Encounter Group #2 Ballooners
 

Name: Ballooners
Geographical Location: Anywhere, often Westward bound.
H&M Average:12
H&M Range 3-16
Number found : 2-12 / Balloon
Tech Level: C
Power / Resources : Solar Power, some battery electric, gas / knowledge of terrain.
Weapons: Small bombs and light firearms, explosives.
Special Attributes: Often travel in flying "Cities" connected by ropes.

An airborne culture which comes to earth for food and supplies. They are known to raid, but are basically traders. They are always searching for more dependable ways of staying aloft, like a dependable (fusion?) power source

It is a nice Sci Fi sort of Group. I mean who doesn't like flying? The broad industrial base necessary to construct and maintain airships is large. Yes, hot air balloons came before internal combustion engines and Zeppelins are WW1 turn of the century technology. Those were the dark ages however.

Ballooners would be a one off kind of Group in my opinion operating something pre-War and barely held together.

So I would scratch this one off altogether except as a plot device to get the Team to follow or go somewhere. " Aye, the villain flew away in his great airship!"

In my MP world, I have Ballooners as a big clue that someone has reconstructed an industrial civilization

BUT

This civilization is a loose alliance of city-states AND it is not based on the continent of North America. Most members are in South Asia, but some are in South America, the Caribbean and North-West Europe (and New Zealand is being considered for membership). These economies have redeveloped to the point where trans-oceanic trade is profitable. Unfortunately, warfare is also a possibility and they would prefer not to fight over the valuable ruins of North America. Therefore, in order to exploit the salvage, they have developed an independent and international corps of Ballooners, who operate large dirigibles (which are named after American cities)

The modus operandi of the Ballooners is to "scout out" communities that their Trade Agents can deal with. The Ballooners themselves might exchange a few easily-portable goods - but the heavy stuff is dealt with by Agents who then contract with Truckers and River Traders for transportation to seaports. These seaports have large paramilitary bases and would be hugely useful in any attempt to reconstruct the USA, Canada, and Mexico. IF THE MORROW PROJECT COULD PERSUADE THEM TO HELP. Changing the Ballooner's objective would not be easy. Not only is there a strong (bureaucratic) inertia - but there is a lingering suspicion about the "people who blew up the world"

I don't know what got me thinking, but thought of a way to keep their balloons in the air if you allow psionic.. They could drift about looking for new people with pyrokinesis to enslave to heat the air with their talents. Plus the ones who serve willingly could go all Carrie on villages they plunder. This could make people scream in terror when the balloons appear on the horizon.

Tech level A

Spider bot repairs airship in flight.

Have you decided upon a common language for this coalition? Chinese? Hindi?

English would be the "second language" of most of the Federation. A useful way to communicate. However, Hindi, Mandarin and Spanish are likely to common.

In the book Virtual Light, a language developed that was a fusion of Esperanto and Japanese I think. The common language for the coalition could be something similar, like a fusion of Hindi and Mandarin. Put that linguistics specialization to use.

This has possibilties for the Atlantis Project too.

This has some real possibility of making Ballooners work.

https://www.ecowatch.com/floating-so...638980599.html

The Ballooners use solar power as both the 3rd and 4th edition state, generating methanol. Methanol can be converted to methane via both chemical and biological processes matching the 4th edition description. They not only have cities in the sky, but isolated solar islands to generate the lifting gases and other support they need in the sky, venturing out to scavenge or trade for other materials they need.

Note: If they used chemical processes to convert methanol to methane, they would also be generating hydrogen, a much better lifting gas than methane. No one ever said being a Ballooner was always safe.