Transiting Crystal

A required navigational aid for airships.

A Transiting Crystal is an item critical to modern airship travel, allowing airships to be tracked through airspace.

Mechanics & Inner Workings

Once confined in its housing and configured with an incantation, the Transiting Crystal permanently locks into a set configuration and broadcasts its presence using a field invisible to most races. Those attuned to the Ethereal Plane may see the field taking on the contours of the ship.
The Transiting Crystal remains inert until it intercepts a signal sent out by a beacon or monitoring station, where it reacts and sends back a scale image resembling the field it generates. This allows monitoring stations in particular to work out the location, heading and altitude of an airship in relation to other objects in the general airspace.
Transiting Crystals are hardy and can last several decades, but smaller ones are known to last only as long as half a century before being replaced, at which point the airship has probably exceeded its operational lifetime.

Significance

Transiting Crystal is almost mandatory for airships, and is critical to allow beacons and monitoring stations to communicate to airships and avoid mid-air collisions.

Item type

Navigational Aid / Instrument

Rarity

Primarily only found in the Emirate of Sifr, although small pockets of Transiting Crystal can be found in other nations, and means of creating synthetic Transiting Crystal are being researched throughout Anira.

Weight

Varies by ship size

Dimensions

Varies by ship size - skiffs have a fist-sized crystal while galleons have ones the size of an average human.

Base Price

Varies with size.