On Feb 16, 2004, at 8:01 AM, Bryan Newell wrote: > > I think the Floating Castles are more Levitating Castles than Flying > Castles. > > On a mostly-unrelated tangent, where are the flying ships? Think > about it: > Flying Ship vs Floating Castle, that's gotta have a high CQ (Cool > Quotient)... I believe the former sentence answers the latter question. If a Floating Castle takes a century to cover 50 miles, even though a boat is much lighter (take for example 1/1000th the mass), it would still take over a month (or possibly two Dragaeran months) to cover the same 50 miles. It might be formidable, but not a hard to hit target. I kind of wonder why aerial combat or Chinese Cinema-esque wire fighting (without the wires) is not a bigger deal in general where magic is concerned. I'd think a levitating Athyra would be a major advantage in a field combat (assuming his personal protection was equal to the task - s/he'd of course be a major target as well). That or having the wizards catapult warriors into combat. I would imagine a Dzurlord, while not enamored of the idea of being moved around quite like that, would acquiesce anyway for the opportunity to be literally dropped into the thick of the fight behind enemy lines, surrounded by dozens of opponents as far as the eye can see... Bronze Enigma (Noam Izenberg)