Land Vehicles

Most travel across Endros still relies on carriages, caravans, and mounts, but Aethertech has produced a range of remarkable land vehicles wherever the right Aether is present. Magtrains connect cities through underground tunnels, Earth Aether carries vehicles across rocky and subterranean terrain, and a few exceptional machines have earned reputations of their own.

Magtrain

Magtrains are the fastest and most important form of land travel in Endros, carrying passengers and cargo along magtracks through underground tunnels at average speeds of 65 to 95 km/h. Stoneway Authority operates the Onyx Magtrain Network, which connects Onyx with Titania, Stormcrest, Hearth, and other linked cities, while local lines run beneath most major settlements through their Underwards.

The Velvet Line

The Velvet Line is Stoneway Authority's luxury service, consisting of elegant carriages coupled ahead of the ordinary passenger cars on the network's major routes. Each carriage offers private suites, fine dining, and observation windows that open onto the grand halls and caverns along the route. Since Velvet carriages travel with regular trains rather than on a separate schedule, wealthy passengers can usually find one available on whichever train they board.

The War Train

The War Train is an armored Magtrain operated by the Titan Order along the Wall Line, which runs behind the Great Wall from North Harbor to Seafang. It carries a full garrison along with weapons, supplies, and medical crews, shuttling back and forth between Northstar, the bastions, Titania, and Southstar. Troops disembark at stations along the Wall and take their positions from there.

Demonic forces are usually spotted long before they reach the Wall, so its garrisons are rarely caught unprepared. The War Train's value lies in shifting strength wherever pressure builds: reinforcing a section under heavy assault, moving reserves as an attack shifts along the Wall, and carrying supplies forward and the wounded back. It allows Titania to respond to threats along the entire Wall within minutes, a capability the demonic forces have never found a way to overcome.

Spider Tank

Spider Tanks are 8-foot or 12-foot vehicles built by Wildrun Co. around an enchanted wooden frame that moves like a spider. Pilots form a symbiotic Nature link with the tank, which is fast, quiet, extremely durable, and capable of self-repair in Nature-rich environments. Only eight exist: five 8-foot models and three 12-foot models, with two stationed in Sanctum, three in Haven, and three in Riven. Elite Spider Pilots operate them in teams of four, two per tank, so they can hunt demons within their territories around the clock.

Sandglider

Sandglider is a massive cargo barge that levitates across the desert dunes surrounding Hearth, drawing on the Earth Aether present in sand and stone. It carries entire caravans worth of goods and passengers across terrain where roads cannot be maintained, serving desert settlements that lie beyond the reach of the Magtrain tunnels. Its crews must read the desert carefully, as Sol Storms and shifting dunes can make its routes dangerous.

Strider

Strider is a colossal walking fortress built by Auracore Industries and operated by Haven in the Darklands. Since natural Aether is weak or corrupted in the Shadowlands, Strider is powered entirely by the Chi of its crew, allowing it to function anywhere. Its operators are drawn from Haven's strongest warriors, and serving aboard it is considered an elite posting.

Strider is armed with heavy weaponry and designed to establish and hold forward positions during major assaults against demonic strongholds. It is slow and enormous, and is deployed only for significant offensives. Its walking design was informed by surviving records of the Roaming Tower, making it in some sense the fulfillment of what Aedron's ancient prototype was meant to be.

Old Gnaw

Old Gnaw is an enormous tunnel-boring machine with a crystal-toothed grinding head and heavy treads, built by Aedron, God of Crafting, and Dwarven artisans shortly after the founding of Onyx. It was one of the earliest major works of Earth Aethertech, and carved out much of Onyx itself over the following centuries. It later excavated stone for the Great Wall, and the lessons of its design shaped the boring machines that dug the Magtrain tunnels and Underwards. Still maintained by Dwarven engineers, Old Gnaw is regarded as one of the most important vehicles in the history of Endros.

Maiden's Coach

The Maiden's Coach is an elegant enclosed carriage used by the House of Maidens, drawn by a pair of Sweetums. Its exterior enchantments shift its colors to match the Regalia of the Maiden it carries, allowing onlookers to recognize which Maiden has arrived. Its interior is enchanted for comfort, privacy, and silence, allowing negotiations and confidential discussions to continue while traveling. Several major cities maintain a Maiden's Coach, and Skywood keeps three.

The Roaming Tower

The Roaming Tower, originally known as the Elderstride, was the last and largest of Aedron's prototype vehicles, created with the help of druids to build a fortress that could cross any terrain. Its frame was grown from enchanted wood around a core of stone and metal, and it walks on six massive limbs that root themselves into the ground whenever it stops. The tower was meant to be a step toward flight, but its weight made that impossible, and it served for decades afterward as a mobile stronghold.

The tower was lost during the Calamity when the kingdom that held it fell to the spreading Shadowlands. Some Merfolk expeditions to that continent claim to have seen it moving through the Shadowlands, its living frame twisted and blackened by Miasma, but little of this has been confirmed, and many dismiss the sightings as superstition.