The races
Three peoples, three cities, three alphabets.
The animal peoples first. Each has a city of its own, a master who keeps something you need, and words carved into the walls in a real script. The words are real too.
The Cloud City, the Cloudway and the Peak Sanctuary
The Air Bears
Bears in monks’ robes, on isles that float above the cloud sea.
They train on the clouds. Pilgrims walk the Cloudway to reach them, stepping from one floating rock to the next, and a white elder, Grandmaster Ursane, keeps the bear shape at the pagoda for anyone who bows properly.
Further up, the pandas of the Peak Sanctuary keep the wind. Their master, Senna, has a court ringed by a standing tornado and a sport to play in it.
They write in Devanagari
Their walls and banners carry Sanskrit words for floating, dreaming, resting and thinking, and they glow sky-blue.
-
In game. The Cloud City -
In game. Senna, at the Peak Sanctuary -
In game. A pilgrim on the Cloudway
Canopy Village, the Vinework and the Bough Field
The Forest Wardens
Monkeys and gorillas in leaf armour, with a market town on decks in the redwoods.
You reach them by climbing: out of the Understory, up the vine tower, onto the village deck. Master Baptiste keeps the monkey shape there, and it is the first one you will learn.
He also keeps a ball pitch on a bough above the village, and he will want a game.
They write in Maya glyph blocks
The words are cut into the trees themselves. “Follow your light” runs up a giant in the Understory; “Never stop dreaming” climbs the Vinework one word to a landing; the village wears Imagination and Joy.
-
In game. A warden on the village deck -
In game. Market day in Canopy Village -
Master Baptiste
The Cinder Aerie, above the Magma Cliffs
The Volcano Hawks
Hawks in robes, ranked from acolyte to archmage, in a terraced city over the lava.
The way in is a climb up five cliffs with the melt underneath, then a tunnel, then a fire temple. Past the temple the Aerie opens out into market streets, and the hawks who run them will sell to anything with coin.
Roux, the archmage, is the one to find.
They write in Elder Futhark
English, sounded out in runes. The five cliffs on the way up read Think, Imagine, Science, Act, Fly, and the runes never go out.
-
In game. On the Aerie’s terrace -
In game. The market street
Still to come
These three are not the whole realm. The turtle folk of the drowned worlds, the dwarves, the goblins, the wood elves and the cave elves all live here too, and they join this page as their pictures are ready.