#AMBER SKIES

[crookedbranchbooks]

Amber Skies by @cryptotheism

June 12, 2025

Full cloth case binding with paper overlay and design in heat transfer vinyl.

I followed Amber Skies when it was being updated weekly, and read the latter half of it live. Even though I hadn't reread it in since, so much of the worldbuilding and the imagery stuck with me. So when I started thinking about internet-published texts to bind, Amber Skies was one of the first things to come to mind. Almost all of the styling of this book stems from me finding the black and white geometric patterned paper in paper source. It defined the "black and white with yellow accents" color scheme, and inspired the maze motif in the title page and chapter headers. The "maze" is meant to evoke the complex, confusing, and often deadly shafts and halls of Teleth Thadeyn, and the front page design is roughly the shape I imagined the megacity to be (although I would not be shocked to learn that I'm off base there, Heaven being at the top of a spire is a fun visual but not structurally sound). The yellow accents on the cover are all in a handwritten/hand-drawn style, meant to contrast against the stark black and white lines, representative of all of the people (and creatures) that have passed through Teleth Thadeyn and made their home their long after the death of the architects. The symbol on the back is the shaft-diver sign for danger, as described by Kali: "an inverted triangle with a cross through it."

Materials: covers - 2 mm grey board spine stiffener - paperboard covering material - white linen bookcloth overlay - screenprinted mulberry paper with geometric design vinyl - siser easyweed yellow vinyl

endpapers - yellow fine paper with gold printing endbands - faux double core french endband, with cotton embroidery floss edge painting - yellow and orange acryllic paint textblock paper - Church bookbinding paper, 20lb, cream, 8.5x11

Typeset: Designed in Scribus. The body font is Libertinus Serif, headings are in SaaSeriesDDOT. Maze images from Adobe Stock.

Cover Design: Designed in Photopea. Font is Permanent Marker.

dimensions: 5.5"x8.5"

[cryptotheism]

The city watchman had a choice: acknowledge the corpse, or continue eating his sausage roll. His stomach growled. To acknowledge this particular corpse would mean acknowledging that it was a famous and politically charged corpse, one with potentially ruinous consequences for his pension, weeks if not months of hard thankless work, and mountains upon mountains of paperwork. To continue eating a sausage roll meant a warm and savory snack to ward off the cold. And! Would a policeman risk getting sausage roll crumbs on a crime scene? Of course not. Especially not a crime scene with such momentous implications for his career and personal safety. That would be unprofessional. It was perhaps the easiest choice he had ever made. Someone was going to have to deal with the corpse. As long as it wasn’t him.

The respite of the sausage roll allowed him time to weigh his options. He turned to face the street. He would have remarked on how bad the rain was getting, had a small plastic woman not collided with him.

After an embarrassingly long moment of regaining his footing and groping for anything grope-able, the watchmen seized her by the lapel of her ratty raincoat. “Hey!” He barked through a volley of sausage roll buckshot. “Watch where you’re going! Don’t you know this is a crime scene?” He put the small plastic woman down as quickly as he could, and shoved her a good distance away.

Digit the Witch tried to speak, specifically to swear, but all that came out was an electrical cable. Digit the Witch could not stand cities, and this one was in the running for the worst city she had ever visited. It was her turn to take a moment. After slurping the cable back into her throat, and punching herself in the stomach to reset the connection, she managed to croak out: “Kshmorri saur,* are you with the city watch?”

The guard’s eyes narrowed. Surely he didn’t hit her that hard. “What’s it to ya?”

“I was hired by the constabulary, but I cannot find it in this strandher** of a city.”

The guard laughed at her. He wasn’t forcing it either. The idea of her joining the city watch was truly, genuinely, hilarious to this man. Digit scowled up at him, and the city beyond.

“Actually” he chucked. “That is a great idea. The constabulary is down on viridium road. You can’t miss it. The street is green. You head down there, and tell them the governor guard has a case for them. There’s a body at the Calf and Camphor. Got that?”

“Green street. Calf and Camphor. Got it.”

“Good!” the guard laughed to himself again as he watched the small plastic woman scramble away. He took a final bite of his sausage roll. The moment she was out of sight, he strolled away. What luck! He thought to himself. What luck indeed! ---

*apologies, ugly hog **shit-heap

More

[terrafey]

“Digit the Witch tried to speak, specifically to swear, but all that came out was an electrical cable. Digit the Witch could not stand cities, and this one was in the running for the worst city she had ever visited.”

Digit, from @cryptotheism’s Six Stomach Murder. check out the first part now and if you like the art, consider throwing me a tip!

[jame7t]

ive been reading amber skies

[ghostmoor]

i read Amber Skies recently and it's been living in my head ever since. working on other characters but heres some Teacher sketches. notes under the cut

i got a little confused in the first few chapters so i think some of my interpretation of her appearance was a little off but i don't care to correct it. let's go

skin is kind of shiny and has a squishy rubbery feel to it

arm/leg "joints" aren't really joints, more like convenient stable bending points that approximate a humanoid form but she can slide them around and make her proportions look weird

undecided on if i want her to just forego any kind of elbow joint entirely and just have bendy cartoon arms

i forget if she was specified to have ears or hair but i like them so they're there. hair is kind of an unnatural-looking grey, like you saturation-slidered all the colour out of it

[bug-gender-art]

chapter 61 of @cryptotheism's Amber Skies hit me so hard with the found family dynamic of these 5 that I just had to draw it. the coziness of this short passage is so impactful in the otherwise inhospitable landscape of the story.

no matter how bleak the world is, there can still be comfort. there can still be rest. there can still be love.

[concreteafterrain]

bugs are in fact the most catholic type of animal

[lettuce-tv]

another heap of amber skies chapters, yay!

[bookfirstlinetourney]

Round 1

She awoke to a boxcar full of corpses, which was damn lucky, because it meant she now had a one-way train ticket to exactly where she wanted to go.

-Amber Skies, @cryptotheism

So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.

-Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, Brandon Sanderson

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.

-Hogfather, Terry Pratchett

[cryptotheism]

The Bear: "Okay here, got another question from a caller...ahem. Howdy girls, love the show. I gotta ask. What rigs do you personally run?"

Lilly: "Well I run a-"

"Hold it Lil. Before you yap everyone's ears off, I got an idea. I know what you like. You know what I like. How's about I describe your rig, and you describe mine?"

"Oh but I wanna yap! It's the radio Bear, people tune in for the yappin."

"You can yap! Just not about your Mako. And just to torture ya, I'm gonna go first."

"Fine! Fine! You better make me look good though!"

"Lil here runs a Pointer&Short Mako S-610. For those that don't know, only about 3000 of these things exist. They were a sleek custom job for some fancy courier service that went belly up about a century ago. I don't even wanna know how much it's cost Lil to restore this thing-"

"The parts are all original-"

"Aht aht aht, it's my turn. But yeah, the parts are all original. Original hand-machined bioceramic plating. Original glossy red paint. Original custom fins and gilding. This thing even has custom vinyl upholstery. This nut learned upholstery for this rig."

"Tell em about the coat."

"The coat? Oh right. So, the Mako's bioceramic is an older formula. It's heavier than the modern stuff, heals slower, and it scars. But Lil's? Not a scratch on the damn thing. She moisturizes it folks. She moisturizes her rig."

"Damn right I do! You tell me a machine that pretty doesn't deserve it! And hey when's my go?"

"Oh by all means take the floor."

"The bear drives an Atlas P2. Now, some of you out there are thinkin' 'thats it? My dad has an AP2' Well you ever wonder why your dad has an AP2? There's a good reason for it."

"It is not a Dad Rig."

"Bearie, it's a Dad Rig. Just embrace it. Listen, three words. Ease of modification. There is not a single part in the AP2 that ain't cheap, available, and standard. It is the canvas upon which my lovely gearheaded obsessive of a co-host will paint."

"You're makin me sound like a weirdo!"

"Bearie I haven't even started."

"Now listen here!-"

"Nope! My turn! Listen, Bear here likes to futz. She would call it optimizing, or tinkering. But I call it futzing. I think she's tuned up every last damn nut and bolt in this thing. The AP2 is a general purpose work rig. But I think I could do brain surgery in this Rig."

"Well maybe not brain surgery.-"

"Will you shut up!" [The microphone picks up a playful batting noise.] It's a gorgeous piece of engineering. Brilliant! But you know what color she painted it?"

"Oh come on-"

"Grey! She painted the damn thing grey! Her co-host is a lifelong expert on bodywork detailing, and this bitch paints her rig grey!"

"Alright alright settle down! That's gonna do it for this episode of screw loose!"

[terrafey]

Emerald Seas by @cryptotheism! Read the story in its entirety here, or start from the beginning with Amber Skies.

Click for higher resolution! Like my art? Leave me a tip!

[valkirswrath]

I just finished amber skies, it was amazing. It gripped in a way not unlike Gideon the Ninth did.

You can read it over @cryptotheism

You should read it

[gentlemean]

I'm currently rereading Amber Skies (@deeper-ever-deeper) by @cryptotheism, and couldn't help but create some fanart! They've been posting these short in-universe radio-shows as extras, and I recreated one of those as audio!

audio recordings, voices, editing by me

script by the Caretaker

read the entire novel on their ao3

[alias-a]

The autumn chill that wakes me up

You loved the amber skies so much

[krakenator]

yes i know the first house is described from space as beautiful and blue, but also consider- Amber Skies + TLT is extremely funny

[lettuce-tv]

another 6 amber skies chapters, yay