The World of Skybourne

[Arthnek]

To sit perched on the edge of the land and lean out, face burned by the rush of the wind, eyes forced open to force the gaze past happy tears into an endless expanse of sky, cloud and mist which marks the Empyrean sea.  To look down between one's knees and watch the cliff wrens dart and spiral in their flocks so far below your feet that they are naught but dancing dots, small as midges over banks of dusk kissed clouds skirting and further below still, the gray ocean.

As a boy I often hiked to the very windwall of the Barony and sat, enjoying the last rays of light on my skin and tossing the odd stone down over the edge of the cliff face...watching each toss tumble down into the clouds forever and knowing that one mistep or the wrong stone seat would topple me into the abyss.

That is living.  That is freedom.

Gavrun Witch King

 The World of Skybourne

Skybourne is a fantasy campaign setting which was first dreamed up by myself, Steve Holmes and Rob Perez as a unique world for a Fantasy Hero campaign in the early 1990's.  Since then the setting has evolved and changed, been pulled apart and totally reworked at least twice.  This final generation of the campaign moves the setting into one appropriate for 4th edition D&D.  The details are offered here to anyone interested.  It has been a long labor of love with quite a bit of time, energy and effort invested in all the maps, artwork, history and lore.

Skybourne now fills more volumes of notes, maps and pdfs books than I'd care to admit.  Now for the challenging and admittedly exciting task of plugging my beloved Skybourne into these forums.

 Skybourne Super Scale Map

 



 At the birth of the world and the dawn of the First Age the Gods gathered together and shaped the world out of Chaos.  For more thousands of years than one can count the world was very like any other that you might encounter should you be inclined to the gift of Sorcery and the craft of portal building.  Yet there came a blight and a threat to the world.  A poisonous star long predicted by the prophets and seers of that age whose coming cast a shadow of certain doom over every living creature appeared in the evening sky.  With each passing month its baleful glow increased until it eclipsed the light of every other star and the Gods themselves understood that without a tremendous work on their part that all that they had loved and delighted in would be destroyed forever.

So it was that the Gods gathered together and agreed that something of the world as it was must be saved.  Gathering together, each pantheon in their mighty temples, the Gods sent aloft whole sections of the land and set them on their sailing courses and orbits.  Creatures long land dwelling were gifted with wings so that they might survive and even plants and certain trees were changed so that their bulbs and gathered branches sent them spiraling aloft.

When the end came, the Gods sacrificed themselves so that something of their creation might survive. The old world came to an end and its name and the names of the old Gods were lost to time and yet the new world, the World of Skybourne was born out of this destruction...and beautiful and breathe taking and different from all others has it matured.

Where the old Gods sacrificed themselves, great pillars of permanent cloud and wind were born and out of these the forces of weather and storm.  Likewise those lands set aloft into floating chains of isles now move in regular orbits around their associated central pillar of storm.  The storms are called the eyes of god or more commonly the Storm Eyes. [note]Storm Eyes are like the permanent storms on Jupiter in that they are large, impossibly dangerous to approach closely without magical protection and seem rigidly tethered to a spot on the planet below.  From the side they might appear more or less like a great water spout or tornado rising out of the sea.  Out of these permanent storms spiral weather patterns, cloud, rain and such, always in a counter clockwise rotation.  The floating isles which orbit each central storm eye always orbit in a clockwise path.[/note]

Some chains of Isle move through the surround Empyrean or seas of wind and cloud at high altitudes where the air is always cool and all is locked in snow and ice year around.  Other isles move in more temperate altitudes and some pass through regions where the climate makes them muggy and covered in jungles or dry and barren as a desert.  

All move above a planet which is universally shrouded in ocean for every remaining continent of the world was lost, buried below the endless waves with the arrival of the killing star.

 Floating Isles

Floating isles come in all varieties of shapes and sizes.  They can be as small enough to barely accomodate a single building or large enough to carry an entire Duchy or Barony upon their upper surface.  Entire swaths of the map are dominated by floating asteroid fields of rocky debris often covered in vegetation and swarming with creatures (and sometimes pirates).

Despite Skybourne being a world entirely floating in the air it is, none the less, absolutely bursting with life and opportunities for adventure.

Below is an example of a floating isle as seen from the side.  Waterfalls spill down over the side and flank a modest temple on the isle's surface.

 

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Whoa....

Welcome to the site, and please keep typing.

How does the water get to the floating islands? :)

[Poseptune]

It's definitely an interesting setting.

How does the water get to the floating islands? :)

Someone left a Decanter of Endless Water set to Geyser running.

[Arthnek]

The floating islands of Skybourne hover in the air over a planet which by all appearances is a completely oceanic planetoid.  The permanent columns of storm at the center of the orbits of each chain of floating isles act as a sort of permanent weather center for each system.

In other words, Skybourne tends to be a very cloudy, misty, rainy sort of place.  At least in most respects and so the surfaces of many of the floating isles are absolutely covered in lush plant life, forests heavy enough to rival many rain forests and plenty of water.  

Of course there are few permanent large bodies of water on the surfaces of the floating isles outside of lakes and ponds and the cascading waterfalls spilling down over the sides of the isles can wax and wane depending on the state of the weather.

Picture some of the floating island art by Roger Dean who did much of the YES album covers or traditional paintings of chinese landscapes and you have a pretty good notion of what its like in much of Skybourne...and why there is water in a great deal of locations.

I do indeed plan to keep up the posts.  I have about two weeks of heavy work ahead of me and plan to post one major update each evening.  Those will include artwork as well. =D  After that I hope to continue to post at least once a day if not twice as my schedule frees up.

I'm reasonably certain I could put up a daily post most of the coming year before I began to run thin on existing material and notes / artwork to put up but talk is cheap.  Just give me afew weeks to roll.

[Arthnek]

Much of the setting is fleshed out to be sure.  So please don't post a note about flying creatures or ships here or how dragons would be cool to get around on in the setting and then get bent out of shape to find that yes, I had thought of that and have some ideas for how it works.

I'm totally fine with suggestions and recommendations but best to let me have a week or so to post up stuff before immediately diving in on the recommendations side as what you talk about might already be covered in something I have planned to post in the first couple of weeks.

As an overview I'll be immediately posting (in the next 2 weeks).

Geography - How it works
Weather, Navigation and Cardinal Directions - How it works
Player Character Races and their Backgrounds in Skybourne
Getting Around - Flying Creatures and Airships
General History - Timeline and Big Picture Stuff
Mythos and Magic
Fighting the Dust and the Culture of the Barrier
Calendar

[Poseptune]

I'm totally fine with suggestions and recommendations but best to let me have a week or so to post up stuff before immediately diving in on the recommendations side as what you talk about might already be covered in something I have planned to post in the first couple of weeks.

From the first post I didn't have any doubts you have most of it fleshed out already. This is why I suggested the site's Wiki as a better medium to host your information. (If you'd like this thread cleaned up so that your post are at the top, just shoot Ishmayl a PM and he'll delete these posts)

Weather, Navigation and Cardinal Directions - How it works

After your second post I had some questions about how you handled weather and isle orbits, so I'll wait for this before asking.

[Steel General]

Kind of reminds me of the Skyland cartoon, very interesting.

[Arthnek]

I can touch on any questions in quick snippets before I post tonight. No problem at all. =D

Floating isles tend to move in clusters or chains.  Whether this is because they were originally larger sections of land set aloft that have broken apart bit by bit over the centuries or not is somewhat sketchy to those interested in the lore behind such things.

Certainly the floating isles seem very stable at the current time.  Collisions with rogue bits of floating stone or isles are so rare as to be unheard of in recent memory.

The movement of the floating isles is fairly regular in that each chain rotates in the line of its orbit in a regular and predictable cycle.  Most orbits take anywhere from many months to years to resolve themselves.

This means that the isles change position in relation to one another as they move in their orbits and the position of land elements and kingdoms and such can by very dynamic.

There are years, for example, when the floating isle of Krymone..found in the most outer orbit of the Free Provinces, is very nearly a neighbor to the system of floating isles known as The Dominion...under the control of an enemy faction.

There are other years when Krymone is furthest flung from the Dominion out of all of the floating island chains in the Free Provinces.

This gives way to something called the Cycle of Dragons which amounts to a calendar marking both the position of the isles in the skies of Skybourne and how something about the nature of these positions.

In the case of Krymone the year closest to the Dominion are noted as a cycle of the Dragon Rampant.  During that cycle Krymone frequently turns into a contest battleground where the armies of the Free Provinces and the Dominion take advantage of the temporary change in geography to battle for control, seize assets or territory or build bases for launching organized assaults against one another.

This also means that the floating Isles of Krymone tend to be somewhat devestated and have a sense of being on and off again war zones even in the best of times.  Ruined and broken war machines litter the country side and one must always be cautious of where one pokes their nose even under the best of circumstances...

So island orbits will be presented in some detail and link to a great degree with what is going on in the calendar as well as the War against The Dust and other plot threads.

Weather still moves across the face of the planet below in the usual fashion but is so influenced by the presence of the Storm Eyes that the general effect is an outward spiral of weather centered over each central storm moving in a general counter clockwise direction.

Each region of sky has its own personality to some degree as far as weather patterns go..influenced by the size and strength of the Storm Eye at each system center.

That is why when you look at the map each individual system has its own named Empyrean.  An Empyrean in the dictionary defines a region of the heavens and in this case it translates to a literal Sea in the Sky...like our own seven seas each with its own name and border.

The Empyrean surrounding the Free Provinces is known as the Saturnine Empyrean for example.  Weather patterns in the Free Provinces tend to be fairly reasonable and predictable, thus the name.

Where the oceans of sky or Empyrean meet one another as they spiral outward and pass beyond the borders of their central system they usually give way to more violent regions...

In the regions outside the systems the sky can become unpredictable and weather more violent.  Thus the names of the Empyrean for those regions as the Tempestual Empyrean or Vaporous Empyrean.

From the perspective of the natives dwelling in Skybourne this is all normal and as it should be, of course.  They don't give it much more thought than we do at one of our oceans being called the Pacific Ocean and another being called the Atlantic Ocean.

From the perspective of running the campaign the position of the floating isles is definately important although they don't change all that much when looking at the massive grand scale map from day to day where regions are quite vast.

I use a table for each system and the calendar to mark the current location of any system of floating isles quite quickly and easily.  Characters dwelling in the world and navigating on airships or traveling on flying mounts would use the same system for finding their way to their destinations.

I'll cover how magnetic compasses work, cardinal directions are named and used and how the Reach provides a handy navigational aid when traveling from one system to another in my full post later.

As far as weather goes I use a weather table for each individual Empyrean that ties directly into the calendar.  It has some adjusting random elements as well but will nicely generate details for me.

Wind direction however at least within each system is very predictable.  Winds generally spiral outwards in a counter clockwise direction from each system's central storm eye.  Only in the center of each system are winds consistently higher in speed and weather more severe.  Things generally calm down quickly the further out in a system you go until you get beyond the border of a system and weather systems and fronts are mixing regulary with one another.

Anyway within each system that makes the wind direction..the direction you experience the wind hitting your face or your sail while standing on any floating isle within that system so consistent as to be a reliable indication of a direction.

Well I've probably posted more than I should before something more organized but talking back and forth is alot of fun.  More to come tonight in the big post.

[Arthnek]

On Skyland.

Neat!  Its a little daunting starting work on this more than ten years ago and having all the characters and artwork and such in hand and running into the current explosion in airship, floating lands etc...in comics and fantasy.

When we started this almost nobody was doing anything like this.  Of course our ideas were not totally our own either.  I was inspired by the artwork of Roger Dean and books like Dune and the Dragonriders of Pern and such.

Its a little odd to look at someone else's work and go..wow that looks a whole lot like places in Skybourne I had in my head or written in notes but its inevitable when you are inspired by something cool.

Especially when your notions go from extremely fringe and obscure to vaulting into such common usage that they are almost becoming old hat.  That is the really odd thing to experience as a writer.

Inevitably someone else gets inspired by the same cool thing no matter what you are working on.  Still, for me Skybourne still has a flavor and personality all its own and after all its all good fun anyway. =D

[Arthnek]

Campaign Journal: Entry One   World of Skybourne

 

SKYOGRAPHY

Overview

   The floating isles of Skybourne hang suspended within great seas of sky known as the Empyrean.  There are seven Empyrean in counter point to the seven seas of our own classic adventure novels and they include:

Tempestual Empyrean
Saturnine Empyrean
Lambent Empyrean
Vaporous Empyrean
Umbral Empyrean
Serene Empyrean
Vast Empyrean

   Each Empyrean is named for a quality that it is known to possess.  To the natives of Skybourne the Empyrean are much like our own native oceans and seas.  They cross these expanses of open sky on flying mounts, airships or through the application of portal magic.

Vindauga 'Wind Eye'

   The major floating island chains of Skybourne are organized in orbital systems which mirror those of planets around a central star.  In Skybourne the floating isle orbit around a central point occupied by a permanent funnel cloud of storm and wind known in the old speech as the Vindauga (ancient norse which literally translates to wind eye).

   The Vindauga do not move in relation to the surface of the planet, their positions seem rooted and fixed.  Wind and storms are generated or manipulated by each Vindauga in a counter clockwise direction outwards into its surrounding system.

   Mythology tells us that each of the four known Vindauga were the last gathering points of four different pantheons of the gray lords or gods of old, as they are known.  It is recorded that the gray lords gathered together to save portions of the land and those creatures most beloved to them from an apocolypse involving a poisonous or killing star.

   Each Vindauga has its own name, for example the wind eye located at the center of the system known as the Free Provinces is called Beortvind (ancient norse for bright wind).

Gray Lords

   The gray lords were responsible for setting the floating isles in their courses and sacrificed themselves to shield their creation as much as possible from the destruction of the killing star.  Unfortunately the vast majority of the old world and continents on the surface of the planet of Skybourne were destroyed.

   Today the surface of Skybourne is covered in a vast, endless ocean.  All land and creatures tied to the land are restricted to the floating world hovering in the skies.

Cardinal Directions

   The Vindauga generate a magnetic pull sufficient to draw the needle of a compass.  The range of the pull of each Vindauga is significant and extends somewhat beyond the outer orbit or course of its furthest isles.

   The magnetic pull of each Vindauga provides a handy sailing reference for navigators in each system as a compass will point consistently in the direction of the nearest Vindauga or 'into the system'.  This direction is known as Coreward and vessels sailing towards the center of a system are said to be sailing to Core.

   The direction opposite of Core on the compass is known as Spinward.  This name was likely taken from the tendency of an object to fly off of a disc sent to spinning, reflecting an outward movement of direction.  Ships sailing out bound from a system is said to be sailing to Spinward.

   Within a system of floating isles all weather and clouds spiral outwards in a counter clockwise direction.  Anyone dwelling on the surface of a floating isle will experience the passage of clouds and storms in the sky overhead as traveling outward in the same general direction.  Facing into the wind is therefore a reliable reference for direction and can be used to some degree as an aid for navigation or travel particularly when hiking or riding over the surface of an isle.  The direction of wind and storm is known as Stormward.  Facing into the wind is known as facing 'to Storm'.

   Someone spitting into the wind or spitting 'to storm' is thought to be testing the patience of the gods themselves or tempting fate.  It is also a general slang for someone thought to be engaged in a very foolish line of thought or behavior.

   'Always, always spitting to Storm, that one is.'

   The opposite direction from Stormward is Holm or Holmward.  In the old tongue this is a simple reference to returning home after a journey.  Many ports and settlements are constructed close to the Holmward or trailing edge of a floating isle as all floating isles orbit clockwise and into the wind.  The mass of the floating isle itself and its rear cliff face act as a natural wind break to protect home bound vessels as they maneuver to port and protect a settlement as well from the worst weather and in more recent times the regular threats of Dust.

The four cardinal directions of Skybourne are therefore:

Coreward
Spinward
Stormward
Holmward

The Horizon

The main map also indicates the location of the magnetic horizon or horizon line which is indicated in the map key and shown for each of the four explored systems.  The horizon line notes where the magnetic influence of the local system wanes to the point where a compass will begin to waver between its old heading, true planetary north and the magnetic influence of other surrounding systems.

Magnetic compass directions become unreliable beyond the boundary of the horizon indicated on the map and therefore marking position based on sun and star readings or taking note of significant land marks or sky marks becomes important.  It is fortunate then that a large swath of floating debris seems to encompass the equator of Skybourne like a belt and this field known as The Reach touches on each of the four systems.

One has only to sail to The Reach and then follow it to their destination making compass bearings less important when one is sailing "beyond the horizon".

[Arthnek]

Campaign Journal: Entry Two  

CHARACTER RACES

 Overview

All of the player character races presented in the player's book are available in Skybourne.  Several races have dwelled in the world long enough to be considered natives while afew have migrated within the last century or two.  Portal magic is present in Skybourne as will be discussed later and the use of portal magic to establish routes for travel, exploration and trade to other worlds (and even other campaign settings)has been active and even routine throughout portions of Skybourne's history.

 Note:  In the interest of avoiding any "Imperial Entanglements" I will avoid the use of licensed character race names or specific references.  Even so it should be clear from the race descriptions which character race's history in Skybourne is being discussed.

 HUMANS

Humans are surprisingly enough the one race truely native to Skybourne.  In point of fact and from a certain perspective humans may well have migrated during the Second Age into any number of parallel or alternate worlds.

Most human cultures were present or at least vaguely hinted at on Skybourne prior to the arrival of the killing star.  Humans were largely scattered in the aftermath with various cultures present "off camera" or "off map" in other regions of Skybourne as yet undiscovered.  The primary human culture to arise and dominate the floating isles during the centuries immediately following the disaster was largely a mix of various barbaric northern european cultures.  Thus the original place names, artwork and culture of the region has a decidedly celtic or norse influence.

 


 
A non-pagani human cavalry officer from one of the city states of the Free Provinces, likely with a Dragon bonded mount.
 
Human Magic

The native magic to Skybourne is a form of shamanism or druidic nature magic.  Healing and radiant energies were the sole magical powers tapped within Skybourne for many centuries prior to the arrival of a foriegn culture known as the Skeld.  Skybourne's life force, that which holds it together and allows it to exist as a plane is a magical essence known as Draioght (Dree-ockt, which is a gaelic word referencing magic).

 Draioght

It is said by the wise ones of the Pagani, the iron age / viking culture of clans which still dominates most of the interior regions of Skybourne, that the death of the Gray Lords shattered their beings like enormous crystals and threw fragments of these beings far and wide over the world.  Some of these fragments were drawn to secret and magical locations, magical nodes at the crossroads of ley lines, locations where totems of rock, water and tree sacred to the humans dwelling aloft.

Certainly what grew out of the end of the First Age was a sort of non-deist spiritism similar to Earthly ideas drawn in some respects in Shintao and Daoism.  The ancient human clansmen and the druids of the First Age no longer venerated a pantheon of mighty major gods but instead respected and drew strength from a local collection of nature spirits, ancestors and totems.

This period of spiritism lasted well into the first two or three centuries of the Second Age, after the arrival of the Skeld and the building of the very first of the large Skeld cities.  Prior to the arrival of the Skeld there were no large stone cities anywhere in Skybourne.  The Skeld brought with them a duality of "civilized" culture to counter point the simple "barbarian" culture of the native humans and their clans.

Draioght will be covered in some detail in a later posting dealing strictly with the weave of ley lines, nodes, the old places of power such as rings of standing stones and old temples and how these places of power have been a point of contention in the struggle between the original druids, arcane cabals and the rising power of the church with its clerics and fighting orders of paladins.

While each of these three types of casters wields a different form of magic to some extent, in Skybourne the sort of primordeal ooze of power from which all magic flows is Draioght.  In a sense developed powers like healing energy, radiant energy, arcane energy, totem or spirit energy and the like are like choosing to run off of "leaded", "unleaded" or "diesel" fuel which are all derived from a base product of raw fossil fuel (Draioght).  

 INFERNALS

The Skeld fit the description in the player's book for horned infernal types to a T.  The Skeld are a race born to magic.  Their entire society is structured around the passing of sorcerous blood lines through marriage and political alliances.  If you are familiar with the noble households and their fueds and such from the Dune books you have a good model for the politics and infighting present amidst the Great Houses of Sorcery.

The Skeld arrived in Skybourne several thousand years ago through a magical portal of their own creation.  Several thousand Skeld escaped to Skybourne when their own home world was consumed in a magical disaster wrought by their tampering in portal magic and trade routes with distant planes.

It was the Skeld which brought knowledge of arcane magic into Skybourne.  Warlocks and Sorcerers in Skybourne must have at least some measure of Skeld blood in their past for their form of magic to function.  Thus the magic of Warlocks and Sorcerers in Skybourne is partly inherited and partly learned.  Wizardry on the other hand was invented by the Skeld -after- their contact with the native humans of Skybourne.  Wizardry is a specialized form of magic any race can learn to develop although some individuals definately have an affinity for it over others.

Early on wizards served as assistants and servants to the blooded Sorcerers and Warlocks of the Skeld Great Houses of Sorcery.

The arrival of the Skeld in Skybourne marked the beginning of the Second Age.  During the Second Age the Skeld constructed their capital at the City of Portal and true to form went right back to forging their trade empire of permanent magical gates and portals.

 Halfers and Gnomes

By the year 228 of the Second Age the Skeld had once again opened a dozen permanent portals to the planes considered most vital (and safe) for trade and the acquisition of knowledge.  Their City of Portal was connected as a hub to each of these planes and was slowly being connected to the larger clan villages scattered throughout the surrounding isles of what is now known as the Dominion.

In that year the Skeld stumbled upon the home plane of a race which the Skeld dubbed the Midge. (Midge being an old Scottish word used to reference trash or junk, the junk man who used to come around to collect rubbish was, and still is in some places known as the midge man.)

The Skeld discovered that the Formorians,a rival race of plane hopping conquerors the Skeld had encountered and battled previously prior to the destruction of their own plane, were already well on their way to conquering the Midge home world.

The Formorians were in the process of wrapping up the conquest of the Midge home world and were proceeding forward with the systematic genocide of every living Midge there.  The Skeld decided to take it upon themselves to rescue as many of the Midge as they could and bring them to Skybourne before sealing closed the portal into the Midge world..and the Formorians, permanently.

Once they were here the Skeld had to do something with the Midge.  They settled upon working them into their own rigid structure of Houses, bloodlines and position.  In effect the Midge became the lower orders of serfs, craftsmen, butlers and servants of the Skeld particularly in areas the Skeld found distasteful to perform themselves.  The Skeld have a certain aversion to handling the dead, even touching the bodies of a dead animal which has not been properly cleansed of the taint of death is disgusting to them.  Thus the Midge settled into a sort of Burakumin underclass.  In particular they became farmers, raised animals, ostlers, stable hands, leather workers and tailors, butchers, cooks, undertakers and caretakers of Skeld family burial plots.

By the time of the campaign the Midge have largely broken out of their under class standing outside of the Dominion but the cultural expectation by the clansmen and humans even beyond the Dominion lingers.  In civilized cities outside of the Dominion the Midge are usually relegated to their own district, usually known as the Midge ghetto.

In point of fact the Midge are two small races.  Halfers and Gnomes.  To the Midge the distinction between their two peoples is obvious but the clumsy big folk and even the Skeld tend to mash them up and throw them into the same bucket.

The differences between Halfers and Gnomes is quite strong.  They are, after all, two distinctly different small races.  Mixed blooded births are extremely rare between them and always result in a sterile child.  Halfers and Gnomes brought with them their own distinctive mythologies and religious beliefs.  Many of these have been turned into elements of folk lore over the years as the Midge adopted the local beliefs of their new home.

 TROLLS

Trolls migrated into the campaign area from "off map" in the year 304 of the Second Age.  They hail from a hereto unexplored system of floating isles they call Savage Arboria which is said to rest some months by airship or dragon mount across the Vast Empyrean.

Prior to their arrival trolls were totally unknown to the human clans dwelling in the four systems of the campaign and it seems likely that some accident of the destruction of the Gray Lords in their region gave rise to them.

Trolls are large, standing seven to eight feet tall in height.  They are quite a bit more massive and strong than the average human but their body is built proportionally and they can cut a spectacular and dashing figure in the formal uniforms of either the Dominion or the fighting orders of the Church.

During the second age clashes between tribes of Trolls and Clans of humans over land and trade were common.  These settled down in the Third Age with the rise of the Dominion, which once encompassed within its borders all four of the known systems of floating isles shown on the campaign map.  During the Third Age, the trolls found a ready home within the military orders of the Dominion.  Many tribes continue to follow these traditional allegiances to this day while others have followed the nobles of their adopted human houses and nobles when they broke away from the Dominion and forged their own kingdoms and city states.




  A troll in the service of the Free City of Krymone.  Standard bearer.

 CULTURES, DRESS, GEAR

Three cultures fairly dominate the World of Skybourne at the time of the campaign.  

First is the old culture of the clansmen which still dominates much of the pagan interior of the larger floating isles.  This is an iron age, viking style culture.  In creating it I was heavily influenced by books like Beowulf and historical books covering viking and ancient european tribes and culture.

Second is the culture of the Dominion.  The Dominion is controlled by the great Houses of Sorcery and the political machinations of the Skeld.  I based the Skeld off of a combination of Roman Empire, Dune, Japanese Samurai culture and ancient Chinese feuding states.  As we get into the timeline and talk about the Dominion and its wax and wane in detail hopefully some of this flavor will pull together in a cohesive whole with a semi-original feel.

The power of the Dominion seems to be largely on the wane at the present time and its borders are limited to the extent of its own single system of floating isles.  Outside of the Dominion independent city states and small petty kingdoms, duchies and baronies of popped up everywhere.  The city states dwell in what amounts to old Dominion imperial cities and so they retain their "civilized" state versus the pagani / barbarians dwelling outside of the city walls and into the countryside.  

Outside of the Dominion a rising power called the Church of the Holy Orders has brought with it the reverence of a pantheon of local saints (which were once hero images of the old Imperial / Dominion cult).  Its power is divided between a structure of cardinals, bishops and lesser priests with their attending fighting orders.  To the Holy Orders the Skeld and blooded sorcerers represent an oppressive former occupying power which has been largely demonized.  The Holy Orders are currently engaged in an attempt to A. convert the surrounding pagan / barbarian population, by force of arms if necessary and B. an inquisition to hunt down and burn anyone tainted by the bloodlines of the Houses of Sorcery within their lands.

 

 

more races to be outlined in a little bit...    

 

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=Arthnek]Human Magic

The native magic to Skybourne is a form of shamanism or druidic nature magic. Healing and radiant energies were the sole magical powers tapped within Skybourne for many centuries prior to the arrival of a foriegn culture known as the Skeld.[/blockquote]
This sounds plain-old-interesting...I like it.  I look forward to more on this.

[Arthnek]

Racial thread updated with more to come tonight.

[Arthnek]

testing something

[Gamer Printshop]

Very interesting world, and I love the illustrations, as well as now understand your partiality for airships :P

GP