History Headscratchers / TheCinderSpires

* (Throwing my 2¢ in.) "[T]he surface is uninhabitable[.]" Just because it's uninhabitable doesn't mean it can't be visited or mined. The Earth's ocean floor is uninhabitable by human, but it can be visited; oil is drilled from the floor, too. Now, given the Spires aren't shown to have "diving suits", we don't know exactly how close any ship can safely get, but I suspect there ''are'' ships that know how close they can get with a pulley system.

* (Throwing my 2¢ in.) "[I]the surface is uninhabitable[.]" Just because it's uninhabitable doesn't mean it can't be visited or mined. The Earth's ocean floor is uninhabitable by human, but it can be visited; oil is drilled from the floor, too. Now, given the Spires aren't shown to have "diving suits", we don't know exactly how close any ship can safely get, but I suspect there ''are'' ships that know how close they can get with a pulley system.

** In the authors other series possessing a magic system part of the rules state "you cannot defend against yourself" in the Dresden Files Series this is meant that if you lent somebody your power you make yourself open and vulnerable to them. Since WoG (aka WoJ) has hinted that possibility that all his stories are inside one multiverse the same rule may apply here and The Enemy has some magical connection/deal with the Silkweavers.

* So we can assume the trees are grown in the spire... But where do the copper and brass needed for everything (And the iron that they sometimes coat) come from, if the surface is inhabitable? Are the habbles all conveniently full of mines?

* So we can assume the trees are grown in the spire... But where do the copper and brass needed for everything (And the iron that they sometimes coat) come from, if the surface is inhabitable? Are the habs all conveniently full of mines?

** to support that, the Warriorborn who supports the Enemy's side is mentioned to be "spiderlike" and compared to the silkweavers at least once, unlike the other Warriorborn, who seem more like human-cat hybrids.

*** The problem with that is that if the power core goes then there's nothing to power the lift crystal and the ship drops like a rock. Similarly the small boats must have a small lift crystal of their own and therefore a small power core to power their steam engine. I think it's more likely that the steam engines are indeed powered by electricity and are intended as an alternative to the ethersilk webbing that are the primary form of propulsion, not as a completely independent system. As a side note, there is a mention of buoys that are a small lift crystal with a flag, so presumably smaller crystals can be produced relatively inexpensively, it's just the crystals large enough for full airships that are in short supply.

*** Probably this.

*** to support that, the Warriorborn who supports the Enemy's side is mentioned to be "spiderlike" and compared to the silkweavers at least once, unlike the other Warriorborn, who seem more like human-cat hybrids.

*** But it's specifically mentioned that steam engines are used in situations when you can't use energy from a power core, such as in the little boat they use to get from one ship to another in mid-flight. Besides, they do get electricity from the power cores and have at least some electricity-based technology. If it was just a matter of extending the use of power cores without cables, batteries would make more sense. And the steam engines of the great battleships are there as backup in case of power core failure. It's probably a RuleOfCool thing - there must be steam engines, otherwise it's not steampunk.
**** I'd assume they get it from the same place they get all that metal they seem to use. Alternatively, they could use etheric energy back in the Spire to synthesize fuel (or maybe even inside the larger airships), but still allowing significant advantages over pure electric batteries. If nothing else, going with the steam punk aesthetics, batteries might as well be vats of sulfuric acid and lead bars.
***** Vat-grown algae producing hydrocarbons for fuel is becoming a thing in real life. With this Universe's predilection for growing stuff in vats, they may have perfected the technique.

***** They could very well be using electricity to run steam engines. In our world, we use electrical motors, which we know are just a generator running backwards (there's a bit more to it, I know, but...) to get kinetic energy from electricity,. This universe, however, doesn't have generators, so it's entirely possible they don't have electric motors, and that the only way they can get kinetic energy from electricity is using said electricity to heat water to drive a piston. We know they can use electricity to boil water (Captain Grimm's fancy electric kettle) so...