On certain days, at twilight, the clouds gather themselves down along the horizon and become indistinguishable from hills. At such times, the onlooker imagines that the two phenomena - the clouds and the land itself - merge into one. If only he could get there quickly enough, before night descends, he feels, he could step up into the clouds and be borne away into the dusky sky.
What if the clouds did in fact one evening come and lay themselves down on the land to create a whole new range of far-off hills of solid earth? A distant Shangri-La perhaps - or a rugged badlands filled with terror? What would any self-respecting adventurer do, other than gather his belongings into a pack and strike off to explore the fresh new landscape?
Where these hills loomed large such adventurers would congregate for mutual support and supply, and frontier villages or towns would spring up to serve their commercial needs and exploit whatever opportunities for plunder they unearthed. Life among these people would be short and cheap - it is hard to imagine that the New Hills would be a place of safety or ease, and it seems likely that whatever strange life the Hills brought with them would threaten constantly to escape beyond their confines. But still adventurers would come, certain that in their case skill or good fortune would see them through and make all the risks worth taking.
Mappers. Traders. Pioneers. Magic-users searching for new knowledge; priests searching for new converts; heroes searching for monsters to slay and maidens to rescue; rogues in search of treasure. All would come and test their mettle in the New Hills' crucible. Would you?
Criminals, rogues, convicts fleeting from the law, preferring exile to execution. Some are disguised, perhaps traveling next to you, perhaps in this very tavern. Is that scarred Westerner furtively looking for pursuit, or is that just the nervousness of setting out on a journey from which many have never returned? Keep your gear close and your sword hand free.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a paragraph from the opening entry in a Fighting Fantasy book!
DeleteOne day, the clouds rise back to the sky with everyone on them, then come down again in an unexplored region of the world. Would you stay on the partially explored cloudlands, or go out into the newer unknown?
ReplyDeleteYes, I absolutely thought about that and I love the concept, although it has this annoying association in my mind with the Magic Faraway Tree books!
DeleteVery nice - have had similar thoughts looking out at the ocean on an overcast day, the ocean and the sky seeming to merge together at the horizon into an endless grey.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the sorts of clouds they were shape the earth they become - pillowy cumuluses become mounds of pumice, weeping a thousand streams from their pores. Maybe the things that lived among the clouds are transformed with them - a sylph solidifed, her graceful movements becoming a painful grind, her song now a dusty grating.
Nice!
DeleteExcellent post.
ReplyDeleteCheers, Patrick!
DeleteCaravans of Sky Ramblers search for pockets of mist and fog that become foothills into the Wandering Mountains at sunrise. They're people who spend their lives in darkness for the hope of walking in unrelenting sun and unending slopes. They yearn to rebuild their shrines of ice, adorned in shreds of cloth - parts of themselves they can leave with the winds.
ReplyDeleteNice concept - I like it.
DeleteGiven how prevalent it is in legends and parables that people are "fallen", in some manner reduced or disconnected from their wellspring, and this state so often described in imagery of descent, inevitably some wonder if the cloud realm is the original homeland. That what might be found there includes long-sundered brothers and sisters, forgotten truths, or simply a sense of correct belonging. Pilgrims, thinkers, and those simply unable to find peace or purpose seek to make the journey. Inevitably, this is complicated by philosophical and religious argument over whether it is acceptable, advisable, or ethical to make that journey. Is the descent of the clouds an invitation to return, a sign that "we" are ready, enlightened, forgiven, needed... or are explorers and pioneers engaged in hubris, giving in to temptation, or spitting in the face of the Divine Powers? Perhaps the pious must pursue the faithless, who would profane the land of the clouds... or alternatively, ensure their continued purity by only permitting the worthy.
ReplyDeleteThis is good.
DeleteThe most distant initial deciptions of the Forgotten Realms had something of that - they are the "forgotten realms" as in glimpsed regions outside Earth, the lands that received pioneers from our world crossing over through short lived planar conjunctions, who were never heard from again. That idea quickly disappeared over time in the sucessive publications. Forgotten Realms indeed.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame really, as I like the motif of real world crossing into fantasy more appealing as I get older.
DeleteWhat islands marvellous are these,
ReplyDeleteThat gem the sunset's tides of light -
Opals aglow in saffron seas?
How beautiful they lie, and bright,
Like some new-found Hesperides!
What varied, changing magic hues
Tint gorgeously each shore and hill!
What blazing, vivid golds and blues
Their seaward winding valleys fill!
What amethysts their peaks suffuse!
Close held by curving arms of land
That out within the ocean reach,
I mark a faery city stand,
Set high upon a sloping beach
That burns with fire of shimmering sand.
Of sunset-light is formed each wall;
Each dome a rainbow-bubble seems;
And every spire that towers tall
A ray of golden moonlight gleams;
Of opal-flame is every hall.
Alas! how quickly dims their glow!
What veils their dreamy splendours mar!
Like broken dreams the islands go,
As down from strands of cloud and star,
The sinking tides of daylight flow.