Caelmar

Caelmar is the 9th shard of the CreateThisWorld saga. It was officially opened on October 4th, 2020.

## The World

### Sky World

*Gather ‘round, children. I shall tell you a tale. Once, long long ago, when the world was still young, all the land rested upon the surface, at level with the watery sea. But then, for reasons unknown, there was a great shaking of the earth, and the many lands of Caelmar lifted up from their beds and began to float high into the sky. Up and up, they floated, coming to rest at the layer of clouds. And life was forced to continue in the sky. That is where our story begins.*

Yes, that’s right. For Create This World’s 9th and newest shard, we have taken to the skies. This is our most unique and most innately fantastical world yet, so there is lots of fun to be had here. The principle behind our sky world - Caelmar - is that most of the landmasses of our planet are floating up at cloud level, and that is where the majority of us live, floating amid the cloud sea. There is still land down below; some continents clung to their beds in the watery sea, and others were revealed when the ocean rushed in to fill the massive holes left by the Breaking Away. You’ll see the surface land bears the scars of the Breaking Away, and features a lot of erratic archipelagos. Also, sections of it are shrouded in permanent shadow, sunlight blocked by the floating land above.

But how did we get here? Floatstone, my dear fellow. Floatstone.

### Floatstone

Floatstone is a metallic ore with a nebulous magical property that allows us to defy gravity and float permanently in the air. We can (and have) spend hours trying to rationalize the physics of how this could work, but at CTW we try not to get lost in details. We just like to establish some ground rules (or in this case, cloud rules), and then let your imaginations do the rest. So, in short, this is what you need to know about floatstone:

* On its on, floatstone will come to rest at the float point, which is at the top of the cloud layer, at an altitude at, or slightly above, where the continents float. Float point won’t be an exact elevation, but more of a grey area with a variance of 50-100 meters that can rise above the sky coastline.
* The more weight you have, the more floatstone you will need to maintain float point. Floatstone will sink if it is weighed down too much. But Floatstone will never float higher than its float point on its own. If you have excess floatstone, you can mine some away without changing altitude.
* If you apply pressure directly to floatstone, you can make it float higher than float point, or support a greater amount of weight. (Increase pressure to go up, release pressure to return to normal)
* Floatstone is found in veins all through continents in the sky and on the surface, but is much more common in the sky continents (for obvious reasons). It can be used in raw or refined form. It is much more common on the floating landmasses.
* Floatstone negates gravity; it does not provide independent thrust. So it cannot be used to travel through outer space. Please don’t try it.
* Floatstone has undiscovered properties and applications. Players will be allowed to propose their own ideas about floatstone, and the ideas will become official if they get a green light from the mods.

### Sky Sailing

Since the technology of our setting does not allow for powered flight, floatstone is essential for travel between lands. You can construct traditional sailing ships with floatstone in their hulls in order to make them buoyant at float level, and then sail from one floating land to the next.

* For the purposes of the game we will treat our “cloud sea” much like an ocean. There will be airborne sky fauna living in the cloud layer. Most travel between floating islands and continents will happen in or along the top of this cloud layer.
* Using a floatstone sailing ship, if you skim along the cloud sea, there will be natural stabilizing air currents that act on your hull, and you can use your sails to pick up the wind and tack along in almost any direction, like a sea-faring ship.
* If you want to go higher than this, you apply artificial pressure to the floatstone on the ship (such as with a vice or winch) to increase altitude. There is no theoretical limit to how high you can go, if you have enough floatstone and apply enough pressure. But leaving the cloud layer makes it more difficult to navigate the winds. And as you go even higher, you need to worry about falling temperatures and thinning air.
* Because floatstone rests at float point naturally, travel between the sky layer and the surface is a bit difficult. It’s more like descending a submarine than it is landing a plane. Trips must be planned carefully, using a lot of ballast weight — or players can propose their own solutions.

Finally, to make things easier for everyone,Caelmar will actually have two cloud layers. There will be clouds above the floating landmasses as well, which allows them to have normal climates and weather patterns. Also, note that the “cloud sea” will not always be cloudy. Just like on Earth, there will be clear days where you can see straight to the bottom.

IMPORTANT NOTE: There is no need to overthink any of this in your own posts. The intention is for the rules to be clear enough that people who want to get into more complex details about sky-sailing have the means to do so, but it is meant to be simple enough that people can do what they want and not worry about the details. If you want to write, “They took a flying gondola to the top of the mountain,” you don’t need to provide an explanation on how the floatstone mechanisms of the gondola work. We can just assume that it’s working properly.

## Technology

Our technological theme for this sky world is “Age of Exploration”, which means we will begin at roughly the equivalent of mid-16th century Earth. The basic guiding principle of this tech period is pre-industrial, with interest in exploration, empire-building, and new ideas. As with all shards, time will progress, and players will be able to invent things, as long as they don’t break the tech period. To keep things focused, we separate technologies into tiers.

Tier 0 - Technology that is assumed to already exist at the beginning of the shard. This includes basically anything that existed in early 16th century Earth in a workable form.
Tier 1 - This technology can be invented and developed by players from the time we begin onward. This includes tech that belongs to the latter half of the 16th century and the very beginning of the 17th. (Eg. newspaper, flintlock musket, flush toilet, revolver, graphite pencil)
Tier 2 - At a certain point in the shard, the moderators will unlock tier 2, and players will be able to start inventing these technologies. They are influential tech from the 17th century that we don’t want people rushing right away. (eg. Telescope, microscope, pocket watch, barometer, air pump, pendulum clock).

Given that we live in a fantasy sky world, obviously technology isn’t going to progress in exactly the same way as it did on Earth. So some anachronisms will be allowed. Hot-air balloons will be available as a tier 1 technology. And in tier 2, players can begin experimenting with propellers and forms of powered flight.

## Magic

That brings us to the subject of magic. Most CTW shards have featured magic, and this one will have more than most. This will be our first high magic shard in quite some time.

Where does magic come from? Well, this shard, like all shards before, is part of a multiverse, connected by the unfathomable trans-infinite space known as The Void. The Void is a place of chaotic magic and cosmic horror. There is a buffer that exists between our shard and the Void; this buffer is called the Arcane Shroud. The chaotic energies of the Void pass through the Arcane Shroud and become converted into a more user-friendly form. People who use magic in Caelmar are therefore tapping into the energies of this Arcane Shroud, whether they know it or not.

### Mages

This shard was voted high power and high scope. Scope refers to frequency of magic in the population. High scope means that a maximum of 1 out of every 100 people in your claim can be a magic user. That might not sound like a lot, but when you really think about it, it is. (For reference, the ratio of wizards to muggles in the Harry Potter universe is somewhere around 1 in 8,000). It doesn’t matter exactly how people become magic users: it can be a random quirk of birth, it can be passed down through a bloodline, it can be trained extensively for — but it needs to stay no higher than 1/100. And please remember this is a maximum. If you choose, magic in your claim can be much rarer, or nonexistent.

High power means that your magic users can become quite powerful; however, not all mages are created equal. Rarity should be proportional to power, so you will have a lot of average mages for every one epic mage. Your average mage could do things like heal a normal wound with ease, or a fatal one with difficulty, be able to fight a dozen or so soldiers, conjure elemental objects like fireballs or lightning bolts, and be able to enchant a large object or groups of small objects. An epic mage could heal fatal wounds easily and resurrect the dead with difficulty, be able to fight a hundred or so ordinary soldiers, conjure whole entities, and be able to enchant very large objects, or groups of large objects.

Everyone will have different magic systems with different rules, and it is difficult to make 1:1 comparisons between them. But here’s a quick list of what is not allowed: summoning demon armies, mass resurrection, soloing an entire army, destroying a whole claim, summoning world-eating Void beings (unless it’s part of a mod-approved shard event). Basically, it should still be fun, and if everyone tries to make One Punch Man, that won’t be fun.

### Magitech

Magitech is what happens when magic becomes fused with regular technology. This can mean adding a magical augmentation to a regular device (eg. a rifle that shoots fireballs), or an entirely new device that uses magic as part of its function (eg. a magical voice-amplifier). It can be small-scale, like a handheld object, or large-scale like a magitech-augmented sailing ship. You could even incorporate magitech into a city’s infrastructure. In a high magic shard, magitech can be common, but still not ubiquitous. It should not be something that everyone has. It also needs to be balanced in some ways.

A person can use a piece of magitech without being a mage, but it is still something that requires specialized training. Using multiple pieces of magitech would require even more training. Magitech is also not ever-lasting; its potency will run out and need to be recharged by some other magic force. Magitech is ultimately powered, in one way or another, by your mages. If you want to have a whole legion of powerful mages who can call upon their power at a moment’s notice, then your magitech level will be much lower. If you want to have a lot of magitech, then your mages will need to devote a lot of energy to externalizing their power, and won’t have as much inner reserve to draw upon.

It is natural that magitech would result in some anachronistic bits of technology. That is OK as long as we don’t violate the overall guiding principle of our pre-industrial age of exploration, or blatantly circumvent the technological tier-locks.

### Moonstone

One additional quirk we have in Caelmar is the addition of moonstone. Moonstone is a mineral that has come from the moon and fallen to our planet in the form of meteorites. It is a magical substance that both carries a magical energy from the moon down to us, as well as acts as a container and conduit for magic. Moonstone is therefore used in a lot of magitech as a sort of magical battery. However, its power is not infinite, and it can be depleted and will need to be recharged by a mage. It is a nebulous mineral that players are free to adapt to their own needs and find interesting uses for.

### Racial Quirks

And last but not least, racial quirks. This means that every claim race that you folks make is allowed to have a minor magical ability that is intrinsic to their entire people. It does not count against the magic scope limit, and it can extend to as much of your population as you like. However, these quirks will require mod approval as part of your claim post. They should be within reason: a good couple of steps below what a proper mage is capable of. The racial quirk can, however, become more powerful when used by a lot of people in concert.

Flora and fauna are also allowed racial quirks, but this should be presented in a detailed fauna post and receive approval from mods before being made canon. They should also be rare, with a hard cap of 9 magical fauna species per claim.

Claim Guide

## Weekly Events

MARKET MONDAY

This is probably the most popular weekly event. It is a massive group interaction wherein one player acts as “host”, chooses a specific location within their claim that is suitable for gathering crowds, sets the scene, and invites all willing participants to send in characters to interact. Some of the best moments in CTW have happened on Market Mondays, but it’s a lot of work to be the host, so make sure you have enough time on your hands when you volunteer.

WEIRD SCIENCE WEDNESDAY

This event is for introducing new scientific and technological advances to the wide world. And the reason it is called “weird science” is because we will also be including major magitech developments. WSW is meant to be for new developments that stand to have an impact on the rest of the world. If you simply want to call attention to an existing technology, or bring up something that is very specific to your claim, those are better suited to normal info posts with a [technology] flair. If you wish to reserve a WSW spot, you must first message a moderator with a brief outline of the tech you want to develop, and then get the OK before you make the post.

FEATURE FRIDAY

Feature Friday is our oldest weekly event. There aren’t any particular rules about what needs to be included in one, but it should be a detailed, well-written post showcasing something exceptional about your claim. It should be of a higher quality and longer length than a typical post. Beyond that, you can do what you wish.

## Claims List

† indicates the claim owns territory on sky level.

⸸ indicates the claim owns territory on the surface.

## Quick Links

* Feature Fridays
* Market Monday
* Entities of the Void