SAILORS OF THE STARRY FIRMAMENT

It is common knowledge that, in the upper air, there is a second great ocean to mirror the first. Where do you think the sky gets its blue coloration, some kind of trick of the light? It's common sense, idiot.

Less common is the knowledge of how to get up there. You'll need a ship, for one, and if you value being alive, it should be plated with armor and piled with as many protective charms and enchantments as you can afford. Get a crew of madmen for whom the earthly seas no longer hold any thrills, the more prosthetic limbs and tattoos the better. Install a system of harnesses or other measures to keep your men from being tossed overboard by the next step. Get everyone drunk, high, or otherwise out of their gourd, and sail directly into a violent storm; a waterspout or hurricane will do nicely. A tornado could work as well, but it's better to perform this at sea for the sake of simple convenience. If you've done things mostly right, when all hope seems lost and it appears that your ship shall be swallowed by the waves, you shall be taken to the Upper Seas.

The process is not pleasant. It's like having an immaterial, invisible child grab your ship like a bath toy and hoist it up to the air to fly it around by hand; your ship will be turned upside-down in the process, which is what those harnesses are for, but eventually gravity will realign itself and up will become down and your feet will be steadily planted on the deck once more. You'll probably want to have a lie down, on account of having just sailed into a storm of monstrous proportions whilst utterly blasted on alcohol and alkaloids. You've earned it.

Getting down is similar process, but you'll want to choose your descent location carefully; while most of the world is made up of ocean, there's a significant chance you'll get dropped down into dry land and get crushed into paste by cruel lady gravity. The inconsistency and dangerous nature of storms strong enough to travel between the Upper and Lower Seas is the primary hurdle in all efforts to use the Upper as a means of expediting travel, although not for a lack of effort among the trading companies and navies across the world. Weather-manipulators are getting a whole lot of job offers.

Sailing the Upper Seas is a very different experience from the lower ones, as strange and novel to seasoned sailors as the normal ocean is to a land-locked farmer. You can see the distant surface of the world when you look up, and by night, you can see the faint illumination of cities above you just as easily as the distant stars below. Distance tends to be fluid, with landmarks shooting back and forth in strange perspective tricks as you observe them; this is a less cohesive area of reality, not yet solidified. That is not to say that there is no life in the Upper Seas, however; uninhibited by the conditions of earth, evolution has taken strange turns. Sargassum abounds, forming reeking, island-sized clumps that are solid enough for a man to stand on. Hound-sized frogfish tunnel through it with webbed hands, perfectly camouflaged among the floating seaweed to clamp their jaws around a blundering foot. Really, if you can imagine a form of marine life, it can probably be found in the Upper Seas in some capacity, tossed up from the lower oceans by the same storms that can be used to bring a ship up there. The lack of a seafloor necessitates change, but most species can manage to eke out some kind of living. 

There are people too, of course. Small settlements of a few dozen farm and fish for subsistence on islands of clumped sargassum, usually descendants from those who sailed to the Upper Seas but could find no way down. Hemelhaven, built on a floating stone that served once as the foundation of a sorcerer-king's castle before it drifted up into the Seas, hosts a couple thousand fortune-seekers, wizards, pirates, and other ne'er-do-wells in its docks, shacks, and tunnels. While ostensibly without laws, the town is run by Mad Gijsbert, an aging mercenary captain who is too cruel to be properly good but too pragmatic to be properly evil, and his company, the Knife Angels, who fancy themselves as knights and practice a cargo cult form of dirty-fighting chivalry. While Mad Gijsbert regards his company's claims that he is a king as a joke, he takes his seat of power deathly seriously; this is his land and sea, he claimed it rightfully, and by Providence, if you raise a hand against it he will see you fed to the fish. He sits upon what remains of the sorcerer-king's hoard, diminished by time and expenditure but still a princely sum that could purchase a city. 

Mad Gijsbert, the bastard.

If you earn Mad Gijsbert's trust, he may even part with some of it in exchange for services rendered. In his office, flanked on one side by a trained gorilla in plate armor and on the other by a chain-smoking wizard with lightning-strike scars, he makes demands:

1. My idiot bastard son is paying a visit for the week, trying to hound me for money again so he can drink it all away. Scare the piss out of the little simpleton, enough that he doesn't come back, but don't let any harm come to him. He's still my blood and hell, maybe he'll learn something.

(Complication: The Idiot Bastard Son is too foolhardy to easily threaten or scare, but he is deathly afraid of something unassuming that is also hard to come by in the giant ocean in the sky. Watch him, and take notice of the things he nervously avoids.)

2. There's a ship in the port with a few casks of good wine in the hold, and Captain Tight-Fist doesn't want to share for the big feast I'm holding next week. Make them appear in my cellar, and don't get caught.

(Complication: The captain is holding something a lot more valuable and dangerous than just the wine in his ship. His response to any sign of thievery is one of murderous terror.)

3. One of the outlying kelp-farm villages says they can't pay their taxes because some nasty creatures keep coming up from the deep to waylay the shipments. Sort out if they're lying to me or not, and act accordingly.

(Complication: As usual, there's truth and lies to everything. Some farmers really have been been losing crops to unpleasant sealife, some just don't want to pay, and everyone wants to throw accusations and screw over their enemies.)

4. I've heard word that there's a derelict ship out drifting on the borders of my territory, and since ships and materials are hard to come by up here, I want you to clear it out and bring it to me as intact as you can keep it. I demand an even share of whatever riches you find on board- just call it my finder's fee.

(Complication: The ship is a prison hulk, and the prisoners inside have overthrown the guards and formed their own micro-society that is just barely scraping by. Any offers to have them join Hemelhaven is liable to end in split factions and, if the PCs can't work out a truce, a bloody internal war. Also, other people want the ship and are willing to let the PCs do the heavy lifting before they swoop in.)

5. There's a plague about, and people are starting to sicken and die. Find a cure, someone who knows a cure, or cut and burn the infection out until it isn't a problem anymore.

(Complication: The plague is intelligent and, through subtle manipulations of the brain chemistry of the infected, can crudely control them. It isn't very smart, though, and plague victims do not make for very subtle agents.)

6. There's a foreign spy in my ranks. Figure out who they're loyal to, gain their trust, and make a bloody example of them in public. The empires of the earth will have no place here.

(The Spy makes themself the victim of a piss-poor frame-up job, then cleverly frames someone else as the perpetrator. Once it seems like the heat is off of them, they cut their losses and make a run for it.)

Instead of working with this bastard, the PCs could also try to rob him, kill him, and/or usurp his authority over Hemelhaven. They certainly aren't the only ones, as Mad Gijsbert has made many enemies; most legitimate earthly authorities, for one, and any number of rival warlords would love to control the largest permanent settlement in the Upper Seas. Even Gijsbert himself would like to retire someday, and if he thinks he's found a worthy successor, he may be willing to hand over the keys to the kingdom. Farming disgusting sea plants would be a nice change of pace.

Expect more posts on this setting in the future. Hope this tides you over for like, five months.