The Campaign Builder's Guild

Argenostro is the working title of this setting. It is a mixture of renaissance, medieval, fantasy and political struggle.
Oh and there are floating cities too.
[note=Disclaimer]Some of the topics brought up in this setting are not the authors opinion on actual world organizations,political structures or historical events. They are merely observations that have inspired the setting. No offense is meant by any of this.[/note]

 The islands are city-states held above the clouds by a strange yet reliable magic.. It is called magic yet it is practiced as science would be. With elaborate tables and charts. Strange formulas and studied subjects. Laboratories filled with strange artifacts and power sources. Most of these are gathered from the lands below the islands and brought back for careful study under the watchful eye of the Warrior Caste.

 The lands below (represent evil,destruction) are wastlands with many evils. Before the people rose to the clouds they dwelt there , but war and greed destroyed the land and the people were forced to evacuate to the skies. There is a strict political structure on each of these islands. Argenostro is the only one I have set in stone yet.

  At the bottom are sub-humans(fimus captivas) Basically slaves that work in the underground facilities of the islands. They keep the wheels and gears turning. Most are disgraced citizens or peoples culled from the lands below. (There is still a population below the islands)
 The sub-humans work in the same capacity as a peasant would. They work the fields and provide food. But these tasks are reserved for obedient workers. One has to work the tunnels for many years to be moved to the fields (which at least are above ground).

The next two castes are on par with each other and begin the broader class of Citizen. This means they are allowed to own property and to speak in public.

 Scientist (schola scientia) without the scientists the islands would never have lifted off of the earth. They are given special tasks by the Clergy to benefit (theoretically) all of the citizens.
 
 Warriors

Speculating that clergy and royalty are on par with each other.
 Clergy The clergy has its own hierarchy of rank which is so convoluted and disorganized , its been nearly two hundred years since anyone has bothered to look it up.

 Royalty: The right to rule an island is both hereditary and divine. The clergy appoints a male to rule until his bloodline ceases, then they appoint a new one. The clergy also has a say in who the king can marry. It is rumored that the clergy will engage an unpopular king with a barren woman to end the bloodline. Only a male successor may take the throne of Argenostro.

 (more to come)

[blockquote=Sarisa]The islands are city-states held above the clouds by a strange yet reliable magic.. It is called magic yet it is practiced as science would be. With elaborate tables and charts. Strange formulas and studied subjects. Laboratories filled with strange artifacts and power sources. Most of these are gathered from the lands below the islands and brought back for careful study under the watchful eye of the Warrior Caste.[/blockquote]

Hmm.  Where did these artifacts come from?? Big picture, I mean.
ANd I like the strange, reliable, semi-scientific magic approach.  

The artifacts come from the world below, the same place the majority of sub-humans are culled from. The land below is a chaotic place, vaguely detailed. The artifacts are remnants of the great empires (think rome,persia etc.) that were utterly destroyed by the very magics they harnessed wildly. The islands are the new approach to using this technology: Carefully studied and in the hands of scientists.

  [ic=Cardinal Dorcieu's Big Day]
     The Piazza de Argento was filled to the brim with spectators for the unveiling of the famed sculptor Mateo Ronsard's new work. In the center of the raging throng stood the sculptor and his scientist. The odd coupled pair stood in front of a massive stone rectangle nearly forty feet high, ten at its base, pure white and un-blemished. The sculptors instruments hummed and purred even over the banter of the crowd. The scientist coddled the instruments, tweaking here and there. Mateo just stared at the stone monolith in front of him.

  The Cardinals palanquin broke through the masses and settled on the edge of the demonstrations stage. The Cardinal came down
from his palanquin much to the relief of his slaves who eased the ornate taxi carefully to the ground. Four of the Cardinals
guards were suddenly in tow, wrapped in silver armor and holding ten-foot poles with wicked blades that were both beautiful and
deadly. Their helmets were sleek and emotionless and the crowd parted easily for them.  The cardinal said a few words to the
scientist and then nodded to Mateo. The sculptor bowed low and then turned to the stone. He seemed to be explaining something very
technical using his hands in quick motions. The cardinal only stared at the young man. He said only a few words and then pointed
to his guards. Mateo went pale and bowed low.
 
   The cardinal and the scientist stalked off the the edge of the stage with his retinue of silver guards and was given a pair of  
odd looking spectacles with black lenses and a thick leather headband. The scientist put a similiar pair over his own eyes. Mateo
wore none as he moved toward the stone block. His assistants lifted something very heavy from the stage floor, something
previously unseen that looked like a spear wrapped in copper tubing and bent queerly at the end, where the blade would be. This
they placed on a tripod and helped Mateo aim it at the block.

 The scientist raised his hand and the crowd instantly spun about to face away from the demonstration. I spun just in time, light
engulfing the square and dead silence followed. All about the people wordlessly cheered, with expressions of disbelief on their
faces. It was the 'deafening' that always followed one of these sculptings. When I spun about my eyes marvelled at the young
sculptors work. It was of Cardinal Dorcieu holding aloft an island, arms outstretched,palms cupping its underbelly gracefully as
if offering it to the gods. The spear-like instrument had snapped in half and Mateo lay crumpled in the shadow of the statue. He
stared at his creation. Its perfect balance, composition and proportion. It was only then that I noticed his eyes were bleeding
and his face and neck had been badly burned. That was Mateo Ronsards' last work. [/ic]

There is a monotheistic religion on Argenost, not to say other isle-states won't have there own ideas about religion.

 But for now I'm detailing the Opal Crown which has an iron grip on the Royal House. The current King is Seleucius III , the third son of the houses founder. He is only 13 years old and as such is highly susceptible to the churches influence. The High Crown (which would be the equivalent of pope) is urging Seleucius to embargo an on again/off again ally, Lazcau, another isle state in the chain. (meaning isle grouping, localized islands)
 
 The Opal Crowns core beliefs are achieving redemption through the study, and eventual mastery of the magic/science thing going on here. The redemption is based on the fallen empires that the floating islands literally rose above to survive. Paradoxically the magics the church urges the scientists to master are what caused the fall of these old empires.

 

Just decided somthing:

 The world is flat.
 The sun revolves around the world.
 Take that Copernicus!

Apparatii Illuminatus  This is the lawmaking branch of the High Crown, the religio-scientific faction. They instituted a set of rules on how to examine and use the magical material Arkanoil. (it is not an oil per say , but comes in a variety of forms.)
 The A.I. is also the strongarm , the enforcers of the holy writ. [note=Social view of the Apparatii]Report any unauthorized Arkanoil use to the Crown.That pretty much sums it up. The commoners and merchants are under the thumb of these guys, though not really evil, think they are doing the best they can for the people. There methods are not always...pleasant. For instance they might capture a spy from a rival island-state, and torture him to find out where they are harvesting their arkanoil.[/note]

I am looking forward to seeing the relationship of the church to the arkanoil, specifically how it ties into faith.

(vs. reality)

I tend to draw on current events either consciously or sub-consciously for my 'creative' endevours. I think a fanatical branch of the Opal Crown would be present in the setting, going so far as to collapse entire islands by witholding the valuable arkanoil from island-states that are considered heretical. The scary part is , they don't entirely understand the way the substance works. Perhaps the great machines that power these islands were set in motion by a now lost sect (precursors to the Opal Crown?) and the faithful struggle to hang onto their way of life/survival. What would happen if these powerful men went public with the fact that the only thing keeping thousands of people alive is a technology that is only barely comprehensible? The Crown holds a delicate balance between madness and fear. That seems to be where this is going. I think I have begun drawing on the red-scare of post world war II america for inspiration, as well as 1984, animal farm etc. That seems to be the general climate of this societal structure, except the great fear is eternal damnation by an unseen-all-powerful diety.

[note] If I continue this, most of the previous posts will be null and void, as the ideas transform and I get a clearer picture of the setting. For instance, in a previous post I said the arkanoil comes from artifacts etc.. This has changed to a process of harvesting the life from a person. [/note]

I have been letting this cool for a while.

 Here is a summation of the settings current form:

 The islands and there quasi-religious-fundamentalist governments require the substance arkanoil to remain aloft, i.e. the substance keeps the islands afloat.

Why? Well there were some wars long ago and what was once a scientific society decided to do somthing about it. There answer was the Lazerus project. While the nations of (what I will call the world) Terra Proper waged horrible wars, the society realized they could harvest an incredible power from the souls of people. They showed the governments what could be done with it, but the existing churches and political factions of that era refused (contradicting there wars, whats the word, hypocracy?) to use such a substance because it is harvested from the very soul of men, resulting in the persons bodily death. The knowledge of the technology was limited at that time. What happens to the soul? The person? Does the soul literally burn up as the arkanoil is spent? Is the harvesting process painful? The powers-that-were decided that it was not somthing they would support. The scientist claimed the nations were hypocritical to wage war, yet refuse the technology.  

The scientists were condemned as heretics by the church, and dissidents by the governments.
They had to continue there research and experimentation in secret.
The wars continue, growing ever more horrible. The nations looked to bigger and more destructive weapons to attain victory.
 The society of scientists waited until the right time to reveal their greatest project, the raising of the islands to escape the hell created by the wars. A large number of people from all different sides quickly took the chance to escape the war torn Terra Proper.

 As the last bombs fell, and destroyed the world, the islands arose.

Now, in the current setting(time)the society has a firm grasp on their populace, through a religion set up to worship the substance arkanoil. After all, it is what keeps the islands running.

The powers-that-be are quickly running out of the substance, and have to make expeditions (for the glory of the holy arkanoil!) to the destroyed lands below the islands, harvesting arkanoil from the scattered populations.

But there are great moral questions being raised by the society. Sure this technology keeps the islands afloat, and the people safe, but is it not morally wrong to kill a human so that another may live? This is where the power of the church comes in, through doctrine and ritual they have attempted to keep the populace in check. But, as real world history has shown, this is impossible.

Not all of the island states resort to harvesting expeditions, there is one state that has a strict penal code. Any infraction results in harvesting of the soul of the condemned. Food and water are also carefully controlled, the islands are large, but the population swelled some centuries back, and as a result the governing body restricts procreation. Any person born outside of the law is hunted and harvested. This too has helped fuel the opposition to the governments ideology.

So that is the premise of the setting.  

This sounds really cool. You mentioned bombs, so what is the technology level? And are these floating states just cities or is there also room for farmlands, forests and mountains up there? Are there small spots of civilization here and there in the world below, perhaps base camps and starting points for collecting expiditions? These are just my personal curiositites, not critiques.

The technology that was used at the time of the last wars should be considered parallel to our own modern level of technology. Except that it is not planet earth, and the physical laws that define our world and universe (or what we suspect do) should not be excepted as the laws of this world.

Energy was certainly harnessed to create the super-weapons of the last great nations, which ultimately destroyed each other. But these technologies were either forgotten or destroyed by the church after the islands rose. The main (or current) form of technology is still based on energy, but that of the human soul. Or whatever you want to call it. This is still a vague idea right now.

The setting is supposed to describe a time and place that is entirely devoted to the use of one single energy source-arkanoil. The civilization level is roughly around 15th century. The use of gunpowder is just becoming known, but I am debating the churches stance on it. It certainly came from the lands below the islands. One of the main 'struggles' of the setting would be the opposition to the use of arkanoil, and the championing of alternate power sources. Rogue-wind farms floating across the sky on tiny specks of islands still caught in the energy fields of the main city-states come to mind. Certainly the use of such a powerful substance would have consequences on the environment.

Refugee camps are scattered throughout the wastes, as well as 'fortesses' placed by the church, either before the last war, or after. These could act as supply depots, transportation hubs etc. I'm thinking they might even be the refining mills that are needed to turn the soul into arkanoil. I can picture anti-society rebels launching an attack on one of these fortresses in the waste, to disrupt the flow of the precious substance. Maybe some of these 'plants' are under allegiance to different island-states, making them subject to acts of sabotage and theft by rival states. There should certainly be a wasteland settlement that is the culmination of the refugees attempts to re-organize society. Of course rumors of this city abound in the floating isles, but the church would of course call it heresy.

The islands themselves would be strictly organized, providing just enough farmland and wildland to maintain the population. The Romans were very good at city planning, and I might take that into account.

I had a setting a long time ago with some similarities to this.  The floating islands, like your own, were kept aloft by a physical substance.  This substance was mined for use in airships as a fuel source/magical catalyst, and as a given deposit was depleted the island would slowly sink, until it eventually settled in the ocean, bereft of the minerals that kept it afloat.  The towns that boomed on the mineral-rich islands would become ghost-towns or pirate bases, with the old mines riddling the island flooding.  Prospectors would head into the treacherous regions of "High Sky" in search of islands still mineral-rich, fighting off thunderfolk and electric wyrms as they did so...