Swindlerock Chronicles

SWINDLEROCK CHRONICLES

The Swindlerock Chronicles are set in a semi-dystopian fantastical world riddled with floating islands consisting of the elusive Blackrocks that was split into three inherently different and rivaling sectors thanks to the machinations of notorious explorers.The core of the story is about learning how to deal with grief, about looking past deeply rooted prejudices and about the potential weight of one’s ambitions in relation to the well-being of humanity as a whole.

This world-building project is a project we are working on in our free time.
It is a continuous work in progress - and there might be a written novel in the future, which is why we cannot reveal too much about the main story and its characters just yet. Until then we however plan on revealing small written sneak-peeks to make viewers familiar with the general setting.

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STORIES

INTRODUCTION - Keitan Saro

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INTRODUCTION

When he wasn’t busy flying, he spent his time on the deck of his old airship, remembering. It was a calm and familiar summer evening, the kind that made him want to lean back to remember, and to let the light warm the old scars on his temple. Soon the sun would disappear behind the Flying Isles and he wanted to enjoy the comfort of the last rays as if they were to kiss him farewell. Keitan Saro from the Shallowdocks wasn’t old yet, but he sure was a man marked by life. He was just in his forties yet his experiences are what aged him, and you could see it in the way he presented himself with a sense of serene calmness. He’d been away for a few months, to travel to the warmer lands of Yanuzar and thanks to his helpful nature he made sure to see wherever his aid and skill might be needed as long as it wasn’t here at the Shallowdocks for a while. It was an eventful year for the resting aviator, and not just for him.After parts of the floating Great Capitol crumbled and crashed down to the Surface , the amount of destruction and casualties kept everyone busy for months and all the sectors, even if some were unwilling, had worked together to restore what could be saved. Many lives had changed and some were forced to take the elevation systems and move down to the always dark Subaqueous below sea level in order to start life anew. Its ever so mysterious and outlandish inhabitants were skeptical towards the foreign newcomers at first, but they had always been more accepting than the Capitol and the entitled Aerialists, far up in the air on the great Flying Isles.Disasters like Rockshowers weren’t rare, in fact it was absolutely normal for things like this to occur. Keitan always knew that the Capitol’s force of engineers responsible for securing the crumbling blackrocks to the Isles with their giant magnetic cores usually tried their best not to harm anyone in their studies of the Blackrocks but sometimes said rocks found their way off the isles anyway to crash down into the ocean and onto the lands below like giant bombs crafted by nature.While he sat and watched the sun set over the rim of the sea spanning in front of him he adjusted his posture with a sigh. Keitan himself had suffered casualties from the incident himself, the wound on his back caused nothing but trouble those last few weeks but he knew would get over it and he did not take it all too seriously despite the discomfort. Wounds were common for people like him, especially the ones you could not see. As he clutched a little pendant made of old bronze metal and the same type of floating rock common for the Flying Isles his expression suddenly hardened as he was reminded of his loss and for a moment he appeared to be somewhere else entirely, as if his mind was still on his travels and had not actually returned with the rest of his body. So his mind danced away, as the old record player in the back of his airship’s gondola played faint, familiar tunes.They used to dance on summer evenings like this one, down in one of the many taverns on the Shallowdocks, but Keitan wasn’t ever any good at dancing and he often made himself a spectacle by embarrassing himself. They loved each other though, so it did not matter. It was always Sintio who pulled Keitan up for a spin because he would have never suggested it willingly. Sintio Hikan, originally from the surface lands of Yanuzar in the south knew how to excite the crowd and he was loved by many, uniting all the sectors with his purity and his love for dance and song.Keitan and Sintio used to be part of a well-renowned and respected squadron of Surface aviators for hire, but when they were not busy working, Sintio spent his free time performing to songs of his culture and Keitan loved watching him, because he was hopelessly in love. Sintio’s talents enchanted the crowds of all sectors and often people forgot for at least one evening the rivalry between the Surface, the Aerial and the Subaqueous as well as the Rockshowers and all the hardships and struggles as with the music their spirits were sent back to the Flat World, where once upon a time every human lived on The Surface united as one - and where the Flying Isles and the depths of the Great Seas still belonged to the deities - untouched and distant.However, the nature of humans is to be curious and ambitious, and a few select powerful people of the past took their ambitions so far as to invent airships and submarines to explore the air and the water, seeking to expand and exploit until eventually the once deemed unattainable Flying Isles and Great Seas were inhabited and greedily claimed as property - which lead to the once united world being split in three.But now all of these moments were moments of the past, and Keitan sat in his wooden airship with nothing more but memories of said song and dance, and the memory of Sintio beside him as he sat here, clutching the pendant. Despite his thoughts and the sadness those thoughts might have induced in someone, Keitan managed to smile, and that was what people liked about him, and he leaned back, because he knew that’s what Sintio would want to see. Despite the fact that Sintio was not here anymore ever since the last Rockshower occurred he could still sense his presence as the sun warmed his face and he knew he would always be with him, accompanying Keitan on wherever his new journey might take him.