Star Wing
Star Wing was the sentient craft that the First Ascendant flew to the largest of the Moons in the event that ushered in the Age of Ascendancy. More than just a vehicle, Star Wing was the largest Dragon ever created by the Exultants of the Stoneforged Assembly. It was the culmination of centuries of blood and stone magic advancements during the Age of Exultancy.
Unike most dragons of the age whose bodies were constructed from more prozaic metals, Star Wing was created from pure Crystal uhd, and powered by a vast artificial sentience that worked in magical symbiosis with its pilot, First Ascendant Kyria De Chola.
Creation
The First Ascendancy had become a symbolic dream of the leaders of the Assembly, to reach the largest of the moons and to look down upon the magesty that the global Assembly had become. It was seen as the culmination of the ideals of cooperation and common purpose that the Age of Exultancy has provided since the end of the Bloodstone Wars. Star Wing was the first dragon to be created since the Bloodstone Wars. it took nearly two decades to grow and construct it's body, and another ten years to develop its mind and the symbiotic realtionship required with the First Ascendant. Its construction involved the cooperation of all the great city-states of the Assembly working together - a masterpeice of physical and metaphysical engineering unsurpassed since.Impact and legacy
The immediate legacy of the creation of Star Wing was the adaptation of its core technology into the ghosting networks that powered international transport and communicationacross the globe during the Age of Ascendancy. This alone proved to be one of the biggest changes to the workings of the Assembly, and saw the unprecendented increase in global migration and the proliferation of trade in goods - and ideas - that drove the fervour of the Age and the later spread of the personality cults. Potentially far more momentous was the myserious discoveries made by the crew on the Silver Wolf moon that is hinted at in the only surviving record, the Testimony of the First Ascendant. The truth of what Star Wing and the First Ascendant's crew discovered on the Silver Wolf Moon was never revealed, but some believe that whatever was discovered there holds the secret to The Godling Wars and The Destruction that eventuated 200 years later.Fate of Star Wing and the First Ascendant
The sentient craft was expected to have lived for many centuries, but was never seen after the death of the First Ascendant Kyria De Chola. None know of its true fate, but many believed Star Wing went into hiding and was destroyed during the Godling Wars. However, a popular muth of the Returned is that just before Kyria died, Star Wing took him on one final flight and upon his death the dragon powered down in grief as its long partnership with the First Ascendent ended. The myth tells that they still orbit the planet millenia later, locked together in their celestial grave beyond the ravages of the Age of Shadowfire.Power Generation
Sky Wing's draconic form drew its power from the vast reserves of Uhd kept within its body. This fuel was used by Ascendants and Star Wing itself to power the magics required for atmospheric flight, and propulsion through the vacuum.
Propulsion
Atmospheric flight was like traditional dragon flight, using the Uhd power source to power the wings.
Beyond the atmosphere, however, normal flight was not possible, and required one of the gratest innovations of the age: the technique of magical travel that would become known later as Ghosting.
In its earliest form, ghosting essentially involved the rapid decorporealisation of the entire craft and its crew in millisecond increments, to appear immediately in a space ahead. This techinique of chained teleportations would appear to any external observer as a kind of strobing effect as the craft would stutter across the space before it.
Through this technique the grip of gravity could be overcome, and vast forward speeds could be achieved.
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