Floating Continent: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

An otherwise-normal place that's floating in the sky, often for no adequately-explored reason.

This is an ''extremely'' common trope in fantasy and video games. Nothing says "exotic" like a city floating in the sky. Outside of scifi settings, there's also no real way to [[Justified Trope|justify]] or [[Hand Wave]] it, so you basically have to say [[A Wizard Did It]] and hope that the [[Rule of Cool]] will carry the day. Or never mention it at all.

 

 

Waterfalls are often expected to fall from the continent. Even if there's an explanation for how the place stays in the air in the first place, how they can possibly not run out of water is pretty much never explored.

 

 

 

If some cataclysm has resulted in the entire planet being broken up into a collection of floating continents, that's [[Shattered World]].

 

 

{{examples}}

* In the manga version of ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'', the Sinner's home is a small floating town called Eden. Somewhat [[Justified]], because (1) demons are actually {{spoiler|aliens, who came to Earth on a fish-like spaceship -- so the Sinners probably have access to technology that would allow for that sort of thing}} and (2) the Sinners are on the run and need to be in hiding, so a home base that's removed from people is probably a better idea than forming a colony somewhere on Earth.

* The Neo Nation colonies of ''[[G Gundam]]'' are a really odd example - not only are they space colonies, but they actually seem to be gigantic hunks of Earth which lifted off the planet and floated into space. Keeping with the show's [[Refuge in Audacity]], most of the colonies ([[Creator Provincialism|except Japan]]) are unusual shapes - Neo America is a star, while Neo Mexico is a giant sombrero.

* A floating island of devious monkeys appears in ''[[Kyouran Kazoku Nikki]]''. This one ''does'' have a reason for the hovering -- [[Unobtainium|Levistone]], the same material that powers Hyouka, one of the main characters.

* In ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]!'', Magicus Mundus ''had'' one of these... {{spoiler|until Asuna's [[Anti-Magic]] caused most of it to crash. All that left now are small clumps of floating debris.}}

** And that's just one of ''thousands'' the Mu possess (they built them out of necessity: having only one continent on their world meant overcrowding set in pretty quickly).

* Neo Verona in the anime ''[[Romeo X Juliet]]''.

* In ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog The Movie]]'', seemingly all of society lives on floating islands (as opposed to the games, where there's just one). Heavy cloud cover makes the otherwise perfectly habitable regular ground more or less abandoned (and earns it the name "The Land of Darkness" to boot). The only ones who dwell there are Robotnik, who implictly doesn't care that it's so gloomy so long as he has the place to himself, and his robots, who obviously don't care that it's so dark.

* Floating castles and jewel-like planetoids feature in a fantasy sequence in ''[[Whisper of the Heart]]''.

* In the "After Days" chapter of the ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]] StrikerS'' supplementary manga, a cluster of floating islands served as the battlefield for the mock air battle between Nanoha and Signum.

* Vash in ''[[Trigun]]'' got his coat, artificial arm and third gun from a massive colony of SEEDS that never hit the ground, and so remain peacefully isolated from the [[Crapsack World]], comfortable with their future tech. When Vash goes back for repairs and upgrades, naturally trouble follows him.

 

 

* Superbia, the home of the International Ultramarine Corps in the [[DC Universe]], is a city that floats over the remains of Montevideo.

* The shortlived [[Marvel Comics]] ''[http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix4/weirdworld.htm Weirdworld]'' setting has the floating island of Klarn, homeland of the [[Our Elves Are Different|Elves]].

* [[The Mighty Thor]]'s home of Asgard was always portrayed as a great land mass floating in extradimensional space.

** Between 2007 and 2010, it was a great land mass floating over Broxton, Oklahoma.

 

 

* In ''[[The Culture|The Player of Games]]'' by [[Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]], one character, whose job is to build Orbitals (artificial ring-shaped worlds), talks about making Floating Continents because she thinks that orbitals are too ''mundane'', having fairly standard planetary ecosystems and landforms. She was also a big fan of volcanoes.

* Various flying castles in Steven Brust's ''[[Dragaera]]'' novels. All of them fell out of the sky during the Interregnum, since they depended on sorcery powered by the then-unavailable Imperial Orb, but Castle Black was later raised again.

* In Steven Erikson's first book of ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'', ''Gardens of the Moon'', the armies of the Malazan empire besieging the city of Pale face a flying fortress called Moon's Spawn under the command of a powerful sorcerer, Anomander Rake.

* One of the [[Light Novels]] of ''[[Vampire Hunter D]]'' takes place in a floating town, and at one had to deal with a floating pirate fortress. {{spoiler|The town ends up being overrun with vampires caused by a failed experiment, and the residents of the pirates were long dead run by an AI}}.

* Paul Stewart's ''[[The Edge Chronicles]]'' has the floating city of Sanctaphrax, which is built on a floating rock. Unusually, the main problem isn't keeping it up, but rather keeping it down, with the help of one gigantic chain and a chest full of [[Applied Phlebotinum|stormphrax]].

* The City in the Sky from the ''War of Powers'' fantasy novels by Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milan.

* ''[[Magnus]]'' has Dragylon the Imperial Fortress: a massive, invisible, sun-sphere and headquarters of [[Satan|Lucifer]].

* In [[Wen Spencer]]'s ''Endless Blue'', all sorts of islands float. When someone tells Mikhail that his warp drive won't work, this is what convinces him: a place with floating islands is not obeying normal physics.

* In [[Alexander Bushkov]]'s ''Svarog'' series of novels, the swashbuckling-and-sorcery world of Talar has these flying islands, populated by the local uber race of wizard-nobles.

** The Ketran death sentence is sending the offender to the surface, away from the continents. Because the Ketrans can't really fly, they glide, once they fall below the continents, they're dead.

* The human inhabitants of Turquoise, an [[Single Biome Planet|ocean world]] in one of the stories in [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days'' (part of the [[Revelation Space]] universe) live in "snowflake cities", giant vacuum-buoyed city sized airships. Boats are not an option, as the alien Juggler biomass that fills the oceans breaks down nonliving materials at rates far too quick to repair.

 

** And the Ancients also have a flying city... that travels through space.

* The Animarium in ''[[Power Rangers Wild Force]]''. This thing might as well have a yo-yo string on it during the course of the series, as it went up into the sky, crashed back down, and went back up again... of course, if Saban and Disney had managed to work things out, it would have managed to come back down for the next team-up episode...

* The ''[[Firefly]]'' episode "Trash" features the crew staging a robbery on Bellerophon where ultra-wealthy citizens reside on their own private estates that float over an idyllic sea.

 

 

 

 

*** In 4th Edition, the magical structure of Faerun went completely bitchcakes when the god of magic got killed. As a result, there are zones of wild magic where large chunks of the landscape sits ''above'' the landscape.

*** Mystara also features the gnome-built (and mobile) Flying City of Serraine and its magic-powered ''biplanes''.

** The ''[[Dragonlance]]'' setting had a floating fortress, a relic of more powerful magics in antique times.

*** There were actually several flying citadels in ''[[Dragonlance]]'', one of which got Mist-napped and is now a pocket domain in the ''[[Ravenloft]]'' setting.

* Mt Metagalapa in ''[[Exalted]]'', which began floating around at the same time as the foundation of the Realm. Savants theorise that the combination of Wyld Essence from a [[Fair Folk]] invasion and the aftereffects of firing the Realm Defence Grid screw it they have no sodding idea why it floats. {{spoiler|This is because they don't realise the heart of the mountain is a Titan-class citadel from the First Age. Basically, we're talking an [[Ominous Floating Castle]] fitted with a city-destroying mile-wide [[Wave Motion Gun]], forgotten for thousands of years, and encased in stone.}}

 

* Cloudcuckooland from [[Aristophanes]]' famous play ''The Birds'', making this [[Older Than Feudalism]].

 

* In ''[[Breath of Fire]] II'', the small town that you encourage to life is coincidentally constructed over a buried [[Lost Technology]] machine. An optional subplot allows you to activate the machine and the entire town goes airborne, becoming your new [[Global Airship]]. {{spoiler|The [[Multiple Endings|"best" ending]] involves using it as for a miniature [[Colony Drop]]}}

** Said town also {{spoiler|served as the [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]] of the first game.}}

** The first ''Breath of Fire'' game also gave us Agua, near the town of Romero.

** And the Black Omen, but this is more a [[Ominous Floating Castle]].

* In ''[[Disney Epic Mickey]]'', the Cartoon Wasteland is basically a model of [[Disney Theme Parks|Disneyland]] sitting on a table in Yen Sid's tower. But to an observer actually inside the Wasteland, it seems to be a group of floating islands.

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] III: [[Morrowind]]'' features a prison island floating over the capital city of Vivec. Originally, it was one of Nirn's moons but a Daedra ripped it from its orbit and dropped onto Vvardenfell. Vivec, the [[Physical God]] after whom the city was named, managed to stop its fall but he couldn't neutralize its momentum, so he more or less [[Time Stands Still|froze the moon in time]]. Early in the Fourth Age, {{spoiler|Vivec dies as a result of the players actions in ''Morrowind'', and the moon resumes its fall. A machine that Dunmer engineers build to keep it up is eventually destroyed, as well. The moon hurls to earth with the entire momentum from its orbital fall centuries ago and wipes out the city. The seismic shock causes the nearby supervolcano Red Mountain to erupt, killing everything still clinging to life on Vvardenfell.}} The moral of the story being: gravity is one mean mother.

** As well as the Riverne peninsula, which is now a flying archipelago. When a giant explosion blew the peninsula into tiny bits and threw it into the air, it just simply never came back down.

** Its spinoff, ''[[Revenant Wings]]'', takes place largely on a floating archipelago.

* The Nazca Sky Gardens in ''[[Illusion of Gaia]]'', which float above the huge drawings on the Nazca Plains.

** {{spoiler|Soltis, the lost Silver continent that rose from the planet's actual surface, is closer to the classic version of this trope, but it sinks again.}}

** ''Skies of Arcadia'' also contains the following amusing statement (by one of the characters): "The world is a sphere. This means that the east is connected to the west, and the north is connected to the south."

** ''[[Baten Kaitos]] Origins'', the prequel/sequel to the original ''[[Baten Kaitos]]'' has {{spoiler|Tarazed, a flying fortress that completely pops out of one side of one of the floating continents and can blow up other floating continents}}.

* [[Sonic the Hedgehog]] does this several times.

** [[Sonic Storybook Series|Night Palace]].

** [[Sonic Riders|Babylon Garden]].

** [[Sonic Advance Trilogy|Sky Canyon]].

*** The Bob-omb Battlefield stage even had a small "Island in the Sky" floating above it.

** ''[[Mario Kart]] Super Circuit'' has Sky Garden, a garden track floating high in the sky.

** Most of the levels of ''[[Super Mario 3D Land]]''.

** While Solaris is definitely indeed located high in the sky, according to [[Word of God|Perfect Works]], it is 'anchored' by a massive pillar going all the way down to an island in the middle of the ocean, so it technically wasn't 'floating'.

* Lassic's Air Castle in ''[[Phantasy Star]]'', which is shown to still be there in ''[[Phantasy Star]] IV'', a thousand years after the planet it was on [[Earthshattering Kaboom|was reduced to an asteroid belt]].

** The zone Nagrand has small islands floating high above the seemingly solid ground.

** The Undead scourge use a fleet of [[Ominous Floating Castle|floating necropolis citadels]] as bases, which acts as their town halls in ''Warcraft 3'', and act as Dungeons, instanced or otherwise and cities in World of Warcraft.

** With the ''Lich King'' expansion, the city of Dalaran was uprooted and now floats above the northern continent. But then again, considering [[A Wizard Did It|who lives there]]...

** ''Cataclysm'' introduced two instances that take place in the Skywall: Vortex Pinnacle and Throne of the Four Winds. While Skywall is presumably much larger than what was seen, they both qualify as being sky cities.

** It's an interesting case, because the nature of the place as a floating continent is kept hidden from the player for quite some time. The extensive cave network and the references to "The Surface" are pretty good at convincing you that the game is taking place ''underground''. Turns out that the surface refers to ''below'' the island.

*** Doubly interesting in that, while the actual mechanics are more-or-less of the [[A Wizard Did It]] variety, the root causes of the island's floatation are very much a part of the game's plot. {{spoiler|In fact, the truth of the matter seems to be a mystery to the island's denizens. The stated reason, while functionally true, is not inherently necessary.}}

*** {{spoiler|The entire planet (save Yulia City and the island the Tower of Rem are on) can be considered just a large group of these too.}}

* All the mages in ''[[Lunar Silver Star Story Complete|Lunar: The Silver Star]]'' lived in Vane, a floating city/school of magic. They crashed, but ended up relatively intact. Made one heck of a crater, though.

* ''[[Ogre Battle]]'' has the sky islands, which mostly function as bonus stages.

** It should be noted that the Academy cities seen before the [[Expansion Pack|Tribes of the East]] does not actually fly, even though the town screen quite heavily suggests this - the first truly flying city seen in the series is encountered in [[Big Damn Heroes|Zehir]]'s Tribes of the East-campaign, and serves the role as a campaign-specific game mechanic wherein Zehir can land the city in tactical locations large enough to hold the city for the price of a sum of his experience, thus allowing him some manner of logistical flexibility.

** Not to mention Celeste, the City of Light from ''[[Might and Magic]] VII''.

** Of course, the fact that there's an edge to the world that you could fall off of ([[Invisible Wall|if the game didn't prevent you from doing so, anyway]]), {{spoiler|which will eat away at the world if power isn't restored to the four lighthouses}}, suggests that the world itself is a floating continent.

* Zepp in ''[[Guilty Gear]]'', though it is a country, not a continent.

* The Emperor's Palace in ''[[Jade Empire]]'' is made of a special rock with magical properties that floats. The [[Cutscene]] showing your approach is quite impressive.

* The entire gameworld in ''[[Septerra Core]]'' is a concentric series of floating continents around the eponymous core. Having six layers of them takes it [[Up to Eleven]].

** Not forgetting the buildings in the Twilight Realm, which were built on large slabs of rock just hovering in a trippy [[Amazing Technicolor Battlefield|amazing technicolor]] [[Eldritch Location]].

** Link's home in ''[[Skyward Sword]]'' is Skyloft, a group of islands floating in the sky above Hyrule. Something of an inversion for Skyloft's residents, because they all consider hovering islands mundane; to them, the ''ground'' is an impossible mythical entity. {{spoiler|Nonetheless, Skyloft does have [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]], and said dungeon [[Colony Drop|falls to earth after you complete it]].}}

* ''[[Metroid Prime]] 3'' has Skytown, a hemisphere-spanning system of flying buildings in the skies over Elyssia. As Elyssia is a gas giant, it [[Justified Trope|makes perfect sense]].

* The ''Granstream Saga'' has not one, but four floating continents as the sum total of its world. The quest to save the rapidly failing technology that keeps them floating is what motivates the initial quest by the hero. And which gives us [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sCbby2lldI a pretty kick-ass opening cinematic...]

* Certain Ages in the ''[[Myst]]'' series of games contain these, including Saavedro's home world in ''[[Exile]]'' {{spoiler|and Sirrus's prison Age in ''Myst IV''}}.

* ''[[Crystalis]]'' for the NES has the floating fortress as the [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]], where you receive the eponymous sword.

* Sion's chapter in ''[[Treasure of the Rudras]]'' visits a series of floating islands, home to the four races that came before humanity.

* There are multiple floating continents in the ''[[Mega Man X]]'' series, including Sigma's fortress, Sky Lagoon, and Giga City (although technically a collection of islands). The first two inevitably fell, especially Sky Lagoon which was deliberately [[Colony Drop|dropped onto a city]].

* An unusual twist on the concept was a central theme of bizarre Namco arcade game ''[[Prop Cycle]]''. The town of [[Meaningful Name|Solitaire]] becomes one of these after someone accidentally turns on some [[Lost Technology]], and the player must leap astride the titular pedal-driven aircraft, fly back up there and somehow bring it safely back down to the ground before they run out of loo roll and incur ruinous cellphone roaming charges... or something like that, anyway.

* The flying city of Caldoria is the home of temporal agent Gage Blackwood in the ''[[The Journeyman Project]]'' series.

* The entire setting of ''[[Allods Online]]'' is made of these.

* The ''[[Ratchet and Clank]] Future'' saga has Stratus City in ''Tools of Destruction'' and the Valkyrie Citadel in ''A Crack in Time''.

* ''[[Sacrifice]]'' The setting takes place in a realm where the world which torn asunder after a great war,forming the floating islands. As the game progress some of the island start to melt away because of the [[Big Bad|Big Bad's]] [[Doomsday Device]].

* The (remains of?) the continent of Gracia in ''Lineage2'' {{spoiler|after the Zealots of Shilen used the Seeds of Destruction and Seed of Infinity to destroy and mutate nearly all life on the continent, turning nearly everything there undead}}. The only way to get around is by airship or turning into a flying creature.

* Kyushu in ''[[Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon]]'', where this trope is played straight. It becomes the final dungeon, and after you kick some ass, it becomes the Falling Continent, until it lands safely back in Japan.

* The second ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' features "Citadel Station" that by its size qualifies as a floating continent.

* The climactic sequence of ''[[Neverwinter Nights]] Shadows of Undrentide'' takes place on an aforementioned Netherese floating city as it rises into the sky again.

* The [[Dream World]] Fade in the ''[[Dragon Age]]'' setting features the so-called Black City (formerly Golden City of the Maker) floating ominously in the sky. According to the lore, it is seen from every point of the Fade (Euclidean geometry be damned) and it actually ''is'' from every Fade level in the games. On the other hand, it is completely unreachable by the player as of part two. Still, one DLC features a character strongly implies to have been to the Black City.

* In ''Adventures of Rad Gravity'', the planet Vernia has a floating city.

* Floating islands are rarely randomly generated in ''[[Minecraft]]'', but can be made without too much problem.

* The setting of ''[[Tail Concerto]]'' and ''[[Solatorobo]]'' is a world of floating continents in the sky, connected by [[Steampunk]] air travel.

* The last level of ''[[Tomb Raider]] II'' consists of vivid green floating islands. Even more inexplicable is that they're apparently deep underground, somewhere beneath the Great Wall of China.

* ''[[Putt Putt Travels Through Time]]'' has this in the future.

* One of the levels in ''[[Soulcaster II]]'' is set in the ruins of a flying city.

* ''[[Kirby]] Air Ride'''s City Trial mode has a structure floating above the city called the Sky Garden, accessible via the volcano's launching pad.

* The inhabitants of Megadom from ''[[Meteos]]'' live on huge chunks of rock that float atop the extremely dense atmosphere of their planet.

 

 

* ''[[Unicorn Jelly]]'' has flying triangles, ''[[Pastel Defender Heliotrope]]'' has rectangles, and several other JD Reitz-created worlds have flying continents of varying shapes. In fact, I can't remember a world she created that has actual planets.

* While they're not continents, the powerful mage city of Escehelon in ''[[Flipside]]'' has an [http://www.flipsidecomics.com/comic.php?i=1028 anomalous amount of rocks hovering in the air.]

* ''[[Errant Story]]'' has Tsuirakushiti the floating city.

* Nephilopolis of ''[[Dresden Codak]]'' looks certainly like one, even though it's actually refered to as [http://dresdencodak.com/2010/07/26/dark-science-04/ "the largest single earthship by volume!"]

 

 

** Another episode has its plot centered around a floating mountain.

* Flip City in ''[[Rollbots]]'' is entirely above ground with structures held aloft by anti-gravity devices.

 

* Actually a viable means for colonizing Venus. Oxygen floats at, conveniently enough, the area in the atmosphere that is a balmy 70 or so. An air-tight colony could use only the breathable air inside to remain bouyant. Also, since everything is in equilibrium, the colony needs no real structural strength, and so could be made enormous using current materials (the only major problem is the sulfuric acid rain, and all sorts of other horrible acids and toxic, corrosive vapours, and getting the materials there to make it, since mining from Venus's surface isn't very feasible).

** Said acids and toxins could be harvested and processed into construction material.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Artistic License Physics]]

[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Steampunk Index]]

[[Category:Flying Tropes]]