Tempest Lords

They were, perhaps, the first of the Makers. They charted the seas and the stars. They leashed the elements to their will. They built mighty ships and flying castles, sailed forth from their island home and conquered. All who stood against them were reduced to ash and glass and slag.

The pride of the Tempest Lords was warranted, but their hubris led to their fall. They sought to tear their entire homeland free from the earth, to set it floating above the world they ruled.

They failed. Calamity followed.

The seas boiled and belched forth horrors.

Fire rained from the sky. Their island capital sank beneath the waves, and the spine of their empire was shattered. Civil war erupted. Colonies rebelled.

The Tempest Lords who survived were scattered to the winds. Some tried to restore the empire, but met violent ends at the hands of rivals or would-be subjects.

Soon, only a few Tempest Lords remained, enigmas even among other Makers.

One of these survivors, Stormcatcher, made her way to the the Flats, beyond even the most far-flung of the empire's old outposts. There, between four other nations of Makers, she built her tower. And when the horrors of the Things Below were set loose upon the world, Stormcatcher's tower—what folks now call the Ruined Tower—was the last of the Makers' enclaves to fall.

Language and names

Tempest Lord writing was ideogrammatic (characters represent ideas, not sounds), and they spoke a primordial language—all who heard it understood it as their native tongue. As such, the names of Tempest

Lords are rendered as descriptions, titles, or honorifics.

Example names: Brinedrinker, Eyes-Like-Lightning, Fardweller, Foehammer, Lightning-Is-Her-Spear, His-Smile-Isa-Harbor, Mind-Like-Fire, Moonspeaker, Oarbreaker, Rainchaser, Soother-Of-Waves, Sparkspitter, Squalltalker, Starfinder, Taller-Than-Masts, Voice-of-Thunder, Wavecutter, Waymaker, Windwalker

When other Makers spoke or wrote of them, they used their own tongue. Windwalker was called Vetrodokha by the Green Lords and Avaelkerzhaer by the Stone Lords.

Hooks

• A terrible storm sweeps through, a sky-island floating in its eye
• A scholar believes that Stonetop hides a trove of Tempest Lord artifacts
• Cultists seek an orrery with the power to change the stars, to hasten a conjunction that will free their master
• Bandits unearth a Tempest Lord weapon and threaten Stonetop with it
• A hdour seeks to revive a vitrified Maker

Themes

Pick, or roll 1d12.

Sites

Pick, or have someone roll the Die of Fate.

Lingering signs

Pick, or have someone roll the Die of Fate.

Scars of unchecked power

For example:

• A crater, lousy with fulgurites and shards of glass
• A fractal, branching pattern etched in a bare expanse of stone
• A rune-etched menhir or large hunk of makerglass, near which some fundamental law or force (time, gravity, space, light, etc.) is warped
• A barren stretch of glass pebbles, strangely colored and always warm
• The vitrified remains of a Maker, a monster, a small army, etc. Crude glass shapes hinting at what they once were, flash-frozen in time Places scarred by such power might very well be radioactive, haunted sites, and/or corrupted by the Things Below.

Fragments of a ship or sky-island

For example:

• A ship's hull, mostly buried but somehow still intact
• A torn sail of aetherium mesh, strapped to a rusty metal cross
• Strange objects, strewn about and long-buried: a crumpled brass cylinder, an etched metal disk, an oversized ship's wheel, a rudder, etc.
• A rocky outcrop, the stone alien to the surrounding terrain, tilted at an odd angle
• A cracked slab of granite, big as the granary and shot through with aetherium, floating a few feet above the ground and spinning listlessly
• Slabs of worked stone: broken, buried, and scattered, like a child's toy dashed from impossible heights

Enigmatic structures

For example:

• Iron spires, like hollow rusted trees, placed in a line across the landscape
• A black cube the size of a house; when lightning strikes, the earth lights up for miles with glowing lines that fade over the next few minutes
• Stone plinths along a ridge line, some of them topped with 6-foot-tall sculptures, like tulips, spinning in the breeze
• Copper cylinders, each maybe 8 feet tall and caked in verdigris; mostly buried in white and chalky soil
• Megaliths, etched with ideographs that describe the motions of the stars
• A bronze plaque upon a stone slab, the only notable feature for miles; untouched by lichen; deeply etched ideographs begin with the phrase, "This is not a place of honor"

A ruin

Pick or roll for themes, structure, purpose, architectural elements, and condition. Place the ruin in an appropriate terrain (see The Flats for the Flats and South Manmarch for the South Manmarch, but Tempest Lords ranged far and wide). Populate it with lingering signs, artifacts and/or dangers of the Tempest Lords or the appropriate region.

Aetherium

An alloy of copper and lightning. Pure aetherium is light, soft, and ductile (similar to tin), but the Tempest Lords and Forge Lords could further alloy it or manipulate it with magic to have a wide range of properties and uses.

Pick or roll for form and characteristic.

Making aetherium

A clever arcanist might rediscover the process of making aetherium. To do so, you must…

• Study a largely-intact aetherium crucible for a few weeks
• Study both active and depleted aetherium for a few weeks
• Consult a knowledgeable metalsmith (or be one yourself)
• Acquire the appropriate chemics (Value 0) and a sizeable mass of copper (Value 1, immobile)
• Devise some way to introduce lightning to molten copper
• Risk injury, fire, destruction, and failure

When you meet all the requirements, you can transform a purse of coppers (Value ◇

0) and the appropriate chemics (Value 0) into an ingot or casting of pure aethe-◇ rium (magical, crude, possibly dangerous,

Value 1 to those-who-know). The process is risky; you are Defying Danger each time you undertake it.

To imbue aetherium with one of the characteristics above, you'll need access to a trove of Tempest Lord or Forge Lord lore, at least. Beyond that, Make a Plan with the GM.

Artifacts

Major arcana

These might very well be associated with the Tempest Lords.

• The Azure Hand
• Ineffable Words
• Storm Markings

Dangers

Monsters and entities

• A thunder drake or luglfsk, drawn to aetherium
• Ghosts or revenants, victims of the Tempest Lord's experiments, callousness, or wrath
• An archon, ensuring some Tempest Lord artifact goes unused
• An elemental spirit or a fundamental, tethered to a device or artifice
• A primordial entity or something corrupted by the Things Below, vitrified and held in stasis.

Damage d8-2 (hand)

5-7 6 to 11 small; Armor 2;

Damage d8 (hand)

8-9 12 to 18 Armor 2;

Damage d10 (hand, close)

10-11 19 to 23 large; Armor 3;

Damage d10+3 (hand,

close, reach, forceful)

12 24 to 28 huge; Armor 3;

Damage d10+5 (hand,

close, reach, area, forceful)

Attacking the matrix: A matrix itself has only 3 HP. If reduced to 0 HP, the spirit within escapes, dealing the vortex's current damage (+area, one range tag greater than normal).

When a PC tries to strike the matrix inside an active vortex, the vortex's Armor applies. Also, tell them the requirements and/ or consequences. such as:

• You'll have disadvantage to Clash/ Let Fly/deal damage
• You'll need to create or wait for an opening, where the matrix is exposed
• You'll need to get in close/let it engulf you
• You'll need a longer/heavier/magical weapon
• You'll risk losing/ruining your weapon
• You'll suffer its attack, no matter what

Pick options based on the nature of the vortex, the PC's weapon, and the rest of their fictional positioning. The larger the vortex, the harder it is to strike the matrix.