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The Sky

The Sky is where everything is contained within the world. It is the only home many have ever known, a great blue sea of air that contains many diverse cultures on various floating isles, or continents.

Sadal Suud is a rustic frontier island. It is relatively small and covered in great wilderness: home to the Moonguile Forest, a thick wood inhabited by bat-like creatures known as Shawras; Pherkad, an ancient, medium-large city of stone; and Cebalrai, a small farming hamlet that exports fresh food. Just about everything else is trees.

Diadem is known to many as the Land of the Clouds, and for good reason: the entire continent is continuously envelopped in thick, golden clouds. It is hard to tell the terrain, and when walking, it often feels as if there is little holding you up besides the mists themselves. There is a small fishing village here called Nashira, and a larger city known as Sheliak that contains Castle Elnath. The Lesser Celestial River also flows through here, fed by an unknown source.

Anuenue, the Rainbow Continent, is a subtropical island sheilded by magic and commited to neutrality. It is home to colourful people who seem to care only for fun, and the best education system in the Sky. The captial city is known as Komo Mai, and is well decorated. There is also Opu, the waterfall village, known by its (you guessed it) towering waterfall; Holoholo Jungle, a difficult, thick jungle to navigate; and the Ancient Library of Magic, a decaying library that has recently become abandoned. However, the most defining quality of Anuenue is its Celstial Tree: a collection of many hundreds of trees growing in symbiosis to a towering height. It blooms only once every thirty years, and when it does it is cause for great celebration.

Mira is the oddball continent. One must travel through the Trail of Souls, an interdimensional rift, in order to get to it, for it is known to change location by slipping through dimensions. It is a sparkling land of crystal. Places of interest include Parnasse, a confectionary villiage known by its sweets (considering nearly everything is made of candy there--the houses, the trees, the streets, the everything); Reverence, the storybook village where everything seems to be illustrated and the villagers are odd, froglike creatures that spout bizarre phrases at random intervals; Detourne, a mystical garden where walking on ceilings is commonplace; Balancoire, a relatively and refreshingly normal village seeped in mist; and Nekton, the Shrine of Spirits, a dark wood where ghosts from another dimension are said to gather.

Alfard is home to the new and ever-growing Empire of the Flame. Known to be the economic and military superpower, it is defined by Mintaka, the capital city made of gold. However, Azha, a dirt-poor village of slaves containing magma caves, is often forgotten... seeing as it's in the middle of the Nihal desert that covers over fifty percent of the continent. Perhaps due to their advanced knowledge of science and technology, Wings of the Heart have been lost, leaving the majority of Alfard's inhabitants wingless.

Of course, there are other subislands floating the in sky, such as the Celestial Alps, a mountainous region with crisp, clean air, a rumoured kingdom of ice, or perhaps even a place beneath what is known as the Taintclouds, a poisonous vortex a the bottom of the Sky. Many areas are yet to be discovered...

Magnus, Magic, and Technology

Magnus are the result of an ancient technology, developed by wizards when the Earth was still at one with the Ocean. They are cards with the ability to take in the information (or "Magna Essence") from a nonliving thing, then to reassemble the information on command in order to summon whatever was trapped before: water, fire, snow, wood, you name it.

However, Magnus can age, and often do so very quickly. Fruit may rot in a matter of hours when trapped inside a Magnus.

(I will NOT be implementing magnus into a battle system, as it would be hard to explain and needlessly complicated; plus, this RP takes place so early in the Baten Kaitos world that it probably would not be popular as a fighting tool yet.)

Magic in the world is based off of the six elements, and involves their manipulation(there is no healing magic, by the way). It is just as effective as any weapon, and anyone can learn how to use it with the right training. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to magical creativity, but don't go overboard.

The level of technology in this world is fairly difficult to explain. Alfard may have steam engines and jet boots, but flying boats are corporeal. There are guns, but they are only as lethal as other weapons or spells and only possessed by the Alfard. Essentially, it is generally past-like with some fantasy or futuristic elements.



Elements

Upon discovery of Magna Essence, it was found that some objects pertain to one of six elements. Most objects have no element, and are known simply as physical, but some may possess one the following:

Water, or its opposite, fire.
Light, or its opposite, darkness.
Air, or its opposite, chronos (time).

((I didn't come up with the air thing, okay? I realise that Earth is curiously omitted.))

This is basically to say that it's best to fight fire not with fire, but with water... a flaming sword would have trouble piercing ice crystal armour, just as a water-based spell may not work as well when faced with fiery mail. A water based spell, however, would slip right through ice armour, leaving only the physical defended.

Most people feel most comfortable with one or two elements over others, or some with no element at all.

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Stretching, the youth stepped out of the tavern, surprised just how early in the day it was. Or rather... how late in the afternoon? One slightly dirty hand rose and scrubbed at gritty blue eyes, not sure if he was trying to rub sleep or drink from them. Ah... a long day it had been. He had to get off this rock. The local celebrations were starting to grate at his nerves, their joy like salt against the wound of his ship.

Where was she now? The Atlantis Sky. He strolled from his position of blocking the flow of traffic, walking to where he could see nothing but the sky stretch endlessly. A mix between a frown and a scowl marred what might have been an attractive, if scruffy, face. She could be anywhere. For the fifteenth hundred time, curses floated to the top of his mind, as though sheer force of will could bring her capturers to an untimely end and the ship back to him.

He could do with a bath and a shave that was for sure. The same hand that had attempted to rouse him from a thoughtful state rubbed one rough cheek as he considered that. Well, nothing could be done about that just at the moment. Baths needed coin, and he was lacking that. Otherwise he would still be in the tavern.

With a sudden motion, Kaethe turned on his feet, turning his back to the unspoiled portion of the sky he'd been surveying. It occurred to him as he did so that he couldn't quite recall just how he'd stumbled from the port to the tavern. Cursing himself in the same manner he'd addressed those who'd taken his ship, the young man started asking for directions toward the docks.

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Ofelia sat on the dock not facing the wide open sky, but the other way towards a small pond. With her boots laying next to her, and her black pants rolled up to just past her knee, she swung her feet back and forth in the water. Her eyes swam in and out of focus as she was mesmerized by the ripples she was making. As of late she had been feeling less and less like herself.

She was still longing for adventure, and to be on a ship. However there was desperation growing in her chest, as her money ran low, and her need for money was changing her. People talked of black spots and streaks on her wings. This confused Ofelia, and it worried her. When she was a child, she had never noticed any black on her wings, and people always told her she was so sweet. Was it possible, that when things in ife had turned around, and she had changed, and her wings changed as well?? People always spoke of a persons wings reflecting their personality. Did wings change to reflect the person who sported them??

Her eyes began to sting and water and she focused on her feet, the image distorted by the water. The thought of her wings changing bothered her more than her lack of money. However, Ofelia realized that the people who noticed the black, were right. She wasn't as nice as before. In fact only yesterday she had stolen the money a man had left to pay his bill in the tavern. She was just that desperate.

Her wings appeared on her back, in a light green glow. She stared at her new reflection in the water. There was indeed black on her wings. No, the water is dark. And I stirred up some dirt by swinging my feet. There isn't any black...it's just an illusion. She thought of every excuse possible, to deny the black in her wings, and to ignore the black in her hear.

Ofelia looked away from the reflection with disgust. As her wings disappeared, she made a particularly large splash with her feet.

"Of all the towns to be marooned in, I'm stuck in this pissant town..." A black-haired man muttered to himself as he walked down the streets of Pherkad. No odd jobs today, sadly enough. He had barely enough money to eat and sleep in the cheapest local inn, and he almost considered taking to the forest to be able to eat and sleep. After all, it was free...

The man attracted some looks from those that were relatively new to the town. After all, most of them had nursed him back to life from near-death, and he owed them his life. But they all knew he wouldn't stay forever. Newcomers, however, were not absorbed in his lost eye, which was, however, rather unusual with the long scar through the sealed eyelid, nor the scars covering the rest of his face, arms, and though the scars upon his chest made an 'X' shape, they still did not attract the attention of newcomers for too long.

It was his back that was of such interest. Upon his back, where normally the Wings of Heart could be seen, and this man's had once been black-feathered, there were a pair of eternal wings, which could not be summoned up and out of existence. They would be there forever upon his back, whether he liked it or not.

They were made of metal.

They were fashioned after eagle wings, long, light, and with metal feathers. They were currently folded up upon his back, tucked in close, though he didn't put them into the posistion they were normally in when he slept, in which case they conformed to his back, and flexed with it for comfort.

A man on a porch waved to the man as he passed, and the metal-winged man gave a grin. The man upon the porch shouted his greeting, "Howdy, Marcos!" Marcos chuckled and replied "Hola, amigo!" Though he had once been a pirate, Marcos swore that to these people, at least, he would be the kindest soul they had ever known. They saved his life, and he would do the same for them, with the blood in his veins, the metal wings upon his back, and the saber at his side.

But there was something about his wings that did not meet the eye. Something was hidden within them, and it was something Marcos was tentative to use. Within each wing there were two cylindrical rockets, boosters if you will. They were necessary for flight, though not for gliding. The fuel source was rather rare, at least in Sadal Suud. He hoped to travel someday to Alfard to perhaps change his booster's fuel source to something more convenient or acquire some of the fuel it currently took. The current fuel it took was rare enough for it to be virtually nonexistent, and it was a pity that Marcos had uncovered the material by chance. He had come across a small drum of oil in the countryside, presumeably dropped by a freigther from Alfard. However, it was difficult to obtain in Sadal Suud, and it didn't last long, as he had discovered. Luckily the stuff was worthless out here, since nothing really used it besides his own wings. All four rockets had to be injected with oil manually, and he was trying to devise a way to perhaps add a fifth rocket on his back, or at least a master tank for it, so that he could hold more fuel and thusly travel farther without refueling.

But that hadn't happened yet, and so Marcos walked down the streets, getting smiles and suspicious looks alike, still hoping to find someone with an odd job, or at least information as to where he could acquire a ship should he get the money...

But he hadn't had much luck considering either...