An entire kingdom is on a floating continent, and it was not a natural occurrence for the setting. The nation had the land it was sitting on raised above the clouds.
What are some good reasons to actually do this and spend the effort, magic, and manpower on making an entire country float in the air?
They have a magic waterfall that creates infinite water from nowhere and it would've flooded the kingdom.
Accidental hole torn into the elemental plane of water?
A floating island fortress is basically immune to ground invasion without the aid of flight. If the floating fortress can move, not only can it defend friendly territory, but threaten enemy territory and exert a sphere of influence that a regular military fort couldn't match. And holy shit would it be amazing at that, provided people can easily traverse between the floating island and the ground. You'd be able to house people in an almost perfectly safe environment, and you'd have the advantage of a literal bird's eye view of enemy movements. You could even use it in battle by just shooting arrows over the side.
But it all boils down to logistics. A floating island would either have to sustain itself, meaning it would need to be fuckoff huge in order to have farms enough to feed people, or you'd need a supply train to feed the island which means the advantages of it floating are pretty much nil, making it no different than a regular fortress that can be starved out or otherwise isolated.
If there was a portal or something on the island, or better yet, idea of links to elemental planes, you can solve a lot of these supply issues by simply getting supplies delivered through the portal. There would also be plenty of lulz to be had with an infinite waterfall raining down on enemies.
Building an actual castle on the island would be pretty much useless, unless enemies can somehow fly up or have huge ladders or something. The purpose of a wall is to keep people out, which the empty space of air does for an island like that, so really the only purpose of a wall would be to protect against siege projectiles somehow being launched high enough to land on the island... in which case it would be better to just have wooden structures because those are more easily repaired than a properly fashioned stone wall.
So you're saying we need access to the Infinite Planes of Water, Chickens, Potatoes, Arrows, and Oak.
Colonizing some place like Venus which is a "paradise" at cloud level, and a hell hole at ground level.
>The Infinite Plane of Cock
>MAGIC
>WIZARD
>CIVILIZATION
Get fucked.
That's what's going on in pic above, anyway. 12,000 BC, middle of the last glacial decline.
My DM had a country of allied floating cities. Some floated by magic, some floated by machinery, most a little bit of both. The cities began as a haven of free thinkers and intellectuals driven into a harsh land by surrounding places where their thoughts weren't welcome (Vikings/Arabia/Weeaboo). The wildlife down there is pretty bad, so floating homes and eventually cities became the way of life their, powered by their superior technology and magic.
They tend to think of outsiders and ground dwellers as stupid, and the right to live there must be earned by the ability to reach the city under your own power, be it magic or thingamajig.
Slums of sub par mad scientists live in the shadows of the floating cities, always rebuilding after purple worm attacks.
the floor is lava
I assume if you have enough magic to make an entire city fucking float, you have enough magic to make food for the population as well.
Usually from what I've seen, the reasons have either been military, or to escape.
Usually a small population of extremely advanced / powerful species that are losing a war due to their small numbers, decide to say fuck it and go out of enemy reach.
>Elemental plane of potato
Or to prove they are better than everyone else
Or terraced gardens everywhere. That seems like a more reasonable beginning. You'll just have to deal with having floating magical china in orbit above you, with Wu showing up to fuck your shit unexpectedly.
Meanwhile, the various forbidden cities fight between one another in strict formulas based on not damaging the floating stones while stripping the cities off of them.
Oh gosh, what if they keep the top and sides for growing food, and use interior canyons and wall-cities to live? There might be a tower or citadel on top, to show how ludicrously rich one capital is, but aside from that, grain and/or rice alone grows atop the things.
A fa/tg/uy who can't into fantasy... how sad...
>Imagine if you could create a floating moving city
>now imagine floating your city over your enemies gay-land-baby-city
It would be a pretty badass medieval WMD
possibility to;
>drop your city on top of their, crusherizing the poor sods
>cutting them off from sunlight for as long as you want
>>But it all boils down to logistics.
You are a wise user. But if you have one floating island? Cut in four. Have the other three make supply runs while Death Fortress One force projects the hell out of the enemy.
Eador
So there was a shrine to some old gods that gifted out insane power bleasings, so naturally everyone travelled there and got buffed up and did bad stuff so attitudes changed towards the shrine and the gods thinking it changed people for the worst and the gods were evil. it got to the point where the dominant culture decided it was more trouble then it was worth and set out to go destroy the shrine, thankfully the priests who maintained the shrine found out and decided to get blessed and pool their magic together and uproot the thing into the clouds setting it to forever drift in the sky. Hence the heroes journey to go find the fabled shrine to get the blessing to fight that big bad guy on equal terms
The second floating island was powered by technology so far beyond any modern science that no one was able to replicate or even understand it. The mind behind this technological wonder did it simply because he wanted to see if he could.
"Yo mate, did you know there are fuckin' spiders everywhere? Fuck this shit, let's get some wizard bros and live in the clouds where there aren't spiders fuckin' everywhere."
Because dick measuring contest, like people spend their time building taller and taller building so they can say they build the world tallest building. Would be the same thing, they did it just to show other nation that they could do it.
A. Wizard. Did. It.
Actually ran a campaign where the BBEG had a flying city acting as his base of operations. Being an epic-level Loch Wizard he had millennia to dock around and tinker with stuff. Eventually turned his home city (way back when) into this flying fortress, and had a literal army of undead under his control. His overall tactics for battle was stroll up, drop a billion skeletons and zombies on whatever army he was fighting until he won, raised their armies and added it to his forces. Rise and repeat.
PCs won by basically going Seal Team 6 and HALO dropped into the fortress, fighting their way through mooks to his throne room and engaged in high-level PC vs. Epic level Lich Wizard combat, all the while the last large army played stalling tactics while it literally rained zombies on them.
The island fell once the lunch and his phylactery were destroyed, crushing a large portion of the undead army in the ensuing rubble once they lost their hive mind link to the BBEG.
Wingless dragons are roaming on the ground, awaken after ten thousand years of slumber.
Nothing seems to be able to defeat them and they breed fast.
Wizards are raising the whole kingdom to save as many people as possible so they can return down there once the dragons are sleeping again.
I like these
When the Great Mist flooded the land, all nations struggled to hold back the mutated beasts and survive with far less resources in reach.
Though most nations eventually clawed territory by territory back into their control, one instead rose their lands far above the Mist. Few in population and spent in magic from the task, they are drip-fed supplies from other kingdoms as they hold a unique position against the colossal Guardians roaming the Mist-laden lands.
this
The greatest possible way to say
>Hey my country is better than yours!
They can essentially dump all their sewage onto other nations and castles for the lols
I like the Lunar/Chrono Trigger method of lots of mages together literally want to prove to the rest of the world that they are absolutely superior so they make their city float above the ground in a way to display how much better they are as well as keep away from all the filthy unwashed non-magical muggles down below.
If someone actually can muster up the power to reach the place then they have a chance at staying. But muggles get sent to the mines.
I think Lunar 2 had them make slaves of anyone who had no magical capability that made the attempt to enter the city.
And then they invoked the apocalypse beast slumbering under the planet in a bid for even more ultimate power, who literally rains destruction and destroys the floating paradise, sending it crashing into the ground.
There once was a very pious city in which everyone prayed that they might be closer to God. One day God answered. The city rose and rose coming closer with each day to the blessed realm but the closer the city got, the more obvious and repellent even the smallest sins became. Unable to allow the imperfect mortals to enter (and inevitably destroy) the blessed realm while they still sinned and were imperfect. So God made it so that the city would only rise as each citizen became more spiritually and morally perfect. As the city gets closer to the blessed realm the people no longer age, or want of food, and become stronger and more intelligent like the beings they worship. This inner strength does not purify their souls (as that is something they must do themselves) so the entire city is dedicated to exploring morality and philosophy and creating things of beauty and true good. They spend their days watching the civilizations below, debating the lives and actions of the beings beneath them and whether they are moral and right. The city is ruled by a great conclave who try to understand the perfect morality and one day make the city pure enough to enter into the blessed realm.
I think that might be a moral lesson to not use sleeping eldritch entities from space as a power source
post-scarcity magic based low-technology utopia is the most feasible reasoning imo.
For tourism purposes... And to commit SKYCRIMES.
New EP books plz.
If we wanted an infinite number of dicks we'd just look in your mouth.
Not at all. I love Kingdom of Zeal. I'm telling anyone who has problems with magic floating wizard civilizations to get fucked!
It was a haven for necromancers and undead.
It was originally raised as a fortress. The shadow of floating continent is magically reinforced, blanking out all light sources it covers. The darkness is deep enough that undead who would be destroyed by sunlight can comfortably exist within, even during the day.
Even when the original creators were slain, the land could not be destroyed, and now floats aimlessly.
So now whenever the continent floats by, people run like hell, because there's an army of nasty undead tirelessly following it on the ground, and they boil out of it at nightfall to kill and create more of their kind before retreating to the shadow before daybreak.
Of course, some undead don't make it back in time, so you've got a small army of paladins and clerics eternally chasing the damned thing, cleaning out pockets of undead who got stuck when the flying fortress moved on.
While I'm fine with the idea of an infinite water source on a floating landmass-
What's it like underneath the landmass? Just a massive fucking shadow? Does the water from their coming crashing down at terminal velocity or is it spread into more of a constant rain?
The water would diffuse, but not all the way to a rain. It would be like being under a very VERY high waterfall. As for the shadow, that depends on the height of the thing relative to the ground, the curvature of the earth below, and the distance to the sun. Also, on how big it is. Above a thousand feet in height over the surface, you wouldn't be likely to even see a shadow.
For , that shadow is likely magically enhanced in some way.