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UfoEngine

Observations by Naeko, Fredorig, Toma and Dasher

The basic principle of operation of the Enemy flying machines has been long divined -- a large airscrew spins counter to the machine itself, granting flight by the same principle that samara seeds use to float away from their tree.

What was not known until recently is just how high these machines can fly. As most practictioners of the arcane arts know, there is an upper limit to where magic can reach, twenty miles or so above the surface of the world -- or a little below the summit of the World-Mountain. Whether this gossamer net is natural or comes from ancient or divine artifice is as yet unknown, but its gradual nature tends to lead to the first hypothesis.

Enemy ships, while magically propelled, are able to move past this invisible barrier by a combination of two artifices, the devising of which must have taken a great mind but the execution of which is literally simple enough that protobolds can effect it.

Whatever mundane force imparts levity to massive objects and creatures, be it gas bags or flapping wings or the swirl of an airscrew, loses its potency the further up one travels; a simple test involving a harpy (Sorry, Scoots!) showed that this is due to the thinning of the air rather than its cooling. For now this seems to be unrelated to the magic barrier. The Enemy ships that return to their home port circumvent both problems by sheer muscle; during ascent the airscrew is spun at maximum power. When the air is too thin for the airscrew to find purchase, the flying machine's crew ignite some mechanism by which a quantity of dragonfire is lit underneath the spinning contraption. Our opinions are mixed on whether the burning dragonfire's smoke takes the place of the air, allowing the screw to continue working, or the dragonfire itself lends some of the legendary high-flying properties of metallic dragons to the machine.

So boosted, the machine presumably comes to a hard landing to wherever the Enemy's home base is, its relatively soft body cushioning the crew, loot, and essential motive parts. This agrees with the idea that the saucers are basically disposable, save for the central shaft -- which was the only part that was armored.

Absence of Enemy activity has allowed us to perform more testing (Dasher, you're NOT doing that again, you almost died, no matter how awesome the boom at the end was) to determine that this ability to give a boost pushing against air can be replicated, in much weaker form, by our own rockets. We do not yet know if this effect is true in thin air as it is closer to the ground.

We currently do not know if the Enemy base is on the summit of the World-Mountain, on the Iron Star, or both; the trajectories observed are compatible with both, and Enemy flying objects always tend to return when the two are close to each other.