Originally posted on Patreon in June 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

It’s World-Building June!  So I’m building Worlds! Here on Patreon, I’m building “Aerax”, the world of Expectant Woods. Over on WordPress, I’m working on Bear Empire, the world of the so-named story, and a new thing called United Space. 
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1. Tell us about your world, what’s it about?

Sky Islands!

The world I call Aerax, or at least the continent that the story Expectant Woods takes place on, was the center of a massive Mage-War approx 500 years ago.

The notable remnants of this are a series of islands high in the sky, isolated from the forest, ocean, and mountains below, and ruins of places on the edges of where those islands once were in that forest and those mountains.

Magic is generally considered to be a myth on the islands, but it is still very much alive in the down-below world, although mostly in protected pockets.

Exploring the connection between these two is the subject of the story Expectant Woods; spoilers below.

The islands were raised up on gigantic flower-like stems, bigger than any tree on earth, long-lived and durable but still, in the end, a plant. Travel between the Sky Islands and the lower area is both nearly impossible and completely taboo, which means that the societies have been evolving separately for quite a while.

This land used to be fertile farmland and the heart of a city.  Now… Now the ground below lies mostly in jungle and ruins, and the islands above make their own way, each one only tenuously connected to the next.