A Storm-Walker is lean and long-limbed, of about a Human’s height. Its skin crackles with static, small sparks running over it and jumping to anything near, and in the flashes of the storm it shows faint branching marks like frost on glass. Its hair floats around its head in a halo, lifted by the charge, and lightning flickers in it. Its eyes glow the electric blue of the storm.

It moves with a jerky, unpredictable gait, as if riding invisible currents, and sometimes rises off the ground in a reversed patch and walks on air. It speaks in bursts, its voice crackling like a fire, and smells of ozone and scorched glass.

They live out on the fused plain among the crystal spires that channel the bolts, in small, wide-ranging groups. They go where the storm is strongest.

They are bold, quick, and restless, and value courage, adaptability, and the ability to dance with the storm. They find outsiders grounded and vulnerable, and many are amused by visitors flattening themselves on the glassy ground. Some take an interest in the Struck, visitors marked by lightning, and teach them to live with the storm that calls them back.

They absorb electricity directly through the skin and need no food or drink. Lightning does not harm them. They ride it, stepping into a rising bolt and coming out where it ends, which is how they travel and how they pass messages across the zone.

Whether they are born to the storm or were once the Struck is debated; some of the Struck are said to have become Storm-Walkers. They seem long-lived.

Smiths after storm-steel do best with a Storm-Walker to tell them when and where to work. A Storm-Walker’s touch in a building storm can kill.

Herders on the plains say lightning that strikes upward is a Storm-Walker going home. Some faiths of storm and sky count them as messengers of their gods; they have no message from anyone.