All this sky fortress talk got me motivated. I love this sort of setting.
The caption shall be: "I never should have bothered with the site finder..."
[image]
Yeah it's missing a huge ass shadow.. but ill add that in later maybe.
I actually have an image of a sky island I sketched out ages ago; after a good few years later, I ret-conned myself a way of explaining how such an island of that scale (Hawaii-sized) can float. Turns out it was a colossal megaweapon that is millennia old (and it's energy field/magic force field holds it up. Think Zeal, but taken to 11.), and after ages of not being used, it's power was put to more civil use, and land was gathered around it, formed a series of pocket-biomes atop, inside, and below it, and protruding structures were regarded as temples (though portions of the weapon itself), and the skeleton of the weapon was it's mass transit system internally. Because of being a megaweapon, it has a cloaking field that hides it from commoners, and the only way onto it is via airship or stargate. The waterfalls that go up into the island is filtered through the land, and also used to keep the island/weapon cool, and downward falls are the runoff. Alternatively, docks were setup near the upward falls to allow transit by ship, riding the upward current, and doing the same to get down. Of course, the ships to get up and down these currents would require wings of sorts to catch the updraft and also to gently glide down them as well.
Due to the island's colossal size, and all it's falls and etc. the natural balance of things in the regions it hovers around are so strange, mysterious disappearances and etc. are treated like the Bermuda and Devil's Triangle. Where and why else do you think these disappeared ships and aircraft end up where they are? Why else would compasses and etc. freak out? Why else would you see things that don't belong in the current time frame? Of course, the island would never (or at least seldom) go over land, due to how much damage it can cause by it's falls alone, as well, it wouldn't be able to collect any water while in-transit over land. A reason it would stay over the ocean(s).
Of course, I made this island for a Blue Mars kind of storyline, where the "Martians" are a sort of Origin race (Archaiean/Archetypes being their name), and it turns out we're a magic-less offshoot of them. Despite our lack of magic capability, we're still just as badass as these ancients are, because we found our way around not being able to force the will of nature. Though the magic these ancients used was just a more advanced way of applying math and such (symbols, runes, circles, triangles and etc. that you commonly see in magic is just simplified mathematical formulas to bend elements to your will; so to put it. We just lack the capacity to put the will into full-force) sans technological assistance (like forges, power plants, and such). So to put it, religion WAS a science for them. Few of their kind remained on our world at times to try and teach us their ways, but of course, especially during puritan times and such, we killed them before they could get their lessons across; and during the visitations (like the Roswell crash and such), again, we killed them, but took their technology and learned lots, but still haven't figured out their willful-manipulation techniques. Of course, Mankind will find a way around that; and that we do.
I'll see if I can pull up an image of it (the island) some time. I really wanted to make a 3D rendering of it, but there's just far too much detail to toss in to make it look good. I mean, it has at least 15 cities on and in it, top and bottom total (about 7 atop, 1-3 internal, and 2-5 on the bottomside; radiating from spires of the original megaweapon itself that's still exposed and not covered by land mass).
Of course, in this story as well, our main character eventually ends up living on it, especially as a form of safehouse or a home where nobody can find him that he can retire to as well, or something; considering he's more of a space pirate and such in the storyline. I've had these kinds of ideas floating about and evolving for over a decade. Of course, a bit of early exposure, and not my best work on display at the time (it was a rush job for a class assignment that was exposed as a sample), kinda discouraged me from working on it for a good amount of time. Oh my goodness, you shouldv'e seen the comments I was lobbed with. My only real response to it was replying with the MST3k mantra. or simply "Shut up and enjoy it.". That didn't go over too well with the people I was responding to (then again, they were just a bunch of unimaginative trolls. Even their insults lacked creativity. I was insulted by the insults because they lacked insult quality.), so I had to get rid of as much of it as I could and just work on all this in private. Actually, I just let it fade into obscurity until it felt right to bring it out to light again.
EDIT:
Re-reading all that, now I have a craving for some double-downs maaaaaan.
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Topic: Community Art Thread - Good or bad.. Doesn't matter (Read 1695 times)