Sky Ships

The sky cities of Sacaris very quickly moved to rely entirely on sky ships in order to bring material from the surface in order to help rebuild and sustain their populations. Of course these days while still not as cheap a method of transport compared to convential sea bourne vessels, sky ships in all their forms have become numerously operated not only from the sky cities but also goverments, guilds and wealthy private citizens on the surface of Sacaris also.
Initially the few sky ships in operation at the time of the Splintering were not only expensive to manufacture but also not capable of the sorts of velocities or cargo capacties that made them even remotely comperable to conventional transport of the day.

The first desgins of sky ships followed 1 of 2 design principles . While both required a large envelope to provide boyancy that the hull of of the vessel would be strung to via a network of rope or cable, this envelope would provide lift either by being filled a vast amount of arcane parchment enchanted with magic that was levitation in nature or by being filled with a powderized form of sky borugh amber. In addtion the main form of propulsion for these early vessel like their sea going counterparts was sail. But due to the added wind resistance of the envelope combined with the limited space for placing large sail surfaces sky ships had seemed to have reached a dead end.

It was the harnessing of Elerium and Aetherium that suddenly allowed sky ship design theory the qunatum leap in effectivness required for it to become an effective transport alternative. While Aetherium remains en expensive resource, the combination of it being exclusivly located on the floating islands on which the sky cities of Sacaris are settled and the nessesity of those cities for effective means of transport on trade prompted the creation of a new style of envelopless airship.
But it was to be Elerium that would truly push sky ship design to what it is today. The first Elerium generators were used to provide the power to create the arcane levitation field required by Aetherium to provide lift. Later iterations were also able to reduce the Arcane material component requirments for both styles of envelope designs. In addition to providing lift it was not long before Elerium generators were also used to provide thrust. The initial and most basic systems make use of arcane motivators to spin an array of propllelors but the most modern sky city ship designs make use of engines that convert the energy from the ships generator into magical force.