Day 1: Jungles and other crunchy bits

A primeval jungle world dotted with massive mountains.

The jungle, rather than being a suffocating place of misery and disease typical to fantasy stettings, is vibrant and teeming with life. Open mangrove swamps, saltwater estuaries and dense, sun-dappled copses are typical. Its more remote regions house unusual and dangerous predators, ancient ruins and exotic people.

The mountains are individual, not parts of a range. The massive peaks shoot into the sky for miles, their barren tops bereft of breathable air. A network of dangling, crystalline "sky roads" connect the mountains; they're clearly artificial, but every culture attributes the roads' creation to a different maker. The hardy, ancient structures mystically boost travelers' speeds, allowing them to cover the hundreds of miles between mountains in a day or two.

Inscrutable and otherworldly guardians claim portions of the jungle, some mountains and even portions of the sky roads for themselves. These beings, whose minds defy mortal understanding, have goals and agendas that are mind-bogglingly comlicated and far-reaching. Some cultivate mortals as servants; others shun outside contact. All reign supreme within their chosen spheres.

Mortal cultures come in one of three flavors:

• Mountain dwellers live in urbane, technically advanced sttings. These societies are similar to real-world industrialized cultures; they have varying mores, but they value diplomacy and artifice. They rely most heavily on the sky roads, both for commerce and for contact with other societies.
• Jungle dwellers live in low-population-density agrarian or hunter-gatherer groups. These societies have a much wider range of cultural practices and beliefs than their city-dwelling brethren in the mountains. These societies rarely use the sky roads, and are far more likely to hold reservations or harbor superstitions about the ancient structures.
• Sky nomads travel the sky roads, usually in extended family groups. Some set up more-or-less permanent wayside attractions on a sky road, such as inns or thaters; others have no home base, forever traveling. A few have managed to gleam enough understanding of the roads to create "sky barges," slow-moving flying ships that move from city to city. They trade where it's profitable and avoid restrictive laws and strictures.

Conflicts:

• Guardians sometimes oppose to each other. These beings' long-term view and inscrutability often mean that such discord can have long-ranging effects; oftentimes, mortals living under a guardian's aegis are drawn into these conflicts. However, the battles between mortals often take on a life of their own -- whatever drives the guardians is less accessible to the mortal mind than the understandable forces of fear, revenge, pride and hate. The conflicts between mortals can be as benign as cultural rivalries and as serious as scorched-earth warfare.
• Some groups actively seek to limit or bar use of the sky roads. Some believe the roads are for gods or guardians alone; others think the roads are inherently dangerous remnants of a society that deserved or earned its destruction.
• Some mountain-dweller societies, particularly those with high population densities and little farmable land, are imperialistic and self-serving. They seek to impose their beliefs and economoic and governmental systems on others for their own benefit.