/lit/ - Literature

>>13263140
The planes are practically power armor (although there is quite a bit or something else underneath the surface), yes, but they instill a sense of dominance and desire for destruction upon the wearer, kinda like making a sand castle and giving a plastic shovel to a kid and tell him "go on, let's see what you can do". But you're not given a plastic shovel and go ham on a sand castle, you're given a fucking jet fighter and the enemy castle, the same enemies you've been brainwashed or convinced to remove. Also, among the 3 disciplines of magic within the world, one of them deals in potions, occult concoctions, sorcerous substances, altering drugs. It's not impossible for a wearer to ingest large amounts of narcotics before taking flight.
In that sense, you can't reason or trick them, and they are seen as proper monsters. Not to mention, the very concept of operating one of these things is stuff of legends for most people. The average man doesn't think and doesn't know about such things, they hear a roar, a rush of sonic thunderclap, a destroyed city or town and a shiny flying 'thing' diving off into the distance, breaking clouds as it passes. Once you're in their sights, there's basically nothing else you can do except running for cover, but even that is almost impossible when they can cover more ground in an hour than you in a week.

The planes are also very taxing to maintain in proper function and even harder to actually just build one, as the technology is closely guarded. Even without the knowledge and blueprints, the technique is arcane in nature and quite metaphysical, and the resources alone are barely supported by nations, let alone just about any minor lord. With a single one of these things, one person is practically capable of kneeling the entire world, but there are countermeasures, of course.
Destroy the lines of assembly, attack the supply caravans, assassinate the engineers, burn the manuscripts, undermine the workers or plainly crash the economy of the ones paying for this shit.