Zeppelins Are Rad

Previous to the writing of this post, I had a fierce burning desire, like... um... I don't want to finish that simile. In any case. I had realized, There are no zeppelin posts on the Unterblag!, and I yearned to rectify this horrific lack. In my own opinion, though, my execution was, perhaps, excrable. (That is hyperbole but I really wanted to use that word.) Thus, this post exist: To attempt to correct the error.

Why are zeppelins awesome? This is why. They are big! Quite large. Gigantic-purpose-built hangar size. Being big grants you coolness points! So does being archaic - the road not taken, the other fork on the technological path. (The grass is always greener, etc., etc.) I can write about cars and planes for pages but it is a different sort of thing. The lure of the unchosen, as with autogyros (another reason for their inclusion), is a potent spirit - heady, like fine wine.

A gigantic part of my love for zeppelins, and that post, has to be credited to FASA's Crimson Skies; specifically, the great old PC incarnation, which introduced and rendered me enamored of it. (I bought the Xbox version recently, used, for $3. It was a fair deal. I have the quick-start rules for the board game, for reasons lost in the mists of time, but have done no more than read them. So it's basically just the game.) A lot of that shows in the post - the privateers/whatever operating out of a great big zeppelin, the autogyros, the ruined United States, that's all Crimson Skies.

There are some pretty big differences, though - and part of what annoyed me about that post is that I felt that I didn't articulate them clearly. If I recall, Crimson Skies is set somewhere between the 40s and the 60s in an alternate reality wherein the US collapsed after WWI. Its aeroplanes are fast, numerous, and generally around WWII in tech level. My post was implicitly set in the future, maybe fifty to a hundred years on. This is a future wherein things have gone rather wrong - not as wrong as they could go, as nuclear/biological warfare did not destroy everyone, and also, no meteors - but still rather a bit of a muck-up. Global warming, amplifying itself catastrophically, has raised the water level above everyone's worst estimates - somewhere from twentry to forty feet. Coastlines and small islands have vanished. Civilization is having a very nasty time of things. Fuel, in particular, is scarce - thus the rise of zeppelins and autogyros. Much slower, but much more fuel-efficient, the zeppelin is a powerful tool in a world increasingly engulfed in a rising tide of chaos. (Did you like that? I enjoyed that.) It is also a very large target.

Oh! Also, combat in that blagopost was very different from that in Crimson Skies. There was a reason but it was not a very good one. I do like Vulcan cannon, though, so it all works out.

Kelsey has requested illustrations, so there may be some later. I'm hoping I can replace my horrible old CRT with an LCD to-night, so that takes priority. Also: FE10 woo