In the very first drawing of Sha Rephart Island I made, the Golden Pyramid was off to the northwest and the Fountain Park was to the southeast next to the Night District. There wasn’t much on the northeast edge of the island, and I finally realized it would make more sense for these two locations to be placed together on that lacking side.
The service elevators provide alternate access to the upper floors apart from the two main elevator shafts nearer to the middle of the vessel. In the first picture above, you can see the service elevator shaft near the front of the oben.
So I decided to change the name of the vessel’s large open room, as a ‘hangar’ did not seem to be the right word for it. Its new name is a gwil word that is a contraction of ob-ben, a room of large open space, much like ob-mun is the gwil term for a flat plane of large open space.
Here are the service elevators on the fifth floor. Due to the shape of the vessel’s shell, the shaft from the oben to this floor could not continue directly to the sixth floor. Instead, there is a second short elevator shaft between the floors, with that shaft’s door pictured on the left. The door off to the left in the back of the hallway is for the shaft down. The golden piece attached to the back wall is a “bonk bar”, to prevent people from hitting their head on the curve of the vessel’s shell in that spot.
Here is the elevator on the sixth floor, with the elevator car at this location. The square in the wall on the right is an access panel to some elevator hardware.
There was an area on the sixth floor of the Obmunjalae Voidplane vessel next to the elevators that was just a weird empty space with no real use yet. There was a dining hall on the fifth floor just below this space, and that got me the idea to put a smaller drink lounge to fill it in. This wound up leading to a whole bunch of tangential changes including adding actual hinges to doors, improving the design of the elevators, some updates to Lady Jalae’s model (pictured center frame), adding detail to some of the vessel’s connecting bits (one such being visible at the top of the image), and a whole thing about calculating the appropriate size of the water dispensers so I didn’t make something that would weigh 100 pounds and hurt whoever had to swap them out.
You can see that teas are a key drink served at the lounge, based on my own interest in the beverage.
The gwil name for this type of location is “sefbeko”, literally a drink-house. The dining hall below is called a “yumbeko”, an eat-house.
Lukaud, the owner of the Obmunjalae vessel, built a ‘house’ for their adopted child Yezukh’ay within the vessel. It is placed in what used to be an open lobby between Lukaud’s private rooms and the pilot’s deck. Suyen are so small that the house is built at half the scale of the rest of the vessel. Lukaud referenced the structure of round houses on Yezu’s origin island in the construction, but adapted the design to blend in with the rest of the vessel’s style. The amenities are also obviously improved over the impoverished island. For instance, the stove in the back resembles a suyen design, but uses heat magic devices instead of burning fuel. That also allowed the stove to be used indoors.
The wall decoration on the left features art of Yezu’s face and their void-leaper paddles. The brown pieces at the top are Yezu’s original paddles made from plant leaves, secretly built to aid their escape to the Obmunjalae vessel. The lower ones were more sturdily built with Lukaud’s assistance.
Sadly, Yezukh’ay had no home cuisine to bring to their new kitchen, as food on their island was desperately basic. Instead, they learned recipes from other groups of suyen and the foods of other races they found enjoyable.
It’s been a long time since I made an update on this location. I decided having the dragon head faucet vomit out the water was a bit much, so I added on to it to have it holding a pot where the water now flows from. The new wings also act as the levers to turn on the water and to open the drain. Some definite improvement to materials since last time I posted an update of the bath back in… 2012, wow.
The last image:
Within the Golden Pyramid is a hollow sphere that contains a memorial to the first iteration of Sha Rephart, which failed catastrophically. At the center of this shrine is a collection of books that chronicle the progress and ultimate demise of that nation. The council lords visit this place occasionally, helping them remember the tragedy and guide their effort on making sure the current nation does not suffer a similar fate.
Located off of the northwestern circle of Sha Rephart’s core island, the Golden Pyramid was created as a memorial to a failed predecessor to the current nation. It serves as a reminder of those that were lost, and the determination to ensure that this iteration of civilization both survives and flourishes. The structure remains the tallest in the realm, though most of the upper area is just decorative, containing empty space. Inside the triangular shell is a hollow sphere that contains a shrine to collapsed nations and other historical artifacts.
The previous render of Sha Rephart island had three golden pyramids, but as I added a lot of detail I realized just how big this structure is and reverted back to just the one. My original concept sketch of the island dating back to at least 2011 included the Golden Pyramid, though it was located on a piece of land instead of free-floating in the Voidplane.
The library at night. Made some improvements to the dragon statues and added some lighting to the center tower. Also slapped some stars into the background.
This vessel is Lady Obmunjalae’s personal craft. It happens to be one of the most compact Voidplane vessels in use, contrasting greatly with her main vessel (the Obmunjalae), which is the largest. In this picture, the craft is docked at its personalized spot in the Obmunjalae vessel’s hangar bay. You can also see the Lady inviting Yezukh’ay to board, though the Suyen woman looks a little nervous about it. It’s not exactly a ‘canon’ scene, as Yezu was much younger when she first took a trip on this craft.
I did some experimenting on the vessel and I think it turned out pretty nice. The most obvious change is the new fin design on the back. There’s also a fancy emblem mounted near the back. The vessel now has doors that rotate up and can put the vessel in a locked up state or enclose the cockpit during travel. It also has the same paint job as the Obmunjalae.
For reference, here is the previous design:
