Skyworthy
These are rough notes from a playthrough of the solo game Skyworthy. They haven't really been formatted for readability, but I like to keep a record for myself.
Stroke of mad genius.
She wished to reach the moon. Her name was Tharan and she came from the University but was ultimately disowned by them. They told her this was a waste of the university's money; the dean tried to force her to stop even, and she continued in private in a hidden attic. The bones of a rare sky-fish made up its bulk, which she sent her assistant to find in quiet. She called the ship Moth, because it was to fly towards the moon.
Porad had said he'd sailed everywhere. He'd sailed around the world, he said. He had found the golden wings that let him soar beside the ship and make repairs in the air, and thus fly farther than anyone. He had seen a star fall to earth, he said, though it fell into the sea.
The captain gambled for some Secondary Drive Frames because the ship was too flimsy for the high winds in the upper atmosphere.
Captain Porad sailed higher and higher, and soon rumours began to spread. He was going to try and reach the moon. Many made boasts like Porad had, but nobody was as audacious. People came perhaps mostly to see him fail; his exploits had made him enemies.
He made it pretty far, but the air grew thin and he fell unconscious. The ship drifted to earth. He tried again and again but people lost interest. Tharan got kicked out of the university. The ship was left moored on its highest tower. The ship filled with bird's nests.
A noble bought the ship on a whim.She saw it at a garden party, floating by the university, and on a sort of a dare announced she would sail it. It was lighter than most ships and flew higher, and she would hold nighttime parties with an intimate group, looking down at the city lights. Deals were struck and plots hatched in this ship. She outfitted it in gilt and other elaborate decorations.
She took it out in a storm, once, and it crashed into the tall city tower. It was an excuse to replace the sails with swarmsilk.
Another time an assassin hid on board and murdered one of her guests. That was the beginning of the web of politics falling down around her; eventually a rival had her beheaded. The ship was cast adrift through the skies.
The Vengeful Hunter saw it drifting on one of his hunts, and roped it in. He realized that, ruined though it was, it was lighter than his ship, and repaired it in the air with the monomanaiacl energy that drove him.
He hunted the great burning fire-birds, a dangerous prey, but whose eternally burning feathers were in great demand. He met a monstrous one once - bigger than his ship - which sent him plummeting to the ground. He is covered in scars, and has sworn the ground is cursed to him, now.
Until one day he falls in love. A spy who he rescued, who he despite himself hid, who must return home, and he followed them.
Without his obsessive attention, the boat is starting to show its age. The spine of the ship is going to crack soon, and then one day it does, and is grounded.
It is sold for cheap to a woman who wants to sail across the mountains, away from the war. She and her family clean it up, fix the spine, add a cozy family style galley. It is her extended family who sail with her, and learn to sail, sneaking away in the dead of night.
When she lands, it is a hard new land to start a life in, but at least it is peaceful. The family falls afoul of those who would take advantage of visitors, and she is forced to sell the ship for almost nothing. The whole family had carved their names on the mast, and it is the smallest child who was afraid the most when they first set sail that it hurts the most to remember.
It's a while before the criminal enterprise that purchases it figures out how to fly it, though. It is the Canny Smuggler who takes it and starts flying it between rival towns, using new stealth protocols to evade guards.
It is in a cave in the mountains that the smuggler is truly safe, one that the smuggler found that only this lightest of ships can easily go to. Nobody can find her here. But only on the clearest of days; it is too dangerous.
The most memorable cargo, more trouble than it was worth, was a princeling, thought dead, the true heir, to be brought back to the city, but it was treason to do so.
This forces the smuggler to the very edge of the Coalition, right beyond the reach of the law. She sells the ship but lets people know - never bring a child on board again. Thinking of the child's writing on the mast, perhaps. A sad rule to pass on.
It passes into the hands of The Rising Star, a new agent of the new regiome on the border. Outfitted with skybrass lightning sinks to patrol the stormy border, the ship was light and finicky to fly, and the captian struggled. But one day he had to go into the heart of the storm for a rescue and got a reputation as a particularly bold and daring captian.
But when his home village rebels against the coalition, he gives it all up to defend them. They lose the rebellion and the ship sits, decaying, by the now abandoned village.
Someone survives, and tries to gather the lone survivors and fly through the storm, but the ship is too flimsy and crashes.
The world has changed too much. The days of trying to fly to the moon are over. If the ship flies again, it will be in a different, happier age.