Southern sailors learned long ago to stay away from the far western waters. The route from Paxonia to Ekso-Balto is shorter going straight across the deep blue than following along the Constonian coast, and the winds and currents are far steadier and more pleasant away from the crashing rocks of the Murkwind Islands and pirate dens in Umala, but few dare test the open ocean.

Old legends speak of perpetual fogs hundreds of leagues across, ghost ships beneath the surface, sirens screeching in the still nights, and monsters pulling vessels into the depths; all known to be fictitious, save for the last. At the lowest crevasses of the ocean floor, where fissures in the miles thick basalt reach down to the magmatic underbelly of the Earth, the Storm Bringer lurks in the swallowing dark. For years it will go unseen, only to emerge and destroy entire fleets then disappear again, leaving nothing but a trail of flotsam. Those that escape all tell the same tale: a serpent of terrible size, tentacled, toothed, and scaled. As later recounted by a survivor who washed up on the shores of Constonia, "The only warning we had was a gathering storm overheard."