Great Tempests

The Great Tempests are persistent storms of clashing positive and negative energy that travel throughout the Stormlands. They largely remain along the elliptical Storm-Path surrounding the Oasis, a route that is almost 1500 miles long and up to 240 miles wide.

Description

The origins of the Great Tempests are poorly understood, but they seem to have existed for millennia at least. Positive and negative energy from unstable planar tears seeps into the atmosphere above the Storm-Path, where the forces explosively annihilate each other. In doing so they cause fierce storms of unpredictable and cutting winds and lightning that kick up large quantities of dusty, electrically-charged red soil that scours the landscape. Rain is seldom brought by the Great Tempests, but when it does it tends to fall in a phenomenon known as blood rain by the Trailblazers, as the water is laden with red sediment. The Great Tempests also frequently cause tornadoes.

For unclear reasons the planar tears migrate counterclockwise around the Oasis, and as such the Great Tempests are not present over the entire Storm-Path at once. Rather, they tend to occupy an area of around 400,000 square miles at any given time. It takes roughly four to five years for the planar tears to make a full rotation around the Storm-Path. While the worst of the storms are generally isolated to a certain region at any given time, smaller flares can occur at any point along the Storm-Paths and are a constant hazard.

Effects

Besides their dangerous and unusual weather patterns, the Great Tempests have a number of odd effects on the areas through which they travel. Magic in the region influenced by the Tempests can be highly unpredictable, with casters finding that their spells are often either far weaker than they would expect or else dangerously powerful. The storms can also leave magic behind in their wake, in two distinct ways. Aeon stones are formed only in the Storm-Path as natural stones, crystals, and gems are imbued with powerful magical forces by the Tempests. The sheer concentrated magical energy can also precipitate out in the form of ice, unstable shards of pure magic.

Though nothing is known to be able to withstand the full force of the Great Tempests and survive intact, they also affect those on their margins. Depending on the proximity to each type of planar tear, flora and fauna alike, as well as people, can end up reshaped by the storms. They can bring about odd mutations, or induce a form of persistent withering that leads to a slow death. Even the dead are not immune from the effects of the Tempests - particularly strong flares from the negative energy tears are prone to raising the bodies of the deceased.

In society

The peoples of the Stormlands are well-aware of the dangers wrought by the Great Tempests, yet still find themselves drawn to them nonetheless. The aeon stones they create, for example, are a source of wealth hunted for by Trailblazer prospectors, who periodically pick up and move their settlements into the wake of the Tempests in hopes of new windfalls. In the Oasis, the gunpowder states fight incessant wars for control of the more verdant areas around the storms, where they can use the positive energy for their own benefits. For some the Tempests even factor into their faiths.