Character and Citizenry content brought to you by Azurbala Broadcasting System. None of these words are our own. We post what we want, when we want, from who we want. Mostly from people with interesting stories. That doesn’t include you Jenkins the Mutant, so stop asking.

Across continents and worlds there is one truism. Every culture, every faction, has their own way of naming things. It’s all about perspective, right? Your point of view determines how you see something and how you perceive a thing affects how you name it.

Photo Credit: Arnie of BalaBikes Guided Tours

And so it is with the unusual weather patterns often seen in the skies above Azurbala. As jungle dwellers, we’re used to cloudy vistas. They can make sunsets glorious or block them out completely. But from time to time, circling waves of deep blues and greens are reported and sometimes recorded. Lots of names have been given to what we’ve all seen at one time or another. A halo, a tornado, a monsoon, a hurricane, a cyclone. All different words for danger. All different ways to reference the more malicious side of Uxna’s power.

These sightings go back as far as anyone can remember. According to Bice Monks, the scrolls contain mentions of strange colors and wind dancing from even before Azurians were aware of Marrow as a power source. And that was like 500 years ago. So by all accounts, for as long as there have been people in our jungles, there have been…occurrences. Although if you listen to chatter, or you believe the reports coming out of the Azurbala Observatory they have been more frequent over the recent years and seem to be increasing in strength as well.

I remember an especially beautiful day, one of my first memories as a child, learning from my grandmother who was carefully adding milk and salt to eggs before she whipped them with air and poured them in a pan, I must have been all of maybe 3 years old, and I mentioned how lovely that day was. As my family’s giggles tapered off, my grandmother, who always had a flair for the dramatic, said, “Get what you can today, little one, for tomorrow it might be a monsoon.”

That may have been the first time I’d heard the warning, but it certainly wasn’t the last. When I was a little older and able to leave the house in packs for short hunts or shopping trips, I started to realize that different factions had similar phrases. My cousin called them ABs for the aurora borealis affect he’d see as the phenomenon hovered. The booth people in the Syndicate usually refer to it as The Spiral.

The booth people in the Syndicate usually refer to it as *The Spiral*.

When you get Uncle B to dive into his cups, sometimes he’ll reference an all-seeing eye. Azurbala Glassworks claims his family named it The Spirelealis. Arnie, the new assistant manager over at Bala Bikes, the one everyone hasn’t stopped chattering about since his infamous Halloween bike tours were daily sellouts, says he thinks they might be connected to something otherworldly and would prefer not to give it a name. But on the last bike tour I went on I heard him refer to it as Bala Borealis.

Arnie of BalaBikes Guided Tours refers to it as *Bala Borealis*
Photo Credit: Arnie of BalaBikes Guided Tours

Whatever it’s called, it’s always around in one form or another and one of the first things a new visitor to Azurbala might notice is that under most circumstances most Azurians seem to pretend like it’s not even there. But it is. Always somewhere, threatening destruction. Or interdimensional time travel. Or both. No one really knows.

Always somewhere, threatening destruction.

In fact, you can always spot the tourists and transplants meeting up at Bala Coffee. They’re the ones that are staring out the windows and looking up, seemingly awestruck when the circles make an appearance.

My boss, House Vosace, has had visitors from time to time, traders, spies & mercenaries, who claim to know more about the ‘why’ and ‘what’ of it all. Some who fashion themselves authors throwing caution to the wind, trekking through our jungles, only to land in one of her guest houses, trading stories, trafficking in alpha and whitelists.

I love listening to their long yarns which are sometimes accompanied by the soft sound of drumming, sometimes offered a sotto, and sometimes shared in full throated songs that could rival the working shanties from the miners. Each storyteller with its own version of the lesson to be learned when you don’t see danger coming. Each describing the signs to watch for: the winds, the spins, the glow.

Often those sharing these tales toast symbolically when they tell of close calls from flashflooding—when the very floor beneath you can be swept away and you find yourself nowhere close to where you started off. At the mention of those who have disappeared, a few death prayers are typically offered. Each name followed by the phrase, “May their essence sustain.”

There have also been more than a few mentions about those who suddenly appeared in a flash right out of the spirals like a portal. Of course, that’s just crazy talk, but there is no denying that it’s through those strangers’ eyes that we get the most interesting accounts of the monSOON™ phenomenon. Again, it’s all about perspective. When a threat is ever present, and only seldom poses any kind of danger, it’s easy to just weave it into the fabric of your day and ignore it. And so it seems life goes on in Azurbala. Despite the light shows. Despite the winds. Despite the thunder in the distance. Despite the warnings.

Despite the winds. Despite the thunder in the distance. Life in Azurbala goes on as planned. Until it doesn’t.

There are plenty of clear days here in Azurbala, don’t get me wrong. Lots of lush and humid and warm and languid hours can be spent wandering around the trails and regions of our beautiful world. Lots of things to do here. Plenty of shopping and people watching. And even though the locals may act like they don’t see anything, wherever you go you’ll find that monsoon symbol. Sometimes in a doorknob or enshrined in stained glass. Sometimes in a textile or the design of a public park. So the image is really everywhere, even when the threat is far away.

The image is really everywhere, carved into the very blueprint of our world.

As far as we know, the sky show travels around the planet and most assume that as long as they can see the stars after Nira takes over their shift, everything should be ok for another night. But when the seasons change and the winds pick up, even the calmest of characters can be spotted looking over their shoulders, glancing up, scurrying into doorways a little faster than they would otherwise.

Sometimes I think the bigger question is what do we look like from the eye of the storm.

So be aware. There is a reason Azurians warn their children to prepare for the worst. There is indeed a reason.

Episode 08: The Beholder in the Eye of the Storm

Episode 07: Blue Twenty2’s Story