Carrying an airship on a flying carpet (sort of)

[thezombiekat]

My PCs are halfway threw the air galleons of thrall adventure

They have defeated the ogers, the cadaver men, kaer lords and the admiral (an 8th circle air sailer animated with unnatural life whom the horror had cast target portal on so he could keep casting restoration to heal him) all that remains is the horror itself.

They have also advanced the idea that rather than going to thrall and reporting the airships location for recovery they want to take them back themselves. 2 galleons, one with a broken mast, the other has its mast lying on the deck for storage, and not one PC has air sailing, not that it would help the crew needed is 200 for each ship.

The current theory is to fly them out on carpets, sort of, the ship would be hung from 4 or more carpets using a number of ropes taken from the ships. How insane would you rate such an idea

Such a harness could conceivably be built, and going from the weights of historic gallons 4 could carry the thing with good rolls, no problem there you can recast till you get the strength you need. And with the elemental air intact the effective weight should be quite low (mass and inertia will remain however)

My initial thinking is that it is a great way to move a crippled airship around a yard, or pick it up for repairs but not such a fun way to move one threw the mountains the resulting assembly will steer like a cow and while having an impressive top speed take time to speed up and slow down. Not to mention the inevitability of attack and having some ropes broken.

[Flagg]

I guess the answer lies in how gritty your game is. If you go for swashbuckling heroics, let it work. If it's more of a "realistic" feel, that sounds doomed to fail.

[The_Gun_Nut]

There's an Elementalist spell that creates cloud balloons for just such a situation.

[Hank Woon]

What's a Kaer Lord? I love the name--very evocative.

[slayride]

Unless I miss my mark, Kaer Lord is a creature from Living Room Game's Second Edition. The only one of my Second Edition books I have on me is Barsaive in Chaos, and I just checked and its not in there. Might be in Scourge Unending or the ED2 Companion.

[Hank Woon]

Ah, I'm not familiar with that edition... I really like that name, though.

[slayride]

I played it for a couple of years, but not as familiar with it as I should be either really.

[Telarus_KSC]

Heh, Scourge Unending had some interesting ideas.

The Kaer Lord was a random mutation when Adepts were turned into Cadaver Men. Significant differences from Cadaver Men were boosted stats (no Powers), well maintained gear (undeath gets boring), and the ability to choose when to frenzy or to command groups of nearby cadaver men to frenzy. If left for long periods without direct Horror control, they sometimes manifest a shadow of their previous personality.