Three thousand years ago, the most advanced civilization in the world sank beneath the waves in a single night.

A handful of massive airships escaped, carrying the survivors who would become the Stormcrows. This is the tragedy that shaped Dr. Maxim os Storm’s people, and the reason they hunt monsters with ancient technology and unyielding determination.

A Gift from the Powers

Long before the fall, Thule was a volcanic island far to the northwest of what the Stormcrows still call “the Continent.” The good Immortals, who opposed the forces of darkness, discovered a tribe of Viking-like warriors and saw potential. They civilized these people, introduced them to advanced technology, and gave them a mission. These mortals were to hunt down the remaining evil Immortals and imprison them in a volcano that served as a passage to the underworld.

The Immortals officially gave the island to these people four days after the winter solstice, along with the navigational knowledge to reach it through treacherous northern seas. Both Stormcrows and mundane humans still celebrate this date as Giftday, though for different reasons.

The Stormcrows celebrate it as the day their ancestors received Thule and their sacred mission. The mundanes celebrate because the Immortals sent their powerful, dangerous allies away from the mundane population instead of giving them dominion over ordinary humans. Even in that first gift, the seeds of future distrust were planted.

According to Stormcrow tradition, when the first fleet saw clouds of steam rising from the island’s many hot springs in the distance, they thought a storm was gathering on the horizon. “Thulai!” someone shouted in their ancient tongue, meaning “Storm here!” The name stuck.

The Golden Age

For centuries, Thule thrived. The hot springs of volcanic island provided energy to power their growing civilization. They developed steam-based technology that wouldn’t be matched on the Continent for three thousand years. They built massive airships that could cross oceans. They discovered three mysterious metals, called floatsteel, quicksteel, and burnsteel, that still power Stormcrow technology in Maxim’s time.

And they hunted the forces of evil. Generation after generation of Thuleans tracked down evil Immortals, bound them, and cast them into the volcano-prison. They were the first monster hunters, and they were very, very good at it.

But they were also human. And humans, given power and success, tend toward pride.

The Seeds of Corruption

Over time, the Thuleans grew proud. They expanded beyond their island, establishing colonies and exerting influence over the mundanes of the Continent. What began as a mission to protect humanity became a hunger for dominion over it.

A split developed. The humbler, more religious faction, who remembered that their mission was to serve and not to rule, were increasingly marginalized. The more ambitious faction gathered power to themselves. The Thuleans who had once been guardians became conquerors.

Arent, a man distantly related to the royal family, was among those who resisted this corruption. The good Immortals sent him a message by a stormcrow, warning of disaster to come unless Thule changed its ways. He took the warning to the king, who stripped Arent of his right to use the eagle emblem of the royal house. Arent and those who thought like him were pushed to the margins of Thulean society. They were given the least prestigious assignments, and treated as relics of a less sophisticated age.

They would be the only ones to survive.

The King and the Demon

The last king of Thule captured the most cunning of the evil Immortals still at large, a demon of terrible intelligence. The proper course was obvious: bind the creature and cast it into the volcano-prison with all the others.

Instead, the king enslaved it.

At first, he told himself he would learn from the demon, extract its secrets, use its knowledge for Thule’s benefit. But the demon was patient and cunning. It became the king’s advisor. It whispered suggestions that seemed reasonable, plans that appeared wise. And slowly, carefully, it convinced the king that the volcano-prison was not a gift from the Immortals but a threat to Thule itself.

What if the imprisoned demons escaped? What if they united against Thule? Wouldn’t it be better to destroy them all at once, to eliminate the threat forever?

The demon had a solution: a weapon of devastating power, built with burnsteel, a dangerous element that could fuel steam turbines for millennia or, weaponized, could unleash destruction beyond imagining. Detonate this weapon in the volcano, the demon suggested, and every evil Immortal in the underworld would be destroyed in an instant.

The king believed him.

The Fall

When the weapon detonated in the volcano, it didn’t destroy the underworld. It destabilized the island itself.

Thule tore itself apart. The volcanic island that had stood for centuries cracked, shattered, and sank into the sea. Thousands died in minutes: crushed by collapsing buildings, drowned by rushing seawater, consumed by volcanic eruptions, or burned by the weapon’s terrible fire.

A handful of Thule’s massive airships were in flight when the catastrophe struck. Their crews and passengers watched in horror as their entire civilization disappeared beneath the waves.

Arent, captain of one of those airships, made a decision. He declared himself and all aboard his ship “os Storm.” For his emblem, he chose the stormcrow, the bird that brings warnings of danger. Other survivors followed his example. They would carry forward what they could salvage of Thulean knowledge and technology. They would continue their mission to hunt monsters and protect humanity.

But they would never forget what pride and corruption had cost them.

The Heritage That Haunts

Three thousand years later, Maxim os Storm carries the weight of this history. Every time he fights an algomancer, he’s continuing the mission his ancestors received from the Immortals. Every time he uses Thulean technology, whether it’s floatsteel to fly or quicksteel to heal, he’s wielding the remnants of a civilization destroyed by its own hubris.

The Stormcrows preserve ancient knowledge, hunt monsters, and maintain their isolation precisely because they remember what happened when their ancestors grew proud and powerful. The mundanes distrust them precisely because they remember Thulean colonialism and the Empress Inquisitor who followed in those footsteps centuries later.

Breaking the Chains of Thule

But the Stormcrows still suffer from the arrogance, the belief in their own uniqueness, that destroyed Thule. Their insistence on close interbreeding has doomed them to extinction. Maxim believes that their mission matters more than their bloodlines. To him, it is more important that the Stormcrows accept the mundanes as equals, and share their knowledge with them, than that the descendants of Thule continue to exist as a distinct group. His partnership with Chloe might just give him the chance to show how this can be done.

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