S P I N N I N G R E A L I T Y

Chapter 1: Eternal Day, the Floating Cities and the Lotharic Stone

The age of floating cities was a great time of peace for the Elves. High above Lareleth, with their ancient struggles all but forgotten, they prospered in every way - their arts and crafts blossomed, their knowledge and magic flourished, and their system of government and economic mindset aspired towards utopia.

The Elves had successfully floated five cities over Lareleth by 1508. Elithradë - the Elven capital - was the first, and it floated high over a vast and arid desert that stretched to the mountainous gray horizons far beneath the city. The two suns of Lareleth, one an aging white dwarf and the other a blossoming golden supergiant, held a special and peculiar relationship with Lareleth’s orbit. As one sun set over the mountains far to the north of Elithradë, the other was just rising to the south - centered at the exact position of the Elf-city in the sky. This had the consequence that the Elf-capital enjoyed almost perpetual day due to its precise location - and this was by no accident, for many Elves dreaded the darkness of night (q.v. The Siege of Al’Elromir). The barren deserts below were the by-product of the continual unrelenting daylight of the two suns, and from the center of the Desert of Nyriand, directly beneath Elithradë, radiating outwards towards the distant surrounding mountains, the duration of Lareleth’s nights gradually increased.

The Lotharic Stone, located in a tree-filled grove in the center of Elithradë, was a massive, twelve foot rock covered in intricate Elvish runes, which radiated a powerful magic that kept the city afloat. The archaic stone had been enchanted by ancient Elves many hundreds of years before, originally as a magical shielding device to protect the once impregnable fortess Al’Elromir on Lareleth’s surface. Shortly after the ancient tragedy there, mighty Elven spellcasters had subverted the stone’s power to raise a massive island of rock from the sea into the sky. They centred this rock-island over the Desert of Nyriand, high in the atmosphere, in the exact position needed to receive blessed eternal day. Using their winged gryphon allies to journey from the surface to their new home, all of the surviving Elves migrated to this rock island in the sky, and there-upon built a city so magnificent, that no words existed in the Elvish tongue to describe it. After a time, the city became overcrowded, and the need for a second floating city arose...

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16