[PF2E Ritual] Weather Telling
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“Why are you so angered? Are the Wind and the Waves cross with each other, or have I offended them with my story? I…”
The capricious winds blew and spun around Melker, as always a chorus of notes and whispers all talking, crying, laughing, teasing and comforting at once. But today all seemed on the edge of a knife, whirlwind hands tucked at his clothes and his weather-eaten hair, the laughing would suddenly snap into rage and he felt nervous and heavy, like a current of slow electricity was passing through him into the deep earth.
Melker had heard and spoken to the winds all his life, he knew them more than most weatherworkers, but still this was something he had never seen ,neither heard of from all his fellows and old masters. Cruel winds, angered gods, this he knew, but something here was amiss.
“Tell me where it is, my friends. If you even know yourselves, tell me what is making everything feel this…”
He hesitated, what was it? It felt… full, and not just the air on him, but all around. It felt loud and heavy like a crowded dance at the Sunwrought Festival, or a wet and hot summer evening, but also something else, another feeling… he couldn’t figure it out.
“Everywhere” the winds all said at once, “It’s everywhere and nowhere, a desperation and a death. It screams of things that cannot be, that shouldn’t be, that never were. It cries of interrupted lives. Make it stop, it drowns itself and everything else with it, make it stop!”
He understood now what the last feeling was. It was a deep, slow pain, and a desperate fear. An enormous dread, too wide to feel all at once, too much for one person to grasp. Terror.
He thanked the winds and cried. A big storm was coming.
I’ve been reading the Books of Earthsea (as should be obvious to those who have as well, with my use of the word “weatherworker”) and it’s been giving me a lot of ideas! I want to dig more into the relationship with nature, elements, the weather.. And the above text is part of a large plot in my current campaign that explores a lot of those things.
Until I have bigger things to share about the elements and the weather, this simple ritual will have to do! It’s a rough translation from a PF1e spell called “Read Weather” into a ritual, which is a bit awkward because the balance of magic changed quite a bit between editions (and there aren’t really good references for low-level rituals in the official rules as of now). Maybe this is badly balanced or the wrong level, hard to say, if you think it is please tell me in comments!
