Arcadia

"The age of exploration has dawned upon the world of Arcadia. Brave adventurers set sail across the vast skies in search of treasures untold. And, where there is treasure, there will be Air Pirates..."

— Skies of Arcadia opening

The world of Arcadia from the Great Silver Shrine.

Arcadia is the world in which the game Skies of Arcadia takes place. The world is splintered into airborne landmasses and its people utilize flying ships to travel the skies.

The sky is separated into three "layers": Upper, Central, and Lower Sky, though most ships are only capable of traveling in Central Sky due to heavy atmospheric pressures and wind. Underneath Lower Sky is the Great Cloud Sea, an impassable sea of cloud and wind which has lead to myths of a "land of the dead" below. In reality, the world below, referred to as Deep Sky and accessible via the Vortex, is an extremely dark and inhospitable place, full of mud and marked by torrential rain and thunderstorms. Raja are the only known living beings underneath, and Soltis is hidden below.

Arcadia is orbited by six moons of different colors: red, green, blue, purple, yellow, and silver. These moons influence Arcadia and its various cultures heavily. Thousands of years prior to the events of the game, the Old World was destroyed by the Rains of Destruction after already suffering heavily from the rampage of the Gigas; it is unknown if this is what caused the world to become a collection of scattered islands or if the world was always such.

Vyse was the first to officially discover that the world is round.

Trivia

• Although the planet is apparently spherical (as seen when viewing the planet from the Great Silver Shrine), the north and south poles are erroneously linked. This would make the planet the shape of a torus rather than a sphere, as realistically going south past the south pole would have one be traveling north on the other side of the planet, not southward from the north pole.
• The lack of a solid planetary surface on Arcadia, the unusually large number of moons orbiting the planet, the floating landmasses, the multiple sky layers of the planet, the Deep Sky having violent thunderstorms as well as exceedingly powerful winds suggests that the planet is more likely a Mini-Neptune, which also implies that Arcadia is a gas planet rather than a rocky planet. The "mud" at the Vortex could be compared to metallic hydrogen or some exotic liquid ocean while the floating landmasses are similar to the concept of aerostat habitats.
• Enemies do not appear in Upper and Lower Sky, noticeable once the player has the ability to traverse them in the Delphinus after returning from Glacia with the Purple Moon Crystal.
• In the original Japanese version of the game, Eternal Arcadia, the world is not actually named; this was changed in later releases of the game, where the world is named Arcadia in the game's opening.

Gallery

In-game world map of Arcadia.

In-game world map of Arcadia once Soltis has been raised, which causes the sky rifts to dissipate.

The Silver Moon, the Great Silver Shrine, and Arcadia.