In another world, one of plastic, copper, and glass projecting images. Of bright lights that dampen imagination. They say we see far because we stand on the shoulders of giants. They forget that beneath them stand yet greater shoulders, stacked ever higher till they form a great heaving mountain that has carried each and every one of us to this point. To here, to now, to this ever-changing moment in which we live. 

On the ruinous dead lands of Talis ’ Vrok, where the Ash made its home among dead things, there was a dollidoo egg. The inhabitant was to be named Crash, orphaned, taken in by the creature known as the Mother Hen. She kept it warm, and once it hatched, raised it as her own. She taught him to read the runes of mortal creatures; he came to worship that which was bled in sacred ink. He learned to read scrolls, diagrams, and tomes bigger than him. 

He became dexterous with his claws and crafted tools that fit over his beak; he became obsessed with shaping matter to his will. He hammered metal, blew glass, and shaped his domain, making a small workshop for himself. He led the dollidoos under the great Mother Hen and taught them better ways to live and survive. He taught them how to farm and build small hovels to shelter their nests from the cold air of the Mother Hen’s massive lair. 

He often went to explore the island, catalogue plant, insect, and animal species, and map the lands that were his mother’s domain with a small group of assistants. One day, his interest changed when he saw it. Something that broke through the distant haze and fog of the horizon, some strange creature flew through the sky, a great gut above it. A shell of wood and metal hung down from which black clouds spewed. It soared above the grasping hands of gravity as if some great titan shrugged and cast off the world below. As he watched its movement across the sky, he saw it was some great ship carried across the air by a bladder, and soon he saw that among the billowing smoke there was fire. He waddled after it with his assistants in tow and saw it start to spiral down as if to deny death by mimicking the circling of vultures. It finally came crashing down to the ash-coated lands. 

He approached the corpse of a dead thing, for it had been alive in its own way. He stepped past broken bodies of the fabled humidoos and some bigger humanoids he would refer to from now on as biggidoos. He found one humidoo clutching a wheel; metal lye burns covered his flesh, and he was certain the Ash had come for them in the sky. He nudged the humidoo, but it had joined the rest of its flock with Kaxis and Marlis. Crash knew that with this strange artifact, he would not only fly himself but also allow his people to fly to reach the sky above, where sparrows, hawks, and eagles mocked the land-bound Doodles below. Crash sent one of his assistants back, and they buried the dead humidoos. When Kobolds and doodles arrived, they dragged the corpse of something great back home. 

Crash inspected the strange ship, drew sketches with charcoal, rummaged about and found eventually some kind of manual with diagrams. He found canisters of strange-smelling liquid, which Mother Hen told him was some form of fuel that would make it run. He sketched out every part and where he took it from in case it was important and belonged there. He figured out which parts looked damaged from the diagrams in the manual and what he might be able to repair or what he might need to scavenge for, since there would be more wrecks. There were always more corpses on Talis’Vrok, for the Ash drew all things in. 

He set dollidoos to mend the great bladder; it needed minimal skill and had little real damage. He brought forth the flock to see his work and tell him if they had ever seen other such wrecks across the island. He learned of three similar crashes and wrote them on a map he had sketched, though two were beyond the lands he had charted. He repairs what parts he can before seeking out the first wreck, which is on the far reaches of Mother Hen’s lands. 
 

Crash traveled through ash-covered lands, sneaking past creatures composed of ash and earth. He evaded some great lumbering things and found the moldering wreck. He looked it over, and while another flying ship, its engine far older, a big black rock tender he recalled being called coal, sat by the engine block. He rooted around, finding little to nothing his ship could use, though he found an old atlas of Ithia, wind charts, and safe trade passages. He carefully moved the rotten paper, doing his best to resketch the map on a fresh sheet. Crash returned home, storing his new charts in his workshop before moving on to the next wreck. 

He traveled to the territory of another Dragon, waded through ash that rose to his breast, and found paths over rivers of lye. He came to a crashed airship; it had come down and dragged one side against a sheer cliff and had been torn to pieces as if it were sandpaper. He dug around in the ruin with his fellow doodles, rooting through cabinets and finding a few missing bits, such as the things referred to as spark plugs, a few pistons, bolts, and other tidbits he couldn’t identify but looked important. He took them home and figured he didn’t have anywhere near enough to repair the engine. He had to put all his faith in the final wreck. 

He set forth for the final wreck far in the heart of Talis’Vrok and took with him many doodles and a guard of kobolds. They traveled far and came across a relatively intact vessel. This one had no bodies, and it seemed to have landed here after running out of fuel. The wood of the main body had begun to rot; the metal was rusting, but the engine was more or less intact. They removed the bolts and, with pullies, shifted the engine block onto an improvised sled. The doodles dragged it across the ashy lands back home. It took a great deal of work to clear away the rust, with some magical help from the Mother Hen, and replace those parts that had broken. They replaced the engine of the now-repaired wreck with a triumphant chorus of coos. 

Crash came to his mother, gave her a big, feathery hug, then came to an end, said his goodbyes, and brought his doodle crew on their new vessel. They added what fuel they had to the engine and rose into the sky. They flew towards the coastlines, and Crash felt it, attention, terrible, undivided attention. He saw the rising wind, ash swirling, the fell spirit of Talis’Vrok ascended in wrath that any of his toys might escape. Clouds were pulled in; rain started to pour around them as terrified Shrouds tried to flee the pulling winds.  

The Ash buffeted the craft; ash and water spread burning lye across the deck. A tendril of air pulled one of the doodles from the ship, and he was flung out, fluttering towards the ash lands below, wailing in terror. Crash battled the wind, growing ever more tired. He felt he was far too close, and now the Ash would steal from him the destiny of his people.  

In his sorrow, he reached deep down; he drew upon the first Doodle, who, as a mere plush toy, strived towards life, fought inanimation, and, with the help of the dark god, became real. With Siegfried, who first started this great dream, who scaled the great mountain Zatolos, and for a moment flew above the gods of Day and Night. He remembered Snuffles, who journeyed to distant lands, found wings of wax and tubes of fire, and filled the great wound once more with the light of a blue moon. All the great heroes who had pursued flight and died, every giant on whose shoulders he climbed, and the bloody rut of his people. This would not end in blood. He fought the wind, tried to rise above it, and turned to reduce its impact, pushing it back. The metal started to groan, and the wood cracked. Tentacles of lye entwined around the vessel and started to squeeze.  

Crash started to cede that he could not beat the Ash. He heard the terrified baas of the Shrouds caught in the tempest. Thunder rolled, a great hand of blackest cloud that brimmed with suggestions of light trapped in wrathful darkness reached forth and seized the ash like a ball of cotton and squeezed it, tore it from the air, and cast it back to the land below. Eur Chara collected her poor Shrouds and hugged the great squishy cloud sheep, leaving Crash’s battered ship to cross the coastline as the angry sky mother reclaimed her sweet pet Coelestis, stomped down on the recumbent Ash, and, for good measure, spat hail down on the fell nature spirit. Crash sailed to distant lands, living the dreams of his people in eternal joy! He found a place where the strange fuel that powered the ship was made and decided to spend the rest of his life designing ships for doodles so they could fly across the great sky.