Ship

Ships for traversing the land come in many sizes, classes, and means of locomotion. Their introduction to the world is relatively recent; although the Sehali have been using them for thousands of years, with turbines being adapted from the T'ikists, Humans have only spread their usage between Oases beginning with more hospitable relations between some Human and Sehali tribes some 400 years before termination.

Classes

Sloop

The smallest class of ship, first used by the Sehali to make single-man scouting expeditions into the desert faster and easier, although not necessarily safer. Sloops are driven by two true sails (a lateen mainsail and a jib) made of thick and heavy to withstand the high winds necessary to drive the craft. The craft itself is lightweight, built originally of wood but more commonly now of an iron-aluminum alloy, and is usually only large enough for a few crew. Sloops almost always travel on skids, and are best-suited to running quickly over the sand, although they have been known to gain considerable time in the air in particularly high winds. A complex ballast system is used in coordination with sails to keep the sloop from capsizing.

Sail-Brig

Sail-brigs are the largest ships to use true sails, and are differentiated from sloops by both the rigging and quantity of these sails, usually having four to six on two masts. Like sloops, they travel on skids, and are significantly slower and more stable. Sail-brigs are heavily restricted in regards to the direction and even the timing of their voyages, as they must specifically follow the path of a storm or risk slowing to a stop. Sail-brigs are an uncommon sight, but are still used to make low-cost journeys along jetstreams.

Cutter

Cutters are the smallest in the line of turbine-driven craft and are most often employed by pirates for interception due to their high manoeuvrability, second only to sloops (although trumping them heavily in safety and stability). They use a single turbine to directly drive a thin tread along the underside of the ship, with a rudder and, uniquely, a set of "wings" extending no more than two meters from the craft to allow it to make sharp turns. Cutters are usually somewhat larger than sloops, carrying at most thirty individuals in an armed vessel.

Tall Ship

The invention of the wind turbine revolutionized the nomadic Sehali way of life, as it allowed for ships to be built, in theory, infinitely large without inverting the ratio between weight and power produced by wind, making the craft immobile. It also allowed them to travel long distances over non-desert terrain, and so indirectly sparked the first overt conflicts between Sehali and other races. A tall ship refers to any ship driven by two or more masts set with wind turbines. These ships have decks shielded entirely from the elements and the largest ones can be crewed by and home to thousands of individuals. Unlike the cutter, they can not only be driven directly by the turbines, but energy can also be stored in springs or flywheels to power the rollers, which can number more than a dozen and are used to both move and steer the ship.

Steamship

These vessels are powered by coal or other fossil fuels to drive rollers. Due to the rarity of these materials, they are not typically very large or very common, and have largely been replaced by turbines. However, they are still built, particularly for excursions into valleys where the air is less turbulent.

The Deliverance

An immense and fast ship powered by a Generator. Like turbine ships, it runs on rollers. Only one such ship exists. It is a mobile Oasis, populated by some hundred thousand humans and likely built in cooperation with the T'ikists. Farms and ranches exist on the main deck, which is partially exposed, while its citizenship live, work, and trade on the lower decks.