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Building Floating Cities: Worldbuilding in the Sky

In a world where magic keeps cities aloft and the ground below is teeming with horrors, worldbuilding doesn’t just mean mapping streets and markets—it means rethinking gravity itself. Floating cities in Aether Skies aren’t just marvels of arcano-engineering, they are pressure cookers of political tension, crumbling alliances, and looming catastrophe.

If you want to bring your skybound cities to life, you need more than just aether-powered turbines and shiny towers. You need to understand why these cities exist, how they function, and what it costs to keep them in the sky. Here’s how to build your own sky-city settings filled with danger, intrigue, and desperate beauty.

1. Architecture Against the Void

Designing floating cities starts with answering the obvious question: How do they stay up?

In Aether Skies, cities are supported by Aether Struts—massive spinning pillars that gather ambient Aether and convert it into lift and power. But every city’s approach to architecture reflects its culture:

• Theopholis builds towering cathedrals that scrape the clouds, its people convinced the sky brings them closer to their gods.
• Piatracas is carved into a floating mountain, a dwarven bastion of stone and steam, mistrustful of magic but clinging to it out of necessity.
• New Renwick is all glitz and vice, a pleasure-city that floats not on ideals but on indulgence.

When designing a city, tie its structure to its values. Is it spread wide to capture more Aether? Compact and fortified against attack? Does it have failing infrastructure, slowly collapsing under the weight of tradition or corruption?

2. Politics at Altitude

In the clouds, diplomacy is war in slow motion.

The thirteen cities of Aether Skies are caught in a Cold War. Open conflict ended with the disappearance (and recent return) of Haven, but espionage, sabotage, and quiet assassinations never stopped. Trade is both lifeline and leverage. Aether is currency and control.

Ask yourself:

• What are your city’s enemies? Its allies?
• What secrets is it hiding from the other cities?
• Who benefits from the current status quo—and who’s ready to burn it all down?

Consider how the cities spy on each other. Are there diplomatic embassies filled with hidden passageways and two-way mirrors? Are airship “accidents” suspiciously common? Do people vanish on the secret Aether Trains that run beneath the cloud cover?

3. Scarcity Breeds Paranoia

In Aether Skies, the resource that keeps you flying is slowly running dry. Aether is everywhere, but refined, stable Aether—the kind needed to power cities—isn’t infinite.

This creates a web of tension:

• Surface expeditions risk death or madness to harvest more Aether or salvage ancient tech.
• Black markets peddle unlicensed Aether, which may be tainted or cursed.
• Corporations and noble houses wage secret wars over dwindling mining rights.

Let your cities reflect that desperation. Maybe some enforce strict Aether rations. Others run propaganda campaigns, blaming shortages on scapegoats. Some hoard reserves in vaults below the city, guarded by mercenaries and magic alike.

4. City Dynamics and Internal Strife

Every sky-city should feel alive, a place full of contradictions.

Is there a stark divide between the privileged and the desperate? In Kerfluffle, kobolds live stacked tenements high, dreaming of better lives while their rulers sip wine in the Golden Towers. In Purgamentum, morticians oversee a city-sized necropolis while junk from other cities is dumped over the edge.

Add local flavor:

• Sports leagues like Aetherball become cultural touchstones, political propaganda, or even fronts for smuggling and espionage.
• Religions, particularly those like in Theopholis, can define social status or justify oppression.
• Hidden organizations like the Aethernati enforce secret agendas, rooting out enemies—or creating them.

Don’t just build cities—build struggles. Who’s being crushed under the gears of power? Who’s trying to change the system—and who’s profiting off keeping it exactly the same?

5. The Edge of the Map: The Curtain and the Surface

Floating cities are safe only because they’re far from The Curtain—the stormy border around the returned city of Haven. But that’s changing.

As the Curtain expands and Haven’s influence grows, every city is forced to react. Some want to investigate. Others want to obliterate the anomaly before its secrets unravel the fragile peace.

Tie your cities into this looming mystery:

• A secret lab might be replicating Haven tech.
• A cult might see the Curtain as divine judgment.
• Refugees from surface expeditions could be carrying more than trauma—maybe even parasitic horrors that feed on Aether.

The skies aren’t safe anymore. And that’s the perfect narrative pressure cooker for drama, betrayal, and eldritch terror.

Conclusion: A City is a Character

The floating cities of Aether Skies aren’t just backdrops—they are living entities, shaped by magic, politics, fear, and hope. When you build your own, ask yourself: What does this city want? What is it willing to do to get it?

In a world where Aether holds everything aloft, the greatest danger may not be the monsters in the clouds—but the secrets your city keeps.

So light the Aether struts. Spin up the engines. Let your players fly into a sky full of wonder, peril, and betrayal.

Thanks for reading. Until Next Time, Stay Nerdy!!