It is almost as if the sky was designed to pull on your heart, to make you yearn for adventure. This is the clearest I have ever seen the sky, certainly a good sign for our maiden voyage. On a cycle like this you can see forever in every direction, there are islands everywhere. There could be anything on them.
Just looking out at the sky makes my imagination run wild. We have yet to set off and I already feel like an explorer, my spirit flying through the clouds.
Oh, Ryza is yelling, she's threatening to set sail without me.— Darosi, Journal No. 1, First Entry
The Great Blue
The sky is one of the four regions of the skies. It exists above the
Floor and the
Void and below the
High. Here the skyislands float, nourished by the rains brought by the winds and inhabited by many creatures and civilizations. Each of the parts of the sky is associated with the colour it takes on. The
High is azure, the sky is blue, the
Floor is gray, and the
Void is black.
Light falls straight down from above from no discernable source. For most of history this has been the realm of myth but recently a few scholars have speculated as to its origin but none have devised a test to prove any of these speculations. The light feeds the plants which in turn feed people and animals like
skyfish which can fly overland but mostly stick to the edges of the islands because that is where their food - such as dangling mosses or smaller skyfish - thrives.
Many phenomena fill the skies such as
lightward rain and the
golden curtain. These are awe inspiring to some, intriguing to others, and impressive to all. There is much to be learned from these oddities possibilities in how to harness them or use them to understand how life has spread across the different islands of the sky.
Navigating the Open Sky
The first peoples to travel across the skies were the
skyfarers who are believed to be the ancestors of the peoples of
Breharan. They are thought to have lived nomadic lives on the backs of
ketzlat as they flew from island to island following the winds. Not much is known about how they navigated the skies but the limited range of their
mounts makes it likely that they traveled only to nearby islands, using only vision to guide them.
In the present,
skysailors use
compasses which always point towards the
Cynosure Stone to more accurately navigate over longer distances and in conditions of poor visibility. There is a limit to this
tool as they only function within a range around the
Stone which creates a circle on the map centered on it. This line is known as the limit of navigation. Few expeditions have ventured beyond this line and the first to do so - the
Harani - never returned.
The reason may be unknown but it is undeniable that
skyships cannot fly over islands or other
skyships. This limits them to sailing only in open sky.
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