Navigation Leagues

2 - 3 minute read

The Navigation Leagues are one of the factions of Aeroclysm

Their ships are Golden Age of Sail style, rigging and sails

• Corporate Army/Land/Ownership
• Killing people by stapling them to the sky (extravagant!)
• Flying Battleships
• Dreadnoughts
• Sending assassins as a sign of respect

History

For a long time, pilots would sell measurements freely to any geographer in a port, leading to a monopoly on maps within a port due to all geographers being essentially identically informed. This changed with the practice of paying pilots to NOT provide information to a rival geographer. Such fees were often in excess of what the pilot would get for simply selling the information, often leading to bidding wars for up-to-date information from the latest ship at port.

After some time of this, geographers began exchanging letters in an attempt to win bidding wars in other ports. It became clear that many pilots didn't actually enjoy the complex and laborious process of running between multiple geographers adjudicating a bidding war. Geographers started to offer not just payment for this information, but additional payment in the "next" port for those who went directly to their colleague. This not only significantly increased simplicity for the pilots, but the geographers found themselves significantly richer owing to not paying pilots who died en route to collect payment.

What followed was a system of certifications, stamps, signatures, and other methods that eventually became the modern Mandate. Pilots would declare that they would sell exclusively to a particular group of geographers if one was in a port where they docked. In return, they were given assessments to prove that their measurements were consistently accurate, leading to higher and more reliable pay. The groups that created these became known as "Legal Navigation Unions" but over time, the title shifted to Navigation Leagues.

Powers

While technically a navigation league is nothing more than a mercantile association, in actuality they have a significant amount of power to control things far outside that definition. The most-rumored power of the leagues is that they can "lose" an island, refusing to mark it on charts or release its information. Conspiracy theories claim that the leagues know so much more than they are letting on, and that the unexscinded maps contain secrets that could topple nations.

The theories are right.

Notable Leagues

• aeroclysm