Trevin chuckled. “In the days of the Anilords, we left at either Configuration 3 or 2.” She shook her head as if remembering great unpleasantness. “Today Astlan is quite safe, but remember we are multi-dimensional here so we are crossing more than just a border to Astlan; it’s a single border between the Grove and all Grove-connected realms, some of which are more hostile than Astlan.” Trevin shrugged. “And while we don’t expect any problems, you never know who might want to take a pot shot at us. Or what happens if we stumble onto... say... I don’t know, an orc hunting party on dragonback?”
“Orcs on dragons?” Gastropé croaked out.
“It happens. Obviously, dragons like mountains, and what better mountains are there than those around the Grove? Further, there are multiple tribes of orcs that use trained dragons as mounts to swoop down and ransack and pillage villagers. Nightmarish for the victims, I can assure you.” Trevin shook her head.
“Of course, we would come in at too high an altitude for them to immediately attack us, but we don’t typically maintain this altitude; we tend to go lower, since higher altitudes use up more of the ship’s reserves, and we can’t replenish breathing air and so on.” Trevin smiled and waved towards the front of the room and to a railing at the edge of the bridge’s deck. “Moving up here, you can see where we are going.” On the other side of the railing was a very large mirror, or glass lens — Jenn was not sure which, really. It looked like a large window, but given its location in the cloudship, it could not be.
Through this lens, mirror or window was a breathtaking view towards the front of the cloudship and the incredible ranges of mountains they were preparing to pass over. “I think you’ll find the view quite breathtaking. I always do.”
Jenn shook her head in awe; she had never imagined being this high up, Astlan stretching out at her feet, viewing the tops of the insane mountain ranges around the Grove. She could not even really make out much of the detail of the land below, they were so high. Was it her imagination or could she actually see the curve of the planet? It was one thing to intellectually know that your planet was a sphere despite the fact it seemed flat; it was quite another to actually see it for oneself.
“Oh, my goddess...” Gastropé murmured as he came up beside her.
Maelen made a whooshing noise. “I can See many things, but this is one I have never seen, or Seen, before.”
Elrose, standing next to Trevin, asked, “So how high are we?”
Trevin glanced over to a sidewall, where there was what appeared to be a mirror with colored writing on it. “We are currently at 61,350 feet above sea level, or 3.873 leagues; and roughly 55,000 feet above the floor of the Grove, or 3.47 leagues.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but normal clouds never get that high, do they?” Elrose asked.
Trevin smiled. “You are correct, my fellow Enchanter. The highest natural clouds, which, as a Sorcerer, you know are mainly ice particles rather than actual air, have a maximum altitude of about three leagues. However, this is no natural cloud by any means. You recall my earlier comments about pressurization and how I just mentioned that traveling at high altitudes like this requires significant resources?”
The group nodded.
“We are funneling a fair bit of mana into keeping the cloud stable at this point.” She pointed at several crew members gathered around desks with various gems and mirrors on them. “Those crew members are monitoring the mana flows, and are in constant communication with Gnorbert in the engine room.”
“Engine room?” Maelen asked. “I’m not sure I understand the term. An engine is an automaton that does work of various sorts, so how can a room be an engine?”
Trevin chuckled. “That’s the phrase for it; it is more precisely a very large room filled with a great number of different magical engines which perform the hundreds of tasks necessary for all of this” — she gestured around the cloud expansively — “to work.” She smiled and then added, “If you manage to get a look inside one of those flying ships of the Oorstemothians, you will find that they too have ‘engine rooms.’ ” Trevin had a small gleam in her eyes. “However, they have nowhere near as many engines as we have. For one thing, they use mundane materials — wood and non-ferrous metals — in their flying ships, rather than amorphous clouds.”
“That would seem a bit easier,” Elrose noted.
“True, but they power them primarily by geomancy and then use aeromastery with the sails for propulsion. This limits their altitude; they cannot get that far from the ground, and being open vessels, they cannot adjust atmospheric pressure. They have a maximum altitude of less than two leagues above whatever altitude the ground is.”
“But if the mountains rise in altitude, they could repel against that and still climb over the mountains.” Elrose pointed to the large mountains they were now passing over. “I thought you said the Oorstemothians could not scale them?”
Trevin smiled. “In theory, you would be correct, but they cannot pressurize their ships, so they would run out of air. However, perhaps they could create special suits. The bigger problem is that of propulsion up and down the mountainside. The steepness presents their method with serious problems. Their ability to climb in altitude decreases with the incline of the ground they are traveling above.” Trevin grinned with delight while explaining this. “In other words, geomantic lift works perpendicular to the ground. Steep verticals mean they are pushing away from the mountain horizontally. They can correct for that, but they lose climbing capability as the slope becomes infinite. If a mountain slope were completely vertical, up and down, they would have nothing to push off of that would take them up. Add to that the horribly unpredictable winds around such tall mountains and they need incredibly powerful aeromastery to control those winds, fill the sails and not get the ship ripped to pieces.”
Trevin leaned back against the railing. “I wish balling wizardry had always been what it is today; I would love to have shown you their attempts to serve notice on the Grove four hundred or so years ago. It was most amusing — for us, at least.” She grinned wickedly.
“So how high could the Nimbus go?” Jenn asked Trevin.
Trevin made a small grimace as she thought. “Well, technically, it’s only limited by how much mana we have to burn. It’s that resource question again.”
“So could you travel to either of the moons?” Jenn asked.
“I’m not at all sure why we would want to do that,” Trevin said with a shrug, “but if we could figure out how to get enough mana, then probably. I suppose I have never really thought about it. There is nothing of interest on either of the moons, so I see no point in going there. It would also take a really long time.”
Elrose frowned. “The air would be too thin, so how would you move without air?”
“Well the bigger issue is keeping the cloud and what air we have together; however, we can already do that at this high an altitude. Technically, in the absence of air there is vacuos, which can be manipulated by enchantment, as you know. But it would be slow going. However, I am sure Gnorbert could come up with something. It is an interesting thought, I suppose; an excellent theoretical exercise. Hmm.” Trevin was lost in thought for a moment. “Yes, it would be tricky. I am probably going to be thinking about it all night, unable to sleep.” She made a mock stern face at Elrose. “Thank you for sticking that in my head.” She shook her head. “Fortunately, it’s one exercise we won’t ever have to do for real.”
Trevin turned slightly to smile at Gastropé. “Maybe I’ll need to figure out something else to keep me occupied tonight?” Gastropé gave her a small, tight grin, presumably being polite.