The Audoi, a naturally wingless people, largely do not enjoy the open sky the way harpies or dragon-kin do. This dislike is reinforced by their endless quarrel with the winds of Ukan-Agula's surface. But the underside of the island is another story. It is a far gentler place, where wind currents run calmer and steadier. Certain Audoi clans took advantage of it long ago, building cities that hang from the belly of Driftmount. These are the Gate-Cities of Audoi. There are four of them, each belonging to an individual clan, and the Audoi from these clans are the least troubled by the open sky compared to the rest of their people. These people form the bulk of the travelling Audoi merchants.

(Check visual guide to Hanging gate cities)

Nearly all of these merchants cross the sky by a very familiar vessel, an air-balloon. When an Audoi merchant docks in a foreign port, outsiders often mistake them for merchants from Trezera. While this is an innocent assumption, it is not entirely false. The source of this mistake can be traced back several centuries, when trade between the Audoi and Trezera seeded the growth of the widespread air-balloon usage seen nowadays.

But the air-balloon is not the sole means of air-travel for the Audoi anymore. In recent years, a marvel of engineering and artificing has entered into the service of Audoi air-travel. They call it, plainly, the Air-Ship.

If you have never seen it, it is an interesting experience. First you will hear the noise, a deep, grinding drone that rolls in off the open air, the sound of much metal scraping under load. If you track the noise, you will find a shape, a hull built like a sea-going galleon, but one that hangs in the air where no galleon travels. This galleon has four great rotors mounted along its sides, and they are turning so fast the blades blur into pale disks. As it travels, wind comes off them in hard gusts that disturb the underside. As its blades beat the air, it moves steadily across the sky.

(Check visual guide to the airship)

To an outsider's eyes, or even that of an inexperienced Audoi’s eyes, this is a mad sight. Despite all this madness, the air-ship keeps its secret in a very humble tool. A gear, not just a simple gear, but a whole system of them meshed together in clever arrangements. To reach this level of complexity, the Audoi gear system crossed a long and complex history, starting from a humble rope-and-pulley system.

The first Audoi clans started digging their homes to escape the wind, and digging is never only digging. Whatever you pull out of the rock, you also have to move, and moving it is half the work. In the early days, the Audoi did this the way everyone does, with rope and pulley, and for a while it served. But mines ran deeper and meaner over the years. The shafts narrowed, the work grew harder, and the rope-and-pulley rigs began to fail because they took up too much room in a small space.

So the Audoi searched for a replacement system that took up less room, and they found a gear. Once they saw how efficient a simple gear hoist was, it spread fast and wide among the Audoi. The earliest gears were made from wood, but it was later discovered that wooden teeth splintered under a heavy load. This resulted in the development of metal gears.

Not long after, metal gears became a part of Audoi life. They are found in the hoists, the pumps, the bellows, the mills, the forges, and the mines.

As the gears became an inseparable part of Audoi life, the smiths and engineers could not stop tinkering with them. Generation after generation of Audoi tinkered with every characteristic of the gear: its size, its tooth shape, and the simple arrangements that affected the power of the system. After countless work-hours, damaged gears, and the creation of curses, all these improvements gave Audoi engineers excellent knowledge of gears, and they even standardized the gear-tooth shape.

All of this work, impressive in itself, was merely the fertile ground out of which the air-ship eventually emerged. And this growth began with a single smith. His name was Kurkin, one of the finest engineers Clan Amberclad ever produced, and this man built the first fan-lift gear engine the Audoi ever had.

In his diary, he mentioned that the idea came from a child's toy called a butterfly, a small bladed rod that climbs into the air on its own when a child spins it hard and lets go. Most Audoi never thought about it. Kurkin could not stop thinking about it.

"The design is simple and elegant. If a small piece of flat wood and a rod can lift itself, why can we not do the same with something far larger and made of metal?"

"The butterfly is lightweight, and a child's single flick imparts such force to it. Is it in the weight? Is it in the shape? Or something else?" ‐ Diary notes

After many pages of such observations and notes, he settled on speed as the heart of the problem. He concluded that a grown Audoi could not impart the necessary speed to the large metal replica, and that he would need to make up the difference through a mechanism. The most reliable tool he had was the gear system.

So, for more than twenty years, Kurkin hand-cut gears and set them in a new gear-arrangement system one after another, each new arrangement chasing a little more speed out of the same turning. In the end he succeeded. His final design spun a metal toy fast enough to lift off the bench under its own power.

Sadly, this achievement also killed him. The metal toy spun so fast that it exceeded the speed his contraption could handle; it tore loose from the gear system and struck Kurkin, ending his life. The first Audoi to discover aerodynamic lift was the first Audoi to die by it.

Afterwards, he was remembered as a brilliant engineer and a stubborn fool in equal measure. But despite this achievement, the accident caused his invention to be classified as an unsafe tool, and his notes and prototype gear-system were all locked in a storage vault. For the better part of ten years, it sat idle, collecting dust, until a young engineer who was looking for unrelated work stumbled upon it. The unusual design drew the attention of this young man, and he carefully examined the work. What followed was many years of slow and bloody experimentation. The original problem still remained and broke many lives and many engines. Eventually, the engineers caged this raging beast and learned to control its speed. Piece by piece and funeral by funeral, they turned Kurkin's lethal prototype into the first true lift engine: a purpose-built gear-system driving a fan at a high but tolerably safe speed.

While the system worked, it still took a small crowd of Audoi cranking themselves raw to keep a single engine turning. The number of people required and the length of the crank system made it of little use for flight. But it had been noticed. After a demonstration of the new device before the gathered Audoi council, the guilds of magic-smiths reached out to the engineers.

Audoi magic-smiths were already experienced in creating the small magic power-sources that drove underground mining tools. After much trial and the wreck of more than a few workshops, they produced a strong crystalline power-shard that held its charge until it was seated in a special socket. Married to Kurkin's gear-core, the shard turned the cranking-engine into something that could at last drive itself. This newly created flying gear-system was named the Kurkin engine, in honor of its first designer.

And that was the true beginning of the air-ship. Nearly every kind of Audoi smith had a hand in its creation. Metallurgists, engineers, magic-smiths, glass-smiths, all the brilliant Audoi smiths quarrelled and experimented endlessly to create a single vessel, a magic-enhanced frame of wood and metal, fitted with the finest work each craft could provide and driven by four full Kurkin engines. With that, the Audoi raised their first air-ship.

From the first child's butterfly to that first ship, a whole century had passed.

Despite this incredible success, building one vessel is an enormous undertaking. The construction swallows skilled workers and resources like a hungry whale, and one vessel takes anywhere between six and ten years of constant labor to raise.

Due to this staggering cost, barely more than a score of these mighty vessels currently cruise the skies of Ashagon.

But the Audoi are not finished. Their engineers are already at the next problem: shrinking the whole arrangement down into something a single Audoi could fly alone. The gyrocopter, for now, is still a promise. It took a hundred years to make an airship, it is only a matter of time before the Audoi will fly a gyrocopter.

TLDR: the Audoi managed to make planetary gear and using magic power source to built a helicarrier.

I bet you’re all wondering about the new banner?

Well if you’re wondering about it, look no further, here is the post all about it! Firstly, happy fourth anniversary to CTW! The usual fourth anniversary gift is fruit or flowers, but I hope this will do. :p

I drew this new banner based on the shards we’ve done so far and left room for when we do more. It took about three days to do and for the early shards I couldn’t have done it without the help of our wonderful old timer mods helping me fill in the blanks from before I joined. They were also the only ones who knew about this until today, I actually kept an art project a secret for once.

The file size had to be compressed a lot so you can’t really read it too well but each section is supposed to say the name of the shard: Adratal through Aokoa. Here is the full uncompressed image.

Now where should I start talking about the banner itself? I guess I could start at the beginning? Adratal was our first shard while it may have been brief, it sounds like it was very fun. I was told I should include a certain strait, a sea monster rising out of the deep, and the flag of some alliance that was formed. Besides that I had to include the first nonhuman race made in CTW- Wingling’s eel people! But of course I couldn’t do it without including the one thing that’s been talked about the most from Adratal, Nike’s drinking dragons! So here is your banner spot guys!

Next up was Dacrocix, which I still need to look up how to spell every time. This was our shortest shard with allegedly the sparsest map, so I figured that could best be symbolically shown with a bright yellow desert - which also created a nice contrast with the colors of the panels beside it. Anyways, for this one I was told to at least include some robots, one flying, and a “dieselpunk sandcrawler”, which honestly was probably the main reason “desert” popped into my mind for this one. It’s sparse compared to the rest, but for this shard, it works.

Ah Solos. The great and popular Solos that went beyond what any shard had been before. This was the epic high fantasy one that broke new ground, and would have broke several CTW magic rules if those had even existed yet. Well of course it had to be epic. I wasn’t there for Solos but I’ve read a little bit from it and I’ve heard so much about the apocalypse that ended it all, so that’s what I chose to depict. In the Solos panel you’ll find a big flaming demon army, a titan-god (because roaming leviathans was a shard quirk for that one), a wump on the moon, because it’s funny, and of course the enigmatic Apocalypse Trio. During the end of the shard while Bellasaxa was guiding her people to safety somewhere Sabian and Julius built an ark to save Sabian’s people, but Julius betrayed him and used the people as sacrifices to become a god voidwalker so that is depicted through the demon-looking guy (Julius) looking triumphant while the human guy is falling through the sky with with streams of red coming off him. Oh! And I also made the Solos shard “shattered glass” to symbolically represent its apocalypse though it’s a tad bit hard to see in the main banner.

On to Aeras! This was the first shard I was in and it will always hold a special place in my heart. If Aeras could be simplified into a few words, it would be called a world of fire and storms and love and love and war. There was a big world war in Aeras which is depicted through the golden army (representing Myrmidonia’s desert ant army) and the fire breathing dragon (my precious baby Valkar) but what was most significant to me for Aeras was the love. When I joined I made a race coincidentally very similar to Cereborn’s but on a continent separated by seas and a magic Storm Barrier. What followed was an epic round the world romance that fully solidified CTW as my favorite place in the world. So I may have made that a bit of a central piece in this, plus the storminess of the shard and Cereborn’s some mage figure who had a plot I very much enjoyed and is in the same pose as Bellasaxa for symbolic reasons. There is also a certain merfolk in a mech suit down under the golden army, because that battle in the parliament was peak Madi+Tech shenanigans and I couldn’t possibly draw Aeras without slipping Podi in there somewhere.

Now to shard 5! Sector 5! The shard that lasted 5 months. It’s almost like that was done on purpose Literally none of that was actually intentional. Sector 5 was the sci-fi opera shard that seemed very popular at first, but it’s flame burned brightly and quickly. At least it went out with a bang! Yep, the first thing I knew I had to include was the blowing up of the Citari Citadel. Not depicted is the Death Star that did that. What I also knew I had to include were two warp gates to represent all the warp gates we used to handwave travel time across our section of the galaxy. Besides that I wanted to include a sphinx to represent the plotline I had for that shard as well as Cereborn’s badass space pirate adventurer, Rocky, who I drew way too much of and only occasionally well. But lastly, one can’t write about Sector five without mentioning Nuka’s robots that were all over the shard and only mildly genocidal at the end which I wish wasn’t canon but he slipped it in at the very end, so what can ya do.

And now on to Whend! Whend was a world that a lot of people here will have fond memories of, though many of you are even newer players than that. I know I joined the mod team around the time of Sector Five, but I really felt like a mod in Whend. It was also my magnum opus in terms of nation building and epic plot weaving, but that’s a story for another time. The greatest plot of that shard had to be depicted at the top - since every panel except Adratal and Dacrocix has the end-shard epic plots memorialized at the top - and I thought the best way to draw the Awhendgers was with the Ginyu Force pose. Below that I’ll just list off all the things I tried to cram in there: the abolition of slavery that happened across the shard depicted in the woman in a sky blue dress with broken chains. The Seshari Empire, my greatest work yet, depicted by the snek lady with the bow. Wars and ships, because there was a lot of those and ships handwaved how we got everywhere. Also a shout out to all the sun worshipping empires! Praise the Sun! All the mushrooms at the bottom hint of a particularly terrifying fungal plague that several of the southern nations banded together to fight. And finally, bonus points to whoever finds the Avocadonian hidden in the panel.

Last but not least (and certainly not our last) lucky shard 7, Aokoa! This is the shard many of you would be joining for the first time and would be most familiar with. I had a hard time figuring out what to include for this for several reasons. Firstly, Aokoa is still ongoing. Past shards have the privilege of having only the most important things sticking in one’s memory, but there may be new important things that haven’t even been written yet! There also to be just didn’t feel like as much of a cohesive narrative? I mean, there never is one, but Aokoa has still largely felt like many distinct stories without one major collaborated one. That might change, who knows? So what I depicted were the things that I felt best represented the shard. Water is of course a major theme so of course I drew that. In the sky there’s also balloons and other early aircraft for the time, and of course a Batross flying high beside the Great Tower of Ko, which surely had to be included since an entire major nation is built around it and it is probably the world’s greatest architectural feat. Besides that a certain order’s ship had to be included. What is Aokoa without all the ships that connected us? Or a Wug to make us all feel bad for not being pacifist commies? I think we just like war too much. For all the wars fought, not yet fought but probably soon fought, I’ve drawn a Singharata, an U’yahn, a Tlanta’tlan, and an Arcadian, with of course an Eshela and an Ophon to represent The Therion War. Besides that, I had to include, as I always do, Cereborn’s main characters for the shard, Shax, N’Beera, and Kami. And I think that’s it! Am I forgetting something? Oh yeah, Urum. He’s up there at the top in black armor with a strange smoking black sword. That plot hasn’t happened yet but I’m sure it’s nothing important.

Welcome to the 65th Annual Gourd Races!

No one is sure exactly how the races started - since they only started being dated when the Aelbic neighbors wanted to get in on the action - but every autumn, when the Eradûnian Giant pumpkins, squashes, and other gourds are harvested, the biggest and best ones are hollowed out and made into canoes for one epic race.

Autumn in Eradûn is a time of celebration, feasting, and also mourning. As the gods grow old and the world prepares for them to die so that they can be reborn again in Spring, the Vargr throw many festivals and eccentric celebrations to give one last hurrah before the chill of winter sets in.

This race is one of many of these kinds of celebrations and as such, is also the perfect place to enjoy other common Vargr fall festival activities, like singing, dancing, and eating. Almost every contestant, as well as all the spectating packs, have brought food made from the carved out parts of their organic canoes. Roughly forty pies line the tables and benches set up around the starting line, and a whole second fair ground exists at the end of the river. All the food is free to eat, from pumpkin pies of every variation to Aelbic pastries and Vargr marrow cookies, and much more. As guests gather, wherever they chose to meet, sit back, relax, listen to some music or dance with a pretty Vargr girl, and enjoy Eradûn’s favorite sport.

The rules are simple:

-For this race, a “canoe” is defined as a large buoyant object made of a fruit, vegetable, or other non-wooden organic material. It must be carved out of the material and not made from more than one fruit, vegetable, or other grown thing. Oars can be made out of any material as long as it is organic.

-Contestants may form teams of at least two people, but all people must fit in one canoe.

-All teams must make their own canoes, the contest is based both on one’s ability to craft as well as pilor a functioning canoe.

-The first team to reach the ocean wins the race and all the accolades that come with it. There is no official monetary prize, but betting on the race is common place and the winners are often showered with gifts and praises anyway.

Teams can be disqualified if they:

-Intentionally harm another team or intentionally do not give aid to a team they see is in mortal peril.

-Leave their canoe at any point in the race, either accidentally or on purpose, unless to help a person in mortal peril.

-Leave the water at any point in the race for the purpose of skipping a section of the river.

-Any other form of cheating, as spelled out in most games and competitions, and are not worth spelling out here.

——

The race begins on the Kyrgettyr River, at Vrren Herren Run, immediately past where several Titan Trees grow over the river, and ends at the Seal Seiga Estuary, where the river meets The Last Ocean. Roughly 435 miles long [or 700 kilometers], this is the longest river race in all of Eradûn. This river goes through sections of rough rapids, natural and artificial low hanging river-spanning bridges, dangerous wildlife, and all the twists, turns, and tribulations one can expect in a river in a Wild Woods biome. And these racers get to go through it all in pumpkins!

——

[This event will take place over several posts, through which readers may place bets, gamble, or help their chosen contestants cheat (as long as you don’t get caught) using a cast of characters I’ll list out shortly. How contestants do in each post will be determined with the help of KawaiiBot, who will also choose the winner. All rolls will be visible on the server, but the details of how they affect the characters will be revealed in the posts. Any awards or prizes will be based on what the players participating decide to put in. Whether people enjoy this or not, the 66th Gourd Race will be open for all players in a big interaction that I’ll act as Game Master for, I just want to do one myself first.]

The Contestants

Rognvald’s Rafting Pack: These five Vargr men won the 63rd gourd race and have under their belts years of experience both in this race and may others like it. Each one, if asked, would say that they are still in their prime and are sure they can win again this year. They are all from a river-bordering pack that canoes often and has been participating in these races for generations. They would say canoeing is in their blood.

The Biomancers: Jara, Kormak, and Gilli are three growth shamans who are not shy about saying how they’ve grown “the perfect gourd”. These three ride a large green squash-shaped canoe that they claim is “more buoyant than wood and twice as sturdy”. With the perfect canoe, they are confident that they have an advantage over every other participant. Magic is forbidden during the race itself, but there is no rule against using magic to create the canoe.

-The Aelbic Giants: Two Hafgar men from Aelbaion, each roughly eight feet tall, named Abélard and Thorstar have entered the race with a massive pumpkin that can comfortably fit both the two of them and their lunch. Both are farmers in the kingdom and live near the border with Eradûn. They’ve come to compete for the first time, mostly with the hope of just showing off how exceptional their crops can be. They have also provided the largest pie at the estuary fair ground and have one of, if not the biggest canoes in the competition.

The Smallest Competitors: The Cerulean Clique would like all if you to know that size does not matter, only skill and fortitude! Next on the roster are three Seelie in a roughly one and a half foot diameter pumpkin canoe. Rini, Bim, and Puck are three blue feathered faeries in a normal sized pumpkin they absolutely did not steal who claim to have the fastest canoe in the entire race. Being a flying species, they know they have the best maneuvering skills and besides, how much different are wind currents and water currents?

The Suskainen: The next entrants are four lycanthrope elves from Säkkijärvitten with a finely carved, long green gourd that curves up at the front and back of their canoe. These four men and women, Susanna, Ilma, Kristo, and Päivö, have never raced before, but they had spent many years in the Royal River Navy before becoming afflicted with “the wolf’s curse”. While the curse made them “voluntary” exiles from their nation, they believe it has made them stronger and given them keener senses that they are sure will help them win the race and prove that it isn’t a curse they have, but a boon that Säkkijärvitten will regret losing.

The Dimont Family: Not uncommon in most festival races, but a curious sight nonetheless, a family of Hafgar from the Aelbaic border have entered the race in their big orange pumpkin. The family includes Mr. Egard Dimont, Mrs. Mireille Dimont, and their two kids, boy and a girl, Kol and Éva, who are ten and seven years old respectively. They aren’t particularly interested in winning the race, but are here to have fun, as a family, and wish the best of luck to all the competitors.

The Mushroom Racers: Voja and Vernir, a rot mage and her wife, have entered the race with a new creation never before seen in canoeing history: a boat made out of a giant mushroom cap. The rules specify that the boats simply need to be organic but not made of wood, and they aren’t the only ones to enter a magically grown boat. Both firmly believe that mushrooms will revolutionize the extreme canoeing sport and will prove it today. Their boat is lighter, more flexible, and the material is easier to grow in the most aerodynamic shapes possible. Their canoe truly does look just like a larger, smoother normal canoe made of fungi.

Jarlebanke, Hero of the Tusker Vale!: Rounding our the bottom of the roster is none other than the great Vargr Explorer, Warrior, Poet, and Adventurer Extraordinaire, Jarlebanke! (and his assistant, Hælæif). This burly Vargr man isn’t afraid to shout from his spot in the line how sure he is that this will finally be the year he wins the race! Having scaled the highest cliffs on The Spine of the World, sailed across kraken infested waters (to Bisclarivet and back), and battled the fiercest tusked bears in Eradûn with his bare hands, the dangers of this river are no match for his might! He may have come in second or third place most years he’s raced, but he knows the river now like a bird knows the wind. Everyone else can resign now, Jarlebanke is gonna win it this year.

Nippi Longsword and the Terrible Trio!: Last but not least, the most fearsome Seelie pirate in all the Seven Seas has arrived to master one more dangerous body of water!This black winged Seelie, clad in a black cloak, black hat, and with her trusty sword, Butterknife, held high, is sure to win this race! Assisting her in their squash-shaped boat are one Vargr man, Olæ, and two Aelbic humans, Robin and Henri. No fearsome beast, roiling rapid, or law enforcement can stop her invincible team when glory is on the line! (She and her merry crew of Vargr and human ne’er-do-wells are wholly in in it for the prize money.)