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Where is the ocean? Why skyways?

AuthorMessage
Captain
Oct 26, 2012
524
That is one question I never bothered to think about until now. Anyone know why we have skyways and not a sea?
Lieutenant
Oct 21, 2012
101
Golden Guardian on Oct 4, 2013 wrote:
That is one question I never bothered to think about until now. Anyone know why we have skyways and not a sea?
I think it was the idea from one the movies 'The three musketeers'' . Big air balloons, that looked a lot like ships, were there. So I kinda thought KI got the idea from that one...as always
Community Leader
Excellent question!

If I were to guess however I would say that the "Skyway" idea works better with the "Spiral" theme of KIs games. Might be harder to explain how a Sea or Ocean flows from world to world... ;)
Dr Zeppers (aka Silent Sam Stern)
Piratey parodies I like to make.
I be a crazy pirate for goodness sake!
Artist & Admin of Skull Island TV
Pirate Overlord
Mar 10, 2009
6204
Golden Guardian on Oct 4, 2013 wrote:
That is one question I never bothered to think about until now. Anyone know why we have skyways and not a sea?
Read some of Blind Mew's threads. He explains a lot of this as he answers questions about the plot.
Admiral
Oct 27, 2009
1439
It also seems to be a natural off shoot from the sky ships of Wizard, starting with Baldur Goldpaws's ship and continued with the Marleybone airships. I agree with Dr. Zeppers on the spiral being the reason. With pirate lacking wizardly powers (witchdoctors aside) how else could we travel? Well, there are those strange kroks, but pirates generally try to stay clear of wizards. Plus we still get to have cool ships.
Admiral
Jul 27, 2012
1196
Golden Guardian on Oct 4, 2013 wrote:
That is one question I never bothered to think about until now. Anyone know why we have skyways and not a sea?
Oh, I like that question. I think the simple answer to that is, as Dr. Zepper has said, that it fits nicely into the imaginative world view of the Spiral already begun to be explored in Wizard 101. Then, if one is fancifully minded, it is fun to consider what some of the repercussions could be in a universe where worlds are strung out like beads, each world comprised of numerous floating islands that can be only accessed via air-borne ships or magical gates.

So what keeps the ships (and the islands for that matter) afloat and not crash towards the center of gravity (wherever that is)? Following the lead of Jules Verne and other 19th C. authors of science fiction, I invoke Aristotle's theory of 'aether' (not, perhaps, quite the same aether you can collect on Wizard 101. Or perhaps, it is), the 'element of the gods'. The abundance of this aether allows all sorts of things that ordinary physics would usually get in the way of.

Then, what is below the skyways? I imagine: the upper atmosphere. Like earth's upper atmosphere, I envision it as thin and bitterly cold. Mortals can not survive long there, and it is small comfort to realize that you die from lack of oxygen before freezing to death. If there were tunnels going all the way through an island's roots, closer contact with this atmosphere would make the interior of the tunnels frigid and ice-covered (sort of an inversion of Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth). However, the islands themselves have internal geological activity that keeps them warm enough to support life, some more than others, so that in Mooshu you have a subtropical island warm enough to grow rice and near by, one that is prettily covered with ice and snow. (And perhaps this geological activity varies seasonally as well).

Then what is below the roots of the islands, below the upper atmosphere? Does the atmosphere get thicker and warmer to end in a vast earth-like planet complete with great oceans that supports the entire Spiral? Or is that planet a really, really giant turtle? Or does the atmosphere simply increase in density, revealing if one was far enough away, a huge gas giant filled with swirling storms, like the planet Jupiter? Or would it be a gas giant with a distant solid or liquid core?

I don't know! Perhaps Blind Mew does, or perhaps not. But it is lots of fun to imagine possibilities.

Virtuous Anne Radcliffe
Bosun
May 06, 2009
371
Golden Guardian on Oct 4, 2013 wrote:
That is one question I never bothered to think about until now. Anyone know why we have skyways and not a sea?
The worlds are floating lands in the sky. Below the sky is probably a sea if we look at Celestia, but for the most part, even in Wizard101, the worlds were floating a sky and nowhere near the ocean.
Captain
Oct 26, 2012
524
Ty Dr Zeppers! My next question is how do ships fly?
Lieutenant
Oct 21, 2012
101
As an air balloon. Ever traveled in one?
Pirate Overlord
Mar 10, 2009
6204
Anne Radcliffe on Oct 4, 2013 wrote:
Oh, I like that question. I think the simple answer to that is, as Dr. Zepper has said, that it fits nicely into the imaginative world view of the Spiral already begun to be explored in Wizard 101. Then, if one is fancifully minded, it is fun to consider what some of the repercussions could be in a universe where worlds are strung out like beads, each world comprised of numerous floating islands that can be only accessed via air-borne ships or magical gates.

So what keeps the ships (and the islands for that matter) afloat and not crash towards the center of gravity (wherever that is)? Following the lead of Jules Verne and other 19th C. authors of science fiction, I invoke Aristotle's theory of 'aether' (not, perhaps, quite the same aether you can collect on Wizard 101. Or perhaps, it is), the 'element of the gods'. The abundance of this aether allows all sorts of things that ordinary physics would usually get in the way of.

Then, what is below the skyways? I imagine: the upper atmosphere. Like earth's upper atmosphere, I envision it as thin and bitterly cold. Mortals can not survive long there, and it is small comfort to realize that you die from lack of oxygen before freezing to death. If there were tunnels going all the way through an island's roots, closer contact with this atmosphere would make the interior of the tunnels frigid and ice-covered (sort of an inversion of Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth). However, the islands themselves have internal geological activity that keeps them warm enough to support life, some more than others, so that in Mooshu you have a subtropical island warm enough to grow rice and near by, one that is prettily covered with ice and snow. (And perhaps this geological activity varies seasonally as well).

Then what is below the roots of the islands, below the upper atmosphere? Does the atmosphere get thicker and warmer to end in a vast earth-like planet complete with great oceans that supports the entire Spiral? Or is that planet a really, really giant turtle? Or does the atmosphere simply increase in density, revealing if one was far enough away, a huge gas giant filled with swirling storms, like the planet Jupiter? Or would it be a gas giant with a distant solid or liquid core?

I don't know! Perhaps Blind Mew does, or perhaps not. But it is lots of fun to imagine possibilities.

Virtuous Anne Radcliffe
Well done Anne. I just knew that you would chime in on this one and have a fantastically detailed answer that would make it oh so much more clearer. When I saw his question I was wishing that there was a "bump it to Anne" button cause it was right up your wonderful intelligence & imagination's alley.
Captain
Mar 09, 2011
709
Anne Radcliffe on Oct 4, 2013 wrote:
Oh, I like that question. I think the simple answer to that is, as Dr. Zepper has said, that it fits nicely into the imaginative world view of the Spiral already begun to be explored in Wizard 101. Then, if one is fancifully minded, it is fun to consider what some of the repercussions could be in a universe where worlds are strung out like beads, each world comprised of numerous floating islands that can be only accessed via air-borne ships or magical gates.

So what keeps the ships (and the islands for that matter) afloat and not crash towards the center of gravity (wherever that is)? Following the lead of Jules Verne and other 19th C. authors of science fiction, I invoke Aristotle's theory of 'aether' (not, perhaps, quite the same aether you can collect on Wizard 101. Or perhaps, it is), the 'element of the gods'. The abundance of this aether allows all sorts of things that ordinary physics would usually get in the way of.

Then, what is below the skyways? I imagine: the upper atmosphere. Like earth's upper atmosphere, I envision it as thin and bitterly cold. Mortals can not survive long there, and it is small comfort to realize that you die from lack of oxygen before freezing to death. If there were tunnels going all the way through an island's roots, closer contact with this atmosphere would make the interior of the tunnels frigid and ice-covered (sort of an inversion of Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth). However, the islands themselves have internal geological activity that keeps them warm enough to support life, some more than others, so that in Mooshu you have a subtropical island warm enough to grow rice and near by, one that is prettily covered with ice and snow. (And perhaps this geological activity varies seasonally as well).

Then what is below the roots of the islands, below the upper atmosphere? Does the atmosphere get thicker and warmer to end in a vast earth-like planet complete with great oceans that supports the entire Spiral? Or is that planet a really, really giant turtle? Or does the atmosphere simply increase in density, revealing if one was far enough away, a huge gas giant filled with swirling storms, like the planet Jupiter? Or would it be a gas giant with a distant solid or liquid core?

I don't know! Perhaps Blind Mew does, or perhaps not. But it is lots of fun to imagine possibilities.

Virtuous Anne Radcliffe
Hehehe, I agree with you one hundred percent! With the whole Clockwork Lizzy incident thing, I thought about the 'upper atmosphere' thing a lot, to try and figure out a way to explain what CL was thinking, and how she survived. (Yes, she did survive, mwahahahaha!), and I came to the conclusion that although she may have rusted a lot and become pretty stiff, that there was a land below the sky, and she crash-landed on it after going through the upper atmosphere. With the land came trees and wildlife, which means oxygen. She was able to rebuild herself there and the armada gained information on things that we breathing creatures dared never explored. Of course, it took a lot of thought, so she was stranded there for a long time while feeding back the armada information on the way the land was, that way they could have proper equipment to go down there.

But really I'm reminded of the blue people Avatar movie when I think about how the land floats. With this logic, some land floats and some land doesn't. We pirates know of the land that floats, and now the clockworks know of the land that doesn't. However, I believe that these conditions are similar to the ones in the upper atmosphere in our world; cold with thin air, thus the creatures that live there are true aliens to us pirates.

Or, maybe, the very bottom is an ocean? Maybe that's where Celestia went! It could have gone to the very bottom of the ocean, at the very bottom of the planets?

I don't know. I might be right, I will most likely be wrong, but hey, that's my two cents!

~Elizabeth, level 60 ~
Admiral
Jul 27, 2012
1196
Golden Guardian on Oct 5, 2013 wrote:
Ty Dr Zeppers! My next question is how do ships fly?
In the way I am imagining things, the same way the islands float -- the streams of aether that mingle with the atmosphere we as Pirates inhabit. Thus (waving my hands around in the lack of actual data) the density of this aether-atmosphere region allows ships to float, and even wreckage or shipwrecked sailors to float -- at least for a while. In my imagination, the skyway streams are regions of more concentrated aether, allowing for swift travel in these currents, but surely there are other currents of aether that turn over this dense atmosphere, providing turnover of atmospheric 'plankton' (?; well, they would get lots of sunlight, good for plankton, yes? And I love plankton -- so beautiful-- so I like to imagine them there) that would feed the various flying fish of the skyways. The existence of these currents would not necessarily all beneficial, as some would create those dangerous whirlpools, and perhaps treacherous undertows that we have not yet encountered.

Eventually things like wreckage and unlucky shipwrecked sailors sink, to be pulled down by gravity beneath the buoyant atmosphere we know. Why? Water vapor. Water vapor eventually makes materials heavy enough that they sink. And that is why we pirates keep the decks of our ship swabbed, to maintain our buoyancy.

Of course, I am making all this up. But I love things to make sense, even in fantastic situations.
Captain
May 02, 2009
525
Golden Guardian on Oct 5, 2013 wrote:
Ty Dr Zeppers! My next question is how do ships fly?
Hmm... Zero Gravity?
Commodore
Sep 20, 2009
989
Anne Radcliffe on Oct 4, 2013 wrote:
Oh, I like that question. I think the simple answer to that is, as Dr. Zepper has said, that it fits nicely into the imaginative world view of the Spiral already begun to be explored in Wizard 101. Then, if one is fancifully minded, it is fun to consider what some of the repercussions could be in a universe where worlds are strung out like beads, each world comprised of numerous floating islands that can be only accessed via air-borne ships or magical gates.

So what keeps the ships (and the islands for that matter) afloat and not crash towards the center of gravity (wherever that is)? Following the lead of Jules Verne and other 19th C. authors of science fiction, I invoke Aristotle's theory of 'aether' (not, perhaps, quite the same aether you can collect on Wizard 101. Or perhaps, it is), the 'element of the gods'. The abundance of this aether allows all sorts of things that ordinary physics would usually get in the way of.

Then, what is below the skyways? I imagine: the upper atmosphere. Like earth's upper atmosphere, I envision it as thin and bitterly cold. Mortals can not survive long there, and it is small comfort to realize that you die from lack of oxygen before freezing to death. If there were tunnels going all the way through an island's roots, closer contact with this atmosphere would make the interior of the tunnels frigid and ice-covered (sort of an inversion of Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth). However, the islands themselves have internal geological activity that keeps them warm enough to support life, some more than others, so that in Mooshu you have a subtropical island warm enough to grow rice and near by, one that is prettily covered with ice and snow. (And perhaps this geological activity varies seasonally as well).

Then what is below the roots of the islands, below the upper atmosphere? Does the atmosphere get thicker and warmer to end in a vast earth-like planet complete with great oceans that supports the entire Spiral? Or is that planet a really, really giant turtle? Or does the atmosphere simply increase in density, revealing if one was far enough away, a huge gas giant filled with swirling storms, like the planet Jupiter? Or would it be a gas giant with a distant solid or liquid core?

I don't know! Perhaps Blind Mew does, or perhaps not. But it is lots of fun to imagine possibilities.

Virtuous Anne Radcliffe
Nice thinking Anne, I love the "Really really giant turtle" comment. Not only is a reference to Mooshu, but, I also take it as a reference to Turtle Island, which is one aborigional name for North America (or at least Canada).
Commodore
Sep 20, 2009
989
Anne Radcliffe on Oct 5, 2013 wrote:
In the way I am imagining things, the same way the islands float -- the streams of aether that mingle with the atmosphere we as Pirates inhabit. Thus (waving my hands around in the lack of actual data) the density of this aether-atmosphere region allows ships to float, and even wreckage or shipwrecked sailors to float -- at least for a while. In my imagination, the skyway streams are regions of more concentrated aether, allowing for swift travel in these currents, but surely there are other currents of aether that turn over this dense atmosphere, providing turnover of atmospheric 'plankton' (?; well, they would get lots of sunlight, good for plankton, yes? And I love plankton -- so beautiful-- so I like to imagine them there) that would feed the various flying fish of the skyways. The existence of these currents would not necessarily all beneficial, as some would create those dangerous whirlpools, and perhaps treacherous undertows that we have not yet encountered.

Eventually things like wreckage and unlucky shipwrecked sailors sink, to be pulled down by gravity beneath the buoyant atmosphere we know. Why? Water vapor. Water vapor eventually makes materials heavy enough that they sink. And that is why we pirates keep the decks of our ship swabbed, to maintain our buoyancy.

Of course, I am making all this up. But I love things to make sense, even in fantastic situations.
I really love this thinking Anne. It sounds very much like the internal waves that actually do occur in large bodies of water. In rivers, lakes, and oceans, water is stratified, meaning that it exists in separate layers piled on top of each other, kinda like a layered cake. Each layer of water is slightly different than the layer above and below it. The layers differ in oxygen levels, light levels, temperature, and in some cases even current direction. For example in a large lake, the wind may be pushing the surface water in one direction, while the next layer of water is actually flowing in the opposite direction. (This is what creates an undertow in shallow areas).

I expect, (following Anne's thinking) that this aether would also be stratified, with each layer differing in oxygen levels, temperature, light, and current direction. I assume this Aether would have a thermocline, or a region where temperature rapidly drops with increasing depth.

At the very bottom of each world I would expect to find an actual water filled ocean. With the decreasing temperature of the Aether Ocean, the water would begin to condense first into water vapour, then into droplets, and eventually into a large body of water. Beside, all water on the floating lands of the spiral does eventually fall off the floating land and goes somewhere.

We also know that each world is a separate world along the spiral, I don't think that this water ocean would actually connect to any other worlds, instead I expect each individual world would have its own ocean beneath the floating lands.

As for ships, they stay afloat because of bouyancy, that shape and size of the ship displaces enough Aether to allow it to stay floating as long as it's one piece, destroy a ship in battle, and the ship breaks up. Because the ship is now broken into pieces, the smaller pieces no longer displace enough Aether to stay in the sky, and the destroyed ship sinks. However, as with real ships, certain pieces of debris and sailors would stay floating in the Aether for a while.
Pirate Overlord
Mar 10, 2009
6204
x Sits listening to Anne & CDE Winter with rapt fascination. x Wow, you two are amazing. Please, my I reserve a place between you two when ever you decide to sit and speculate like this The tea and treats will be on me.
x Shows a tray of Highlander Fox cookies with a Vanna White style gesturing of hands x
Commodore
Sep 20, 2009
989
Chrissy Th'Blesser on Oct 8, 2013 wrote:
x Sits listening to Anne & CDE Winter with rapt fascination. x Wow, you two are amazing. Please, my I reserve a place between you two when ever you decide to sit and speculate like this The tea and treats will be on me.
x Shows a tray of Highlander Fox cookies with a Vanna White style gesturing of hands x
Here's a bit more speculation for you Chrissy then.

While writing a post in a different thread I realised just what wind lanes are. The spinning of the earth causes something called the Coriolis Effect. This effect influences everything from weather patterns to ocean currents.
In particular, the Coriolis Effect creats large currents known as gyres in the oceans, each ocean on earth has at least one gyre. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans have two gyres each, one in the Northern Hemisphere, and one in the Southern Hemisphere.

A gyre is a large circular like current that rotates within the oceans. I think that in Pirates, in the Aether Oceans the Wind Lanes are the equivelent of Earthly gyres. Each Skyway or Aether Ocean has at least one Windlane, and they tend to loop back on themselves forming a large rotating circular current. Although in many world, the wind lanes extend from one skyway into the next. But perhaps an Aether Ocean is made of more than one skyway?

This also suggests that the tempests seen throughout the skyways may simply be eddies caused by the Aether Ocean gyres. I still think that the whirlpools are caused by the stormgates themselves.
Lieutenant
Sep 19, 2011
126
All good idea's of how the skyways function But I KNOW one thing.
I don't want to fall overboard!!! I can swim but don't float in the air so well