The Airships of Airovale

Three Ships That Carry the Story

Airovale is a city of zeppelins. Every fortune, every farewell and every homecoming in the story arrives or departs by airship, and three vessels carry the book: the Nereid, the Ironwind and the Gilded Star.

All three set out for the Crescent Islands, chasing copper and rumors of temple gold. What each one carries back is another matter.

How an Airovale Airship Flies

Every airship in Airovale runs on coal. Coal-fired engines make steam, and steam turns the propellers that push a ship across the sky. Lift is older and simpler: hot air held in the vast canvas envelope overhead, the same way a balloon rises. Steam moves her. Hot air keeps her up.

That makes coal the real currency of the skies. A stoker feeds the boiler by the shovelful, and the fire has to last the whole voyage. A ship can only carry so much, and every crate of copper, every sack of gold and every passenger pulled from the sea takes room that would otherwise hold coal for the way home. It is the Law of Exchange with a fuel gauge.

Out over the Magnetic Sea the compass spins uselessly, and the crews who cross it are glad of every clear sky and every full bunker.

The Nereid

The Nereid is an old grey zeppelin with a gilded ring of propellers, and she has seen better years. Captain Von Holt flies her, and his first mate, Steffan, passes his orders down to the crew. In Chapter 1 an orphaned young man named Aden steps up to the crew as they load coal and cargo, and the Nereid carries him out of the only life he has known. The Quartermaster, Garrick Vale, once flew her himself.

She is not a lucky ship. A storm drives her far off any chart and out over the Magnetic Sea, and the Nereid limps into Canyon Myst more wreck than zeppelin, where her crew meets the fae and a law none of them understood. From there her story turns on a choice about what she will carry, and what she will leave behind.

• Captain: Von Holt
• First mate: Steffan
• Joins her crew: Aden, Chapter 1
• An old hand: Garrick Vale
• Chapters: 1, 2 and 4 to 9
• Episodes: 1 · 2 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9

The Ironwind

The Ironwind is the ship that leaves with a promise. In Chapter 1 she lifts from the field and disappears into the fog, bound for the Crescent Islands, while her first mate, Kael, holds Mira a moment longer than the schedule allows.

Of the three ships she is the one that turns toward trouble. When the storm comes she is the ship that stops for strangers, and what that costs her, and what she brings home, is one of the most moving scenes in the book.

• First mate: Kael
• Waiting at home: Mira
• Chapters: 1 to 4
• Episodes: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4

The Gilded Star

The Gilded Star belongs to Jonas and Sabina Merrow, a husband and wife who fly together. Jonas is her captain, and Sabina reads the map. In Chapter 1, before they leave, Jonas stops at a healer’s shop for something to settle his wife’s stomach on the northern run. He leaves with more than he came for: an ancient map, slipped into his pocket by Malina.

She is the ship that flies toward what she has been promised. She hangs above a hidden canyon at nightfall while Sabina matches the map’s ridgelines to the stone below, and when the temple gold is finally aboard, the Gilded Star learns what treasure weighs.

• Captain: Jonas Merrow
• Navigator: Sabina Merrow
• Carries: the ancient map, from Malina
• Chapters: 1 to 4
• Episodes: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4

The Rest of the Fleet

The three named ships are only part of the harbor. When the fleet comes home from the Crescent Islands in Chapter 4, Elara reads the names off the horizon one by one through her telescope: the Leviathan, the Behemoth and others. The Behemoth, despite her name, is a tiny ship.

It is a mismatched fleet: freighters with patched canvas and scarred plates, small traders strung with sails, lean ships built to run, and now and then a family in a hot-air balloon who came to the islands for copper and a better life.