Archie
Not even my final form
No need to read over all of this before making a character, but if you're stuck the lore might give you some inspiration for where to start. Captain and First Mate should read the tactics section. I'm starting with minimal lore for now - this doesn't even scratch the surface of 90% of the islands we'll visit. Will update the lore as we go on!
[tab=Religion][/tab]
- Celestis is home to millions of islands, the vast majority of which are not even on navigational charts or mapped. The known large continents are, Folstaran, Bharat, Tengorod, Zhongdao, Dorado, Atago, Vespuccia, and Alfgard, home to a collective six hundred million people (half of whom reside in Zhongdao alone) while hundreds of millions more reside on known islands and island chains. Celestis is home to thousands of states, most of which only consist of a single island. Since islands float throughout the earth, there is no regional “West, North, South, and East” and culture follows islands, island chains, and landmasses more than broad geographic regions.
Today, there are four major powers in the skies.
Aeternia
Founded by Vinnicius Aeternio, an admiral on the losing side of the 57th Ridolfite Civil War, Aeternia is a young and rising power. Fleeing to the backwards Gwynnish Isles after their defeat against Emperor Heraclio, Vinnicius’s fleet conquered the Gwynnish Kingdoms and used them as a base for “military operations” (read: piracy) against the Empire for decades. Vinnicius’s reign was brutal; a Ridolfite aristocrat, he hardly saw his barbarian subjects as human, and subjected them to crippling taxation and cruel punishments. However, a gifted admiral, he built a competent and aggressive navy which trounced the Ridolfites on a number of occasions. Under his son, Vittorio Amadeo, Aeternia transformed from a “petty pirate kingdom” into a regional power. Vittorio’s reforms ended his father’s abuses, permitted the use of the Gwynnish language in state functions, and allowed Gwynns into the highest offices of government. Aeternia founded colonies around the world, and used them to build a thriving commercial economy.
The Aeternian fleet is qualitatively the best in the skies, owing to the aggression of its captains and the clockwork drilling of its crews. Any captain who “fails to put his ship beside that of the enemy” on sight can expect to be executed for cowardice, while Aeternian naval discipline is the most vicious in the world – a holdover of Vinnicius’s harsh and prejudiced reign.
Aeternia is ruled nominally by a King, who through centuries of intermarriage with Gwynnish noblemen is no longer culturally or ethnically Ridolfite. In practice, governance falls to the Prime Minister, who rules with the consent of the House of Lords made up of the country’s nobles and House of Burgesses elected by its rich commoners. Ordinary people are not allowed to vote.
Ridolfo
A vast slaving empire, Ridolfo has a storied two millennia long history. Brought the sail by traders, the Ridolfite tribes used it for conquest. Inferior to the ancient city states in navigation but superior in hand to hand combat, Ridolfo pioneered aggressive boarding tactics to leverage its strength. It gained numerical superiority against more populous ancient empires through its tribal levy system, later codified as the “citizen navy” – every Ridolfite ship owner had to perform military duties in times of war, and every citizen had to buy armor and participate in boarding actions.
Initially a tribal confederation, Ridolfo became a Republic in 127, and an Empire in 248. Ridolfo today is ruled by an Emperor, who in practice is whichever admiral controls the capital, and nominally by a Senate which in practice is a rubber stamp. Ridolfite Senators, each owing vast estates manned by slaves, are among the richest people in the world despite their present lack of political power.
Ridolfo peaked in the 14th century, and has since been in decline because of foreign and civil wars. The collapse of the Pact of Talas in 1377 brought Ridolfo into a war with Zhongdao, then ruled by the Sheng Dynasty. Amid this, the Talarcid horde captured Yarsinople, Ridolfo’s most populous city in 1453. Recently, the naval threat of Aeternia has further stretched the vast empire’s resources. Ridolfite decline has leant largely to declining military prowess; since Zhongdao’s invention of gunpowder, Ridolfite boarding tactics have lost the edge they once had; today, it’s far more common for ships to be blasted apart at range (especially if they have the wind gauge; see naval tactics) than boarded.
Zhao
The Empire of the Great Zhao, the most recent dynasty to rule the “middle island” of Zhongdao, is home to a fourth of the human race. Though not the largest continent, Zhongdao is rich with rivers and has been the beneficiary of millennia of irrigation projects by its dynasties, enabling its huge population. Though its fleet is the largest in the world, it is far smaller than what the country could support, as Zhongdao’s ruling philosophy holds that the key to its long stability has been low taxes, therefore a relatively low military budget. The present state of affairs is therefore an exception. The Zhao rulers, hailing from sky-nomad Jandar stock, need constant wars to legitimize the continued privilege of Jandar warriors in Zhongdao’s society. Further, a century of relative peace, in the Daocheng Emperor’s eyes, have “dimmed the marital spirit” of the Jandar people, which needs war to reinvigorate. Next, a century of irrigation works has exploded the population of Zhongdao, and now, in order to feed itself, the empire needs to settle tens of millions of its subjects in colonies, on land which is already inhabited by other people. Finally, after the fall of the Sheng Dynasty to the Zhao, Sheng loyalists took to the skies, creating a number of rump states which have attacked Zhao trade routes and constantly tried to "restore the Sheng".
The “Zhao navy”, if such a thing even exists, is an amorphous concept. At the core are the “Eight Jandar and Eight Zhong banners”. The former fight in traditional sky nomad fashion – waging flaming archery battles from ships – and are presently outdated. The Zhong banners, in contrast, fight aboard metal-plated ships, and are known to be some of the best melee warriors and artillerymen in the world, trained to perform feats of strength since birth. Supplementing this is a vast “Imperial Fleet” and an almost as large “auxiliary fleet” – much of the so-called “Zhao Navy” is a mass of pirate lords contracted to fight under Zhao on an ad-hoc basis. Zhong battle tactics make extensive use of incendiary rockets, fired by the hundreds. Under the previous Sheng dynasty, the core of the fleet were massive, 9-mast “treasure ships” which carried thousands of these, but these vessels were discontinued by the nomadic Jandar who prefer smaller and more nimble craft, and presently are only in the hands of Sheng loyalists.
Zhao is an object of mystery, as most of the country is closed to foreign traders and visitors. According to rumors, magic exists within the mountaintop Dragon Palace that can predict and even change the winds, and Zhongdao’s Emperors, who routinely live past one hundred and fifty, are rumored to be dragons. Most alchemists dismiss these rumors as rubbish.
Talarcid Sultanate
The Talarcids (“servants of Talarcun”) were the last of a long line of “sky-nomads” who terrorized the clouds for millennia. Using swarms of small, maneuverable ships, the nomads learned to corrall and herd the large but timid Ciel, a group of flying whale species. For millenia, nomads struck fear even into the hearts of the Ridolfite and Zhongdao dynasties, using swarms of small, ever-mobile, nimble ships with a portable food supply to run circles around their more unwieldly navies, and even weaponizing the Ciel to crash into enemy fleets.
Since the invention of gunpowder, however, the nomads have been in decline. Cannons and rocket swarms have made quick work of their ships and their herds, and the wise nomads realized they needed to form sedentary empires. Talarcun, Khan of the Azar people, was one such nomad, taking advantage of a breakdown in Sheng-Ridolfite peace to capture Yarosinople (which he renamed Aslanbol, “city of lions”), Ridolfo’s largest city and second capital. His descendants then embarked on a century of expansive war, blending Ridolfite boarding tactics, Zhong gunpowder weapons, and traditional nomadic archery and Ciel-tactics into what was unquestionably the best navy in the period.
‘Azaria’, as it is called by outsiders, has seen a reversal of fortune in the past century, however, as it has fallen behind the curve tactically and technologically. Azar tactics, emphasizing fast moving small unit action, have become increasingly obsolete in the age of big ships and firepower. Worse, the Azar are a small minority within their own decentralized empire, and many of their subjects in recent years have been agitating for independence.
Other Entities
Less than half Celestis’s population resides within the great powers – the rest inhabits a scattering of other islands and continents. Second to Zhongdao, the most populous continents are Folstaran and Bharat. Both are in a feudal condition. Folstaran has always been a scattering of warring principalities and Kingdoms, but in recent years the House of Volkaria has united much of the continent through royal marriages. Similarly, Bharat has been at war for most of its existence, but recently has come under the rule of the sky-nomad Aksanid Dynasty. Both the Volkarine and Aksanid Empires, while large in size, are not considered great powers as their sky navies are weak and most have been forced to give great trade concessions to the Four Great Powers. It is said that they are “semi-colonized” – nominally independent but in practice carrying out the will of the great powers and not their own people. The battle for favor in both courts has been a major point of the last four Cloud Wars between the powers.
Tengorod, the second largest continent geographically, is sparsely populated. It has recently been united under the Yusupov dynasty, a de facto slave state where the majority of the population fall under the legal category “serfs”. This is a euphemism, however, as serfs can be bought and sold at will. Tengorod is stereotyped by the powers as being just as backwards as most of Folstaran or Bharat, but in practice the Tengorodian Navy – though underfunded and with most of its captains illiterate – has held its own against the powers in the past. While it has managed no decisive victories, it has stalemated the navies of each in a series of indecisive slugfests over trade rights on the continent.
Atago is the only continent which retains relatively the same position near Celestis’s equator. It has been off limits to colonizers since its climate makes it the only continent prone to tropical diseases like malaria, for which there is presently no cure.
Vespuccia and Dorado were both the site of thriving civilizations in ancient times. Since the gunpowder age, however, the empires and chiefdoms of these worlds have fallen victim to cycles of mainly Ridolfite colonization, though the other Great Powers have taken bites of them as well.
Finally, Alfsheim was a relatively isolated continent until recently, circling around the North Pole of Celestis. Until its colonization by Aeternia in the sixteenth century, it was the last known home of the elves and other mythical creatures, who since have been mostly wiped out by settlers, disease, and starvation from being driven off their lands. However, some probably still survive, as every few years a sensational story breaks of a “wild” elf coming out of hiding and into “civilization”.
Besides the continents, there exist a great number of minor states that have formed around island chains, many of which only drift with the winds into proximity with the “civilized world” once or a twice a year.
Last edited:
