The continent of Alsus is periodically ravaged with nano-plagues from the Settler's War, and the always present danger of Viper Cats, a gengineered breed of jaguar with the speed of a low-flying plane in full charge, venom that has more in common with sarin than rattlesnake toxin, and a disposition that starts at 'Kill everything' and gets progressively nastier as it gets hungrier.
In an effort to escape the insanity brought on by the Hopeful Ones, the Grim Folk, their erstwhile servants set out in boats for the summer cottages on the island chain, the Seventy Spires off the coast of Alsus. Upon arriving, they knew that the Hopeful would follow them if they could, and use the boats inbuilt computers to draw the boats back, so they sunk all the boats in deep water.Then they let the various factions of Hopeful Ones kill each other off.
The plagues and the Viper Cats are some of the things the Hopeful Ones left behind.
Now, the Grim Folk were called such because they had a view of the tragic nature of life, and didn't believe in Utopias or Glorious Futures. They were also called that because they had a strong tendency to be the hewers of wood and fetchers of water to the more politically connected Hopeful Ones, and thus they felt a little put upon and grim. Some might think the Grim Folk were the ones who did most of the actual work for little of the actual pay or respect.
But once they got to their separate islands, for they were not city-loving folk, and so they scattered, they found they needed trade. At first it was doctors, and then engineers. Later it was merchants.
The largest island, Calanth, has four Spires, or mountains above four thousand feet, and a total size of ten square miles. This is typical, except most islands have only one Spire. There is very little flat land to farm.There are a few poor ports, but most are rocky and hazardous, and prone to the occasional volcanic laval interruption.
So when one of the Grim Folk re-invented from a historical text the Hot Air Balloon, it was a revolution. That first five years had been very rough, but the Balloon started to ease things. From there, it took about twenty years to get up to the point where there was a fleet of Zeppelins servicing all the islands on a schedule. And where there were other Zeppelins to be had for hire.
And of course...Air Pirates.
Its a rough life, but with the hydrogen from the volcanoes, and the Zeps, and goats that climb the near vertical slopes in search of food, and the balloon fishers who go out from some islands to net fish, the Grim Folk get by.
Each Spire is independent politically, but there is the Grand Moot where all meet for two weeks once a year, and where various deals get hammered out, and duels are settled, and new Zeps bought, and pretty girls meet handsome air pilots. It is of course, on Calanth.
And there you go, O7, a Zeppelin world for your use...
Let me add a few things...1. The original summer cottages on the Spires are made of 'chronofixed granite' which means in the distant future when a comet cracks the planet, that several hundred 'cottages' will be found, still undamaged, floating in the wrack and ruin of the planet. This heightens the independence of the separate spires because there are no weapons on the planet that could even scratch a 'cottage'.
2. In their language 'cottage' has different connotations than in ours.
3. Occasional reckless men travel to the continent to try to loot something of Oldtech. They usually die. Sometimes they succeed and bring back a still powered item (the cottages were powered by a satellite net and have no electrical power). Sometimes they bring back something nasty which kills everything on an island (several islands are Forbidden for this reason), and why getting caught Treasurehunting usually merits the Long Swim (where they take you out twenty miles to sea, and toss you out of the baloon. If you get back to shore, your sentence is commuted.) OTOH, its rumored that the Grand Thane of the Calanth Moot still has a working laser blaster...
Not quite on topic--is one of your Mary Piper variants a zeppelin? It strikes me that a world similar to the Alpha version with isolated citystates rather than nations but with early twencen tech could work with minor revisions. (You know my feeling about Mary Piper--for it to be a real Mary Piper variant it has to be a trading route, and you have to match port and travel events to something similar. In this case, I can see a tornado standing for a whirlpool/black hole, but I'm not sure what takes the place of the iceberg/comet.)
--M. J. Young
I had the Shattered Earth Mary Piper which had the following:
1. Contest between Athena (trade and civilization) and Ares (barbaric independence).
2. A world shattered by Mankind's supertech. Man leaves the area.
3. Earth is now chunks of floating rock in a breathable gas cloud.
4. Something like Eight Races of intelligent animals. Balsom was a Panda Samurai.
5. Some magic, some psi (Navigators were Psionic Seers).
6. Newtons' Third Laws got seriously bent.
7. Magic Talents. Certain people were supernaturally good, or Gifted, at certain jobs.
8. A bit steampunkish.
9. Old Human Tech in ruins.
Thats the one you're talking about. Donna ran something like it for a bit. I'm currently (sorta) putting Oak through it, and he's learning to be a samurai under Balsom by imitating the Karate Kid training techniques...in other words, he's a deckhand although he also has to 'enjoy' tea ceremonies and write analysis of samurai moral dilemnas.
It has the Steampunkish Zeps with the fans blowing into the sails.
You botched with TK into flying off your ship, and then botched again as you crashed into a Shattered Chunk, or something like that.
I knew that; that wasn't really the question.
My thought was that it would be possible to do a zepellin-based trade route on a rather ordinary early twentieth century earth-like world. The map would be very like that of Mary Piper Alpha, although whether it would all be ocean is an open question. Thinking of it, I can imagine Rough Passage being a section of broken volcanic lands where the combination of rising peaks, potential eruptions, and unpredictable air currents makes navigation extremely hazardous. Probably the world would also need a pterodactyl-like monster, or a few suggestions for creatures that would serve the "sea/space monster" slot.
The idea is to be as close as possible to the alpha and beta scenarios, so you can use the same names for ports, for trade goods, for routes, and the same tables for obstacles and events and such.
I wondered, since you've got an entire Greek Alphabet's worth of such worlds, whether one of them covered this approach. (I personally do not consider it to be a "valid" Mary Piper clone if
- it is not a trading ship on a regular route
- the port and travel events tables are not used in ways analogous to the examples of the original
- the ports do not retain much the same character, in terms of goods and population, e.g., Haven is agricultural, Tempest bans weapons, Tristar has a hazard that limits access on a sliding scale
- Emerald is not a substance that is readily available at Emerald and in high demand at the other ports, obtained from a place where primitive beings are apt to attack ships attempting to take it.
--M. J. Young
No, I don't think I did.