Skeletons from the Clouds

A crowd of wide-eyed children had gathered around the old man sitting in his slowly rocking chair. "Cities of snow white stone glimmered in the bright sunlight of an open blue sky." The children all sat to attention absorbing each word like a commandment from a higher power. "Upon the clouds they soared, watching the lush world from above." He drew forth a small box from a table on his left. "How do you think they stayed afloat?" A dozen wild ideas were called out from the young faces. The old man lifted the hinge of the box and smiled. "They were alive. That's how." There was silence, not so much as a breath escape any of the children as they waited to know what was inside the box. Stopping his rocking, the man reached into the box and held aloft a small piece of ivory material. "Bone. These flying cities, they were alive, and flew because of this," he said holding up the bone for all to see. Gasps shot up amongst those gathered. "Creatures as large as the sky itself, the behemoths in the clouds they were. And this here's a piece of their skeleton."

Historical Basis

Sky Behemoth bones have been found all across the Ashlands, buried far beneath the surface. They hold a historical significance in that they suggest a time when life ruled the world. Before the ash and flame won out over nature. Stories of the ancient days tell of cities on the clouds. Cities that moved with the wind. These bones, some the size of houses, suggest that these were more than just lifeless cities of stone. They were alive.

Variations & Mutation

To some the idea of living floating cities was too much of a stretch of the mind. As such, other tales tell of towering cities of white stone but the bones are instead explained as the monstrous protectors, domesticated by ancient peoples. How they went about taming creatures as large as the bones suggest is still up for interpretation. What a time it must have been, floating cities or not.