IC Inbox

[feathersfly]

"Hey, you've reached Hawks! Guess I'm busy right now. Drop me a message and I'll get back to you."

Comments

[nastyboy]

That is one of the problems I was trying to consider. I am sure there are others who are careful and wary enough that they will have flying types with them. A man named Shiro is one of those that I am considering. However, that does not take into consideration the people who are unable to provide for themselves in that way since they are so new and lack a flying type, or the TM, or even the badge that would permit them access to the skies.

It is not a problem I have ever had to deal with before, since these sort of flying devices are completely foreign to Faerghus and Fodlan as a whole. Wyvern and pegasi can only carry one person on them, or two if they are a particularly sturdy mount and their passengers light.

I wanted to ask you, are these sort of things more common in your world? Have you ever had to deal with this sort of conundrum in your line of work?

Hawks I know you're being a professional but you are going to give Dimitri SUCH anxiety

[feathersfly]

oh yeah, they're plenty common where i come from. well, not airships like this, specifically, but plenty of flying machines in general. we don't have wyverns of pegasi, so that seems as exotic to me as what's normal to me must seem to you.

i will say, though, that the kind of flying machines i'm used to...well, how to put it? i'm way more equipped to save people from, say, falling to their deaths back home, or going down with a sinking airship. but at the same time, i've rarely rescued anyone from flying machines back in my own world. the kinds of machines we've got there...well, for one thing, if something goes wrong only a little, they can usually get down themselves. and if something goes wrong a lot...first off, you've got maybe a couple minutes, max, to do anything about it. so unless i was right there, i wouldn't be able to get there soon enough to do anything about it - not even with my speed.

second, i'm gonna level with you. when things go really wrong with flying machines back home, they tend to explode, or at the very least catch fire. an unfortunately large percentage of the time, once something goes that wrong there's nothing anybody can do.

the reason i'm considering ways to evacuate people off this airship is because i think it's significantly different from any aircraft of my world. i don't think it's going to have the same hazards. my immediate concern looking at it is something like engine failure, or some kind of mechanical sabotage. explosions seem less likely to scuttle the whole thing. my expectation would be that the worst case scenario is this thing dropping out of the sky; if it's high enough up and we act fast enough, we could evacuate people before it crashes. that's what i'm thinking.

what i said about the timeframe we're looking at stays constant, though. when something big and heavy in the air loses what's keeping it up, it doesn't waste a lot of time conceding to gravity. that's gonna be true in any world, with any aircraft. there won't be much time if that happens. but at least we'll be on hand to help right from the second trouble starts, which gives us a fighting chance.

[nastyboy]

[..........................so it takes approximately fifteen minutes for dimitri to even begin composing a reply back]

Are you certain the airship will not explode?

[feathersfly]

i'm CERTAIN of nothing. but i will say that the flying machines of my world use a very explosive substance for fuel and propulsion, which is the primary source of those explosions i mentioned. these airships don't seem to do propulsion the same way, and there's no reason to assume they use the same fuel. that cuts down on that particular risk a lot. i can't say anything definite without knowing exactly how they work, though.

that said, not much sense planning for a catastrophic explosion anyway. wouldn't be much we could do about that, except the aftermath. and even then, you can't plan for that kind of emergency situation - just gotta roll with what the situation demands in the moment at that point.

[nastyboy]

[You know what - he'll take that. He'll take "this device PROBABLY does not use explosive substance to stay airborne". Dimitri recognizes that he cannot be picky.]

I suppose you do have a good point there.

It is interesting, applying what I know of regular seaborne ships to one that goes through the air in an attempt to plan better for whatever may happen with it. For a seaborne ship, there is a real concern of water going up through the ship and people drowning. There is technically still that concern for this scenario, but it seems like the last issue to hit us if the ship starts to go down.

Having to fight against gravity in order to get to any exit seems as though it would be a larger problem. What do you think?

[feathersfly]

you're not wrong. people stuck inside the ships if they go down would have a hard time getting out. but honestly, depending on how fast these airships might go down...it's possible that people who aren't right near an exit wouldn't have time to get out, whether gravity was cooperating with them or not. i don't know how high up these things are planning to cruise, but it can't be too high or the air'll be too thin and cold for anyone to be comfortable. and lower flight means less time to the ground.

[nastyboy]

[Sometimes, Dimitri regrets going for a position of leadership and responsibility, even when he doesn't have to. It's not doing great for his stress levels.]

We will be traveling over at least some body of water. Do you think some time would be able to be bought if we hit water instead of ground? It is a ship.

[feathersfly]

hard to say. depends on how hard we hit and how solid the ship is. it's likely it wouldn't immediately sink, no. but depending on any damage done to it, how long it'd hold up in the water might be variable.

that's a good thought, though. water pokémon that know surf wouldn't hurt to have on hand, too. though the impact of hitting the water might leave people seriously hurt if they're still on the ship when it happens, assuming it's survivable at all.

[nastyboy]

It almost sounds as though it might be simpler for someone to blast through the hull of the ship with a high powered move so that everyone could get out quicker.









I was not being serious there, but I am somewhat frustrated and would like an easy solution.