The Flying Fortress
"It has never stopped. It has never slowed. And somewhere in its speeding halls, something still waits to be used.."
High above even the jagged peaks of The Cloudrend Mountains, there roams a great beast deemed impossible to tame. It traces a line in the sky like a scar across the horizon, a slab of steel and stone dragging forever through the upper winds. This is the Flying Fortress. Born in the final years of The Lost Ages, it was never a city, never a home, but a military bastion, an airbound stronghold crammed with barracks, gun batteries, hangars, command towers, fuel silos, and magickal engines. Anchored once as a floating island-battleship awaiting it's next campaign, a crown jewel of skyborne warfare, it was severed from its moorings when the world tore itself apart. In the chaos of The Fall, or perhaps in the first violent convulsions of The Great Schism it ushered in, something struck it. Some unknown force of such magnitude, the entire island was sent perpetually careening across the open skies, flung screaming silently across the heavens like a stone from a sling; Momentum and the island's natural levitation chaining it to a high, furious orbit that it has not escaped for five hundred years. It does not drift. It does not slow. Where other floating isles hover like anchored buoys, the Fortress circles the planet with ruthless regularity, a predator eternally running its course, its engines roaring with old magick that cannot die.
Purpose / Function
The Fortress was built for war, not wonder. Its decks were designed for soldiers, its towers for artillery. It was a place where fleets of Aeroplanes were repaired, armed, and launched, where steel met sorcery in preparation for total air supremacy in an age that believed itself untouchable. What the ancients meant to protect here is unknown. Some say a superweapon rests in its heart, still waiting for its master’s command. Others think the entire island was the weapon, a mobile strike base designed to crush armies from the sky. Whatever its function, it remains locked in the same directive; Hold this ground. Destroy all who approach.
Design
The Flying Fortress is not a city despite what the various buildings poking out over the mass of the island from below might tell you; It is a fortress set loose, by forces unknown but with speed and presence unmistakable.
- Size: Vast enough that from the ground, it blots out the moon when it passes.
- Shape: Forward-leaning, spearheaded mass of decks and walls.
- Structure: Layers of armored barracks, gun decks, airship hangars, silos, and colossal magickal engines bolted into the rock.
- Material: Stone and steel plates riveted together, scarred and blackened by five centuries of storms.
- Movement: Propelled by the ancient magicks that lifted the floating islands, but warped. Unlike stable islands, this one was thrown into an uncontrolled planet-spanning orbit, moving faster than a galloping horse, never slowing, never drifting, never stopping.
Entries
There is no door, no dock, no port of entry. The Fortress was never meant to be boarded while in motion.
- Entry Points: None. Any attempt to approach is torn apart by magickal turrets before the hull is even close.
- Mage-interdiction: Weather mages and sky-shamans have tried to slow it; their enchantments are shredded by the turbulent wake.
- Anchoring: Hooks, chains, even floating harpoons have been flung at it; all have been pulled apart or dragged into ruin.
- Collision: It has scraped Cloudrend peaks, leaving scars in the stone. Its own walls heal within months.
- Exits: None confirmed. If the Fortress has a hangar that opens, none have ever seen it open to the sky.
Sensory & Appearance
- Sight: A concrete and steel fortress carved from a floating island, its silhouette bristling with towers, guns, and broken docks. It moves so fast its wake tears clouds into ribbons.
- Smell: Unknown, none have ever reached it alive.
- Sound: From the ground: silence.
- From the sky: a deep, steady roar of wind torn apart by the hum of magickal engines, like an endless war-drum.
- Feel: When it passes overhead, the air tilts. The hairs on your arms stand. The wind itself seems to hold its breath.
Denizens
- Golem Sentinels: Enormous, bronze-skinned guardians built for heavy combat. They stride the walls tirelessly, their rifles and explosive ordinance older than the greatest kingdoms today.
- Magickal Turrets: Automated batteries, firing bolts of plasma, magick, or solid shot at anything within reach.
- Unknown Presences: Some scouts insist they have glimpsed lights moving inside hangars that should be empty, as if the Fortress itself remembers being alive.
Contents & Furnishings
Through telescopes and suicidal Avian scout reports, a glimpse of the surface:
- Collapsed Barracks: Roofs torn away, long rows of empty bunks visible before the clouds swallow them.
- Craters of Ammunition: Fields of rusted shells and shattered aeroplanes scattered like toys.
- Hangars: Cavernous spaces where experimental flying craft were once tethered.
- Gun Decks: Tiered platforms with silent, gigantic cannons.
- The Heart: A towering citadel in the island’s center, its purpose unknown.
Valuables
Inside the Fortress likely lies one of the the last untouched stockpiles of Lost Age military technology:
- Perfectly preserved firearms, artillery, and flying machines.
- Engines and magicks capable of lifting cities.
- Military archives and weapons so advanced that five centuries have not reproduced them.
Hazards & Traps
- Autonomous Turrets: Still operational, accurate beyond belief.
- Relentless Sentinels: They will leap from walls to catch intruders mid-air.
- High Winds: The turbulence alone can smash a balloon to rags.
- Engines: The magickal engines radiate unstable forces that interfere with teleportation, scrying, and even thought.
Special Properties
- Magick-resistant: Spells fail or warp in its wake.
- Unstoppable Momentum: The Fortress circles the planet in a fixed path, never slowing.
Alterations
The Fortress has been altered only by time, violence, and its own will.
- Collision Scars: When it raked across the Cloudrend peaks, entire hangars were torn open. Those same gaps now stand like broken jaws.
- Adaptive Defenses: In the centuries since its exile into orbit, its turrets seem to have shifted positions, as if some unseen intelligence adjusts them to new strategies.
- Living Engines: The great magickal turbines that keep it aloft pulse like hearts, and some scholars claim the hum of those engines has changed pitch over the years, an evolution of their own design.
Architecture
The Flying Fortress is not a city, it is a wall turned skyward.
- Size: Vast enough that when it crosses the moon, it blots out its light.
- Structure: Layers of armored decks, hangars, fuel depots, barracks, gun towers, and colossal magickal engines bolted directly into the floating rock.
- Material: Reinforced stone and riveted steel plates, blackened and dented by centuries of lightning and debris.
- Movement: Unlike most stable floating islands, like ones typical of The Soaring Lands this one is in a violent, perpetual orbit, flung so hard during its severing that it whips around the planet at speeds faster than any airship, an orbit that never decays thanks to the ancient magicks that keep the island aloft.
Defenses
The Fortress is a living arsenal.
- Magickal Turrets: Heavy batteries mounted along the island’s edge that can fire bolts of plasma, magick, or solid shot with perfect accuracy.
- Golem Sentinels: Enormous bronze-skinned guardians, tireless and incorruptible, patrolling its decks and hangars.
- Kinetic Barrier: The speed of the Fortress itself creates a wall of wind and turbulence, smashing any balloon, airship, or glider that attempts to approach.
- Engine Field: The magickal engines radiate a disruptive energy that ruins scrying, shatters teleportation, and twists spells into uselessness.
History
The Fortress was conceived during the paranoid zenith of the Lost Ages. It was one of the last and greatest symbols of a world trashed and scattered when it's future seemed certain. A mobile fortress, bristling with weapons we can't dream of recreating today, anchored to a floating island to dominate the skies. Then came The Fall. During this cataclysm, or the one it ushered in, something, no one knows what, struck the island so hard that it was severed from its anchors and flung into the heavens like a stone from a sling. For five centuries it has circled the world, never slowing, never stopping. Hundreds of expeditions have tried to board it. None have succeeded. Wherever it crosses, wreckage falls in its shadow.
Tourism
No one visits the Flying Fortress for leisure. It is the ultimate skybound pilgrimage for:
- Adventurers and treasure hunters: Hoping to claim the last untouched hoard of Lost Age weapons.
- Mages and scholars: Obsessed with studying its engines and uncovering its secrets.
- Avian daredevils: Many try to land on it; most never return.
Founding Date
Uncertain, common estimate points towards the late Lost Ages at the earliest.
Alternative Names
'The Bird Castle', 'The Soaring Citadel'.
Environmental Effects
- Wind: Chaotic whirlwinds in its wake.
- Magickal Distortion: Spells fail; scrying shows only static.
- Psychic Pull: Many who see it feel a gnawing need to follow, as if it calls for soldiers to fill its empty barracks.
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