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Ahtarra can't be much of a space setting if there's no way to traverse in space, can it? There has to be some way to get from point A to point B - where the space between those two points is... You know... Space. Since this was core to our 'what if magic is how you went to space' concept for starting the setting I figured that would be what I talk about today: magic spaceships.

They are, of course, the gateway to the stars.

It's fair to say that we've placed a large emphasis on space travel itself and the vessels that enable it. It's where the original exploration started when we first put the question to task about magic and space. As a result, unlike most settings where a ship is the result of technology or industry, in Ahtarra ships are built by layering spell after spell after spell over one another and twining them so that all of the systems function together.

Every runic button or switch by itself could take a dozen small spells to make it work: one for powering it, another to communicate its purpose, another to transmit that command when pressed, another to detect pass or fail conditions, another to actually perform the task, and so on.

There is certainly some traditional engineering and construction involved, of course. A ship needs a hull and housing at bare minimum. But most ships are feats of spellcraft rather than the advancements of science we think of. They're works of art and inspiration.

This means that there is no way to produce these crafts quickly even with abundant manpower and each vessel could be as unique as its owner. It also means that given enough time and knowledge, anyone with any magical talent could construct such a ship. Because of these things, owning a ship is more a statement of dedication than it is of status or wealth.

However, even with the sheer amount of personalization seen in starships, there are some commonalities among all of them.

Classes.

With ships being so versatile and nonconformant, speaking about ships has taken on some standards so folks can keep actually communicate about them without running into basic questions about those differences at every turn. When identifying or communicating about ships a 'class' will almost always be given to help convey the size and purpose of the vessel. These are largely informal in origin but there are some organizations that adhere to them fairly strictly.

Raven - Small combat fighter, often seating only one.
Valkyrie - Small support fighter, often a two-seater.
Centurion - Medium corvette-type craft, most often an armed transport with light weaponry and a crew of 2 to 8.
Firefly - Medium cargo vessel for hauling with a crew of 2 to 5.
Avatar - Medium to large personal or business flagships, ranging from building platforms to luxury transports, typically lightly armored with a crew ranging from just 10 to 500.
Longbow - Massive colony jump ship, typically intended for founding new systems and constructing new jump beacons.

This is only a small listing of a larger dictionary, but it should give a sense of the generality the terms are used for.

Air and water.

Air purification is handled largely by natural means. Most ships employ curated plants and trees on each deck to cycle the air supply. The plants are magically treated, but otherwise work with the symbiosis of the ship. On smaller ships, such as one or two seaters or ones without a proper 'deck' to them, this is less obvious: smaller plants are chosen for the work and might be tailored into a ventilated compartment for the task. Though the plants are able to sustain off of the spells placed on them short term, they still will require long term care to remain healthy and perform their function optimally.

Water, on the other hand, is much simpler but requires more direct involvement. Spells can handle the purification and circulation of the water - but the supply on any given vessel is typically finite and carefully portioned to prevent anyone from overusing or the plants from drying out. There is often an intake of some kind so that a vessel can refresh its supply (or simply add to it) while it is out and about if the opportunity arises.

Jump Core.

"Jumping" is the faster-than-light equivalent of travel in Ahtarra that evolved from the personal teleportation spells of old. But like some of the other equally advanced systems a ship can support, this is not a spell that can be layered enough for the ship to do on its own. A person still has to do the actual jump themselves. This is a skill that is often sought after and those that specialize in it are called, unoriginally, 'Jump Pilots'.

Where the system comes in is two-fold. Firstly, it provides a lot of the raw power for the user to utilize for the jump. Most magic is organically generated and the expenditure is proportionate to the scale of the effect, so a caster jumping a great distance with a vessel and its inhabitants in tow would be extremely draining. The jump core helps lessen this burden like an auxiliary battery tailored to a specific purpose.

Second, the Jump Core provides stabilization. Magic is inherently chaotic like the organics that generate it, so there can be a lot that goes strangely with someone trying to perform a jump that carries themselves, a ship, three friends, and some cargo... When suddenly they get distracted. The Jump Core helps keep the spell and its caster from jumping themselves and their ship to two different locations.

The Jump Core is usually interacted with through a seating or laying space that the Jump Pilot sits or lays themselves into. It can be as simple as a specific chair on the ship to as intricate as a self-sealing isolation tube... But the main point is that the pilot using it has enough proximity to be referred to as 'in' the core.

Levitation Engine.

The simpler of the locomotion systems, the Levitation Engine is how ships remain airborne in an atmosphere. A small set of components that effectively have the standard spell cast on them already with a few additions to control the intensity. This came about from some spellwrights long ago discovering the limits on the effects of levitation: it was only relative to large living bodies, i.e. planets. So once the levitation brought someone far enough away from a planet... it became effectively useless.

So instead ships will make use of a Levitation Engine to fly... Sorta. It provides the vertical distance, but it does not offer any forward momentum nor any stopping power. It merely keeps a ship from plummeting to the ground.

Of interesting note is also the peculiarity of levitation's specific function: large living bodies. The engine renders no use to space stations, metallic asteroids, or even larger bodies that have no life to them whatsoever.

This makes your typical use case of a ship equipped with both items to use the Levitation Engine to reach low orbit, and then the Jump Core to jump to a more distant location. It's also worth noting that while these two systems are commonalities, not every ship has or needs them. A ship that never intends to leave atmosphere doesn't need a Jump Core, and a ship that never intends to enter atmosphere doesn't need a Levitation Engine. Another layer of the endless customization ships can express.

Astratum Rails.

Planetary bound vessels may make use of elements of the planet for traversal - sails, water catches, wings, etc. - but anything out in the vast emptiness has to provide its own impulse. That makes the Astratum Rails perhaps the most universal of systems in any ship. These are usually installed in pairs and consist of long rails that run the length of the ship.

Inside each rail is an energetic ballast at either end and a sphere at the center, with all three built to perfect balance with each other. The sphere can be moved along the rail forward or backward, upsetting that balance and pushing the vessel along towards the new center similar to magnetic propulsion. They are usually paired so that one rail might be moved slightly different than the other to give a skew to the push. Through this dynamic a pilot can control the pitch, yaw, and roll of the vessel in motion.

The size of the rails must be relative to the size of the ship, and some ships may have multiple rails on different axes to makes those maneuvers easier. In some rarer cases ships may be built with 'double rails' - an implementation where one or more axes might have an additional pair of rails - to increase the amount of momentum generated by the rail's shifts.

Weaponry.

Ship to ship combat is usually seen as a last resort in conflicts - boarding actions and disabling maneuvers are seen as more favorable. This is both because of the risks of the unknown with each ship being potentially unique and because a ship can only produce and hold so much energy. Firing weapons is expensive in that way.

Because of this, most ship-mounted weapons are projectile weapons, making use of simple lower-powered spells to accelerate the projectile towards its target. These are often fixed mounted as well, so the pilot often has to maneuver the ship itself to aim.

These factors are what gave rise to the prominence of small fighter craft in conflicts: smaller ships are easier to maneuver and aim their weapons, can dedicate cargo space to ammunition, and have fewer systems that need to make use of power. Big guns don't matter as much when smaller ones can put a hole in your hull just as easily because in space nothing slows down the bullet.

Which isn't to say that big ships blowing stuff up from the other side of the system is entirely gone... Just that it's far more expensive and not everyone has that kind of money.

Sensors and displays.

Magical projection is only a minor hurdle to overcome, so visually seeing a ship's surroundings is commonplace. It does, however, take a bit more of a dedicated setup to 'detect' and provide other sensory feedback to what's going on. What things a ship might be able to detect and look for are too varied to go into here, but the entirety of the suite on a vessel is usually called an 'augury'.

Unlike other systems, this setup has a unique duality: simple augury is a small enough task that a person could do it themselves if trained or skilled in it, so reliance on a ship system isn't strictly necessary. Thus, some ships may not have augury systems at all or only minor ones if the expectation is that one of the crew will fulfill that function. Meanwhile some ships may have much larger suites if focus is placed on notification or idle detection.

One of the most common of those functions is, of course, finding other ships. This can have obvious combat implications but it's often given at least some consideration if only to not run into other vessels during travel in populated areas. This is also one of the simplest detections to provide because of the thing that makes ships possible: their spells.

The sheer number of spells that are layered over one another to make a ship possible makes it also impossible to hide that amount of magic. Even a completely powered down and offline ship could be easily picked up if they're alone in the vastness of the black. The differences in the spells that are layered and the way they've done so also leads to each ship having its own kind of 'signature' to this kind of sensor. Specific vessels could be identified with enough study.

Bringing it back to Earth.

Ships form a core element of the Ahtarra setting, and historically speaking are the reason this specific section of the setting is something characters are able to interact with. So it seemed important to me to start the exploration with them. How they work, what gets them from here to there, and why they had evolved as they had. There's still a lot of detail that can be poked at and extrapolated with them - some of which certainly will need to happen as the writing involves them more - but this first little poke gave a strong baseline for how they would carry stories forward. I hope you enjoy these ideas as much as I do.

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