Jhaeloë

The planet Jhaeloe is a gas giant made of air all the way through, save for a tiny core of pewter in the middle. Such an immense volume of air would not possess a homogeneous density, thus it is separated into layers. Three of them with proportionate densities of air and strengths of gravity - there is thin air and weak gravity at the top layers, and then there is thick air and strong gravity in the lower layers, concluding at the dreaded flats. Many clouds streak the skies, but they are not composed of water vapour - not quite. They are actually made of dense mineral wool that once belonged to an ancient sheep-goddess, but was shorn off millions of years ago.   They drift across the sky languorously despite their strength and resilience, they are still much lighter than air. Hence it is noted that the upper layers - or the 'crust' - of the clouds are held together by the roots of vegetation, which hold the wool together much like how the tree roots of our earth hold tight the soil where they are rooted. Even beings as heavy and cumbersome as us can walk upon cloud-crust with ease, but if one were to dig past the vegetation they would find themselves penetrating a layer so soft they would as easily sink right through it. The clouds, which often form archipelagos and cloud chains, are as diverse in climate, terrain and appearance as islands tend to be in our own world, and there are several stretches of air which constitute their own regions.   The density of the clouds depends on the altitude. Upper layers have flimsy cirrus clouds with little vegetation. Central layers have their stupendous cumulonimbi with towering bread loaf-looking plateaus and mountain ranges, with their own buoyant forests and complicated isolate ecosystems based entirely upon those clouds. Unfortunately the lower layers tend to be mostly devoid of clouds and the lower layers of the sky are empty. These regions tend to be obscured underneath clouds, for light is a rarity, like how things are on Vramcharp. Terrain there is mostly flat and it looks like somebody poured a panful of molten metal all over the ground, because of the high gravity.

Just as the majority of life-forms on Rhobascawl and Vramcharp are amphibious or wholly aquatic swimmers, virtually every creature on Jhaeloe possesses the ability to fly. Even the plants are no exception, for there are trees with gas-bladders that propel themselves as they spread their broad fans to consume airborne algae. Animalcules in their infinite profusions are born aloft on wind currents, hence in wetter climes they can be discerned as bio-luminescent mists that travel at astounding speeds, and waving as the air-currents change. They at are the very nadir of the planet's food chain, these zooplankton and phytoplankton, which always consume the sunlight and expulse specific types of radiation which their bodies cannot photosynthesize.   Animalcules are also reliable indicators of the environmental conditions within their immediate vicinities, for whenever the algae-mists are too thin or too thick there is obviously something wrong going on around them. When the oxygen density is too strong an algal bloom occurs and suddenly the skies are marred with great sticky tangled mats of spongy algae which soar around gracelessly, attaching themselves to nearby clouds. This is usually followed by a large clustering of herbivorous animals, which attract predators - chaos ensues.   The aforementioned zoophytic flying tree is as axiomatical to the ecosystem as the countless filter-feeders who spend their lives following the air-currents and the nourishing swathes of algae which are propelled by them. Contrasting the compact smallness of the animalcules, the filter-feeders are like our whales in that they are enormous, majestic things. Everything about them is soooooft andbiiiiiiiiiig, what, with glistening sections of transparent flesh and long shining icthyopean tails with frilly fins. Their mouths are quite disparate, although they are all alike in that none of them has a single tooth. There are the classic cetacean maws, and then there are the really weird ones that split open like a tripartite vagina and spew out nine fluffy tentacles.   But you can't have enormous beautiful beings that hoard that much nutrients for themselves without parasites seeing this as an opportunity, oh no. Those crude allegories for socialism infest the innards of filter-feeders and lay there eggs in there, and once the filter-feeder takes a shit, the eggs are distributed on some nearby cloud. And smaller predators come about and munch on the larvae when they hatch, with their side dish of free-flying herbivores looking for flying trees to gnaw on. Such is the complicated circle of life.   Hence I have just covered an abridged overview of the ecosystem of the open skies that lie between the clouds. Now I shall commence an explanation of how things happen on most of the clouds themselves on average. And this will have to wait, for this cloud is, like everything other half-baked idea I conceive, UNFININININININIINISH'D!   All creatures that live on the crushing depths of the pewter core are of two kinds - predators or scavengers. Down there not even the most insignificant patch of moss or lichen grows, and the animalcules and the propelling wind-currents dare not stray that deep, for the wind is so viscous that it is inert like a vat of treacle. There is only one thing which benefits from the thick air and those are the pressurized slimy masses of bacteria which lurk and wait for a mangled cadaver to fall from above, at which they will then pounce upon and devour it. There are giant caterpillar-taurs, gibbering eight-tongued rat-toads, and horned stump-legged hyaena-swine.

Inevitably, the resource that first comes to mind when the name of Jhaeloe is invoked is the wondrous floating substance known as levium that pervades not only every single plant and creature on the planet, but the fibres which comprise the clouds. The reason why the cloud-wool does not collapse like a fluffy encumbrance is because of that very substance, suspended as tiny orbs of solid levium which sublimates upon contact with air. Levium is weightless. It is processed by every single living organism on Jhaeloe for the purpose of buoyancy.   When an animal, let us say, a filter-feeder dies it spontaneously releases all its levium, which is then absorbed by the nearest cloud. Should it perish in midair the substance will just poof outwards and get diluted while it plummets to the ground, hence it is not practical to harvest levium from the cadavers of deceased animals. While levium is reliably present in the cloud-wool it exists in the most concentrated profusions in plants, more specifically their fruits, which possess their own internal bladders to help them drift about once they detach. Pure gaseous levium is acquired not by the unraveling of wool but by the capture of buoyant fruits in nets. These are ground up and the organic slush is separated from the emitted vapors, which are captured in bottles.   There is also timber, though most trees on Jhaeloe have trunks no thicker than a stalk of bamboo, and no bark. With reeds, they are tied together into panels and used by the people of Gielosk as a construction material. Windskiffs and other modes of transport can be built by them, for any boat wrought of Jhaeloen wood will course across wind as it does across water, especially in the low-gravity conditions of its originating planet. Spun cloud-wool can be refined into a multitude of materials, including keratin plating to cover the timbers, and by itself it can be woven into textiles which can be used as clothing or stretched out between panel frames. Despite its origin this textile possesses the qualities of both silk and gossamer when processed correctly and treated with the correct concentrations of chemical compounds.   Cloud-wool, in its unspun, unwoven state, can be smelted down in vats the same way iron wool can me melted down into raw iron, save that the wool is not pure but it contains varying concentrations of Jhaeloen chemicals. That planet has a vast host of compounds and elements which are completely alien to those of other worlds.