Cloudhome snags streamers of mist and fog on the plucking fingers of its ruins, a flat-tipped peninsula of stone stretching into the sky from the bone-white rock of Femur Butte. Cloudhome’s expanse hangs unsupported, only open air beneath it, and none know how it remains aloft. Those who live in its shadow say only that it must be the work of the ancients, some mystery known to those who came before that has since been lost. The locals who live below praise it for granting them with shade, and for catching the rainclouds which otherwise would escape their dry land for more hospitable climes. They also say that in times long past, Cloudhome was host to wonders that once changed the world. Now it is but a remnant, a fragment of what came before.

The paths up Femur Butte are arduous but well known, and the local goatherds have made a tradition of racing each other to the top. Only a few of them, however, dare to lead outsiders across the floating bridge of rock which arcs between the butte and Cloudhome. They say, and the visiting outsiders who return agree, that the air itself changes as one crosses the arc. It cools as one crosses the bridge, bringing a chill to the skin and frosting the breath of those still hot from their climb. Dew collects on the stones, dripping from the crumbling walls which yet stand on Cloudhome’s edge. Epiphytic fruiting vines cling to the stonework, their berries a bright and lustrous purple that bursts against the stones’ gray.

Within the walls of Cloudhome visitors find a great sense of peace. Mist clings to every surface, clouds caught inside the ruins’ bounds. Those who have investigated the ruins describe a feeling of rest, of safety, and of a great desire to lay down and let their worries give way to sleep. Those who sleep in Cloudhome and return say they have had the most marvelous dreams, often coming back transformed and inspired by their experience… but few who sleep there have made it back down again. Something about the place pulls one ever deeper into the ruins, with a draw that is difficult to escape. The bodies of those who never wake do not rot, but are called Sleepers by other visitors, and are left undisturbed. They may yet rise from their slumbers, reason others, and more than one legend prophesies the day when all those so blessed by peace will stand again.

Yet the ruins of Cloudhome are not all quiet. In some parts, there are unceasing noises, low rumbles and grinding from inside walls or beneath floors. Elsewhere lights flicker like foxfire in the mists, glimmers that lead ever further into the vine-entombed ruins. There are stories of vast black glass panes, where points of blue and green light gleam and shift, and of statues which speak to all who approach them in tongues long lost. And the ground does not all feel stable beneath one’s feet; inquisitive antiquarians have vanished into suddenly-gaping clefts in the flagstones, and more than one stone block has fallen from the sky to the ground below. Broad stone doors may open or close with little warning and no one to shift them, walls have rattled together and opened new passageways where none before existed, and thus the ruins of Cloudhome have preserved themselves as an unmappable enigma.

Even so, people still come from near and far. Some come seeking peace. Others seek, and find, lost knowledge etched in its stones, or buried in the ruins among the traces of a time and people long past. Healers, alchemists, and herbalists concoct medicines made from the plants and fruit of Cloudhome, fetching a high price far afield amongst those in the know. Many wish to know how it is that such a place could exist, let alone soar among the clouds with only a narrow tether to the earth stretching out beside it. Some few come with the dream of changing the world, of changing themselves, seeking wisdom in the dreams found amidst the clouds.