Skyward - (NaNoWriMo 2013 Novel)

Skygate and The Grave - (Nov 25, Monday)

Need to touch on the odd museum cult.

The drone grew louder as they climbed. As they got closer to it, they could hear that it wasn't constant, the it undulated.

Buildings.

Towers.

The blasphemy against gravity.

The loan against the natural forces of this world; the unnatural structures that had to spend so very much time on structural supports and bracings and counter weights to keep these teetering things in the sky; to fight the earth's ever-present desire to tear them down.

Things put aloft are made to fall. Anything that leaves the ground has bought a one-way ticket; it is destined to return. This book could be called gravity. It could be gravity that plays the part of overall pro/antagonist. it could be that the sky pirates are just the hired mercenaries of gravity: deployed to sow chaos and tear down the sky-scraping idols errected as insult to it.

Different sect of Sky Pirates (Gravity Pirates) who worship gravity and believe that the 'Dos are wholly unnatural and in contravention of natural forces. See it as their purpose to tear them down. Need to include a demolition specialist or an architect who worked on the 'Dos or the like because the knowledge is needed to try to tear them down.

* * *

The age of paranoia in which the 'Dos were built very much informed their construction. It was not inconceivable that someone could find a way to threaten the structural integrity of a MegaDo, so certain structural considerations were made to assure that if one 'Do were to fall and collide with another, that other would not be brought down like a domino.

There were the skysails, which were attached to the highest levels of the 'Dos, like undulating petals surrounding the crowns of titanic glass flowers. The skysails were half meant to act as wind turnbines, harvesting the winds to power the self-sustaining MegaDos, and they were half meant as sky anchors. They were automated, and in the case of a seismic event threatening the structural integrity of a 'Do, they would convert from fluid wind riders to rigid sky anchors, reformatting their surface layers to act as kites that grabbed wind and used the force of its pull to steady the building below.

There were also the skybridges, put into place when the PATH system had been abandonned. The skybridges were a means of moving between the upper levels of the 'Dos, and when built they had been reinforced to act as lateral supports between the various 'Dos. They honeycombed between the towers of the Core every 15 or so floors above the commerce layers. They, too, had a steadying influence on the towers, making sure that any force applied to one 'Do was distributed among the others through the comb.

The combination of these structural systems meant that, despite how densely-packed in the 'Dos were in the Core, they were interlinked to form one titanic structure. You could take out one of the pilars in the structure, but the overall structure would remain.

* * *

We are the scions of Gravity.

We are the walking, talking, thinking army of an otherwise inert, but nonetheless undeniable, force of nature.

We believe that the MegaDos were built in contravention of this force, and that in order to put things back to order, the MegaDos must fall. Just as a religious sect would not permit idolatry against its sigils of power and its governing spiritual force, so, too, are we prepared to launch a crusade to pull down the heretical structure of the 'Dos.

We will restore this place to the people who once called it home, on the ground, where they belong.

The group seemed to emerge from the very concrete around them. They wore simple jackets of a heathered grey with deep hoods. They were the perfect thing to allow people to blend into a landscape that, despite its Wild growth, was still predominantly made up of ruined concrete.