Storm-Bringers

Overview

The Storm-Bringers are among the Sky-Weavers of the Unbound Gale: beings that raise turbulence, not to destroy but to test the resolve of travellers.

Appearance

A Storm-Bringer is a dark, ragged cloud the size of a barn that tumbles across the sky against the wind, trailing grey rain and shreds of mist. Inside it, glimpsed through the murk, turn bright, quick shapes like wings or blades. It comes with a rising howl and a sudden cold, and the air pressure drops before it so that the ears ache. When it has passed, the air smells of rain on stone.

Habitat and Range

They roam the skies of the Unbound Gale, and are met most often on its busiest wind-roads, where travellers are.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Storm-Bringer seeks out travellers and throws turbulence at them, buffeting, spinning, and confusing them, and watches what they do. Those who hold their course it lets go. Those who falter or turn back it chases further. It does not seem to want anyone dead, but it does not stop when someone is in danger.

Abilities

It raises sudden, violent turbulence that can scatter a traveller's thoughts and memories as well as their body.

Uses and Dangers

Travellers say that one who passes a Storm-Bringer's test comes away steadier. Their danger is the test itself, which some do not pass.

Lore and Belief

Travellers' advice in the Gale is to go with the flow and keep one's destination clear, and some say a Storm-Bringer is the plane asking whether the traveller remembers it.

Songs of the high peaks tell of the warrior who rode a Storm-Bringer's gale across three valleys to warn a hold of a raid and arrived before the raiders had left their camp.

Where It Appears

• The Unbound Gale