Excelvior! Light of the world, beacon of mankind! 🌟 The marvelous City of in the Sky debuts in this short promo – also featuring Monica and Tomás, two fiendish members of a merry group of bandits!
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VIEW ART
Rising a half-dozen miles over the evergreen valley of Esselssa, rooted deep in the waters of Oceanus by the unshakable Bone Pillars, the sky-city of Excelvior always bustles and ever glimmers with the comings and goings of its untiring children – proud denizens whose millennia-long tale of hard work, toil, and travail helped build this treasure in the clouds.
Excelvior! Light of the world, beacon of mankind!
With their rich collection of cutting-edge technology and fathomless folio of human knowledge, the children of Excelvior never pause and never sleep, always tinkering and seldom bickering, working tirelessly towards progress, never at rest, but always at ease – for they know that, as hard as they labor and as long as they breathe, mankind will always beat its limits and men’s minds always surpass their dreams.
Sempre avante! Sempre avante! As their saying goes.
Always moving! Always working! Always struggling!
Except…
In the sixth day of the week, six days in every month, the lights go out and the city quiets down to allow its citizens look up at great, black dome… and sing.
In the Hour of the Stars, the Excelvien finally see the natural sky and behold that which they, in their luminous labor and industrious haste, are always threatened to forget: the glimmer of the million stars in the endless void sea; the shiny, milky arms of the Octopus Galaxy; and the ghostly blues and cosmic purple hues of the long-erupted, forlorn nebulae.
In the quiet darkness of this pensive hour, embalmed by the harmony of Excelvior’s melody, shadowed and shouldered by the cold, tall walls of its iron-bronze labyrinth, even the most restless souls and wicked fiends can put to rest their gnarly goals and impish deeds, forget their sins and cleanse their crimes, and look ahead to brighter days, cleaner ways, and clearer skies.
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This concept art depicts the Interlude between books 1 and 2 of the upcoming steampunk series Brasiliana. It features Monica and her “uncle” as they stand (and conspire) before the Vargas Building.
© Art by Gigi Potemkin with AI assets by Perchance and ChatGPT.
IMAGE
The Lone Continent of Azula, lost in the midst of an endless, inhospitable ocean, is made even lonelier and more sorrowful by the Wall of the World, a colossal mountain chain thousands of miles long and several hundreds of miles wide that divide the continent’s eastern and western boards into two self-contained, almost mutually unreachable halves.
Even this titanic, magnificent barrier has its cracks, though, and for the most skilled smugglers, these hidden passages and long-forgotten roads turn the Wall into an impenetrable fortress... and an invaluable vault for their ill-gotten gains!
In the dangerous, narrow, and treacherous trails of the mountain tops, the journeys are always gray and the skies always cloudy.
Well, almost always. On some very rare and blessed occasions, the clouds can part and the sunlight can shine through the icy air to reveal the hidden beauty of even the deepest and most desolate zones of these mountains, a beauty not meant for common men’s eyes, and one that’s most dazzling, almost divine in a little area called the Gap of Whoa.
In this most hidden of most hidden spots, the rare traveler can be blessed by the view of a sprawling ice field at the bottom a dizzying fall, beyond which only the tallest mountains of the Wall lay, and further beyond… the Ever-Storm! The Black Dome of the World! An endlessly raging tempest that clouds the northern chain in perpetual darkness!
From the precipice of the Gap of Whoa, under the rare clear sunset skies, the unsuspecting traveler bears witness to all the terror and awe of the Wall’s majesty and woe: its delicate beauty, deadly falls, breathtaking vistas, slippery slopes, and all the darkness that its vast, sprawling expanse harbors!
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This concept art shows The Girl’s expedition (from right to left: the Girl, her Lover, the Guide, and his bodyguard Carlos) at the Gap of Whoa during a rare clear sunset sky, near the eastern gates of the Wall of the World.
© Art by Gigi Potemkin with the help of AI (perchance.org).