- Requires: ✧ Intellect
- Origins: Kananite, Mazrian
- Start with: ✪ Pilot, a hot-air balloon
You know your way around a hot-air balloon. You can safely land a balloon in any skyharbor, you can secure the materials needed to operate it, and you know how to maintain and repair its components.
You start with the following ability:
✪ Pilot
✧ Intellect Take -1 awareness and roll Maneuver to move a hot-air balloon and all its cargo and passengers. ✦ 5+: The balloon floats 1 span or 1 height up or down. You can then take a free action (but you can’t take this action again). ⬖ 3–4: The balloon floats 1 span or 1 height up or down. ⓧ 1–2: You fail to move the balloon, which hovers in place.Ask the Guide:
What can I tell about that balloon's cargo and passengers?
On what trajectory can we get a good bird's eye view of this island?
Where's the safest place to land?
How Balloons Work
A hot-air balloon has a canvas envelope and a wicker gondola, with Toughness 1, Structure 16, and space for about 6 occupants and their cargo (which is generally tied to the outside of the gondola).
Hot-air balloons drift along the windcurrents of the Skysea, generally traveling the same languid circuits as floating islands. A balloon is slow and almost impossible to maneuver. But by carefully controlling a balloon’s ascent and descent, a skilled pilot can catch faster or slower windcurrents to change trajectory.
Rigging connects the gondola and the envelope to a central bronze brazier, in which wood from specially cultivated olive trees is burned. This olivewood, when burned, reacts with ambient Rephaim to produce a green flame, smokeless and more efficient at producing lift than normal fire. Most occupied islands in Tel-Kanan hold caches of olivewood, and the Mazrian Empire controls its distribution and trade.
Repairing a Balloon
You can repair a damaged balloon as a rest activity if you know this lore or the Crafting lore. Roll Maneuver and add the result to the balloon’s Structure (up to its max). If you also know Crafting, roll twice and use the higher result. An ally who knows either lore can also help as a rest activity, rolling Maneuver and adding it to your result.
The balloon must be anchored on the ground, however—unless you have a means to float near the airborne balloon while repairing it, such as a monster mount or a magical effect.
Your Balloon
If you start the game with this lore, choose the balloon envelope appearance, or roll on the table below.
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