Thrummer Sandships

The Golden Sea has grains of sand so fine that it behaves as if a liquid. Thrummer sandships propel themselves across the ocean of sand by using the power of wind. A windmill on the ship is used to drive a series of hammers to strike thrumming stones embedded into the sides of the ship. Once struck, the thrumming stones emanate a shockwave into the sand and the oscillatory activation of the thrumming stones down the length of the ship drives it through the sand. The spinner ships produce a characteristic triplet rhythm as they travel.

More expensive models use the bound spirit of an Earth elemental to coil a spring far more tightly than possible through mundane means and use the tension in the spring to drive the hammers.  The removal of the reliance on wind power makes for a faster ship, and the ability to increase speed at the cost of tension on the spring.

The thumping sound of thrumming stones attracts the attention of purple worms, so spinner ships arm themselves with harpoons as well as preparing oozes to throw onto the purple worm. If coated in an ooze the purple worm will dive into the sand to try and remove the sticky substance, buying enough time for the spinner ship to flee.