It is autumn of the first year of Larrikan’s Mastery degree. He has moved in to his new den, and word has spread that he has a place to stop, and is a wizard.
He is standing in a field, outside the campus, watching the clouds slide across the sky. Professor Djarlee is there with him, showing him the beginning of how magic and weather interact. The Professor is a gnome; humanoid, but small and full of energy. His hair is grizzled white and mostly avoids the top of his head. The rest of his head seems to make up for it, though.
Larrikan always found Professor Djarlee’s history lectures dull, but his magic always held Larrikan’s attention, and the weather is no different.
The two nonhumans are standing on a rise, and the Professor has been showing Larrikan how to sense and interpret the energy flows of the sky.
The energy of the sky is like the surface of a lake. It looks smooth and simple, but is fill of intricate patterns and interrelationships. Rather against the gentle flow of the clouds, both observers sense a hard, energetic object forcing its way through the sky. It feels hot, hard, and dangerous, and moves deliberately, seemingly unaffected by the rest of energies in the sky.
Larrikan identifies it, and asks, “Sir, what makes that effect?”
“I don’t know,” replies the gnome, “and I don’t like it. Let’s go back to my office, and see if a reference or two sheds any light on it.”
The two begin walking back towards the Professor’s somewhat outlying office. Both are keeping track of the hard, hot feeling thing in the sky. It is circling, apparently deliberately, plowing heedlessly through the energy fronts in the sky. Djarlee talks about how thoughtless that is, and why.
They are almost back to the Professor’s office when something new happens.
A solid bar of power lances across the sky, from the southwest. It makes a straight line between something on the ground quite far away and the solid point in the sky, and lingers there long enough to leave straight clear marks through the clouds.
The gnome and the Shy Folk look at each other, then look back at the sky. The mysterious bar of energy has gone, but the solid object has not. It has changed behavior, though. It now moves in a much less deliberate way, buffeted around by the sky’s other energies. Those energies are quite disturbed by all these things, and this solid object is being tossed around a lot. It takes a moment for Djarlee to realize the unknown point has a new primary direction: down.
The Professor is about to tell Larrikan, when a new source of energy ripples across the sky. It is a low, threatening hum, below subsonic. Djarlee grabs Larrikan’s arm, and says, “Inside! Now!” and drags the fox the rest of the way to his office. His office mage, a troll called Ktharr, looks shocked when the two burst in and Djarlee bars the door.