill of 15.

This seems impractical to me.

The Tech spell Draw Power might help, but that seems only useful in Quick and Dirty Enchantments, if it could be used at all. Even so, how much power can be sucked out of a water wheel? Online I found one that puts out something like a horsepower, which equates to 745.7 Watts. But how much magical energy is that?

Could I buy the ship with Flying and Telekinesis advantages and a Focus limitation? Take it as an ally? I could build a vehicle.

.

The Powerstone idea is even worse than you think. An 1186pt stone would take that many days to recharge in Normal Mana. and 2 Powerstones within 6 feet of each other divide the available mana and recharge half as quickly.

After you get to S&S Enchantment I would have said that costs increase linearly and not exponentially. Still not practical.

The amount of magical energy derived by draw Power is 2.77 pts per megawatt. So your waterwheel is about 3 zeroes to the right of the decimal point in terms of energy i.e. you get none since you round down.

I ask that you trust us that there are no usable sources of energy in terms of Draw Power before TL6. If you won't trust us you can search the forum for old threads. They are extensive.

If some sort of usable source (no doubt magically enabled) for draw Power were to be added to your setting one of your Magery 10 guys could handle about 692 pts of energy (assuming HT 10).

There is actually a sort of magical nuclear reactor in Magic Items III (designed by moi) but it's not quite as big as you want. It could be scaled up.

You can buy the ship as an Ally and you'll probably even find it to be cheap in terms of cp but there's no conversion factor to demine how much such an item would cost in $.

There were numbers in the 3e Vehicles book for alchemically creating levitating materials but hey were arbitrarily selected. You might as well pick some number you like.

There are ways to build such an item in Spaceships 7 but you'll end up with rather vague stats on an individual character level.

[(E)]

Echoes of the great song by David Gemmell has a power source akin to a mega powerstone. recharged at a pyramid from memory.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by TheRealMe

Any ideas that might help?

Well, I did write up an article for the Spaceships line for fantasy-style airships. It's called "Sailing the Open Skies" and it's from Pyramid #3/64: Pirates and Swashbucklers. That might help. I use airships a LOT in my fantasy games and lacking the rules I decided to write them.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Well, I did write up an article for the Spaceships line for fantasy-style airships. It's called "Sailing the Open Skies" and it's from Pyramid #3/64: Pirates and Swashbucklers. That might help. I use airships a LOT in my fantasy games and lacking the rules I decided to write them.

I used that article & spaceships-7 for an airship in my DF campaign. The PC artificer built a small drigible that then became the team's mobile base.

I would reccomend using an existing "anti-gravity" wood as pre-enchanted & not worry about it. Just build the rest of the ship to the spec's you want.

[Kalzazz]

I really like RPM, so, I tend to assume flying ships have RPM spells to help them be well, flying

Why are they flying ships? Instead of say, flying boxes? Because its In the Nature Of ships to float, so a Lesser Strengthen Matter gets that ship to float even better, in the air. Then sails are used in the normal fashion to actually get that ship to move once the magic has it doing the floating thing.

Float the Ship
Spell Effects: Lesser Strengthen Matter.
Inherent Modifiers: Subject Weight + Duration.
Greater Effects: 0 (×1).

Float the Ship - Causes a ship (or other inherently floaty thing) to float in the air.

This Casting: Lesser Strengthen Matter (3) + Subject Weight, 150 tons (9) + Duration, 1 week (9). 21 energy (21×1).

Ships intended for flying usually come conveniently designed as grimoires (see The Old Ways for discussion of Grimoire Objects) making them easier to float in the air. If you are going to pony up 23k for a TL 3 cog (basic set) or even more for a Low Tech ship, you certainly should be able to pony up for a decent grimoire to help it get airborne (botches with flying ships can be . . . . quite spectacular).

You could if you wanted to stay in Magic Magic, since I have been recently encouraged to believe Alchemy doesn't really care about SM, get an intelligent ship (you could use the Weapon Spirit to put a spirit in your ship for instance), and then outfit your ship with 264 charms of flight (each allowing 1 hr of flight with 10 days recharge). Each Charm of Flight takes about an Alchemist Year, but, you don't need Magery to learn Alchemy, you can make alchemicals in batches, and you can get bonuses for nice labs and formularies etc, so making 264 charms won't be impossible even if it won't be easy.

If the ship has less than 264 charms it won't be able to fly continuously, and must instead stop and rest for charms to recover before flying again.

[Pomphis]

It´s 3e, but VE2 has some ideas on p.41.

[Zwarrior]

A bit late but still in time.

I'm also looking for a way to achieve the same goal with GURPS Magic alone. Here's what I have to add:

Inventing new spells. It's there on page 14.

• So, you could make a new spell, like a variant of Hawk Flight that puts the caster in control of the motion and can only be used on inanimate subjects. Make it a Regular maintainable spell and it can be Enchanted via Ensorcel. It will be MUCH cheaper than Flying Carpet to enchant if you include a really easy "escape clause" to get that 90% discount on the energy cost.
• Create a variation of the Lighten Enchantment that allows for up to 95~99% reduction in weight. Now your ship weights next to nothing and using a combination of sails and Wind spell allows you to sail through the air.

Using what's already there:

• The Golem Enchantment. It's up the GM to allow Golems built as ships that can actually fly, but RAW grants you permission to add stuff to the golem template, so it's there.
• Ensorcel. Since it's possible to get up to 90% reduction for an escape clause, this is a viable option to make regular maintainable spells "permanent". Obviously you'll use this on loyal subjects that won't use the easy escape clause that you told them beforehand to screw you over. Yes, saying a simple password that you knew beforehand sounds like the easiest possible escape.

I know none of those are easy to pull off, but it's way better than a cynical "yes, you can enchant flying carpet to make a flying ship. It costs 2304756293754 energy. Better become a Lich first."

In the game i'm currently on, my character is part of the guild of faerie enchanters (nice little dudes that rank around 800 CPs). They have large enchantment only ERs that can go up to 3 digits, so it's possible to enchant a large, SM+10 object to be a flying vessel. We are currently trying to get one of our guild halls to fly. It's a huge SM 10 oak that was shaped to provide all the lodging and rooms we needed inside it, plus some external areas for support and recreation.
The plan so far is to use Animate Plant to give the tree consciousness and then Ensorcel it with Hawk Flight. We are in the process of figuring who will work on the project, since it will cost 8 (base hawk flight cost) * 11 (SM modifier) * 200 (Ensorcel) * 0.1 (Escape Clause discount) = 1760 energy. Plus the Animate Plant ensorcelment, but that's cheaper. Much better than 90k energy for a 50 square yards flying carpet, don't you think?

I suppose you could use Animate Object or Awaken Craft Spirit instead of Animate Plant for a real ship. Heh, if you built a ship with HUGE wings, Animate Object alone could do the trick, but I imagine the flapping could have undesirable side effects.

GLHF

[Phantasm]

I have to wonder if industrialized magic might not be a bad way to go with this. Instead of enchanting the ship directly, have a team of a few hundred mages enchant the boards before they're used to form the hull of the ship. Another team to enchant the sails after they've been cut. The smaller the pieces you can enchant before putting it all together, the more likely you'll be able to enchant it with Quick-and-Dirty rather than Slow-and-Sure before assembling the ship.

You may want to look at The Arsenal of Mageocracy in Pyramid #3/40: Vehicles for ideas. It even has an "aircraft" of sorts that's a boat with a variation of the Lighten spell pulled by a team of swans.

Suffice to say, IMO enchanting an airship is not something a lone mage or even a PC group should pull off; industrializing your magic may be the way to go.

YMMV, of course.