A magical maelstrom, roiling with Fyres, pure unbridled chaos, and a deeply sleeping, nameless psionic energy that can rise unpredictably to swat at an unwary mind much as a dreamer slaps at the tickle of a fly on their shoulder. It churns over the Plane of Zatrikion, parting, seemingly at random to disclose new realms, or flooding over familiar lands to bury them beneath a sanguine veil. Ever it lays in wait about the borders of the small islands of sanity it has revealed, the outposts of darkness, light, death and life thriving and falling by their own choices. Only the very brave - or very foolish - would seek to travel through the Storm. Chaos unleashed, Fyre unbound in the worst storm of nature and magic imaginable. Most prefer to bypass the Storm by using Gates, Portals, and Teleportation. Land and ocean both lie beneath that shroud, but neither can be depended upon to remain the same from one step to the next, as the storm shifts and changes with every swirl of crimson cloud.

In the ocean, unpredictable currents create riptides and whirlpools, while jagged rocks stab upward like daggers plunging from water to air, though not all pierce the surface. Many lie in wait below the brine to rip open a ship's hull as a blade might tear into soft flesh. Churning water may suddenly heat to boiling, then spew forth gouts of poisonous gas, steam, and white-hot stones as unstable volcanoes explode beneath the surface. Waterspouts whirl and lash without a moment's notice, and ice storms whip up seemingly from nowhere to fling daggers of ice with lethal force, shredding flesh, cloth, even wood and metal. Lightning licks and dances in solid sheets between sky and water, creating magnificently deadly light shows in silver, blue and lavender. Banks of blindingly thick fog rise from the water frequently during the rare lulls, and can veil the next danger until it is too late to avoid. Scattered throughout the roiling flood, deep beneath the foam, beached in the shallows and, sometimes, impaled high upon rocky spires, are the broken corpses of ships who, through intention or mischance, have dared the Storm - and lost.

On land there is no greater safety - violent earthquakes tear apart the soil beneath a travelers feet, volcanoes vomit rivers of liquid fire, spew tidal waves of boiling mud, belch forth clouds of acid vapor, and riddle the air with burning stones of all sizes. Normal rivers flood with no warning, and deep lakes shudder and drain to nothing but mud and gaping pits with little more than a resigned, groaning sigh. Just as suddenly those lakes can be plunged full of water again with a pounding roar, trapping anything in the bed beneath hundreds, even thousands of feet of liquid. In days a forest can grow from scorched earth to towering height, and in moments it can be reduced to liquified, rotten sludge. Here too are the skeletons of the fallen - ships that have been plunged ashore, or that once lay on the ocean bed that has since become solid land. Broken wagons and caravans - armies that seem to have slumped into death between one step and the next, laying in neat ranks of tarnishing metal and rotting flesh, where the scavengers haven't torn them apart. Battle scenes, where lie the forms of deadly foes locked in the intimate embrace of death, gaping wounds exposed to the air and eyes wide in the innocent horror of the slain, without a single drop of blood upon or within them. Occasionally the lost wanderer may be found, desperately seeking escape - or at the very least, survival - in that nightmare dream scape.

Perhaps, of all the horrors of the bloody tempest, the most terrible are the creatures - for creatures there are within the embrace of the Mystical Storm. Those who have wandered in, and those who have been trapped within and warped, both body and mind, by the insanity and terror around them. Not everything that goes into the Storm comes out again.... and not everything that doesn't come out again died. And it is not only animals that are effected by the twisting influences. Many of those tormented wanderers were at one time members of the intelligent races. Anything that remains too long within the Storm can be subjected to Mutation.

Only one creature travels the Storm with relative impunity, and even that one goes carefully, cautiously, with utmost respect for the fury about him. He is the Stormwalker, who has given himself the name Xurk. Even he cannot remember any time when he did not walk the crimson chaos, alone but for the insane monsters that have become lost in the terror with him, and the creatures who, in return for his protection, serve him. Foremost among these subjects are the Stormflight Eyrie Gryphons.