Vast-Sky Islands
As the fisher sat on the edge of her boat, the clouds beneath her feet began to sway. With eyes wide she quickly braced and threw herself to the back of the boat, just in time to dodge the grand whale jumping out of them. She watched as the whale soared above her and above the tiny island with a house she called her home, before diving into another cloud, soon totally obscured by it. With a sigh she sat back up and returned to her work.
Geography
Composed of thousands of floating islands. They vary greatly in sizes and shapes - some are round and stretching to all sides, some are flats with a cavernous underbelly, some are so small they could only fit one person on them.
The islands are spread out, though some clump together and are connected by (man-made) bridges to form towns and cities. These settlements, however, can be hundreds of kilometres apart, making travel to them only possible by skyships.
All the islands share a common floating line to which they will return if pushed either up or down.
The largest of these islands is nearly two thousand square kilometres, with several hills, many lowlands, and an underbelly reaching about one kilometre under the floating line with a natural system of caverns.
Beneath the islands are incredibly thick clouds in which cloud fish fly, and above are much less thicker ones. From both of these there is frequent rain - downwards from those above, upwards from those below. On some islands are natural lakes, formed thanks to the two-sided rain and a fortunate structure of the islands.
Fauna & Flora
The flora is as varying as the islands themselves. There are trees, grasses, flowers, bushes, but most of all mosses that cover the floating rocks.
On the islands themselves, animal life is largely adapted to either fly or float, mainly countless species of birds, however there are still land-based animals, such as sheep.
Underneath the islands fly skyfish. They live about two kilometres under the floating line, in the clouds, though some species come closer to bottoms of the islands to nip at the mosses and vines growing there.
Natural Resources
Apart from the organic resources, the islands are rich in metals such as iron, copper, etc. Mining their ores also yields another resource - skyrock, a purplish material that keeps the islands floating. From this rock, skyships are build.
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Heyho!
I really like the idea of the sky lives and the two-sided rain. Is this skyrock some kind of gravitational center? And what happens if one island would be stripped of its entire stock of skyrock? Would it fall down? Whatever "down" is? Or would it follow the last piece of skyrock that is taken?
Hello and thank you! Sorry this reply is some days late, I've been kept busy from checking here. There's gravity that pulls everything down, but there is the Float Line on which the skyrock just stops falling. You can imagine it like water, and the skyrock as really tough floaties (amazing metaphor, I know). A very good question - if you stripped an island of its skyrock, it would indeed fall down, specifically down into an endless abyss. In that way, skyrock is a perishable resource, even if there's presumably enough of it to be mined for millenia. I'm glad you like it! I'm going to be adding articles once I'm less busy, which should be soon enough ^^