Sky-Ship

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The sightings of Isthuaans have grown scarce since ancient times, but you will sometimes find an old woman almost an Age old who still remembers the sight of one of the creatures. Long as a peninsula, with wings like clouds clasting shadows over the land and stirring the weather in its wake. In all my findings I have never once come across one caught sight of such a thing on land. Perhaps they do not venture down to Tantalum or any of the mortal lands, and that is the reason no man has ever caught sight of one. Or perhaps no man has ever caught sight of one and lived.

— Denon the Meraqi, Gylarusian Historian, 180 BGK

Brilliant blue floating vessels of Ice-Glass that enabled the ancient peoples of the Toreworld to travel over long distances during the catastrophic storms and flooding that the Toreworld faces. Thought by the ancients to be gigantic sky beasts, evidence of Sky Ships has long been found in ocean wrecks or unearthed from the soil, usually by gemstone miners who believe they have simply discovered a vein of Blue Lassantine. With giant mechanical wing-like sails, they have contributed to the imagery of apocalyptic or divine beasts for nearly every culture in the Toreworld.

Isthuuan, the Sky Beast

Accounts of flying winged and feathered serpents the size of small islands have been found in every culture, stretching back to pre-history, when images of the creatures made their way into crude carvings and cave art. Early civilizations gave them names and stories, with the Beluccids of ancient Meraqia calling them Isthuaans, after their belief that the sky was heaven, which was watched over by the great god Isthuaan and his many small children, who took the shapes of feathered serpents that could travel through any of the realms of creation: water, earth, sand, air, smoke or snow. Sketches of the silhouettes these cast as they flew over land have woken the imagination of many a writer throughout history. In aspects of religion and literature, they remain revered, or cast as the manifestation of apocalyptic doom brought on by man's sinful ways .

Ancient sheet of writing from the Beluccids of modern Laros, depicting a winged serpent, which Sky Ships may have been mistaken for by Pfeffermin (Using Midjourney)

Sky-Ships of the Akwasi People

The vehicles were thought to have been built by the ancient civilization known as the Akwasi, named for the word for 'Sky' in Iasrumi, as the first explorations and identification of the Akwasi with the ancient peoples of the Sky Islands, and the remnants of huge crystalline ship-like vessels found all over the world occurred in the Iasrum. Analysis of the sky-ships, as Iasrumi archaeologists have named them show that they ranged from relatively small to several miles long. Like the huge Breakwater Walls, also thought to be built by Akwasi people, much about their construction or how they even managed such a feat is unknown, though the material they used is mostly Ice-Glass, which is known to be shaped and reshaped using magical currents, suggesting that some form of magical technological process was used.

Anatomy of a Sky-Ship

Longitudinal cross-section of a small Sky-Ship, based on remains found in the eastern Iasrumi Basin. The similarity to a fish is clear. by Pfeffermin (Using Midjourney)

There is a variation to the shape of Sky Ships found all over the Toreworld. Most of them mimic the shape of fish or snakes, with the additional 'winged' shape of birds, bats or other winged creatures to their sails. It has been thought that their designers studied the movement of animals through various materials in order to find the most streamlined shape. Sky-Ships have been found with streamlined prows like swordfish and long jointed 'tails' that contain passenger or storage areas and resemble terrestrial trains. It's easy to see how their silhouette from below may have caused the myth of 'dragon' or 'wyvern' like beasts in various cultures.
The typical Sky Ship retains the same basic principles of a landship with its hull, hold, bow, stern and prow, though its features have been refined to allow the vessel to more easily move through the air. The Sky-Ships' wings, from what evidence remains of them, seem to be made of mechanical skeletons, fitted with sail-like 'skin' that can be adjusted, tighter or looser depending on the height or direction of travel. The skin of the wings made of a lightweight fabric that retains and directs the thermals produced by various vents along the hull of the ship. The ship itself, as well as the fabric of the sails, is made of a composite of ice-glass, suggesting the Akwasi was able to molecularly change and enhance substances for various uses, keeping the Sky Ships so lightweight as to be propelled easily airborne, but also incredibly strong and damage-proof.

Frontal cross section of a Sky Ship based on artefacts discovered in Umqher by Pfeffermin (Using Midjourney)

Nickname

Isthuuan

Price

Priceless

Rarity

Very-Rare (Artefact), None Known Existing (Complete model)

Related Technologies

• Breakwater Walls
• Illustry

Length

From 10ft to miles long

Speed

Likely very slow

Complement / Crew

Upwards of six crew members, depending on the size of the vessel

The Dragon's Head

Many sea-borne vessels carve their prows to look like beasts or divine creatures in the so called tradition of Embleming - a process which involves creating an aspect of a being thought to be in another realm of existence and summoning it by drawing said being into the created aspect. Seafarers who carry out the practice are said to hope that their vessel gains flight or strength or sentience to help them through a difficult voyage or naval battle.

Isthuuan head carved into a Tipranian fishing vessel, replicating the ancient Isthuaan carving held in the Hawa Maritime Museum by Pfeffermin (Using Microsoft Designer)

A natural chunk of Blue Lassantine unearthed in Yagoye by Pfeffermin (Using Microsoft Designer)

Evidence of Sky-ships and purported purpose

As no historical or written record from the Akwasi people has yet been discovered, despite the wealth of artefacts, architecture and sculpture they left behind, it has been suggested their writings were built somehow into their objects and buildings, or they used another method of recording that has since been lost. Archaeologists have pieced together a rough sketch of the civilization known as the Akwasi. Starting out from small settlements in the Iasrum and the Sky Islands, they soon built a bustling maritime empire that would last for thousands of years, in different forms - the most famous being its last iteration, the Gylarusian Empire. Most civilisations or settlements before the Akwasi would die out quickly or move before they could build anything significant, due to the apocalyptic weather phenomena, storms and flooding once approximately every five hundred years on the Toreworld known as a Deadwater Turn. The Akwasi built the very first Breakwater Walls - enormous structures that were initially built out of clay and stone, but were later demolished and replaced with Ice-Glass due to its durability, to keep out the flooding. Where they built walls, settlements thrived, and grew into civilisations that rose and fell. The Breakwater Walls of today rise thousands of feet above sea-level, meaning that once they were raised, there was no travelling between each walled section. Before the building of the Breakwater Gates, in times which they could be used and simply for ease of travel, it has been suggested that these Sky Ships were built to travel long distances over the Breakwater Walls so that settlements didn't suffer the madness, famine and chaos that came with complete half-a-millennia isolation. While no Sky-Ship has ever been witnessed in flight, or a whole ship being uncovered, there have been many ancient ships unearthed, either from the ocean or suspected land crash sites. It has not been determined for many of these ships what caused the crashes, but due to Ice-Glass' near indestructable nature, it has been speculatued that magic or divine intervention were the cause.

'Skeletons', Blue Lassantine and the divine origin of Sky Ships

While most scholars and academics use the structure of unearthed Sky-Ships and their resemblance to modern sailing vessels as evidence they were human-built, there are many religious figures who posit that the 'ships' unearthed were the decomposed skeletons of the Isthuaans - called 'dragons' in some parts, of myth. The Common Unity Church which controls a large part of western Bhufain and some of the eastern Yagogin territories considers it heresy to desecrate or even touch the 'bones.' In many parts of Yagoye, the folklore and cultures of the people contains many references to the 'fallen tears of the gods' - tiny chunks of Blue Lassantine, thought a form of Ice-Glass, with magical properties, that fall as comets from the sky quite often in certain parts of Yagoye. These 'tears' are thought to be from the gods, who live in cities and ships in the sky above Yagoye; too high to see.