The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 461: Rill’s Opinion

Rill stared at the model and the wall full of blueprints in the airship factory. When they had called him over to discuss their plans, he had thought that they wanted to talk business, perhaps secure funding or a purchase agreement for the first few airships that would come out of the factory.

But what he found was nothing of the sort.

They had designed airships specifically with the needs of caravan operators in mind, and they had even added features that would make them easier to load and unload.

Of all the things that he had expected, modifications specifically for the safety and comfort of ground crew and cargo dockworkers were not high on the list.

"Honestly, you’ve included things that I wouldn’t have even thought to ask for. Ground crews are just low wage workers, they do the job they’re told to, and nobody really thinks about how to make it easier on them unless it affects unloading time.

But this airship design, it’s got nearly everything that one could ask for.

The only thing that I can think is that it might be nice to have a whole wall open up, for loading very large or awkward objects." Rill noted.

The dwarves stared at the sketches for a moment, then nodded.

"We can put the panels on with cam locks. Or we can make the whole section modular, and you can preload a container and lock it to the airship, for quick turnaround." Gully offered.

"Preloaded container?"

Gully nodded. "You’ll need to adjust the ballast position and levels based on how heavy it is, but we can make these sections nothing but top locks, and then sell you containers that can be secured to the airship.

Then, you just need to put them in position and lock them. No need to unload and reload the airship that day at all, just swap the cargo hold."

"Why does this sound suspiciously like a smuggling operation?"

Dominic and Gully shared a guilty look, and then shrugged.

"Well, it’s practical. Just ignore the little details. If you know the mounting point sizes, you can make oversized containers for specialty cargo."

"When you put it that way, it sounds much less sketchy. But we can discuss that later. The depots are all set up to load a standard cargo hold in a trailer. The solid design is perfect for that.

When it comes time that someone needs a specialized cargo hold, they can custom order the airship directly from you.

It will be easier than asking everyone to learn new loading patterns and practices." Rill decided.

Dominic nodded. "Alright, then we will get started on a full-scale prototype of this airship design. If there are no issues with the build, or the materials supply, we should have it ready in..."

He trailed off, and everyone else shrugged. There was no telling how long it would take to get everything fine-tuned after it was actually built.

"Well, we are going to have it built eventually."

Rill just shrugged. "I trust you. I can see that there has been a huge amount of progress already, and there are designs for all the magitech orbs you said that you would need, so it’s only a matter of finding all the materials and making the airship itself.

Is there anything that you can’t make with magic?"

Gully nodded. "We are most likely going to need silk. I don’t have a spell to make silk, but I do have one to make linen, if we can get someone with strong enough nature magic affinity.

The rubber I can make with nature magic as well, so it’s possible that we can do it all here, but we might need an entire cargo trailer full of low-grade silk."

Rill whistled in appreciation. "Even if you use the cheapest of silk, that will be expensive. But, that’s how it is with airships. The raw materials make them expensive enough that nobody outside the Royal Families could just own one for pleasure."

Dominic nodded. "Well, we can work on that after the first batch is made. There are only so many ways to properly contain helium, and rubberized cloth is the most well-known one.

If we switch it up too wildly, nobody will be able to repair it if the airship should get damaged. It’s not like a hot air balloon, which you can patch with nearly anything."

The merchant laughed at the thought. Magitech powered hot air balloons were quite popular as noble passenger transports, but they would never have the ability to hold enough weight to make them practical for cargo.

Well, not without significant magical assistance. Rill knew that many of the so-called luxury flights between Noble estates were actually a cover to move contraband items hidden within storage rings.

That sort of thing was inevitable, even during the days when they had to make excuses for a week-long trip by horse.

"I will talk to the trolls, and the weaver. I know that we’ve been making a lot of linen cloth in town, as we have so much flax growing. The trolls will be able to help with any relevant nature magic, and the weaver should be able to supply us with the basic cloth.

It might take some time to get enough for an entire airship, but we can worry about that later. I’m sure he will be happy to get a major customer for bulk materials." Dominic suggested.

"I wouldn’t be so sure about that. He’s already swamped with requests for making winter clothing." Rill reminded him.

"Right. It’s not just good for rubberized containment, it’s also easy to waterproof. I should have remembered that.

In that case, order us an entire truck load of cheap linen. It won’t set us back as much as the usual silk will, and I think that we can deal with the extra weight, right?"

Gully made a noncommittal gesture and Dominic frowned.

"Is there something that I’m missing?"

"Cheap silk is thin and light, but not as smooth as good gossamer silk. Cheap linen is coarse and rough. Much heavier than what we want."

"Alright, order silk. Not trash, good enough to not have major flaws. We will take a truck load." Dominic relented.

"You would think that the payment was coming out of your own pocket." One of the engineers joked, then paused.

He had forgotten for a moment that Dominic was the local Duke. The payment really was coming out of his pocket, and a whole truck load of silk was not a common sort of order.