This is winding up to be stupidly long, even though there are no characters or narrative. I'll post the first part here, then finalise the second to make sure I capture how I felt, experiencing Red Sepulchre for the first time (with a little dramatic embellishment, of course 
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TW: I am not the best writer. The infinite mesas and plateaus that pepper the landscape of the Red Sepulchre with an alien visage sit beneath your fleet as, with one hand grasped tightly at the helm, you thumb some of the dirt from your goggles, surveying what lies before you.
Possibly a misnomer, that a land so devoid of life would be colloquially known as The Womb or Teat, you ponder, sparing a brief and somewhat bittersweet thought towards the family that raised you. And yet, would it not be fitting that the rich ore seams that nurture the ships that bring death to innumerable sailors rest in a place that so readily brings images of aridity and decay?
Perhaps such philosophies are left to the thinkers of this generation. You were never much of a poet anyway. Such daydreaming has always exacerbated the already stressful life of the unaligned pilots.
The tension in the crew is palpable. Scouting squids had reported that you were not alone amongst the haphazardly formed cliff faces, but had little to no information other than that. That lack of detail came from a need for hasty retreat upon contact. Whoever lies in wait beyond the spiralling dust ahead is shifting an entire arsenal of dangerous weaponry on each deck, primed to hurl projectiles larger than your torso deep into the guts of your humble craft.
The hiss of steam and rhythmic inhale and exhale from the balloon’s pump provides a quiet, consistent background noise that enables such misplaced musings. As many would say:
“It’s quiet… Too quiet.”
You shake the mental imagery of your own, disintegrating ship from your head as you hear the thunderous engines of your friendly galleon cough several dregs of dust before firing up, the awesome heavy machinery signalling ignition to all allied ships. With a thumbs up from the engineers, you follow suit.
A steady advance; that was the plan. You squint through the near-translucent lenses over your eyes as you ease the throttle forwards, gripping the wheel tighter as if your finger strength could steady the behemoth beneath your feet.
Vibrations from the engines shaking in their mountings pulse in intensity while the pistons find their stride, eventually resting on that familiar rattle as the crew take post and the ship begins a cautious route ahead.
The dust cloud ahead must measure kilometres high and lord knows how far across. With the warm air hampering your lift and the surrounding cliffs blocking any form of flanking manoeuvre, the crawling line of ships is faced with but one option; a blind foray through the amorphous giant that sits between you and the enemy. Risky, but should the wind favour your approach, undetectable through the haze and dominating sound of shifting sands.
Upon teasing the border between open skies and dusty miasma, the deep growl of the nearby galleon recedes to make way for the sand’s constant hum as it enshrouds your ship, the tinny tink-tink-tink of your engines as they spit out the offending particles miraculously finding its way to your ears as well.
You are blind; deaf, blind and, as far as the other airships braving the cloud, mute as well. A stolen glance to either side reveals nothing but a wall of dancing brown and orange, no trace of the titanic craft that cast you in shadow, only a hundred metres to port. In fact, you can hardly see the engineers pass but a few feet away from you, tending to the spluttering engines, let alone see the brash gunner, who jealously guards his weaponry from the invasive airborne sediments furthest ahead.
At the heart of the cloud, only the most ambitious rays of light infiltrate the myriad above, and even those can barely provide but the faintest online to the helm but a few inches from your face. In this deep, even thousands of tonnes’ worth of flying sand creates only a background rumble. Every other sense is wired, and you battle your beating heart while checking the throttle; still angled forwards. You have to focus past the whirling dust, but you can make out the sound of relatively healthy propellers.
You should be moving forwards, but this deep, it is virtually impossible to tell will direction you are headed and how fast. It’s almost as if you are stationary in still winds, a strange, noise-filled silence. The silhouette of the gunner perches behind his field gun warily, shouting back the occasional “Clear!”
His voice is garbled by the threatening growl of the cloud, but by the way his shape keeps switching between scope and the naked eye, his itchy trigger finger may as well be shown as a glowing beacon above his head. Turning your head to the side, you see the engineers carefully monitoring the engines for any clogging damage. Yet, even in their stoic vigilance, they cannot help but peer over the guard railings into the swirling not-so-emptiness below. Even yourself, who has sailed out of range of a hostile galleon on broadside with only one working engine, who found their ship pinned to a mountainside skewered at the point of a pyramidion that you were certain was piloted by a captain that knew not a ship could be put in reverse, you who had done little more than grit your teeth in determination through all that, share the anxiety of your comrades. Regardless of the futility of it, you feel compelled to utter “Steady…” to the nervous deckhands around you.
The ship trudges on. Once or twice you think you may have seen the other ships in your fleet, but these ghosts do not hold their form as the dust dances. However, little by little, you see more of those ambitious sunrays piercing the looming ceiling above and get a feel for the engines as the strain lessens on their workings. The other side of the cloud is near, which could bring about anything. In a raspy voice, through a throat shredded by the dry air of the Womb, you call the crew to sentry positions and reposition your hands on the helm, eyes in hawk-like focus at the lightening dust ahead.
Should I bother with the next part? Sorry, if it's bad.
