A Brief History of Infinite Sky
Age of Seeds
Since prehistoric times, the Ciela tree has been known for its unique properties. Cavern paintings and monument carvings depict its shimmering seeds' ability to float through the air and be scattered by the wind. In the eponymous, mythic land of Ciel, the proud king ignored the Oracle's warnings and planted so many "Jeweled Trees" that his kingdom "fell upon the Void and was devoured."
Many ancient cultures considered them the tree of the gods or even worshipped them outright as things to be mentioned in the same breath as the sun, the land, fire and gold. Long ago, the Oracle was established at in the Valley of Providence by the planting of the Providence Tree. That place and that tree remain the icon of the Oracle to this day.
As cities and trade grew, Ciela seeds' economic and military importance matched its religious one. More and more plantations became established and the cultivars grafted to their roots bore seeds of increasing power. When Cyaxares obtained kingship from the Oracle, he commissioned a great army of floating chariots as well as a grove of five hundred "Skyseeds" to maintain them. His daughter burned it all to the ground as the dynasty crumbled around her but the root system survived and remain productive to this day. Although it takes almost a generation for a copse to become productive, once established, the roots are as resilient as the land itself. Over centuries of cultivation and generation after generation of variants, trees began producing seeds powerful enough to lift ships, allowing the first shipborne traders, sky pirates and aerial navies to appear in the world.
Age of Sail (~10920-11744)
Much of the foundation of the Age of Sail can be credited to Yuming, an eastern polymath. His experimentation with countless cultivars of Ciela eventually led to the Windwillow. Its name comes from the drifting character of its young shoots; where previous Ciela bore seeds that would fly, the very wood of the seedless Windwillow produced its own powerful flotation. In combination with the developing science of engineering, Windwillow wood allowed the construction of very large ships. Over a period of centuries, clones of the original Windwillow spread to shipbuilders across the Continent and outwards to far flung lands.
The Age of Sail allowed trade to thrive over the vast expanses between the floating landmasses of the world. Though still at the mercy of the winds, oversky trips that were once fraught with danger became insurably commonplace while the adventurous could roam further still. It was during this period that the educated circles and naturalists of the world learned just how immeasurable the world truly is for no edge to the Infinite Sky has been found in the centuries since.
The Great Collapse (11744-11788)
The first cases of Rust appeared in the vast Windwillow plantations of the south in early 11744 and rapidly turned into a pandemic spread by ship and wind to every corner of the known world. The plague attacked not only live trees but was difficult to manage even on the wood of existing vessels. Although ships did not plunge dramatically from the sky as depicted in the grim art of the era, its spread was exorable. By that time, virtually every grown tree in existence was a Windwillow and each was a clone of Yuming's original. Not a single one had a resistance to Rust. Naturalists searched ceaselessly for a replacement cultivar or the revered scholar's lost writings but none were successful. Economies collapsed and the centuries old colonial and mercantile systems came crashing down in slow motion as ships ceased to be skyworthy and could no longer be replaced. More than a few of the powerful oversky empires of the day collapsed.
Age of Luftum (11788-11893)
Although the Windwillow effectively went extinct, other legacy cultivars survived to replace them. In 11788, the alchemist Mircala von Verne acquired (through unknown means) seeds of the Providence Tree itself and distilled a clear blue oil from them. This turned out to be Luftum – distilled anti-gravity. Left on its own, Luftum is flammable but otherwise as inert as the sterile husk that remains of the seed after extraction. The liquid's properties reveal themselves when it is injected into a torus and propelled in a rotating current to generate a powerful anti-gravity field within the torus's area.
Though dire prophecies were issued the world ignored the Oracle. Within a decade, the Luftum Revolution swept over the Continent. Although experimental attempts to float ships took place immediately, it was the Luftum dynamo that had the most immediate impact. Cheap electrical and mechanical energy drove production and warfare to unprecedented heights. The clashes that followed in the wake of her invention dwarfed those of the previous decades and rearranged the face of the world map.
In 11820's, the Luftum Well was developed. Almost overnight, long producing seed plantations of Ciela trees were felled to make way for mechanical wells to be built over the root systems in their place. With these, Luftum could be extracted from the roots directly without the need to process seeds. At the same time, the Luftum Torus matured enough to be made mobile and shipbuilding finally rebounded. Industrialized shipyards turned out vessels of unprecedented size, speed and range fit for empires both new and recovered. Explorers, prospectors, armies and colonists grasped the boundaries of the known world that had threatened to close back upon them, and threw them back, far, far into the distance.
In the 11860's onward, an even newer technology began to emergy – the Luftum Combustion Engine. Instead of spinning it up like a centrifuge, the less efficient but more convenient LCE burned further highly refined Cieline directly, extracting energy from its silvery blue flame. The vastly lighter LCE allowed a small portion of Luftum energy to be made mobile. Vast networks of Cieline propelled railways spread like spiderwebs across the the land, bringing abundance, affordable travel and vast clouds of bluish smog.
The Continental War (11907-11915)
On the eve of 11893, the Oracle recorded a warning more dile than the usual. A crown prince had a change of heart. An heiress fell in love. An assassin switched sides. The next morning, Sir Albert Lee, a minor professor of the University of Sorsa, published a paper detailing systematic climate cooling experienced by the Continent as well as several other landmasses and linked the phenomenon to altitude loss and the industrial scale extraction of Luftum.
The confirmation that Luftum and therefore all industrial energy was a finite resource shocked the great powers of the Continent and sparked renewed hostility over colonial tensions. The spectre of another Great Collapse haunted every monarch of the Continental Powers. Long tense but stable diplomatic systems soured into rapid spree of armament and escalating threats and desperate alliances.
In June of 11907, the Continental War broke out into nine years of unprecedented bloodshed. The "War to End All Wars" claimed more lives, it was said, than every war humanity had ever fought up to that point. The great powers of the Continent mustered every drop of the vast resources that the industrial revolution had gifted them and fought to exhaustion. The only victors, historians pronounced, were those who had not fought at all.
Present Day (11930)
For the Continental Powers that had dominated history and constructed great empires in the Age of Sail and again in the Age of Luftum, 11915 was the turning point, when the balance of power shifted from them to their eldest children – former vassals, puppets and colonies, island and coastal countries that had long been in their shadow. Yet, Albert Lee's spectre has not vanished. The world runs on Luftum and there is only so much of it. For any of these new powers to have a future, they must strike out as the Continental Powers once did and secure more.