Aerial Torpedos



Electroid lifting requires heavy metal tanks to hold electroid, heavy coal-fired boilers to generate power, heavy alternators and generators to turn that steam power into electricity. That was one of the key rationales in building Leviathans in ship-type hulls – most of the preparatory engineering existed in situ, as it were. There aren’t at this stage any ‘small’ lifting setups - the lightest are sky destroyers, weighing several hundreds of tons at their low end.

There is one ‘small’ form of lifting equipment – the aerial torpedo. These are cumbersome, intricate and troublesome devices. They use (highly combustable) liquid fuels like paraffin for compactness to run open-cycle steam engines – built lighter, but without any form of steam recovery. They’re also not capable of running for more than a few minutes anyway before failing mechanically, but this isn’t seen as a problem given a working lifetime of a few minutes.