How do I eliminate air craft usage in my story?

Well I was thinking of more like magnetic noise in the sky. So like the higher you go, the worse navigation is and maybe you can make it so that water can nullify these affects (I'm hooked to the subnautical idea lmao).

You can probably couple this idea with the electromagnetism idea from above.

 

I'd not rule out technological limitation just yet.

Why not suppose that air travel was attempted but impractical due to fuel reasons? There are two advantages I can see with a boat: alternative locomotion and buoyancy.

If you run out of fuel in a plane, you're stuck gliding until you touch down. But a boat can be paddled or use the wind to move.

Or suppose that fuels like oil have not been refined into a manner that provides sufficient energy to overcome gravity. You can even add the complication that the energy produced from the consumption of fuel scales poorly, i.e., the fuel is too heavy to produce sufficient energy to lift the aircraft and its fuel reserves. At least with the ocean, you can have a vessel supported by its buoyancy (salt water is far, far more buoyant than air).

 

With nothing to go on technology wise, the best reasoning I can see is that while there may be technology, research on fuel refining is nowhere near the level necessary to burn efficiently enough for aircraft to cross the oceans, or something to that end. To that end, physically-powered craft are likewise unreasonable.

 

Last Exile anime, Grand Stream. Air currents so strong they would shake metal airships apart.

 

If you have multiple continents moving, it'd make it difficult for people to sail to the desired location. If the land is basically divvied up into 100km or less islands that are moving then that'd be even harder depending on the speed of the drift. That's what I was getting at.

For your question, electronics rely on electromagnetic waves to function. Even the human body relies on it. Electronics have an electromagnetic field and the human body has a biomagnetic field, each extend beyond the physical object and are what some see as auras. For electronics, that's why EMPs are deadly, they disrupt the field so much that it fries them.

In that previous post, I suggested having something in the atmosphere that either affects the electromagnetic fields of electronic devices directly or base it on the planet's poles that does it at a certain altitude. Both methods have some basis in physics. I am not knowledgeable enough to explain it, but Google has a lot of people who are.

 

Expanding on my idea of hard navigation in air. Why not make a new metallic substance for your world?

Something like a new metallic substance, which has a density lighter than the air in the atmosphere and has magnetic properties. You can make it so the particles themselves repel each other, which would make for some very interesting air turbulence, since they would be moved around by wind very easily. Perhaps you can also make it interfere with communication signals as well, which would make inter landmass communication much more unreliable. Something like it disperses waves when charged with electrical charge (i.e. lightning). Maybe this is too hard-core tho.

 

You could have an extremely advanced civilization living on floating islands or cities. The civilization causes some type of interference for flying so they are not discovered.
Wind Spirits become too destructive up high.
Wyverns / dragons
different laws of physics - The Magus of Genesis did that

 

Do you already have an explanation on why the land masses are moving? My idea is that after whatever happened that broke up the primodial land, all of the individual islands repulse each other. That's why they're always shifting directions randomly with some moving faster than others. It's because they're bouncing off each other like bumper cars. This invisible interaction between the islands greatly disrupts magic. Even ships may have to switch to mechanical propulsion to slowly breach an island's "barrier", as they leave one and as they approach another one. Perhaps this repulsion field causes chaotic storms, magical or natural (hurricanes, water spouts, wind shears, lightning, etc.) Ships would need to batten down their hatches, maybe even needing to go air tight in case they're forcefully submerged by the violent conditions. Thus flight between land masses is suicide.

Unfortunately, this idea still leaves the option of using air craft over land.

 

You can also say that the earth has constant earthquake and the magnetic field is very chaotic making it impossible to fly.

 

While electromagnetic interference is bad on compass and electronics. There are still work around. Like for compass you could always use celestial navigation. As to electronics an easy fix is going old school and don’t use electronics. I mean if I was going the EMP route I’ll probably use a frequent random geomagnetic storm idea.
Personally, as an out of the box idea. Why not eliminate the stars in general. Let’s say there’s a constant clouds cover between landmasses and everything above the clouds is darkness. The only light is above the landmass. The planes would in essence be flying blind. As to the ships at sea. Maybe stationary buoys with lights. Or go old school with dead reckoning. Or high tech and use sonar and radar.
Just a thought. Good luck

 

Nice idea, I actually don't really have a "why" to the constant movement or "teleportation" of the land masses. It's definitely something I'll think about. It makes the ocean all the more terrifying and dangerous which is something I want in my series.

Also thanks a lot to everyone who gave some ideas! This thread has given me a lot of inspiration and ideas for some things I might incorporate in my series.

 

Another thought: if the world is anything like our planet and you want it to infinitely expand, I think it would be interesting for the world to expand via lava generation. It would be something like the world expands, the crust tears open and lava spills out into the ocean which then forms a new landmass and repairs the tear in the crust. The only idea I don't have is how more water would be produce in the world (else the ocean would constantly shrink).

If the world expands this way, earthquakes and tsunamis would be a commonplace. The various landmasses could also have mountainous edges (as in, the land bordering the seas are mountains) which could be a viable limiter to inter landmass flight as well. Sounds like a turbulent world.

 

Woah how are you so full of amazing ideas?

Another person before had suggested that there would be constant chaos between the lands due to repulsion, so I was thinking of using that to add into the danger and disorder of the world by incorporating stuff like storms on the sea that result from that repulsion. This actually fits right in, and as for the ocean constantly shrinking, I'm not sure. But just the idea of the world infinitely expanding may be a bit contradictory, since it's kinda bordering on the creation of something from nothing, but perhaps I can work some sort of "input and output" system for how the world expands. Law of Conservation and all.

I'm still thinking of how to organize all the inspiration (Don't mind me if I steal someone's ideas ) I got from this thread.

There are a lot more details about this world, but it seems like it's becoming more and more turbulent by the second.

 

I've just seen this thread, and will thus give my two cents to the initial question. The most common answer to this question that I've seen is "air-based travel attracts the attention of animals that destroy the technology that utilises it". But that doesn't actually prevent all air-based travel, especially if there's flying creatures notably larger than the MC's race (which I'll just assume are humans), because of the possibility of riding said creatures. So it potentially gives a (poor) explanation as to why flying technology doesn't work, but riding animals that can already fly can work.

So my answer is to incorporate the fact that you have the landmasses moving into why you can't have anything flying too high, or to far from land. You can do this in several ways, but the simplest is to have each landmass produce a magical field that keeps the landmass together, and ensures that it moves together. If you get too far from the land, you don't have anywhere to land anymore. If you try to travel between landmasses, you either rapidly run out of power, due to not having the support of the land's magical field, or you're negatively affected by the "chaotic" magical fields of the ocean, that shift, sway, and twist on themselves akin to how the ocean's water currents do. If you DO reach a new landmass with a flying device, the magical field projected by the new landmass doesn't match what the engines and flight systems require, causing the machine to practically need to be taken to pieces and rebuilt to allow access the energy of the local mana field to power and operate the flying device in question. As for living animals, they can only fly if their ability to fly is wholly biological. So birds can fly, giant bird-people who don't actually have the strength or wingspan to lift their body with their wings can't.

 

Honestly, if the landmasses are constantly moving ... I would rather be on a ship than a plane and no place to land.

 

That's an interesting concept, magic is localized to the land masses. Thus the further you are from your island, the weaker your magic gets until it's just gone. This applies vertically too, so while you can fly, there's a natural restriction to your altitude and the amount you can lift. Boats still float after they lose their magic and you can use some sort of energy crystal thingy that are good enough to power propulsion. So with this, you don't even need chaotic storms in between islands. The islands just need to be far away from each other.

If you add in that each land mass has a unique affinity (to something) such that the inhabitants need to learn to attune themselves to it before they can properly utilize the magic, that can open up a lot for you to expand on storywise.

 

I think the fact that ships can be used for landing spaces have to be taken into account, kinda like aircraft carriers.

All these ideas are just for you . Instead of an infinitely expanding world, how about that the world expands and contracts at a certain pace? That way, a every couple decades there will be a "high tide" and a "low tide" in the ocean, as well as certain places that are created and destroyed or covered in ocean every so often. While the world is contracting, some of the landmasses could be destroyed which would result is a viable reason for people to move to the seas in search of a new home (and here arises the conquerors of new landmasses as well as conflicts in between inhabitants of said landmasses). This can also be a limiter on technology, depending on how large your world is and how many of those landmasses are destroyed (you can't realistically progress that fast when your home is destroyed).

This would also be interesting for an underwater mountainous civilization, which lives inside of an underwater mountain. Every "low tide" the mountain would surface, bringing more air into the mountain system and when "high tide" comes, the air inside the mountain would essentially be trapped in by the water. It's basically a giant bubble under seas. They would struggle to ration oxygen until the next "low tide" and also maybe have a way to get out into the ocean for subnautical exploration.

Another idea is that your world is technically still in "infant stage" (even though it might not be for those inhabiting the world) thus is still expanding to a certain size (this would explain expansion). I wonder how pressurized magma can become? Is there such thing as supercritical magma I wonder?

 

The thing with people living underwater, that was actually already one of my plans for the story! Not with that specific reasoning though. And one of my plots for the first arc actually involves a "dying land" and people kinda have to struggle to escape and find a new home. I was actually inspired from the constant earthquakes and tsunamis that haunt Japan.

So this theory really fits in really well.

Also, as for subnautical exploration, that's also something I'm still working on. I mean even with our oceans, there is so much that is left unexplored in the deep ocean floors. So for a world which is infinite or still expanding, the ocean really holds a lot of prehistoric dangerous creatures as well a whole ton of other stuff. So the ocean holds a lot of potential in the story. (Also taking into account the natural disasters that will result like storms etc..)

It's really nice getting different perspectives on stuff like this because none of the people around me are interested in fantasy or stories like this.

Honestly, that's a really neat idea. But with my world, there would be a few issues that prevent something like that from happening. Mana or magical energy in the conventional fantasy like form doesn't exist. Majority of the world not only do not have much access to the "magical energy" that does exist in my world, but it also cannot be harvested for external usage like powering aircrafts, islands, or any type of article that requires some sort of energy to do work. Basically, it can't be used to externally generate. Also, when I say the landmasses are moving, all the different landmasses move randomly and independently.

 

It sounds like a dangerous, dangerous world. I see the potential of your story becoming super long with how complex your world is becoming. Any plans on religions? Something like worshipping the world because it "breaths" and grows.

 

Yeah, it's pretty dangerous . There are specific people in my story that can "travel" from land to land almost like teleporting but that of course comes with a ton of limitations/ specific rules and there are a lot of times they have to physically cross the seas as well. It's lot of downsides to it as well, as if they're not careful they end up being stranded in some random part of the ocean. However, I'm actually planning on focusing a lot on "normal people" through out the story as well. I have two MCs, and they both start out as normal kids trying to survive in this world.

As for religion, yeah I already have something planned out. Religion is pretty subtle (it's not going to brought up explicitly too much) through out the story, but basically people in this world are all born with a basic and instinctual knowledge of the existence of "God" and the simple act of worship. As people grow older though, people tend to forget about this or gradually place less importance on it, as it's kind of like an instinct they're born with. There's also the last book of "God" left, but again it's very vague and barely mentioned. Nothing too serious but instead it's going to be very philosophical/emotional whenever religion is hinted at. I'm not really planning anything like the typical "religious organizations" that are evil, political, or wage wars I guess. Also, since everyone is born with this instinctual knowledge, aside from a few differences in schools of thought, everyone essentially follows the same religion, whether they practice it or not. Kinda a way to keep people together in an infinite and independent world. (Same with language ^.^)

There is so much to this story that I have planned out and many more elements that I have no idea how long this story will turn out. Especially since the two MCs start out as children and eventually grow up with the story. (Inspiration from HxH except Gon and Killua...well...you know.) I'm kinda planning on it for being like a universe with many stories in it I guess.