Pantala

Pantala is one of the two main land masses on Wings of Fire: The New World. It is home to the three Pantalan tribes: HiveWings, LeafWings, and SilkWings.

Description

Pantala as seen without cities, towns, or markers.

Pantala is a large continent, measuring 5,760 blocks from east to west and 5,632 blocks from north to south. The whole of the continent was generated in WorldPainter by Bog, who crafted the entire land mass into an extremely accurate rendition of the continent as it appears in the series.

Pantala is home to many locations and events canon to Wings of Fire such as the Hives and Silk Bridges and the Poison Jungle. There also exist locations canon only to the lore and history of WOFTNW such as the Festival of Favors.

Locations in Pantala

The Hive Kingdom

• Cricket Hive
• Freedom Hive
• Jewel Hive
• Monarch Hive
• Sundew Hive
• Willow Hive

Kingdom of the Trees

• Dynasty
• Leaf Palace
• Tranquility

Kingdom of Silken Leaves

• Hazel Canopy
• Luna Canopy
• Luna Canopy Academy
• Serenity

History

Early mentions

After the release of Legends: Darkstalker in 2016, the first recorded request to add The Lost Continent to WOFTNW was made by Articuna-Dragon on the first of January, 2017. Very little was known about The Lost Continent at this time.

Initial development cycle

After the release of Wings of Fire: The Lost Continent in 2018, ebelle announced on the 12th of July that Pantala would be added to the server as it would be updated to Minecraft 1.13. Four days later, ebelle announced that the base of Pantala had been finished and asked for help to finish the continent.

There were few development updates after the initial two announcements. Over the following years, the project was scarcely mentioned until eventually being forgotten. By 2020, requests about Pantala were rejected by the staff, reporting that the project was not planned to occur.

Project Birdhouse

On April 14th, 2022, what started as a joke discussion in a staff call become a legitimate research session on how Pantala could potentially be added as a separate custom dimension. This method would allow the addition of Pantala without modifying the existing world. The project was code-named Project Birdhouse.

The continent's terrain was constructed by Bog using the WorldPainter software, similar to how the Pyrrhia terrain was created by ebelle. It was finished April 17th of 2022. The world was hosted on a private server to allow the staff team to build the structures such as the hives.

Because of the imbalance of territory between the three Pantalan tribes, the two south-most hives were converted into new structures called canopies and were disconnected from the other hives. The SilkWing nation was planned to be named the Silken Leaves Kingdom, not dissimilar from the canon LeafSilk Kingdom that would be revealed later in Wings of Fire: Flames of Hope.

Many of the forests on southern Pantala were created after the terrain was finished. The trees were built and placed manually by Kunahic to better suit the Silken Leaves Kingdom.

The Hives

Cricket Hive was the first of the hives to be built. The exterior was created primarily using WorldEdit with additional manual touch-ups. The lower half of the hive has thicker walls because its organic shape was produced by stacking and merging small spheres of material. The Cricket Hive exterior was copied and pasted to every hive to save time and effort on the similar hive exteriors. Cricket Hive's interior started as a winding staircase at the lower levels with various platforms attached in the large interior volume. The small middle level was dedicated to the Temple of Clearsight, which cannot be entered without a key hidden at the base of the hive. Inside, the Book of Clearsight is replaced by the Book of Verity, a book in-universe written by seer Verity of the NightWings. The book contains references to several server events as if they had been predicted prior.

Each hive has a unique interior structure. Because of the architectural complexity of the hive interiors, they had to be largely constructed by hand. It often took multiple days or weeks to complete the core structure of the interior, even before decorations and other elements. Willow Hive was not complete upon the release of Pantala and was hastily finished some time after release.

Tree Nursery

The Tree Nursery is a small building south of Freedom Hive. It was built to help bridge the gap in lore between the books and the server canon. Surrounding the tree nursery are large trees, constructed using WorldEdit. It was initially planned to have these trees all across the savanna, becoming smaller as the distance from the Tree Nursery grew. A book detailing the origin and operation of the Tree Nursery was also planned. Neither of these ideas came to fruition.

Build up to release

By the time Project Birdhouse was nearing a release-ready state, the transition to Generation 4 was in progress and plans to add Pantala to the existing map were scrapped in favor of holding it until the release of the new server. Project Birdhouse was subtly teased throughout development until it was officially revealed July 30, 2023 with a YouTube premiere of a trailer produced by Bog. It was released alongside the new server on September 2, 2023.