Ok, Let's Hash Out Midgaheim's Sky Ecosystem
I blame One Piece.
Ok, so, sky islands. A classic fantasy trope that appears in more than a few folk tales and myths. I've been thinking about how I'd use this trope in my Midgaheim setting, and I think I've got my angle.
Firstly, sky islands/skyslands are not naturally occurring ecosystems. The first sky island was made during the time of Atlantis, before the Time of Antiquity and thus well before the recorded history of Midgaheim itself. The Atlanteans had a ridiculous grasp of technology and magic that was almost completely lost with their unfortunate self-inflicted destruction, and their skysland was subsequently abandoned by its human masters and left to the various arepyiai (bird/human chimeras, such as harpies and sirens) they had bred to work as a servant class, including one variety of them that was exclusive to the skysland itself, the Cloudcuckoolanders, so named because they dubbed their inherited world Cloud Cuckoo Land.
While humans forgot the existence of the skysland, the Cloudcuckoolanders and their fellow arepyiai maintained it, welcoming any flying creatures that reached their shore with open wings, and slowly figuring out how to expand their burgeoning ecosystem in the clouds.
Skyslands are made possible by unique flora that the Atlanteans magi-engineered to gather water vapor, produce excessive oxygen as well as a gravity-defying magic gas, and bind minerals together into solid land over the gas layer. These curling vines even produce nutrient-rich magic beans that both nourish the residents of the Skyslands and improve their attunement to wind magic so they can defy gravity on their own to some extent.
A tribe of exiled pixies proved essential to figuring out how to take the seeds of these vines and using them to create new skyslands. With their massive Chariot Bees and Spring Rabbits, they created a system of pollinators to support the growth of new skysland vines, tending to them as they did normal terrestrial flowers.
Another chimera that was initially exclusive to the skyslands were the Flying Pigs, which some call "pigasi" as a play on the flying horses called Pegasi. The primary livestock of the original skyslands, they proved to be tenacious creatures, spreading to every new skysland right alongside their arepyiai masters, and often down to the mountain peaks beneath them.
At some point, Ogres began making skyslands of their own, though whether they had simply stolen examples of the Cloud Cuckoo Land vines to use for themselves or recreated a similar sort of plant is hotly debated - ogre historians are adamant that their sky islands were their own invention and, in fact, predate those made by the Atlanteans, but many humans are skeptical of it, and there aren't solid records of that period of the Lost Epoch's history to tell which version of events is correct.
What is known is that ogres really, REALLY like skyslands, and worked hard to make some that can handle their lifestyles. Their first innovation involved crossbreeding pigasi with cthonic boars, creating hoggogriffs - flying boars of ogre-ish size to fit ogre appetites, and which prove horrifically powerful whenever they set down on the human lands beneath the clouds.
Many other livestock were made by the sky ogres in turn, as they did not wish to live off of pork alone. Skysland oxen, while descended from normal ogre oxen, were magically altered to be able to inflate large pouches of skin on their humped backs, allowing them to float for long periods before slowly descending should they wander off of the solid ground of their skysland homes. Skysland sheep had a similar adaptation, growing long, whispy hair that manages to catch the wind, allowing them to drift through the air like clouds.
Skysland cockerels, in addition to being large enough to suit ogre appetites, are capable of powered flight unlike their normal chicken counterparts, while the gilded geese of the sky ogres are more or less just upsized gilded geese (retaining the ability to lay gold-shelled eggs despite living in vastly different environment).
Skysland ducks were bred as well, but the feed used to create them had the unfortunate side effect of also altering the various opportunistic gulls that would steal meals from them, creating the False Ruhks of the skyslands - similar in size and ferocity to Midgaheim's more famous giant eagles, but technically a very different variety of magic bird.
Eventually, between the cloudcuckoolanders and the ogres, these artificial ecosystems became common enough that native life of Midgaheim migrated to them. The Great Skysland Jaculus is a species of gliding serpent that has adapted specifically for life among the skyslands, while the Skysland Kite Hoogah, while capable of living elsewhere, particularly flourishes in the skysland environment, where it faces much less competition for food than in other ecosystems. Massive skysland amphiteres likewise find the skyslands to be prime hunting grounds.
Some chimeras likewise migrated to the skyslands to flourish away from stiffer competition. Feathered Gwibers are extremely common sights up in the clouds, massive serpents with numerous feathery wings who excel are eating the smaller skysland fauna, including massive populations of flying rats. No success story is greater than that of the Ruhkatrice, a cockatrice made by mixing the basilisk components with a ruhk instead of a common chicken. While these impressive chimeras were outcompeted by dragons and standard ruhks below the clouds, their uniquely large lungs gave them an edge they needed to survive in the skyslands longterm, where most dragons and ruhks can only briefly visit.
Unfortunately, skyslands eventually became such thriving ecosystems that they attracted a species from the continents South of Midgaheim: an enormous species of pelican known as the Ziz. These whale-sized birds can swallow dozens of arepyiai in one gulp, and even devour sky ogres with ease. When one appears, it tends to devastate everything in its path out of gluttonous hunger.
Luckily for the skyslanders, the Ziz is not an apex predator. While very good at devouring much smaller prey, it is not skilled in fending off attackers, and the many large dragons and ruhks that inhabit Midgaheim see the Ziz for the easy meal it is. It is not uncommon to see a Ziz immolated by a dragon that's less than a third of its size, with its flaming body quickly being torn to delicious shreds by its reptilian executioner any any other opportunistic aerial predators who happen upon the scene. Puff dragons, who are uniquely well-suited to life in the Skyslands among all dragon kind, are particularly fond of Ziz meat when they can get it.
