A World, Broken
The planet was destroyed
by the catastrophic climax of a world long-since forgotten. None know the apocalypse’s exact nature, but its evidence is all around—in the sundered planet and its crippled peoples. Generations later, the scarred surface is covered in Pitch, an accursed haze of demon-filled miasma. Death and worse fates await those who fall through its abyssal depths.
Luckily, our stories mostly take place well above the pitch, upon magically suspended islands—safe havens home to minor deities, people, and critters alike. The isolated nature of these islands has given way to innumerable cultures, beliefs and lifestyles.
Welcome to The Seas Above, a world born anew.
Pitch Lies Below
Pitch is a black, inky, smoke-like substance that moves without wind and ripples with the passage of unseen beasts. Faces and hands flow in waves of smoke, grasping and searching for their missing reality. It thickens the further you descend, feeding what life remains on the world’s surface. It completely covers the surface, hiding its scarred and destroyed face. Pitch is extremely dangerous. It amplifies and warps magic, and mutates anything with a spark of life. Most cultures avoid it for good reason: to be touched is to be...changed.
Gods Rule Above
Islands float because of the powerful beings that possess the heart of every floating island. Each is unique, yet all wield magic of unknowable power. Their islands are reflections of themselves, fashioned of their image, a home and a kingdom for their unique creatures. Typically a disembodied force of nature, if a god wants to communicate in ways that don’t include thunder and lighting, they need a host to manifest through. Given a host, a god may interact with mortals on their scale: with vocal cords and gestures. While many are reclusive with age, some still humor the occasional visitor, if only to pass the time.
Pearls are everything
Crystallized sentience, distilled experience, the willpower of life. Small iridescent spheres, each with a ‘word’ defined by its origin. Much of the flora and fauna of The Seas Above have adapted to using pearls to survive in the new world. These Pearled Creatures can use these to enact magic as easily and naturally as breathing. Thus, the best way to ride the skies is by hitching a ride with a willing friend.
Free Sailors have coined the term Titans for these massive beasts.
Navigating the Black
Pantheons
The Gods are mighty indeed, but numbers will always rule supreme. Often seeking protection from their warlike cousins, many Gods have formed bonds of loose cooperation called a Pantheon. Pantheons are like family: dysfunctional and petty, but most importantly forever. Due to their static nature, Free Sailors use Pantheons in mapping to distinguish ‘regions’. A good map details both how to travel a pantheon and how to behave on the islands therein, to avoid upsetting a God or being turned into a pawn within a greater Pantheon Drama.
Islanders
The people of the new world. They may be finned, scaled, or winged, but most are humanoid. Islanders populate the islands of the gods, so their physical and magical nature reflects their god’s nature. Just as pearls have words, Gods have ‘domains’. They may be nigh-invulnerable and casually break physical rules, but all are defined by their domain and the lands they create from it. Whether they have chitinous suits, halos of green fire, gossamer-thin wings or clusters of poison glands, all Islanders are rooted in their connection to their island and its god. Most Islanders will constantly carry something from home.
Demons
Psychic parasites, surviving on pitch and willpower. They latch onto a host, feeding on their strong memories and emotions. Trapped demons can be used for war or ship making, but if a demon makes its home in your mind, you may lose your soul without noticing a thing.
The Atmospheres
blossoming ecosystems have arisen,
biome upon layered biome.
Upper Void
No breathable atmosphere, no clouds, no pitch, just open sky all the way up. Creatures that use pearls to fly are largely absent here, where the sun’s rays bathe the flat cloud layer in an empty, dreamlike warmth.
Stormset
A layer of cold clouds and twisting winds. Where warm pitch-laden air is forced up, near-permanent pitch hurricanes form, supporting life in their centers. Mega’s shelter themselves amongst the storms, ready to descend on creatures or scavenge scraps that float upward. Islands looking to hide can easily mask their presence in the persistent storm cover.
Safehaven
Heavy rain clouds, thick with bounty, sink from above and heat and pitch rises from below coming together to form a temperate and almost comfortable middleground between the two extremes. Perhaps a misnomer, Safehaven is home to most island gods and thus the layer with the most varied life and solid land. Most crews travel here, alternating between the thick clouds of Stormset and the light clouds of Safehaven.
Everhaze
A fog of pitch, fed by the layer below. All life here subsides on pitch and its magic. Luminous, floating super bacteria congregate in swarms tended by tentacled, ever-watchful caretakers. Strange stick-like pitchworms propel themselves through the air on millions of tiny waving fibres, cleaning the undersides of resting umber dragons. Life here has begun anew, in a way the world has never seen.
Styx
The thick layer of black pitch that coats the world’s surface. Mighty waves careen across its surface only to break on each other. The sea is occasionally broken by black geysers which send pressurized pitch shooting up as high as Stormset. Here, demons gaze toward the sentient life in the seas above, hungering for their willpower. To plunge beneath these dark depths is certain doom.
Factions
The Chained Empire
Monolithic, powerful, legion. From the island Gloria and its great chained colonies, it hungers for people, resources and land, feeding the so-called rise of civilization in the skies. The emperor and his small priestly army serve chained gods, and raise the dead for counsel and war. All must join the empire, willing or otherwise.
Stygians
With sure hooves and sharp horns, the Faumon people traverse the tunnels and slopes of Hellmount, their gigantic mountain home. Living on a demon-infested mountain swathed in Pitch has cost them their original forms, their trust in any divinity and a staggering number of Fau souls. From this crucible emerged the only civilization to fight the Chained Empire to a standstill, using their mastery of demons and enchantment to great effect. For the Fau, life is toil made worthwhile by those who stand by their sides. Woe unto those who betray or oppose them.
The Free Sailors
Rebels, outcasts, brigands and nomads. Made up of refugees and exiles from both the Chained Empire and Styigans, Free Sailors are as varied in origin as they are in character, yet all quest for freedom in the strange skies of this new world.