Adrift in an Endless White Sea- A Floating Islands Civilization Quest

Closing the vote, looks like Creatorless Creations wins. Full steam ahead.
Thanks everyone for voting and participating. Update should be out later tonight, possibly tomorrow.

For many years now, they have fallen on our fair island of Wire.

Great ships of treated wood, of strong rope, of strong sail, of powerful Magicite, these fall from somewhere beyond the horizon, to the west. Some are smaller, "merely" a few hundred feet long with two decks, others with 5 or 6 decks and thousands of feet in length. A few, even, were more than a mile long, and had dozens of decks.

At first, they were wonders. Such amazing craftsmanship, such an amazing concept. Ships that could fly? That could go beyond the horizon? Who built these? Why? Where were the crews? Why did they crash here?

The answer to the last at least, in part, became apparent soon after.

It started with those first discoverers falling ill. As Captain Sprocket Notch pulled out her steam knife to take a sample shaving from a particularly strange bit of timber in the floor, her knife fell from her grasp, and then she too fell over, her gears slowing to a speed that could be considered only barely alive, and very unconscious.

She was taken out, fretted over in the expedition camp outside, but her fellows kept up their search for knowledge. As time passed, as those explorers spent longer around the crashed ships, they began to fall ill as well, though none so quickly as Captain Notch. They lost energy, they lost willpower, their minds fogged and some began falling unconscious. Meanwhile, Notch's form began to decay, cracks appearing in her cover plates, chips in her cogs, stutters in her chain drives. Her springs squeaked and her brass tarnished. Until finally, her gears ticked to a slow but all too sudden stop.

At this point, those among the crew that still had their wits about them fled, dragging the unconscious and insensate behind them and leaving their captain's body behind, along with many of their notes. Their steam balloon crashed half a mile from the city of Umbire. With most dead, and the rest gravely injured and ill, it took time to get the story, but once we did, we began to put together a response team.

Months later, the specialized team was sent in to investigate more closely. Armed with rubber suits,- to shield from whatever the contaminant was-clockwork fans,- to push away bad air- and in the case of something more tangible lurking, steam cannons, they set off in three steam balloons, and we waited, still more curious than scared.
The environment around the wreck was unrecognizable. The grass had changed colors, becoming purple and bright blue, sharp in places, slimy in others, and simply dead in still other spots. Trees became twisted and strange. All animals in the area had mostly died, the team finding corpses riddled with cancers, growing abortive extra limbs, even extra heads. Others survived the mutations, seeming to actually adapt to the twisted landscape, just as strange as any of the rest of it. Twin eerie howls, perfectly in concert, still purportedly haunt the surviving team member's visions.

At the captain's final resting place, they found only a lump of fine dust.

The team was on a time limit. They knew from the initial explorer's report that they couldn't stay long, and the rubber suits were only guessed to help shield them from whatever this was, as were the steam fans. They did not dare dally, but nor could they rush their examination. This twisting of the landscape was important, the cause must be assessed.
They soon found the culprit. On examination of the notes left by the explorers, the team checked that initial strange bit of timber in the floor of the second deck, that had killed poor old Captain Notch. The timber was not hard to spot, as it was now made of pulsing flesh, spurting disgusting fluids every few moments, quivering when they got close as if in anticipation.

As one, they blasted it apart with overcharged shots from their steam cannons. No one was taking chances on that. With its destruction, the room below was revealed, a room that the explorers hadn't had time to find a way into, seeing as the doors to it were all locked, and made of much sturdier metal than the mostly treated wood doors of the rest of the ship.

The room, which seemed analogous to an engine room, contained a massive crystal of magicite, floating serenely above a pedestal made for it. This magicite was not right, however. It had an inner gleam of purple that cast an eerie light, and occasionally the whole mass flashed a dark blue, instead of the bright blue shine of a clear sky that magicite usually had. The room itself was a writhing mass of madness. Flesh and bone and slime and shards of unknowable metal where once was wood and iron.

It was immediately apparent that this was the source of corruption. The mana it put off was so strong, so tainted, that even the relatively magically uninitiated members of the response team could feel it, unmistakable as anything else but the same as the corruption in the area around.
Hastily, they made their escapes, but it was too late for 2/3rds of the team. Two steam balloons crashed on the way, everyone aboard falling too ill to operate the bellows and rudder. Of the remaining members on the final balloon, one died in transit. One died shortly after landing. The three that remained were the only survivors of the expedition, and even now all but one are intensely cared for, day after day.

It was horror beyond imagining, and the reports shocked us. We had never seen or heard of anything like this before.

Still, it was only one ship. The corruption stopped after about a one mile radius. A curiosity, a horror, a tragedy, but not overly alarming. Something to carefully study, to forbid entrance to, and a reminder that we were not omnipotent, and still knew so very little about the world.

More ships fell.

Each new ship that fell was another square mile- or more, depending on the ship's size- of our home that was now lost to us, twisted into something unrecognizable, and the very air there now our poison. As the rate of falling ships only increased with time, a grim calculus made itself apparent: At the rates presented, we would slowly but surely lose most of our land to the taint within 1000 years.

1000 years was time though. 1000 years was, at that time, longer than it had been since the Calamity. Surely with that much time we could find a solution?

It was only 20 years later that it became clear that The Taint was spreading.

Frantically, as previously pristine land became strange and poisonous, despite no new wrecks landing there, we surveyed. Fleets of steam balloons were launched, a massive and expensive undertaking, but we were past such concerns as panic started to grip our cores. Frantically, we re-calculated the time we had remaining.

A mere 50 years.

Despair swept through our populous. We did not see a way out of this fate. Every one of us felt doomed when the predictions were made public.

But then, something changed, and we averted that fate, at least for a time. What happened?

[ ] A Great Sacrifice: A collection of our wisest scholars and mystics, our priests and druids, of every and any disparate faith or order that touched mana as a profession came before us. They said they believed that they could slow down the rate of spread substantially, though at great personal cost. They were willing to send their most powerful members into each zone, where they would find the magicite spreading the tainted mana, and redirect the flow into their cores instead. They weren't sure what would happen to them, but they were sure they could arrest the rapid spread for as long as they could keep the working going, and for that, they were willing to accept whatever price it cost. To our shame, we let them perform this great sacrifice. Our desperation was too great to do anything else.
Gain Dark Magi, a mysterious Spirit technology. Will work to at least slow the spread of The Taint. Other effects unknown, but what choice do we have?

[ ] Nature Fought Back: When the land was poisoned, we thought of ourselves as the chief victims, but that was foolish. It was the land itself, Nature and the spirits who served and embodied her, who truly suffered. They did not suffer quietly. From the untainted lands, spirit wolves howled and ran in packs around the borders of tainted areas, laying down greener than green plants in their wake that seemed to heavily resist the taint. Vines thrashed at the purple ground where it crept closer, tearing it up and in some way only leaving pure, if rough and torn, soil.
The spirits are losing, however. They cannot keep up with the rate of spread, and as time passes they only grow weaker as more of the Nature of the island is lost. Their raging against the end is buying time though.
Gain a special resource, Ephemeral fur: Leavings of fallen spirit wolves, the fur has several interesting properties. Skilled magi can choose whether it exists or not at any given moment, by changing some magical context that only they seem to understand. It can be burned like incense to push back taint and other evil. Some suspect that it could be even more interesting if we could figure out how to get it into a loom…

[ ] Cancer Beat Cancer: There was a great cacophony one day. The wind blew hard, and clouds swirled and churned, appearing like a storm, yet of a type we'd never seen. That was when we saw Him. Karkanos, the Great Cloud Crab. His form was enormous, perhaps the size of a mountain, though hard to judge given that it was amorphous and far above. With claws of mist he smote down at Wire, never at our cities and towns, but off in the wilderness and abandoned areas. Then, a voice boomed across the land:

"Payment for services rendered; Demand. Further services rendered for payment; Suggested."

Our steam balloons were sent out to see what had happened, once the winds had died down. What they saw from the air was ultimately heartening, if less than the absolute salvation we'd dreamed. Some of the Tainted areas had been cordoned off by swirling masses of clouds. There was no observable spread outside those areas. The god had stopped The Taint in its tracks in those zones.

There were still other Tainted zones spreading, the majority in fact, but this act had given us time nonetheless. Calculations seemed to put our remaining time at 200 years, with this revelation. And hadn't the Great Crab mentioned something about further services?
Begin in debt to Karkanos, the Great Cloud Crab, and gain him as a patron. Karkanos is a greedy but mostly honest god interested in trading some services and knowledge for precious things: Food, rare gems and metals, worship, mana. He deals frightfully with those who cheat him, or do not pay their debts.

****
With our date of execution postponed, we had breathing room once again. We could think. We could plan.
First, though, we would need to recover. The panic had been a catastrophe. Many were dead, some by their own hands. Properties were destroyed and damaged by frantic rioting. Our system of government had been strained, and now either needed to be reaffirmed, or torn down and replaced. How do we now organize ourselves?

[ ] The Councils: At first, when the question of governance of the entire body of Axles came up, the solution seemed obvious to the scholars. A council, elected from each region, giving the average Axle representation in government without bogging them down in the day to day morass.

That didn't work, of course. There was too much politicking, not enough attempting to actually meaningfully serve their constituents. The whole thing was quickly abolished and more thought was put into the next attempt.

Since the problem was a lack of concern for their constituents, there were a few changes made. The council was enlarged, and given mechanisms to grow larger whenever any given area reached a certain population threshold. No more than 5,000 Axles per representative was the goal. Next, there were put in place methods for the constituents of a given councilor to recall their representative, at any time, should they be displeased. Finally, to allow the function of the recalling measure, and to generally keep the citizenry informed, a national service was put into place. News would flow, and a great tradition of investigative journalism took root in our culture, the natural Axle need to know lending itself well to uncovering shady business and political muckety muck.

This almost worked, but after a while the opposite problem was occurring. Councilors were too interested in pleasing merely their own constituents, damn anyone not under their flag. Wild laws and measures were being proposed, clearly nothing but pork, and worse, some of them were being passed thanks to rampant tit for tat horse trading.

Wearily, after a number of hard hitting articles shook faith in the new system, the whole process was stopped again, and some political scholars despaired to ever come up with an adequate system.

Then, three of the most well respected and oldest Axle on the whole of Wire stepped forward, and made a proposal. A sister council, a Council of Elders to accompany the already extant Council of the People. They offered themselves for this council, claiming that they could rein in the excesses of the Council of the People with vetoes and gentle guiding advisement, without neutering it and becoming the rulers of society themselves.

Thus was born the Council of Elders. The three oldest Axle, Mana Spring, Davy Sprocket, and Spanner. Each over 500 years old, each masters of multiple disciplines. They were the epitome of what an Axle should be, paragons to aspire to. Finally, with their guidance and light corrections in the form of whispers in the right ears and firmer ones in the form of vetoes, finally the project was a success.

Some may claim that the Council of Elders is unnecessary. That it is unfair to the People, to have unelected fogies in charge simply because they're fogies. There is a value to wisdom and restraint, though,- as seen with the iterations of the Council prior to the Elders- and some wisdom only comes with age. Others wonder why we don't just let the Elders rule without the impediment of the Council of the People, but the Elders themselves would tell you that it is foolishness to entrust a nation's fate to merely three people, no matter how learned.

The Council of the People proved their worth, and made sure that every living Axle remaining stayed alive, distributing food and supplies and coordinating recovery efforts. As for the Elders, their reassuring speeches and steadying presence are what allowed the general population to pick themselves up again. We had lost so much, but with the Council of the People making sure everyone had what they needed, and the Elders remaining the heart and core of our society, we recovered. It was this event that truly cemented in many Axle's minds that this time, this time we really had gotten the system right.

Parliamentary atmosphere, Strong journalism tradition. The Elders really do seem to only want what's best for everyone. Victorian era Vibes. Expect plucky investigative journalists, political intrigue, and far too many tea houses.

Communal assembly: In the times before the crisis, there was a ridiculous system. Dictatorship by lottery, each Axle eligible to gain absolute ruler-ship over us all for years, all based on random chance. It was never a good system, always unfair, always leading to abuses of power, always to ineffective, lackadaisical governance and far too much partying, or to strict, authoritarian governance that were ironically just as ineffective as the laissez-faire approach of the partiers.

With the crisis of The Taint, the system was strained past its limits, and broke. Too long had we suffered under the yokes of arbitrary slave drivers, too long had we put up with a farce. Now, to hear that we had limited time left, and faced an existential threat? No one was putting up with ineffective governance anymore.

The Revolution was gritty but short. The current dictator was ousted, and a rapid reorganization of society took place. There were, by this point, very frustrated political scholars, long calling for any number of better systems, and now finally seizing their chance. Together, they reached a consensus between differing ideas, balancing the need for freedom with the need for governance, and ensuring a lack of abuse of authority going forward. Perhaps most importantly was a consensus that no Axle would be allowed to hoard food while children starved, as they had in the recent crisis.

Now, each Axle is part of their community, and each community elects a council to oversee the day to day, resolve disputes, and make local laws. For more wide cooperation, there is The Assembly, made up of special representatives from each community, separate from their local councils. Together, by consensus whenever possible, and super-majority vote when not, our national course is set.

Communism vibes. To each Axle according to their needs, from each according to their ability. Early Utopian communism/ Paris commune atmosphere. Expect revolutionary fervor, equality to a fault, and democratic shenanigans.

[ ] The United Academic Church: There are many truths in this world, and many perspectives to consider, in the quest for a Grand Truth.

The perspective of the mystics, who know the workings of mana from a practical and theoretical standpoint, and who can weave it to perform workings. They see the world in shades of magic. They know that any Truth must therefore concern raw magic.

The perspective of the scholars, who know history and natural lore, who understand natural laws and who seek to learn more. They see the world in numbers and repeating patterns of history, in theories and hypotheses. They know that any Truth must therefore concern the natural world.

The perspective of the druids, who know Nature in all her many ways. Who speak to trees and rarely come into towns for longer than to trade for essentials, offering up furs and rare plants in exchange. They see the world in leaves and bark, in the many tapping legs of the centipede and in the howl of wolves, and in the knowing smile of Nature herself. They know that any Truth must therefore concern Her.

The perspective of the Church of the Gear, who's priests know the immaculate science of clockwork. Who work beautiful artisan pieces of clockwork technology, advanced and incomprehensible to lesser engineers, as a way to get closer to whatever gods first created we Axles. They see the world in actuators and perfectly meshed cogs, in springs and turnkeys. They know that any Truth must therefore concern the divine technology of the gear.

All these and more, disparate faiths, orders, practices, and disciplines. All seek truth, and all recognize the fundamental problem: Perspectives are limited. Any Grand Truth will be too large for any one approach to encompass it. We must all work together, respecting the other's crafts even when different from our own, and helping each grow in skill and knowledge and faith, so that we might one day grasp that Grand Truth we seek.

This understanding led to an organization that has grown over time to have subsumed any civilian government and now manages most Axle affairs. The United Academic Church now leads us all.

The crisis tested the faith of many, but we survived. The UAC led us to that survival. No one ever said the search for the Grand Truth would be easy. We will stay the course and dedicate all our many perspectives to defeating The Taint.

A mixture of religious and scientific vibes. Pan-religious cooperation, with room for every truth as part of the larger Grand Truth. Expect street preachers, holy days, blessed sprockets, Templar orders.

****

Now, reorganized and on a more manageable time limit, we have set ourselves to solving this crisis with a fervor. A great ship has been constructed, a prototype, based off of the wrecks we found, but with pure magicite, not a whiff of The Taint.
She was 260 feet long, 56 feet wide. Sails flapping majestically in the wind, she hovered silently above Umbire, tended by steam balloons ferrying tools, supplies and workers to put the finishing touches on her. Her own lift owed not a draught to steam balloons, but instead to the much steadier magicite core, itself controlled by a team of highly trained mystics. With its power providing lift, the ship could be built sturdy enough to actually leave the safety of Wire, and venture into that wild blue yonder. With this ship, we could begin to explore where the wrecks were coming from, and try to find a way to stop them... and once that was done, Axles could begin to truly explore the world, beyond Wire. Who knows what could be out there? Some wonder if we might even find whoever, whatever created us so long ago...

A ship with a purpose so grand as this deserves a name. What is her name?

[ ] Write In

****
Reverse engineering the idea of the skyships was not all we had taken from our experience with the wrecks. Desperation breeds ingenuity, above and beyond that which we could achieve in calmer times. What technology did we develop in that time, that has potential beyond the narrow applications it was meant for?

[ ] Mana barriers: Our mystics attempted many things to stop the Taint, seeing as it was ultimately a magical problem. Mana barriers, panes of mana tuned to block ethereal objects, were the result of one such attempt. Ultimately they failed far too quickly and were too expensive to actually be a solution, but they did work for a time to stop the spread, and other magical phenomena they were tested against, such as fire bolts from angered torchbugs, were stopped handily. On top of that, the mystics think they're only scratching the surface of the barrier's potential.
Gain an advanced technology, Mana Barriers. Provides rudimentary magical shielding to your ships.

[ ] Chemical throwers: One attempted early tactic against the Taint was to burn it back. This was very, very marginally effective, at first, and a weapon was developed to increase effectiveness. Capable of spraying and lighting vast amounts of aerosolized oil over an area, the chemthrower was born. Sadly, it proved ultimately ineffective at stopping the spread of Taint, but the design is solid, and improvements have been made to allow it to 'throw' things other than oil, such as super-heated steam, or irritating acids.
Gain an advanced technology, Chemical Throwers: Provides a powerful and versatile ground force weapon, with potential for further developments. Provides small amount of DEV, for its use in burning burning clear new land.

[ ] Aura-meters: When surveying the spread of Taint, it wasn't always clear when an area was under its sway, if it had only just taken root. The problem recognized, a coalition of scholars, mystics and engineers came together to produce the first aura-meters, devices capable of reading the ambient mana in an area. They could tell one the relative concentration of mana in an area, and more importantly, its alignment. Taint, Nature, Mystic, Elemental, the aura-meters allowed even the magically illiterate among us to tell when they had strayed into a Tainted zone.
Gain an Advanced technology, Aura-meters: Provide a way for anyone, not just magi, to perceive mana. Allows for the quantifying of mana.


****
1 hour moratorium for discussion, then I'll open up voting. The ship name vote is seperate from your plan, since it isn't mechanical.