Years ago, a force of sheer evil razed the world. None could stand against it and live or remain uncorrupted. There was no hope for anyone, except to flee. And the ancients did flee - they cut themselves completely off from the world below by sundering continents from the earth and taking to the skies, where they were forced to survive with a portion of the resources they had - arable land, water reservoirs, personal space.
These scarcities changed the leftover politics of the old world, but not for the better. Far from being a paradise, fights - so many of which ended in murder - broke out as soon everyone was sure they were safe from outsiders. And so while many people split off into gangs and quarreled, some tried to escape, building airships and fleeing to the few untainted mountaintops, where they hoped to raise more landmasses and start over. Yet each time they did this, and each time they promised to make their continent the one committed to peace, something always happened to cause them to fail. Decades and even a few centuries passed, but this one result never wavered.
The people of the skyborne world, hardly distinguishable from those in the ruin below, had given themselves a multitude of chances to work together to promote a new and unlikely age of prosperity. All of them had been wasted. Divided, embittered, and without the finely-honed means of killing that those on the ground had made their specialty, they would simply fall apart if an outside force cleanly assaulted them. But until now, that hasn't been a concern.
The geomancers lifted one more mountain valley high above the earth, trying once again to struggle against the nature of all that lives. Two representatives of these mages flew to their terraformation, which they called Thera, to see how suitable it would be for habitation. But their departure was delayed by harsh winds... By the time they were able to reach the airborne island, they were surprised and somewhat dismayed to see that it was already populated. Some of them were optimists colonizing the island in hopes of another chance, some of them were wayfarers stopping wherever their travels took them, and a few of them were there when the area was sundered - beings from the malevolent nether realm who should never have been taken to the skies. The underworld, and all the evil and despair that its inhabitants embodied, were now one step away from grasping what had so narrowly eluded it before.
In a world full of dark hours, the darkest was being heralded. Only an unthinkable plan could possibly save this world...
1) enomis
2) fferyllt
3) implosion
4) Katsuki
5) MattP
6) hp [leaves]
7) Oversoul
8) Amrun
9) sword_of_omens
10) Syryana
11) Tammy
12) Tierce
13) Antagon
14) Zachrulez
15) Zdenek