World Building Part 2: Airships, What Do They Eat?

Here we move forward with building this fantasy world I started just a bit ago. If you want to know what was done, here is the previous post:

Part 1 Initial Arbitrary Idea

SO yesterday I laid out the basics of the setting and spun some ideas off into interesting directions. Now I am going to dig into one of those ideas in a bit more detail. That idea is Airships, my friends. Airships are the future, and don't you forget it. So what kind of world would make airships viable. I want them to be pretty central to the setting so they need to be pretty common. So lets do some brainstorming. I will just be spitting out the ideas as the come to me...or for me?

Perhaps their are massive mountains and canyons that halt all long distance travel by land or river. Most folks would then live in valleys and mountainsides. I could also see a bunch of floating islands in the sky, or the world is set in a ring of asteroids and stuff around a gas giant.

I have seen a lot of the sky island type of settings, so I am leaning away from that type for now. I really do like the ring of asteroids idea, but I am leaning toward the mountains and canyons thing. Perhaps I will add the ring of asteroids with livable terrain into the setting. So instead of a moon their is a ring of asteroids that hold atmospheres and have life on them and such.

So we have rough terrain everywhere, with mountains, plateaus, and canyons blocking off long distance travel. Most people live in the valleys or canyon walls(I really love the cool cities built into the walls of a canyon).The rivers are fast moving and dangerous on a regular enough basis that water travel is not optimal for long distance travel. Perhaps there are few oceans and most water is in rivers and small lakes spread across the whole land. Maybe the only ocean is the center of the water elemental...center/nexus/focus/spirit? Because of its magical nature the ocean is very treacherous. All water stems from that ocean. Ooh, here is a thought the water of the world is all fresh water due to its magical nature.

So we have a world that needs airships for long distance travel, and we even have cool places to explore that would require airships to get to(the asteroid ring). So now we need to figure out how these airships work. The first thing that comes to mind is the magical elements of the world crystallize or somehow solidify and can be used to do odd magical effects. Air element crystals can be used to give a ship neutral buoyancy in the air. The ship needs to provide its on propulsion and direction. So you would get sails and propellers and all that. Also I could see harnessing birds to pull ships(so the sprites can use their flamingo mounts to pull their airships). I would also like for the ship to have some really weird or esoteric means of propulsion, but I don't have any ideas for that right at the moment, so if you have any really cool ideas pleas suggest them.

due to the need for propulsion I thin that either the Njan or the Humans would probably have built the airships first. Due to the idea that humans are everywhere I think that I will go with humans inventing the airships and using those to go everywhere. The Njan have the expertise in technology, so their airships are probably all masterpieces of design, efficient and impressive, but they don't have enough of them as they never came up with them on their own. The sprites(who I have yet to name, but am stuck between Bit-Bit and Flamin-gelves. Let me know what you think) had the ability to ride on their flamingos ot go places. The Fa-Chia can fly on their own, so airships just never occurred to them. Now that humans have spread the technology around, though both of those species are excellent airship makers.

Now that we know that people live in valleys and that the magic of the elements materializes a bit we can begin working on a few other thoughts. Like what do they eat. Well there are monsters everywhere, so I think that monster meat is probably pretty popular. Also you could probably get the elemental magic material of wood to grow things in confined spaces. Also we could get loads of terraces for farming on the mountain sides and such. Perhaps their cities grow up and down rather than out, so the cities are filled with tunnels and towers. The sprites probably live within the trees by shaping them into living houses. Also with the materializing of the various elemental magics you could get the Fa-Chia wind wizards building castles out of clouds, and even airships from the clouds. Their instinct for the sky allows them to do things with air magic the other species would view as impossible.

So that is the basics of airships and how that helps shape the setting. I would love to here your thoughts on it. Comments, critiques, and questions are all welcome.  If you would like to help me name the sprites please let me know what name I should go with, or if you have some really spiffy ideas for airship propulsion methods also let me know. Moving forward I think I will probably move to either monsters or the thinking species of the setting. Perhaps I should also come up with a name for the world I am building, but as of right now I can't think up anything that sounds right. Ideas would be welcome.