Ash Storms as an Entropic Gloom, by Welly Wormswill

[ItsHeroTime]

Ash Storms as an Entropic Gloom

By Welly Wormswill

Foreword

Most longstanding theories of Ash storms conceptualize the Ash as an element carried from what were the outer rings into the wastes. The Theophanic school explains it as Divine Curse bringing doom to the world, the Gradualists explain it as an entropic process, and the Geothermalists explains away Ash as a fundement of creation or destruction. The Theophanic school is wrong, the Geothermalists are wrong, and the Gradualists are right but don't offer a good explanation.

So what are Ash storms? Why do they exude lethal levels of positive energy? They are not just wave of Ash born onto he wind, but a magical force pretty much like a Gloom.


On the Properties of Ash

Living matter caught in an Ash storm experiences severe burns and tissue degradation caused by positive energy. Obviously there is the risk of choking on Dust but that's not relevent here.

Its pretty well known before Ringfall Ash had powerful healing properties. If this is true why are the Ash storms harmful? Overexposure? The Geothermalists argue the healthful Ash is what makes up the wastes which repulses the the baneful Ash that constitutes storms. If that is the case why can't the dust of the desert be refined into a healing admixture? And why is the Ash left behind by a storm not harmful to touch?

My skin doesn't burn when the wind whips up a cloud of Ash. If the sun isn't there to heat the Ash I can walk on it barefoot just fine. Has the quality and character of Ash changed since Ringfall? No. Fauna and flora of the desert are not so different compared to before Ringfall by all records.

Obviously, the Ash we see is mostly unextraordinary, and not responsible for the prime dangers of an Ash Storm.


On the Properties of Glooms

So Glooms are obviously a suffusion of Otherworldy magic into the local wildlife. There are theories around it being driven by jinn, residual planar energies, its probably one of the two or both or something. The obvious consequence is local flora and fauna taking on the properties of an element or other esoterric entity like ooze, fire, shadow, or very rarely mead. Its kind of charming in a way. I'd tack it up to jinn mischief or whimsy that there are probably ones out there for desserts or dogs out there too.

You'll see jackals developing lava teeth, goblins swollen with muscle, trolls overed in rhym and hocking globs of supercold mucus at you.

But in any case these emanations of arcane energy appear and disappear unpredictably over the desert, imperceptable except for the effects on the local environment.


Summary

I propose that an Ash storm, and the resulting deadly conflux of positive energy, is not just magical Ash whipped up by wind but the actual biproduct of magical transformation. The Ash storm is an event not unlike arcane disintegration where Ash is just a biproduct of creation reduced to its most basic component.

This is pretty similar to Glooms which are suffusions of elemental and otherworldly magic into the local environment. Ash storms are probably (at least ninety nine percent likely) a similar phenomenon, one that specificaly results in an entropic degradation of all organized elemental materia.