Core World Vignettes
1) Label: Ra’Kern and Llywyll board the “Arc”
Shot from on high, a scene at several thousand feet. Sunset colouring the landscape in subdued reds and oranges. In the distance, blues and greens of the ocean flicker and flash reflecting the proximity of the deep red Sun.
Left foreground and expansive far beyond the borders of the picture is the “Arc”, golden metal sides pockmarked and armoured, utilitarian as though never designed to fly through air. There is no clear indication of what holds the vessel in the sky. A gaping hole rent by some terrific force is in focus, almost fully apparent, with a peculiar green luminescence displaying the form of similar gold green metal inside. Fungus and moulds gather in nooks and crannies on the hull. An outpouring of vegetable matter hangs over the edge of the rend, dangling like a garden beard beneath the open mouth of the vessel.
Right foreground is the skybarque “Inquisitor”, doors open and guns run out, battle ready. Sails emblazoned with the Four Quadrants symbol billow out in holding pattern. Twin harpoons on the foredeck have shot, one has failed to find purchase, and is being reeled back in, a long chain hanging loose into the void. The other tethers to the “Arc” in a loose inverted parabola, secured to something unseen inside the maw.
In the gap between the ships are two figures. The first is a broad winged Kra, with beak ajar and eyes wide in wonder, muscles straining at the weight of carrying the other, clasped as they are between the figure’s crossed legs. She wears an armoured flying harness, with paired long, curved blades sheathed upon her back. Her hands free, she has them out stretched toward the vessel as though trying in advance to reach out and touch the surface.
The other, carried figure is mostly in shadows below the winged one, swathed in purple and ermine robes. The two deep violet eyes that stare out while the many limb / tendrils grasp almost desperately at the legs of her burden bearer are wide and hungry in spite of the obvious fear of the fall. Pale lavender skin of the Thuul flashes bare from the robes in one small space, and it can be seen that a tendril has been spared from the grasping to hold out an ebony rod with silver inlay; ornate, intricate and faintly luminescent.
Several crew members are gathered on deck of the “Inquisitor”, mostly Thuul, all eyes strained towards the two in the gap, and their destination. Some are pointing, others standing still in pensive observation, while others still seek to be almost obscured by the bulkhead and deck shields of the mighty skybarque, peering around corners like frightened children.
How dwarfed and insignificant they are against the overpowering mass of the “Arc”!
2) Label: First sight of Arcology
Shot from behind, the same two figures. Picture edges begin in darkness of gold green ragged metal, out into a massive bright cylinder landscape seeming to fall away, on to a horizon in the incredibly far distance. A band of ocean circles the middle of the cylinder, and in the distance, high above, water ships can be seen sailing impossibly on the upside down estuary.
The near landscape is wrack and ruin, with years of slow reclamation by shrub and grass. It is clear that the rent in the “Arc” caused much destruction to the inner landscape, and that this has given rise to a mountainous, jagged edge.
In the middle distance, open fields surround a village of wooden houses. The curvature of the land reveals rather than obscures things far off. The haze and distance are enough to obscure the inhabitants, but smoke rising from chimneys tells the tale of current habitation.
Clouds circle the inner sky, and over the ocean two thirds of the way to the roof, rain falls. There are flashes of lightning in the clouds.
The taller of the two figures, beaked face caught in profile, points at an angle away from the centre of the spectacle unfolded before them. Following the line of the hand, and the turn of the cloak of the other, eyes are drawn into a hillside lined with rubble, close by. At first nothing seems outstanding, but then, camouflaged by a kind of haze, a Shape can be made out. Eyes first, glinting like agates; then the curve of a giant spine, and tail, and legs, and wings; all orange and rocky and hard.
And an open mouth. And rock jagged teeth. And a forked tongue.
3) Label: The Fenris Cannon, in the afternoon.
Scale shot of a 12 horse wagon train, pulled up beside the giant brown metal sides of a massive cannon. Shot includes view down the barrel towards its obvious target, high in the sky: The Arc.
The Arc hovers high over land, taking up about a quarter of the screen in spite of the obvious distance, a massive floating cylinder of spinning metal.
A large body of water lies between the distant land and the beach shores from which the cannon protrudes. A few sail ships cross the waters, and a city can be seen around the arc of the bay to the right, tall wood and stone spires with many-coloured glass windows.
The wagon is a low flat bed, with a tarp pulled over the curved cannon shell it carries. The shell is fully the length of two horses, and the Gren-Horse wagon drivers are taking time to wipe down the animals, which have obviously been straining at their cargo for some time.
A massive metal crane arm rises from the rear area of the cannon and is being shifted into position to lift the shell from the carriage. A mighty armoured building rises from the rocky bluffs behind the cannon, and a giant dual carriage rail track run to the base of the building from the cannon itself. From this angle, the doors, which must exist in the building to allow access of the giant machine, are not visible. Several other shells are housed in an enormous bracket work magazine that struts out at 45 degrees from the back end of the gun, suggesting that the re-firing of the cannon could be managed in fairly rapid fashion.
The nose of the cannon protrudes out over the water, and its shadow casts across the beach in the late afternoon sunshine, leaving umbra on the reefs beneath the waters.
4) Label: Two Gulgath and a Batrak unload a mistbarque at Angaville docks.
The air leaves a misty, blue-green tinge in this shot, as haze rises from below a docked mistbarque. The proud wooden ship has sails furled on her seven masts, and is tied above and below to the strutted docks, spread out from the cliff face. The fresh greens of the skywood are slowly beginning to darken and become barnacle infested.
She is three times as long again as any skybarque, four times as broad, and five times as deep. Her weight holds her low in the mists, destined to never rise higher than hill-height.
In the fore ground, two stocky and silver scaled figures manoeuvre a heavy crate off the deck of the ‘barque with pulleys and ropes, while amidships a tall, lanky figure with smooth leathery skin and wide batrachian eyes reaches out a long fingered hand to steady himself on the rigging and watches. On deck there are many more hundreds of crates, some with platinum labels, others with silver and still others with gold.
The mists beneath get thicker and thicker, and the ladders and ropes from the docks delve down into the depths. A few brown wood masts rise up from the mists, evidence of the cheaper make of the seabarques resting on the water surface below.
5) Label: Aroun Warrior Knights confront a large Orange Chromataspore
Four centaur shaped saurian figures are shown from a tree top view in a forest edge / farmland vista. Two of the knights hold swords and shields and are cautiously advancing, while one holds back and angles to the right with bow in hand, and the last sprints to the left and backward, dropping weapons and arms about him as he flees in panic, eyes wide, right arm bent into impossible shapes by some kind of unnatural curvature, blood spraying from popped vessels in the upper arm.
Before the figures is a strange effect upon the tilled earth and worked stone of the path, with all the land in a direct path before them blasted and warped in a line, everything within the bounds of the course of the creature is monocrome orange, various shades the differential. And all things touched by the effect are withered, aged, reduced or warped into strange and chaotic shapes.
The creature at the cause of this desolation is bounded by an opaqueness in the air, shaped with greater density and less translucence in the air itself as upon things already coloured. If one was to half close ones eyes, the form becomes more distinct, and there are multiple limbs of shade surrounding a central sphere of colour, like a single celled organism. The tendrils reach out and pull it along the ground, or reach for the slow advancing knights.
One of the knight’s blades has a central channel between the edges, in which are housed three blue and one green stones. The blade itself glows with an inner light in shades of blue and green. This knight holds the central line towards the creature, and has a grim look of determination to her eyes. The others have something more of desperation in theirs as they hold back or take flanks.