Cloud Oasis

Eyes wide open, Arthur watched the enormous creature peel out of the clouds just a few hundred meters away from their airship. The huge, whale-like body spun once around its own axis, broke through the cloud cover downwards, only to rise up again a few moments later with a kind of leap. The young man leaned a little forward on the railing and tried not to let his eyes be distracted by the subtle flickering of the magical barrier around the outer deck of the airship.

Once again, the white shapes of water vapor were pressed apart, this time in several places. An audible sound escaped Arthur as he recognized a dozen or so of the whale-like creatures with the white wings. However, they were considerably smaller, barely the size of a canoe. With clumsy movements and accompanied by the frantic flapping of their still gray wings, they tried to follow the movement of their mother. She stopped in mid-jump, rotated around itself and dived down again, under her children, before she began to pick them up individually with her back and carry them with her.

The short flying lesson seemed to have satisfied both the mother and her children. Each of the creatures pressed close to her. Cuddled with her massive body and relaxed to be carried by her as she sped up her flight and grew smaller in the distance before disappearing among the white rears again.

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The Cloud Oasis refers to one of the seven Beast Wonders that resulted from the battles of the Ame against the seven hell beasts.

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Type

Island, Floating

General

As one of the beast wonders, the Cloud Oasis emerged from the goddess's battle against one of the seven hell beasts. It formed in the shape of a floating, almost circular island with a diameter of three kilometers. The island itself is always surrounded by a sea of clouds in which sky leviathans are up to mischief. Seemingly endless amounts of spring water flow from the water sources along the island, which is why the island always trails a veil of rain behind it. Due to the island's changeable nature and a few other occurrences, it is not inhabited by any members of the Intelligent Races. However, due to its otherworldly nature, the island has attracted a lot of researchers, spiritualists and fanatics.

Origin

by CSor96 using Midjourney

Whenever the power of the goddess, the Ame, collided with one of the seven hell beasts, their battles wreaked havoc. Entire regions were torn apart by their conflicts. However, when such a conflict ended, it always ended with a final powerful clash of their forces, in which their powers combined to produce a beast miracle. The fourth of these beast miracles came about after a battle against a huge creature that resembled the appearance of a tortoise. The Ame challenged the creature east of the later conutry of Lahoral to battle and struck it down, drowning it in the waves it could control.

When the creature's body, infused with the light of the goddess, rose to the surface again, its ascent did not end there, but instead the creature drifted several hundred meters into the air, where it remained while an endless stream of rain poured from its body and down on the ocean. Over the next 100 years, the creature's body deformed. Its massive scales became layers of earth, eventually forming the shape of an island. From its teeth, which grew out of its body and sprouted along its back, rose massive trees that usually could not survive in the same climate. The endless stream of water that poured from its maw flowed to its surface, forming a deep spring.

Eventually, her body disappeared completely and the beautiful face of the cloud oasis remained instead. Soon, Nature energy and Life energy began to flow from the island, attracting the sky leviathans, who declared the small domicile the birthplace of their young.

Flora and fauna

by CSor96 using Midjourney

Both the flora and fauna of the oasis are colorful and offer a variety of creatures and plants that would not normally be found in the same regions. Water-saving desert plants grow alongside evergreen fir trees, creating a true paradise for botanists. At the same time, the climatic changes on the cloud oasis are sometimes subject to immense fluctuations. The four seasons on the oasis only comprise individual months and even change their order from time to time.

All of the island's inhabitants are adapted to this altered biorhythm and are therefore able to follow their own rhythm within the corresponding time cycles. This means that animals on the island can reproduce much faster or hibernate for shorter periods. It is still unclear exactly how certain creatures, such as deer, reached the flying island. However, they all show slight differences to their relatives that can be found on the surface of the continent.

Sky Leviathans

The sky leviathans, previously unknown on Uras, discovered the oasis shortly after its completion and have visited it once every 3 years ever since. They appear precisely at the beginning of the summer season and lay their eggs in dozens of tunnels scattered around the island. Over the course of the summer, young develop in these eggs, which hatch at the beginning of the next season. For the duration of the following season, the young sky leviathans remain on the oasis with their parents before their schools split up again and return for the next breeding season. It is estimated that a single leviathan returns to the oasis up to 60 times, which would mean a surprisingly short life for them. However, a leviathan will only return to the island once it is fully grown and ready to mate, which is estimated to be after 120 years.

Corresponding to the three seasons that can follow summer, there are also three variants of sky leviathans, which hatch from their eggs according to the season following their birth. Autumn leviathans have a bronze coloration and a harder shell than their other representatives. Winter leviathans have a white coloration and a black back. They wear a collar of fur on their neck and have longer limbs than the other versions. Spring leviathans are greenish in color and have the thinnest skin, but also move the fastest.
- Excerpt from "Encyclopedia of the Flora and Fauna of Legendary Places"

It is believed that sky leviathans of a certain age no longer return to the oasis, as their bodies can no longer make the long journey. However, the body of a sky leviathan has never been found so far, which is why it is unclear where they lie down for their last rest. Sky leviathans killed by external influences have also not yet been found, which is not surprising considering their powerful bodies.

Visiting the oasis

Although a visit to the oasis, especially during the breeding season of the amazingly peaceful leviathans, may sound like a dream, very few people are able to stay on the surface of the island for long, or even enter it. The immense energetic radiation of the island leads to energetically induced mutations in most people within a few dozen meters, which adapt the body to the influences of the energy, but make it impossible to transform back, so to this day the island remains a paradise for its natural inhabitants and must be admired from afar for the most part.