The School of Hard Rocks

And soft rocks and sharp ones and smooth ones...

Since stones that were part of a skyisland fall and soil that washes off the edge falls, why do the islands stay aloft? When some sink - like Outpost 4 - why does that happen? Is there any relation between the answers to these questions and why the rules are different in the Floor? Why can't skyships fly over islands or each other?
These are the questions we will seek to answer. Not to mention anything we may learn about the properties of stones and how they may be used.

— Julra Atalco, excerpt from A Proposition for a New Department

Getting Things Off the Ground

Apologies Julra but we must decline your application to open a department of geology. There are simply no rooms left at the school and funds are too tight for an expansion at this time.

— Jamray Afrah Aza

Jamaira was already an incredibly busy school when Julra Atalco sought to create a department of her own. Inspired by her work as part of the team that worked at the Monument, she wanted to create a department more specialized in the very ground between them and falling into the Floor below.
Faced by an initial setback after her first proposal to open the department was rejected she stood firm and looked for new ways she - and a few interested colleagues - could entice the Jamray into granting them a department. She and her friends had been doing some work with fertilizers made from different mixtures of crushed stone. This rock dust was effective and when Julra presented it to the collected department heads was able to get her own department funded from the profits of the knowledge sale.

Clearing the Dust

The only room in Jamaira that was available was a rarely-used storeroom. Ecstatic that her vision was finally coming together Julra took to cleaning out the room right away. Some of the items were transfered to other storerooms, some were sold off to fund the purchase of materials for the new department, and others were repurposed.
After many days of cleaning and setup, the department was officially opened in the Autumn of 53EX. Things were slow to start, few new people expressed interest in the work they were doing, but there were already plans in place for digs, trades, and other methods of acquiring new samples of a large variety of stones and soil from Breharan, the Colonies, and beyond.

The Rocks and the Hard Place

The geology room is set up with all the rock samples stored on one side and the blackboard on the other. Along the top edge the blackboard are the biggest questions the department seeks to answer, these are big questions about the skies, ones that will be very difficult to answer - "How do skyislands form?" and "Why do skyislands float?".

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Old Article

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The Rock You Can Eat

The crew of the Harani discovered the large glowing spheres - known as Sweetstone - long before Julra founded the geology department at Jamaira.
The medicinal discoveries - and tragic deaths - from the initial studies were not the successes or failures of the School of Hard Rocks but they thought there could be more to learn and purchased some additional samples from a much more recent expedition.
So far, they have discovered nothing new about the stones except that they are useful for lighting their work in the almost windowless room they operate in.

Contributions

In its nearly thirteen years of operation, the Atalco School of Geology - as it is officially called - has made several important discoveries and contributions. Beyond the boost to crop yields provided by their experiments with rock dust, they have also provided a different powder which sticks to unwanted household insects. This powder is unwittingly carried back to the nest and gets on other bugs eventually killing the entire colony. In the quickly growing city of Darapur, this was a very highly regarded product. Most of the money the department makes goes into funding digs and expeditions.
While the formation of certain stones, gems, and other materials are mostly a mystery to the department head and her students, they have made great strides in the categorization of rocks using an ever-expanding suite of tests to determine their similarities and differences.

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