Mannasurge Sandstorms

The skies darken ahead of you, and the camels, normally stoic, even grumpy animals, suddenly begin to panic, pulling at their leads, trying to break loose of the wagons, trying desperately to get loose, to turn and to flee. Something isn't right about the storm ahead of you. The wind whistles at first, but is soon roaring, and in the distance you see the flickers, the sparks, the flames, the sudden crackling flashes of entropic energy within the thick choking dust and swirling sand that darkens the horizon ahead of you. Its covering ground quickly, as you feel your blood freeze up even in the mid-day desert heat. Orders begin being shouted, you leap free of the wagon, cutting loose a camel from the tack of the wagon team as you land on its back. The merchant men are bloody fools, trying to get their wagons turned around. You've no interest in dying in the midst of the Great Bala, and pay no heed to the shouts of protest as you ride off in the opposite direction of the storm atop your liberated mount. After all, the shouts of dead men mean very little to the living.

"Keep your wits about you and your guns loaded men!" Captain Harbruck checked his own revolver insuring the gun was loaded. His right hand found and drew his sabre as he continued speaking. "Note the bits of the dunes that are smooth, almost as if melted and heated to the point of becoming glass, and the brown-grey dust amidst some of the dune. A Mannasurge Sandstorm passed through here recently. Depending if any poor sods or beasts were unfortunate enough to be caught in the brunt of it, some may well be part of the sand dunes now, however some may just as likely be wandering nearby, feral skeletal remains kept alive by the unnatural manna surges within the storm driving by bloodlust and hatred to seek and destroy the living."

Manifestation

Seeming at first naught but a strong sandstorm from a distance, unless one has Aethyr Sight or Manna Sensitivity, or a traveling companion possessing either or both, you might get no warning. These massive storms sweep across parts of the Great Bala Desert, but thankfully rarely move beyond it into the surrounding savannah regions of Susma, amongst the villages and towns. When they do, it is a disaster without scale, capable of wiping out entire settlements, half burying them, and leaving their entire populace dead or worse. As they travel and grow, they become more visually obvious, the sky seeming to be swallowed by blackness and dust, the wind roaring even from a great distance, and sudden bursts of crackling purple energy, entropic burst of manna, as well as sudden flashes of fire, become visible.

The passage of such a storm leaves even the desert of the Bala greatly changed. Patches of the desert sands will be transluscent, flat and smooth, with a subtle green tinge within them, the heat of the bursts of Doitean having melted patches of sand to such a temperature as to form a glass-like crust. Some areas will have a white-grey dust coating, which one has to know comes from poor creatures caught within the storm, their very bones burned to ash, settling over regions of the desert. Wandering such areas can also see one very directly threatened for if creatures caught within do not find themselves turned to ash, they most likely found themselves stripped of their flesh, but their bloody skeletal remains might have been caught in a burst of Lobhadh. If such an entropic burst catches the skeletal remains of a creature, it imbues itself into the very bones, unable to go through the natural cycle of Entropy, the manna stuck in stasis, bringing an unnatural life to the skeleton. These skeletons are generally wild, frenzied and very aggressive, even more so than most restless dead of such a boney ilk.

Localization

Thankfully Mannasurge Sandstorms are very rare, occuring only in the Great Bala Desert, and though they are large storms, when compared to the size of the Bala itself, they are generally actually quite localized. They also only really occur over two seperate windows of time in the year, each roughly three weeks. These windows of time are the transitions between the rainy and dry season and then back again. It would seem that the sudden surge in Doitean and Lobhadh when the dry season is beginning can fuel them and kick start them, as well as the sudden influx of Aeir and Uisce when the rainy season is starting. Normally a Mannasurge Sandstorm covers an area of a couple dozen kilometers square, however it can last many hours and will travel, and often at impressive speeds, able to cover distances of 15-20 kilometers in an hour. It is this speed, and the directional unpredictability of them, which makes them so very dangerous.

A sandstorm skeleton by Keon Croucher (using midjourney)

The above is an example of a skeleton born of such a sandstorm. Coursing with Lobhadh, the violet manna heavily visible even to the naked eye on the Material realm, and with bones blackened and charred from the friction and heat of the sandstorm itself.

It is worthy of note that these storms do seem to inspire certain unique behaviors of some semi-sapient tribal species, such as Canins, a race of canine like beastials more commonly known as gnolls, that roam the Bala and the surrounding frontier edges of the Susman Savannahs. Known as The Feast of Sands, an odd belief and behavioral change within the normal for these ever ravenous children of Gulagor, the Eternal Famine, the Void God of Gluttony. For it is the rare time where instead of killing all they can and collecting the corpses to feast upon during their raids and attacks, they seek to take living prisoners. As one might imagine this is for nothing good or that ends well for these prisoners.

Type

Metaphysical, Arcane