Context

The world is made of floating islands suspended in the atmosphere. For all intents and purposes, the world doesn't have a solid surface.

Due to a magical influence, islands rise from the core of the planet into the outer atmosphere and then fall back into the core in a cycle that takes thousands of years. So islands move vertically albeit very slowly.

Due to a lack of a strong enough magical influence, all but the largest islands (Ireland-sized and above) will drift in the horizontal plane under the influence of the wind. If the wind is strong enough, it may be able to push smaller islands up or down.

The world is about twice the size of earth, that combined with the technology level means that people haven't traveled around the world and haven't discovered most inhabitable land-masses.

Because of the way islands work, they can be 'tied' together to prevent drifting, but this isn't commonplace and is only done on islands that are very close together due to the difficulty of such practice.

Also consider that vertical distances are substantially larger than those found on the Earth, since the temperature and pressure gradients in this world are much less pronounced.

Question

How would the people in the world go about mapping, charting or otherwise have a consistent means of navigating the airs with airplanes and airships?

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posted almost 8 years ago

Miguel Bartelsman‭

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