The Burnt World of Athas

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My friends. I sail the Silt Sea once again. For today’s clairvoyant missive in the name of the Athasian Survey Project, I share a remarkable sight.

Since I had come this far out into the silt, and was equipped with a craft and crew capable of making the journey, I felt this was my chance to see the relatively new ecological phenomenon which had so concerned the Consortium– the Cerulean Storm.

As we sailed overnight from the southeastern edge of Morghaz island, the image you see now greeted me in the morning as I came onto the deck. It seems we were skirting along the outer edge of the Cerulean Storm, the source of all the newly occurring bad weather across the Tablelands.

From the charts, I knew we were west by northwest of the main body of the storm, facing south. Even at our considerable distance from the heart of the storm (10 leagues by both our navigator’s and my own measurements on the maps), the Storm was still quite intimidating.

Even this far away from the storm the heat and humidity is quite harsh, amplified by a feeling I almost didn’t recognise– humidity. It seems the massive, roiling cloud is actually scalding steam laced with occasional loud blasts of lightning. Perhaps the lost Valley of Dust and Fire still has an effect on this weather phenomenon after all. I daresay nothing living would be able to weather a journey into that storm without powerful protections.

It wasn’t long before my captain turned us to port and we made our way back towards the Tablelands. As we were leaving, however, I did spot something far in the distance, north of the Storm. It looked like another silt craft, but of a design I didn’t recognise. Neither my own talents nor those of the crew yielded any information on the craft and our attempts at using the Way to probe the craft detected no signs of life. It didn’t seem to be moving either, only serving to raise still more questions as to what is actually inside the Cerulean Storm.

If you have any information on the Storm, please do share it. Otherwise, until next time, may the moons guide you.

Edge of the Cerulean Storm
Cerulean Storm by Neujack

(This one might be a tough one to place, but for the clever soul who can guess the location on Earth, I will reward you with this bottle of strange fizzy blue liquid. It seems to be named after a bull of some sort…)

Neujack

Been playing Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs since 1987. Been playing Dark Sun since it was released. Returned to Athas in 2020 for its expanded timeline and geography.