An au idea I'm playing with...
I recently started playing with the idea of writing a fanfic for Avatar the Last Airbender. (I mean, I've written fanfic before, but i have a specific idea...).
I'm still working on a couple oneshots for it, but here's the prologue/explanation. (The AU is caused by this event, and it changes the setting the rest takes place it.)
In the time of Avatar Kyoshi, the ocean was great. Battles were won and lost on the sea, by sailors and pirates of four nations.
Then, a glory-seeker whose name and nation have been lost to all time infiltrated the Spirit Oasis of the Northern Water Tribe. Here, eons ago, the Moon and Ocean Spirits had taken mortal form, and here they were attacked by the fool. He slew the Ocean Spirit, causing the seas to dry up. The Moon Spirit, enraged by her lover's death, killed the attacker, but even that did not bring back the Ocean.
The catastrophic results of the Ocean's death have been recorded many times. Where the seas had been, only rocky, barren deserts remained. What had been the ocean floor was strewn with gasping, dying fish. Those sailors unfortunate enough to have been at sea at the time found themselves stranded in a wasteland, with no way to return home but start walking.
For weeks afterward, former sailors and pirates crowded what used to be prosperous ports, wondering where to go and what to do after the disappearance of the ocean that had been their lives.
Then, when a young engineer introduced to the world his invention, a balloon lofted by hot air, these landlocked pirates and sailors turned their attention to the skies...