Wednesday 8 April 2015

Sky Chariots

An illustration from my dad's Atlantis book, by Chris Foss.
No demonstration of the power of Atlantis's three great empires is as eloquent, as brutal, as complete, as the sky chariot.


They are so omnipresent that children in free Rmoahal townships fear clear skies and sunny days lest the Atlanteans come to rain death by fire, burning light or choking gas. 

An esoteric reactor powered by the concentrated life-energy of a seed supplies force adequate for nine engines, four vertical thrusters on each side and the primary motive at the rear. A skilled trimsman can execute rolls, loops and all manner of manoeuvres with these huge machines. They're able to reach an altitude of a thousand feet, and can travel a hundred Atlantean miles an hour. While far in the future other empires will build faster, more stable, more deadly flying machines, for now nothing can match them.

As time has progressed, the secret of their manufacture has passed to the Tlavatlis and the Muvians, and each empire maintains its own aerial navy with its own character: the rough-edged privateers of the Second People, the colossal ironclad monsters of the Muvians. The Atlantean Civil War was fought largely in the air.

Alone among the empires, the Atlanteans maintain civilian sky-chariots, but these are rare, the beautiful air-yachts with painted sails the preserve of the rich.

Mechanics
It's pretty simple. Vehicles have Attributes like characters do, these being Body, Armament and Speed. When you're flying a machine like this, you add the vehicle's Attribute to your own Suit + Attribute (usually Machines) and draw your card as usual.

These come under the category of Adds, an Attribute belonging to a circumstance, animal (like a riding animal), piece of equipment or a machine that supplements a character's own.


Atlantean Sky-Chariot, Siriun Class 
Body 5, Speed 9, Armament 6 (1 pilot, 2 gunners, 12 passengers)