Flying Turtle

A flying turtle is a type of Sky Chariot built with one purpose and one purpose only. War. The flying turtle is a class of archano-technology flying machine that has either two or three Avistian pilots. Besides being a full crew, where the co pilots can do everything from aiding navigation, manning weapons, or other tasks while the primary pilot focuses on flying the craft, it has another more morbid reason. Without the Avistian pilot to control the craft, the flying turtle would come crashing out of the sky. The extra pilots were there, in case one of the others were incapacitated. During early development, the enemy factions learned that if they simply managed to kill the pilot, they could wipe out entire units of soldiers. Because it would fall out of the sky and the occupants would have no choice but to ride it down to the ground and hope they either died on impact, or managed to get thrown out of the vehicle and somehow survive. There was no real middle ground to their desires as the crafts almost always turned into an inferno upon impact. From all of the magical energies being unleashed at once and going out of control. And the thought of burning to death was near the top of the list for most of them to avoid at all costs. Some soldiers even began carrying additional pistols as side arms, to give themselves a third option in case the worst happens.
But, doctrine and prudence prevailed, making such unpleasant plan B’s unnecessary, and the shortcomings were rapidly patched. Extra armor for the Pilot compartment. Magically enhanced fields around them. And, eventually, second and third Avistian crews as back up just in case.
The Sky Turtle is a heavily armored troop transport with moderately heavy weapons. It’s not designed to stay in the area and provide sustained fire. The purposes of it’s primary guns are to lay waste to an area as they are coming in, so they can clear a landing zone long enough for the troops inside to get out and into cover, or so they can load up troops that are receiving fire and in the middle of an all out retreat.
Their secondary weapons are far less impressive.
Though the secondary are just as capable of killing someone in their cross-hairs as their main, it’s more for quick defense against smaller infantry, or to shoot down flying attackers that are buzzing around it.
The primary weapons, consist of a pair of fixed archano-enchanced ballistic weapons whose ammo explode on impact with the target, set on either side of the primary pilots’ seat. Directly under the pilot is a rapid firing light energy weapon that is capable of rotating 15 degrees from center either direction to stay locked on a target as it rapidly fires bursts of magically focused light at it’s targets. It is capable of rotating down 20 degrees for the same purpose, but it’s rise is limited to horizontal and perpendicular to the pilot’s cabin.
The sky turtle, as a whole, is almost in the shape of a tiped over egg but with bulbous additions to both sides and top and bottom. On the bottom side of it is a framework of metal lattice that functions as legs as it comes in for a landing. Although, the ground side of the lattice has small retractable balls that allow it to roll across the surface for easier placement and positioning while on the ground.
Each of the four bulbous additions to the two sides, top, and bottom, have weapon emplacements where the crew inside can fight attackers from any direction. Avistian’s are used to maneuvering and fighting in three dimensions, so it was an early add on that they absolutely demanded, despite the outcries of waste from the other races. However, once other flying races entered the war as mercenaries, they whole heartily applauded the decision as even a single lone flying turtle could scrap off entire wings of attacking gargoyles, while sending many of them to ground level via fatal wing injuries.
A variant of the Sky Turtle is the Wasp Queen. Instead of being used mainly for troop or supply transport, the Wasp Queen was designed as an arrival delivery system for large groups of bombs. It would fly over an enemy position, drop it’s back hatch, and just let the bombs start falling from the sky. All of which would orient themselves correctly mid fall, and impact the ground before exploding spectacularly. The tactics wasn’t used very often, as against intelligent forces, they would hunker down and hide and the bombs wouldn’t do as much in the way of damage. Against large hordes of automatons or structures it was far more effective. But, by those points, it would be more cost effective, both monetarily and in lives, to simply call in artillery barrages from cannon emplacements far away from the battlefield.

Nickname

War Chariot, Ice Box (because of their tendency to get codl at high altitudes), Armored Grocery Getter