The Three Peoples

A universe inspired by a dream, where the regular people who live on land are referred to as the earth peoples, those who live on a giant floating city on the sea are known as the sea peoples, and those who live on metal masses and ships in the skies are known as the sky peoples.

World Description

The World Itself

The world of the three peoples has no official name, as its people only ever refer to it by its three “land” masses. It’s just the world. The land would most likely be characterized as flat, but it has a mysterious quality that prevents anyone from ever finding the edges of it. The actual pieces of land that exist are fairly large, but seem more like islands in a vast sea, as the seas and skies have a strangely endless quality to them. Those who traverse them say that just when one thinks one is getting their bearing, a shroud of fog or cloud makes it impossible to tell where one is for a long stretch of drifting, so no one has ever defined the edges of the world, if indeed they exist. Though the lands are the most populous and encompass a number of countries, the three peoples are the earth peoples, the sea peoples, and the sky peoples, with the sea and sky peoples floating through their respective mediums, and rarely interacting with those from the land.

The Earth Peoples

The least developed of the three peoples for me personally, the earth peoples are generally thought by the other two to be greedy, lazy, war-hungry, and fat. This is unlikely to be completely true, as earth people are of many cultures and countries and therefore unlikely to be all the same. It is fair, however, to say that the advantages of having a stationary home that doesn’t have to be sailed around can certainly be felt and seen in the behavior of the people. It is also true that the different countries allow for a number of wars in a way that people living on sparse floating metal plates don’t. As the only people with actual land, they are also the people who can most easily grow food, so the sea and sky peoples when they come into contact with the earth peoples often trade their rare technologies and resources for food and more normal resources.

The Sea Peoples

The sea peoples are more unified than the sky peoples. They are a single peoples floating on a somewhat long city, not unlike a light, metal Venice. The “kingdom” is actually a series of long, flat ships connected by a complex network of loose bridges. It is under the rule of a monarchy, with a small network of nobles, and is most notable for something called “pellets.”

The pellets of the sea peoples are very special, small, brown pellets that look rather uniform, but are basically any object condensed down into tiny pellets. So far, only sea peoples can create or use pellets, and it is done by no mechanism of science known to any of the three peoples. These pellets can be used to transport and hide the identity of anything, and are therefore extremely valuable… to anyone outside of the sea peoples, who simply use them because they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years, and it’s convenient for their day to day life.

The Sky Peoples

The sky peoples are the most fractured of the three peoples. Unlike the sea peoples, who travel on a mostly unified city, the sky peoples seem to travel on a series of separate air ships, and they most frequently shuttle earth people between land masses (which sea people don’t do because they float randomly, not with any particular direction in mind). A relatively large air ship houses the “royalty” of the sky peoples, but they hold very little bearings on the activity of most of the sky peoples, as they tend to be very independent. Of the three peoples, they are the most technologically advanced, keeping their ships in the sky and their people fed by constantly improving their nearly-magical sky technology.

The Sea War

The last heir to the throne of the sea peoples fights to claim her kingdom back after a coup led by scheming nobles who wish to turn the country over to the more extravagant earth peoples leads to the death of her parents. Along the way she is helped by a childhood friend – the last noble left who cares for her… in more ways than she thinks.

Prologue

I looked down at her, on her knees in that dirty relic of a cell. I could feel myself shaking, and I wanted to say it was from the cold, but I knew the truth. I wanted to be the one on my knees. I wanted to give in to it all, let the string of matches she brought me fall from my hand. I wanted to scream at her, ask her why. Why did she have to follow me? Why did she have to trust me? Rely on me? What had I ever done to warrant this blind faith, this empty burden?

I stood there, shaking silently, and though I wanted to cast my eyes down and away from her in shame, I could not. There was no crying, no turning my sight from the truth, no giving in to the despair of fighting a hopelessly one-sided war. Her action of foolish hope left me with only one option – to straighten my spine and win – and I hated her for that.

Falling

The adventures of a sky girl who discovers that her deceased father was a genius inventor who implanted a device in her mind that is the basis for a secret cult determined to create new prosperity for the sky peoples with her father’s inventions. They are opposed by the earth peoples who fear a war from above.

Prologue

“Give her a good push!” One of them yelled viciously. I turned around hastily, raising my hands in surrender. Jumping off the edge wasn’t a great option, but it was better than being ingloriously pushed off.

I took a few steps backwards, then turned and jumped off the edge of the ship. I was expecting a scream to be ripped out of me as I fell, but with my eyes jammed shut I somehow managed to ignore the rush of the wind and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I unrolled myself from the protective tight ball I had assumed and relaxed. My back was to the ground hundreds of feet below me.

I opened my eyes and, resigned to my fate, asked myself aloud what exactly had happened…