Airship

"Grimnoir used dirigibles because I wanted to have cool dirigible fights. That was it. However, then I had to tweak the rules in a way so that their use made sense and felt organic and true to the world. I had to look at why they lost to heavier than air craft in real life, and then add something which would have kept them competitive."

– Larry Correia

Airship refers to two types of flying machine, both popular in fantasy works.

In the real world, an Airship is a lighter than air vehicle that can propel itself with some kind of force, typically a propeller. Since the World Wars, when heavier than air flying machines really took off and the Hindenburg Disaster, which scared people off further developing them, their only practical use has been their virtually non-existant minimum speed that allows them to see and be seen for long periods of time. Since they were only used for a relatively short period of time and look pretty cool (while making pretty explosions), Urban Fantasy loves using them to demonstrate a work is set in the first half of the twentieth century, and/or alternate history where the airship lasted longer.

In high fantasy, an Airship is a sailing ship that, instead of (or in addition to) sailing, flies by magic or quasi-magical science. Since making something and non-aerodynamic fly is blatantly implausable, it’s typically a mark of a civilization that is highly advanced magically.

Final Fantasy

While it’s a video game, Final Fantasy is getting noted here because its depiction of fantasy airships is a major influence on how virtually anything depicts them. Looking like a normal, wooden, sailing ship with propellers, and in many games actually being upgraded from such ships, these vessels are in most games exceptionally rare artifacts from ancient civilizations or recently constructed masterpieces by the local mad scientists. They are typically obtained by the party during the mid-game and allows nearly free travel of the world map, with few obstacles able to stop it.

Eberron

Eberron’s airships take elements of both types, with the aesthetics of high fantasy airships (befitting of Eberron’s possessing “wide magic” to the point it’s a science), but serving much the same role as an urban fantasy airship (befitting of Eberron’s interwar influences). Constructed of soarwood, a “naturally” lighter than air wood, and propelled by a bound elemental, they were created during the last part of the Last War (less than 10 years before the standard starting point) by House Lyrandar with the aid of Zilargo’s elemental binders. The bound elemental requires the captain have the Mark of Storm, which almost entirely limits them to being controlled by Lyrandar, and while foundlings and excoriates exist, they’re still built exclusively by Lyrandar.

The existence of airships is quite a concern to House Orien, as it threatens their monopoly on travel that their Mark of Passage has ensured them till relatively recently. To deal with this, they’ve been making greater research into reducing the cost of teleporation and making airships that don’t require elemental binding (or, at least, will work for the Mark of Passage like the Lightning Rail does). An obscure web-article actually confirms the possibility of making airships that will work for anyone, as it includes one that is an artifact of the long lost giant civilization.

Forgotten Realms

Halruaan Skyships are a magical wonder created by the Halruaan. Like any other useful object in Toril, despite their method of creation being now widely known, they don't actually have any effect on the world despite just being magic items any sufficiently powerful wizard could make and several governments are described as having commissioned.

Pathfinder

Airships are given stats in Ultimate Combat. They’re essentially a giant hot air balloon, that’s lighter than air via alchemy, with a wooden platform attached under it. They can carry 30 tons of cargo (compared to the 50 tons of a viking longship and 150 of a proper sailing ship).

Airships would later appeared in one module set in Alkenstar (a land where magic is fucked up and technology is higher to compensate, but their existence there is pure window dressing and only serves to describe how the PCs get from point a to b with no encounters and gives no details on them, though the presence of dedicated docks for them indicates they’re at least reasonably known within the country itself. The setting already established that Alkenstar is very jealous of its guns and its agents seek to destroy foundries elsewhere, so there’s at least an excuse for why these aren’t elsewhere.

An airship tileset has been released, based on the description from Ultimate Combat. The only official use of it has been some organized play scenarios set on the elemental plane of air, which imply the ships used are a different kind of vessel that only works on that plane.