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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ivocaliban" data-source="post: 1766802" data-attributes="member: 17596">Not long after D&D 3.0 hit the stands I started a campaign set in a heavily modified version of Greyhawk. At the request of my players I had to find a way to introduce airships to the campaign. My only experience with using airships in an RPG came from the '93 D&D boxed set Champions of Mystara, but that had long since left my possession and, for the most part, my memory. The one thing I wanted to avoid with airships was the idea of making them commonplace. If they were going to exist they would come from the time before the war which destroyed the Suel and Baklunish nations west of the Flanaess. In fact, the devices even went some way towards triggering the Great Cataclysm. In this alternate Greyhawk, a group of individuals living on the Suel/Baklunish border set about to create three flying ships for the essential purpose of escaping east over the mountains. The group included Baklunish and Suel refugees along with a small group of Dwarven and Gnomish craftsmen and one historically significant elven mystic. Together they created the devices known as windtreaders, flying ships powered by meticulously-carved gemstones. The idea was simply to allow those who wanted no part in the growing hostilities of the Baklunish and Suel a way to escape the death and destruction which seemed otherwise unavoidable. However, one young Suel, trained to be captain of one of the vessels was so enraged that his own people were the cause of the troubles (again, this is how things occurred in my version of Greyhawk, that the Suel were attempting to absorb the Baklunish lands and wipe out the Baklunish people), that he felt the windtreaders should be used to aid the Baklunish. The elven mystic in charge explained that in order for this to work properly that all involved must remain neutral in the war and that if the Suel held other beliefs then he should leave immediately. That night the Suel did just that, but he took one of the ships with him along with a number of crew members who agreed with him. Unfortunately, the Suel had recently discovered the secret enclave, but they were uncertain as to what (and who) the ships were being constructed for. As none of the Suel had any knowledge of those involved, they assumed the windtreaders to be weapons of the Baklunish. So, the Suel had gathered together a sizeable force to march north and seize the vessels for themselves. When the brash young pilot lifted his windtreader into the sky, the Suel forces believed they had been discovered and were about to come under attack. Obviously, the war between the Suel and the Baklunish had gone on for sometime now. The Suel had a contingency plan, of course. Having suspected that the Baklunish might have more of these flying ships being built further north, they called forth the Invoked Devastation which utterly obliterated the Baklunish lands. With the exception of what happened to the windtreaders and those responsible for their construction, the rest of Greyhawk's history remains pretty much unchanged.As for what happened to the three windtreaders and their crews? The young pilot hoping to do a good deed had certainly spotted the oncoming Suel forces and, despite his recent "theft" of the ship, attempted to signal the others below. He realized at that moment that he had bitten off more than he could chew, and, while he had no way of knowing his ascent would soon trigger the very thing which the windtreader engineers had hoped to avoid by building the flying ships in the first place, he knew he must help those below. After a brief communication with the elf below, who did not seem surprised or upset at the young human's actions, they managed to work together in order to escape the oncoming Suel. All of the vessels were damaged by magic hurled from the earth below, but they slipped over the mountains by the break of day, just as the Invoked Devastation came down on the northern lands of the Baklunish. Soon after the Baklunish would respond with a counter-assault known as The Rain of Colourless Fire. The west was a wasteland.The elf then decided that the three vessels must go their separate ways and that, once the crew of each windtreader found a suitable home, the ships would be hidden away. He had reasoned that they sighting of the windtreader was probably the catalyst for the Suel's magical assault, but he was also quite convinced that it could not have been avoided, merely prolonged.Each windtreader then went in a different direction. One, captained by a Baklunish man, sailed far into the east, ending up in what would someday be The Great Kingdom. Second, still lead by the young Suel, remained in the west, disheartened by all that had come about. Third, the greatest ship of all captained by the mysterious elf which lead the party went north, ending up on an island in the Nyr Dyv. In time, the windtreaders, like much of what happened in the west, was forgotten. Although legends persisted and many sought them out, nearly a thousand years went by before the windtreaders resurfaced. But, while a thousand years is a long time indeed for Man, it is only a few generations for other races. And, in a few families the knowledge of the windtreaders has been passed down from parent to child in a form far more solid than mere myth...Wow, that was a mouthful, but I felt it was necessary for the second part of this thread which will be the actual Windtreader Engineer Prestige Class I've been working on for the past few (sad to say) years. I've been DMing for a long while, but creating PrCs has never been something I've attempted with this one exception. With so many to chose from it's hard to justify creating more prestige classes, at times, but this one is absolutely necessary for my campaign. Unfortunately, you'll get to see the many problems I've run into during it's creation. I'll give more details in Part 2. Thanks for hanging in there if you managed to read through all of this!</blockquote>

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