Presentation
The series is set on The Edge, a huge cliff which peaks onto a seemingly endless abyss.
An enormous buoyant rock is the site of the scholarly city of Sanctaphrax, which teaches students a variety of subjects — mainly concerning the weather and how to predict it. There are Colleges of Raintasters, Cloudwatchers, Mistsifters , and so on. Other scholars also come here to pore over the many texts here for study. Very little use is made of the knowledge acquired in Sanctaphrax; it is largely the home of pedants , each of whom attempts to outdo or destroy his fellows. Sanctaphrax is attached to Undertown by a huge metal chain to prevent its floating away.
The great floating city depends for its very survival on the amazing properties of stormphrax – the tiny shards of lighting found only in the far-off Twilight Woods, that in darkness weigh more than a thousand ironwood pines. Used to weigh down the Sanctaphrax rock, stormphrax is the prize that has been sought by the Knights Academic on their solitary storm-chasing quests ever since the days of their illustrious founder, the great Quode Quanx-Querix.
Loftus Observatory is the tallest tower of Sanctaphrax which houses many weather forecasting instruments including several large telescopes.
The Knights Academy is the school where young scholars are trained to be knight academics. However, there are only thirteen that are chosen to be knight academics at any one time. The rest of the students become academics-at-arms : the guardians of Sanctaphrax who become catapult workers, swordsmen and a host of other positions that are required for the academics-at-arms to guard Sanctaphrax. The school consists of four main classes which teach the students key subjects to being Knight academics.
These are: the Hall of Storm Cloud- subject: ship building; the Hall of Grey Cloud- subject: prowlgrin handling; the Hall of White Cloud- subject: Stormchasing, and the Hall of High cloud- subject: weather forecasting.
