Q
Quakernuts
Guest
Original poster
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The world has changed in a way that no one believed possible.
The ground reached up to touch the heavens but only managed to kiss the sky.
In the year 1754 on our God Given Earth, a few young boys pioneering in Europe, looking for their riches and attempting to gain a step up on life, set out with the intention of finding gold. Panning through rivers, striking deep into the dirt and sifting through mounds of rocks. While they didn't find Gold, silver, nickel, aluminum or any other metal known to us at the time, they did happen upon something completely different. One day, while sifting through one of the many rivers dotting the land, a boy by the name of Matteo Ancil caught a fleck of some kind of gem in his pan. At first, he thought it a trick of the mind, but after polishing it slightly, found it to be mesmerizing. It was beautiful, glistening like the morning sun after a fresh rain, a vibrant hue of violet and green, and yet somehow soft to the touch. Upon realizing their find, Matteo, along with his brothers and friends, searched down the river to find where such a gem might have come from.
It took them a few days of travel, their passion for the potential find waning as they found their food stores starting to diminish and doubt clouded their minds. Luck was on their side though, as they found a small hole leading deeper into the crust of the Earth, with the tiniest of crystal fragments being slowly eroded by the river. Digging further in, they revealed a chunk of the crystal about half the size of their fist. They set up camp, half of them started digging and the other half went back to town to find an appraiser to see how valuable the crystal was. Upon reaching someone of that particular talent a few days later, they quickly realized that the crystal was incredibly clear, malleable, beautiful and above all else...completely unknown. The crystal, later known as Ancilika, became the talk of anyone who heard about it. Matteo and his friends staked a claim to the vein they had managed to find, and over the next few years, they were still the only ones who had managed to find a supply of the crystal.
By that point, with the demand for the crystal growing and the price having skyrocketed as a prized possession, Matteo and his group became rich beyond their wildest dreams. The hole where they mined the crystal became a town in and of itself, with miners, aristocrats and thieves from all walks of life coming to get their share of the deal one way or the other. The boys who found the crystal lived the easy life, able to pay people to mine for them while they sipped on the finest wine and dined with the cream of high society. Despite all that, there was something that no one seemed to notice until it was far too late to do anything about it.
Over the years, the mine had gotten deeper and deeper, the veins of the crystal becoming thicker and more pronounced as they went. The year was 1757 when the troubles started to arise. The deeper veins of the Ancilika had taken on a new property, colors seeming to fade in and out of the crystal. It was soon discovered that these were not just colors, but the crystal was giving off light. With light, came power and fuel, meaning that an already valuable crystal became even more so as immediately anyone who knew started thinking of ways to power machinery and new technology utilizing the crystal. It was also during this time that the miners of the Ancilika started reporting hearing voices, hallucinations, headaches, nausea and other symptoms that not a single person could attribute to any known cause aside from the potential exposure to Ancilika.
Study into the crystal didn't seem to come up with a potential cause, nor could a classification be given to the energy that the crystal was very evidently exhibiting. The only thing that could be determined for certain was that it took a vast amount of the crystal, and therefore the energy given off, to start producing these side effects in the miners. Precautions were made, and work continued.
By the year 1761, Ancilika was a well known rare commodity. While efforts had been made to harness the energy given off by the deeper veins, nothing as of yet was yielding any decent results. It was during this year that the miners stumbled upon another discovery. During a routine expansion of the mining tunnel, a couple of the miners ploughed through the earth and tumbled into a chasm. Once they recovered, they found themselves in the presence of a pulsing orb of what could possibly have been the richest deposit of Ancilika yet. Easily three stories high, and as large around as a building, the miners were beside themselves with the find and it was quickly reported. Excavations were temporarily halted as the head of the expedition, including Matteo Ancil decided what to do. While it was very obviously a crystal, research had yet to figure out how the crystal was giving off energy. There was the fear that by striking what could be considered a core or heart of the crystal would let the energy 'escape' and it would lose its value.
This was debated for months as other veins were harvested instead, but eventually they came to the decision to try to remove just the tiniest chunk from it. Plans were made and put into motion. Matteo, along with the founding members of the mine were present. The only reason any record of the following even exist is because of a single member sent back for lamps, and the timing of his return.
According to the survivor, one Viggo Phillips who was crippled by the event, leaving him wheelchair bound for the remainder of his life, it was a terror. One man took a small knife to the 'core' for lack of a better term, and attempted to scrape off a portion. To their surprise, the crystal immediately hardened upon the man reaching out with the knife. This reaction from the crystalline substance was completely new, as it took multiple hours of smithing to harden the crystal otherwise into a hardened state. In this hardened state, the crystal was as tough as steel, and further attempts to remove a scraping proved ineffective. At the behest of the 'eggheads' as Viggo called them, they moved forward with the plan to hit the crystal with a pickaxe instead. It was at this point that the lanterns were started to run low with fuel, so Viggo moved backwards towards the entrance to refill them.
Upon the chosen miner striking the core, Viggo states that there was a scream that reverberated throughout his entire body. Covering his ears didn't seem to lessen the sound at all, as if it was coming from inside his own head. As he looked over, within moments, a 'pulse' of sorts went out and everyone from the expedition dropped. Viggo stumbled backwards a few steps and fell, the pulse ending at his waist before retreating. Upon waiting to see if it was over, Viggo realized that he couldn't move his legs. The pulse had rendered him paralyzed from the waist down. It took a few hours for other miners and members of the company to reach the core and find out what had happened, only to find Viggo trying desperately to climb out of the mine without the use of his legs. The other members of the Core Expedition were declared dead upon their discovery, with the cause of death surprisingly being asphyxiation. The pulse, it seemed, had simply paralyzed them completely, leaving them unable to breath on their own. This was only the beginning though, as things were about to get a lot worse.
Over the next few days, the company and town that had sprung up around the mine suffered earthquake over earthquake, resulting in fissures opening up all over town and forcing people to abandon the town. The earthquakes spread though, and within months, they had reached nearly every known civilization. While it wasn't widely known at the time, it was said that even the lands across the oceans started feeling these earthquakes, with the ground opening up into these seemingly bottomless pits.
The world broke April 16th, 1762.
Records of the event claim it was the end of the world, that the impossible had become a reality and nothing was like it was meant to be. The ground cracked and split with alarming speed, swallowing entire towns and cities, while others were raised into the air like a hot air balloon. The Earth split, and millions of people died as the ground was abandoned and it felt like the end. As the ground rose into the heavens, an unnatural fog seemed to separate the pieces floating into the sky and those still left below. A fog that persists to this day.
When it was all said and done, entire land masses had flown into the sky, where they now currently perch. The world had fundamentally changed, and with access to the natural resources that once resided in the ground now entirely limited by the size of the landmass drifting in the sky, it seemed like any hope of humanity surviving seemed hopeless. We were destined to die out.
That is until certain people started seeing what they equated to 'ghosts'. Seemingly faceless individuals who were more wisp than corporeal that not everyone could see. At first, it was chalked up as mass hysteria and paranoia, insanity and any other plethora of mental disorders, after all they were doomed at this point. However, these people who could see the ghosts lead the others to reserves of water, metal and other desperately needed resources that had somehow survived the trip upwards with them. With the help of these 'Seekers', certain islands managed to survive and live long enough to become self sufficient. After a few souls became brave enough to venture a trip down along the edge of the island, they found that their land mass was supported by an Ancilika core, with veins spreading throughout the entire mound of dirt. When one of the Seekers managed to get that close, it was determined that the 'Ghost' they had been seeing was a mental projection of the Ancilika itself.
What they had believed to be a crystal, was in fact an organism. A sentient, living and angry organism.
And there was more than one.
These Ancilika were creatures beyond our comprehension...at least at the time. As the days after turned to weeks, to months, to eventually years, it became known by those that had survived that, for whatever reason, these Ancilika wanted humans to survive. Not only that, but they seemed to be connected to each other, which is the only way to explain how nearly every seeker on every island managed to come up with the plans to initiate travel in the air.
Airships became widespread in 1789 at almost the exact same time globally. Every design was somewhat different of course, but the fundamentals were unchanged island to island. Utilizing the unique properties of the Ancilika, and built akin to seafaring vessels, Airships utilized the crystal turned organism to fly. Not only that, but seeing as the classification of Ancilika changed, it required the Ancilika of the island to consent to being mined. In fact, it was very quickly discovered that the creation of an airship was the birthing of another Ancilika organism. Seekers on the ship saw different ghosts on different ships, and without fail. As such, Airships were also 'Living Vehicles'.
People, cultures and civilizations were reunited, and by the year 1819, major hubs had been recognized and maps were being made. These maps fluctuated however, as they realized that the tinier islands that dotted the sky seemed to drift with the wind, Seekers explaining that these islands were host to very young Ancilika, immature and otherwise incapable of controlling themselves in the sky to remain stationary. Children, in other words. As with people, the Ancilika seemed to have different personalities, and changed from island to island, ship to ship.
With the change of geography came a change of technology, methodology, religion, progress, society, etc. Humanity entered a new era and became fundamentally different than anything they could have possibly predicted. New nations arose from the largest islands, new things were invented and different resources were used for otherwise common items and machinery. Ancilika became a renewable and respected resource, although from island to island it was treated differently to that mindset. Some islands allowed anyone to mine from it so long as a Seeker was around to give the go ahead, others hoarded it, and then there were those who simply didn't care. The Ancilika also produced brand new resources on their islands, creating substitutes for certain metals, plants, vegetations, and even in the rare case, animals. Powerful psychic beings with the ability to create on their chosen habitation, religions arose quickly around these would be 'Gods'.
The year was 1832 when the first recorded 'Island Fall' was recorded. A navy skirmish with an erupting pirate faction resulted in the pirate airship going haywire and crashing into an island core. A psychic scream and pulse was sent out, luckily the navy ship was far enough away to avoid the effects. The ship watched in silence as the core seemed to pulse with light for a moment before dimming entirely, the core cracking apart and shattering, and with it, the island fell.
That was the moment that the cores were immediately sheltered, protected and guarded. They became the single most defended objects in the history of man, and a massive target for those wanting to perform genocide. What conflicts did arise from differing islands were fought with the concern that they shouldn't be harming the cores. To do so deliberately would result in catastrophe for both nations, as Ancilika seemed to be linked to each other. A Seeker once put it as 'They are aware of each other and their pain, to hurt one is to hurt them all.'.
Humanity would continue to exist into the 20th century.
The current year is 1902, and Humanity has recovered well enough to consider itself 'civilized' once more. Even in our current state, humans are humans, disagreements are had and wars are waged. Pirates plague the skies and the common folk are separated from the rich. With everything more or less stabilized, humanity continues to exist and move forward. The world seems brand new again, if somewhat less stable in footing. You live in a world born among the clouds.
I would say the sky's the limit, but that has very different meaning now.
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