Weclome back Sky Pirates!
As we approach the launch of Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire we're starting a six-week series of updates for you, breaking down some of the lore, characters, and core mechanics at the heart of the game.
In this first update, learn about the events that lead up to your adventure in Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire.
The world of Sky Oceans is fragmented. That is the easy way to describe how its surface looks. Looming all over its atmosphere, at lower or higher altitudes, large patches of land - the flying islands, roam the skies. No one knows the full story of what happened to it. That knowledge has been lost for generations. What the habitants of this place know is that many, many years ago, there was a disaster: the Big Scattering. This violent event shattered the planet's surface, throwing large portions of land toward the skies and forcing mankind to adapt or perish.
Centuries have passed since then. Few humans survived the Scattering, and those who did formed tribes, claiming for them what little usable land they could find.
Life was resumed; focused on surviving and rebuilding, humans soon stopped looking behind. The past was soon, forgotten. The Scattering was now part legend, a starting point for the new generations that came after it. What happened before that was named the lost history.
As the tribes became stronger and larger, there were some who started searching for that lost history. They soon found out that the floating islands were full of ruins from the past, ruins that many times contained a lot of strange and advanced technology.
That was the start of the Scavenging Guilds and the age of the adventurers.
For the inhabitants of Sky Oceans, flying has become almost natural. Generation after generation, people have learned how to build, operate and care for flying machines of different complexity. But resources are very scarce and energy sources hard to obtain. It wasn't until humans learned to refine a rare crystal that air travel was possible: the Aerius.
The Aerius has strange properties. All floating islands and rocks have Aerius veins inside their structure. This is what allows them to float. However, when Aerius is exposed to air is of no use for humans. Once a crystal is separated from the main Aerius vein, it decomposes, losing all anti-gravity properties. Virgin Aerius veins are a scarce but valuable resource, making it a powerful trade commodity.
Mining Aerius is one of the most complex and dangerous tasks tribes must undertake. Exposed to air, Aerius reacts violently, so miners must use inert gasses to saturate the chaffs and avoid catastrophic explosions. Once mined, Aerius is stored in special containers or “batteries”, which then can be used in several ways, such as engines, machinery, mining and propulsion. The bigger the battery, the larger the machine it can power. As refining processes improved, humans could build larger aircrafts until creating the large cargo and battle airships that now cross the Windwalls and make trade between tribes possible.
Without Aerius, life in Sky Oceans would be impossible.
And the rest is history! Uncover more about the the world of Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire when the game releases and in the demo. Stay tuned for next week as we delve into the various factions that occupy the skies.