The Nuvem Enclave Settlement in The Threads of Magic | World Anvil
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The Nuvem Enclave

The first people to settle among the clouds, to build a settlement up in the sky, could already fly by themselves. They built their homes with a little help from magic spells and a lot of determination, so they could always be where they felt most comfortable. But with time, as these things often are, more joined them, and it grew from a few dozen houses into a proper city - it became the Nuvem Enclave.   The Nuvem Enclave is a Courtless city - neither the Summer or the Winter Court hold power over it, and everyone is welcome there, if they can reach it. The city never stays in the same place for long - it moves slowly across the sky, like a cloud itself. The foundations of the city are hidden inside an enormous cloud, which shifts and changes shape as necessary, but always accommodates the city on top of it. There's a group of powerful sorcerers who control where the city goes, always keeping an eye on the path ahead, at possible dangers to avoid. Even so, there's never a set goal, they make the city roam as they see fit, randomly assigning directions for a given week or month.   The inhabitants of the Nuvem Enclave do not hide their location, nor have they ever barred passage to anyone, despite it being a seemingly hard place to reach. Their prosperous industry is a major part of that: they build airships, big and small, to travel to and from anywhere in the Feywild. More precisely, they also produce the Echo Crystals that make all of this possible.

There's A Castle on a Cloud

There are several ways to get to the Nuvem Enclave: you can fly there yourself, or perhaps you have a mount that can do it for you; there are magical items like flying carpets or brooms that could do the same; but the safest and fastest way is through an airship, and many of them are built in Nuvem Enclave, flying since their creation. They fly back and forth from the capitals of the two courts, as well as from Mystwick, one of the main courtless cities, or from the houses of those rich enough to own a private vessel.   Some older airships, like zeppelins, still exist, but they're slow and quite limited in the way they're able to move, and handling the gas that makes it possible for them to fly is quite dangerous. These days all modern airships are equipped with several echo crystals. There airships which still look like zeppelins, other which look as if they belong in the city instead, with big sails to help pick up speed. Some are big enough to transport a small army, while others are quite small, just enough for one or two people. All of these have been equipped with navigation tools that allow them to fly in all sorts of directions. There's an intrinsic connection between these ships and the crystals they house: without them, they would never be able to have such freedom of movement. Without them, they wouldn't fly at all.   Even the city itself is held aloft by several of these echo crystals, clusters of them hidden throughout the vast cloud it occupies. Only the council which rules the city knows where all of them are, and even then, no one knows the location of all crystals. That information is spread throughout those responsible for protecting the Nuvem Enclave, so it's more difficult to sabotage the city and endanger all who live in it.   These echo crystal are quite difficult to manipulate. In their dormant state they're just crystals full of potential, but those with the know-how can imbue them with magic spells, or a magical essence to do all sorts of fantastical things. In this case, the Nuvem Enclave specializes in creating echo crystals with variations of levitation spells, although their enchanters are perfectly capable of creating other types of crystal, and often do. Some create protection crystals for airships which expect to see battle, or even illusion crystals to hide them amid the clouds. Most of the airships are not meant for combat, though, and are used mostly for travel. Some crystals aren't even used for airships at all. They are quite expensive, though, given the knowledge and experience that is needed to create one without breaking the crystal, so for smaller spells people usually find other means of maintaining them.   The Nuvem Enclave is a city in constant activity. There are always airships around it, flying beings zooming in and out of the city, people coming and going from the ground. The industry surrounding the airships and the echo crystals made it possible for the Enclave to turn from a small settlement into an enormous city, one that keeps on growing, the cloud below it getting bigger with it as the city needs it to. It's also quite a peaceful place, and no one has dared attack it in centuries, perhaps even millennia. After all, although that's not their main goal, they are certainly capable of creating warships and crystals with spells to attack invaders or those with nefarious intentions. War and disquiet is a thing of the ground-dwellers, for up here, amid the clouds, the sky, the stars, the inhabitants of the Nuvem Enclave have other things to focus on. They rarely even fight among themselves, seeing as that could endanger the very magic that keeps them aloft.   The sky is the limit, as they say - and who knows, maybe one day even that will change.

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