The Overbright

 See this post by Skerples because it's really cool.

 Also this flash game.

Basically my first introduction to fantasy (Beyond a book of Greek Myths my mother read to me,) was the Dark Elf trilogy by R.A. Salvatore, so I love the Underdark as a concept. 

But what about the Overbright?

 

First off, put on your cartoon logic hat. You can walk on clouds, mine them and juice them with your hands for water. Cloud-soil can take seeds like dirt and grow vines and trees. There are grazing herds of pegasi in elysian cloud meadows miles above the land's surface. The centers of clouds become denser, solidifying into striated marble, which is just as heavy as the land-bound stuff, but hangs in the air all the same.

The Overbright is Isolated yet interconnected. Islands drift together, conjoin or split into smaller cloud islands. Birds and floating souls can cross easily, but clod-footed ground-dwellers need lighter-than-air sky canoes and pegasi driven chariots to get around. This leads to extreme isolation- the denizens of most islands seldom leave, but they are not in danger of starving or stagnating, since migratory birds and sky-bound nomads bring trade and food. Sunlight is abundant in the Overbright, making agriculture and photosynthesis a viable form of subsistence. A good many wizards travel to the Overbright to build their towers- the solitude works wonders for their research.

But don't expect the Overbright to be all sunshine and rainbows, though those certainly do figure in. Just because it's in the sky doesn't mean that it's a paradise. You think the underdark invented danger? The Night Below was a crack in the burning Earth when the Overbright was a storm as tall as the horizon, formed from the oceans turned to steam hotter than flame. It's like they say; as above, so below.

The interplay of distance and gravity have a strong affect on Overbright navigation. You can see the lands below, but going down there is almost impossible, since doing so would break every bone in your body. Therefore it's fun to play with that "so close, so far" relationship. Imagine mile long fishing lines reeling up catches from oceans below. The peaks of great mountains brush past as sky-goats disembark, having traveled the whole of the world atop their temporary cloud pasture.

The Overbright is Formless and Ancient. The shifting nature of cloud-islands means that it is impossible to chart the distances between them. Imagine trying to map a three-dimensional ocean of ice bergs that keep smashing into each other. Individual mountain sized clouds become shifting labyrinths, the surfaces on the outside remain, but the geography churns with the wind. All the same, the contents of the islands are ancient.

Due to the difficulty of getting around, when an island becomes abandoned it could be centuries before it is discovered by an explorer. There are ancient crystal sarcophagi held suspended at the peaks of white cloud mountains, marble coliseums of the cyclopes manned by the floating spirits of their long dead slaves, titanic forests held within the hollow pillars of the sky; all of these places untread by mortal feet in centuries.

This makes the Overbright genuinely alien. There are creatures up there that have been extinct for millennia on the surface. There are creatures made for grand cosmic plans for the surface that never panned out: the work of dead gods who never returned home to their private skybound workshops. There are ancient empires and hidden sky kingdoms and wild offshoot tribes of people that genuinely don't know that there's a whole world down there, just like most people don't know that there's a tyrannical dystopia in "that cloud over there that looks like a shoe."

Metal is rare, any bronze or steel in the Overbright came from the surface at some point. Without magma, the largest cloud islands instead churn with unshed lightning, which boils cloudsoil into metamorphic sky-marble, or crystallizes it into igneous fulgurite. Most material crafting in the Overbright must therefore be done with bone, cloudstone, and wood.

 

 

The Overbright is Big. It stretches from about a mile away from the surface to the edge of space. That's a whole lot of sky.

So how do I get there?

1. Climbing. Tall enough towers, giant beanstalks, mountains.

2. Divine Benediction. Sometimes the angels painted on chapel ceilings reach down and pull you up.

3. Tornadoes. If you survive getting sucked up into the sky, you might just realize you're not in Kansas anymore.

4. Invitation. Sometimes, somebody lowers a rope. If they're nice, it's got a basket big enough for you and your friends attached.

5. Fog. A fog bank is just a cloud that fell down from the Overbright. Sometimes they rise back up with you on them, sometimes you can find a staircase made out of cloudstuff. 

6. Riding something with wings. Dragons, Megaravens, helicopters. If it can fly, it can probably land you on a sky island.

 

(2) The Stone of Caliber

Terrain- Rocky, Wet, highland, A river runs southward through the hex, shallow enough to ford where it meets a lake in the center. 

The Lake: Shallow and silty water, lily-pads and humming skeeters and water striding spiders. Long legged birds stalk the thrushes.

Odd effects/ bodies left in the water here do not rot or degrade. The bottom of the pool is littered with corpses in blankets and tapestries weighed down by smoothed stones. The nearby town of Omadien buries their dead here. The pond's ecosystem treats the corpses as any other stone, and does not eat of their flesh. The same applies to wild animals that fall in and drown, but anything native to the ecosystem such as moss or fish is fair game.

The island// center of the lake. There is a large stone that rises from the green, and an anvil on top. There is a Riftsabre thrust through the anvil and into the stone. The Sabre looks to be made from gold wires woven together and burnished, and is as tall as a man. The flat of the blade on either side is woven into the glyphs "Cherish" and "Abandon." Excavation would reveal the stone to be perfectly spherical deposit of alternating granite and basalt. Caliber cannot be pulled free by any means, unless the challenge bears the mark of conquest upon their skin.

Stuff:

2. A historian from a noble house and a coterie of scribes  and servants. Examining Caliber and noting its markings and shape for posterity.

3. A handful of Falconer hunters are letting their birds drink from the river.

4. Pallblood Knight taking a rest. They hold their boots in one hand and stroll across the water.

5. Village folk harvesting water lilies from the lake.

6. Gaggle of foolish youths forded the river in a lily-fishing boat, are taking turns trying to pull Caliber from the anvil.

7. Village folk fetching water.

8. A giant dog is drinking from the river.

9. Recurring NPC.

10. Outlaws in a flat canoe creep along the river, trying to hide corpses that they've fetched from the lake beneath a tarp. Headed downriver to sell the bodies to necrophages.

11. Sentient pod of dolphins. Very lost. Speak by psychically vibrating your inner ear.

12. The elder of Omadien and some priests are blessing Caliber with rosewater and rice.

Riftsabre: A sword from an older time when men were more knowledgeable of Divine Alchemy. They are typically the size of a Zweihander and made of unknown materials. They are harder than any mundane material, and thus cannot be sampled for experimentation. Riftsabres are rarely all one piece, rather woven from multiple threads like wicker, often into the shape of glyphs and pictures. No two Riftsabres are alike. Their shapes are fanciful, but due to their attributes this ornamentation does not affect their use. Despite being held like any other sword, the weight of the weapon falls onto the wielder's center of mass. (Though Riftsabres are separated into "male" and "female" categories, men have difficulty using women's Riftsabres, though women have less difficulty using men's. Thus the use of counterweight belts is common among Rift-Duelists.) Whatever causes this odd weight distribution also provides perfect leverage- Riftsabres face almost no resistance against their cutting edge from any position. They can be used mid-air, underwater, and are almost impossible to remove from another's hand against their will. Since the knowledge of their construction is lost to all but the most powerful cults, they are incredibly valuable. They're magic super-swords, you get it.

Rift - Sabre

(Rift- Both in the otherworldly sense and the Breaking sense. The blades are the provenance of angels, and their capacity for destruction is infamous.) (Sabre- in the sense of dueling. Often the only method of defeating a Rift-Duelist is by single combat. The length and power of a Riftsabre allow them to decimate halberdiers and even pikemen on a field. Sabre also bring to mind the role of cavalry lancers.)