A plain band cut with a sign, that once carried a storm across country on someone’s arm, and kept a breath of it when the storm went home.
Wondrous Item, Uncommon (Requires Attunement) — attunement is needed only for its kept properties; anyone can wear it laden.
Rules
A band worn on the upper arm, cut through with a sign. It has two states. Laden, it holds a storm and is a burden. Kept, after its storm has been grounded at its mark, it is a minor wind item. It is laden only if someone lades it: how that is done is an adventure’s or a DM’s business (a carver cuts a held storm onto it, a weather-maker knots one into it). A ring that has never been laden is a plain band with no magic.
Laden (while it holds a storm)
No attunement. The rules for the storm itself are the Pent Storm and Great Pent Storm stat blocks; this section says only what the ring does.
Holdfast. The ring is the holdfast of one great pent storm, unformed, and of every pent storm that leaks from it. The creature wearing it is their bearer. Unformed, the storm is a cloud about a mile across above you, keeping a walking pace.
Mark and Time. When the ring is laden, its maker names a mark (the one place the whole storm can be grounded without harm) and a time (when the hold gives way wherever the ring is). You know both while you wear it, and you always know the direction of the mark.
Overhead. While you wear the ring laden, you can’t travel faster than Slow pace, and neither can anyone who travels under the storm with you and keeps your pace.
Grounding. As its bearer you can ground a pent storm bound to the ring (Pent Storm, Held Weather, Grounding: a Magic action, a save, and a Bloodied storm always fails) and, if you start your turn touching the mark (within 5 feet of it with a hand on it, which needs a free hand: Pent Storm, Terms), from the third round after it forms, the great pent storm itself (Great Pent Storm, Held Weather, Grounding at the mark).
Off the Arm. The ring leaves its bearer’s arm safely in only two ways; every other way breaks the hold.
- Passing it. At the end of a Short Rest that you and a willing creature both finish, you can pass the ring to that creature. The hold keeps, and that creature becomes the bearer. You can’t pass it to a familiar, or to a creature that was summoned or conjured.
- If you die while wearing it, the hold keeps while the ring stays on your arm. A willing creature can take it from you at the end of a Short Rest that creature finishes, as if you had passed it.
- If you are Unconscious, you are still the bearer and the hold keeps (the ring is worn, not held, so you don’t drop it). You can’t pass the ring until you are conscious again, and taking it from you while you are Unconscious is one of the other ways below.
- Any other way, the hold breaks. If the ring is removed from you in any other way (taken off, torn off, cut off), or is destroyed, or if its bearer is a creature that vanishes or is dismissed, the great pent storm forms over the ring and at once falls where it stands (Great Pent Storm, Held Weather, Broken hold), and the ring cracks.
Out of Time. When the ring’s time comes, wherever it is, the great pent storm forms over it, loosed (Great Pent Storm, Held Weather, Out of time), and the ring cracks.
Home. If its bearer grounds the great pent storm at the mark, the ring stops being laden and becomes kept (below). If the great pent storm falls in any other way (it drops to 0 Hit Points, its hold breaks, or its time comes), the ring cracks.
Cracked. A cracked ring is a plain band with a split through its sign. It has no magic and can’t be laden again.
Kept (after its storm went home)
You must be attuned to the ring to use these properties.
Weather-Wise. The ring hums faintly before weather. You always know the weather where you are for the next 24 hours, as the Weather Sensor effect of Druidcraft. You also have Advantage on saving throws against being pushed, pulled or knocked Prone by wind, including magical wind such as Gust of Wind and a storm’s or creature’s gust or downburst.
The Kept Gust. You can cast Gust of Wind (save DC 13) from the ring. Once you use this property, you can’t use it again until the next dawn (one use: ☐, cleared at dawn). The spell needs your Concentration as usual, and it is your turn’s one spell of 1st level or higher.
The setting layer
The rules above are world-agnostic; everything below is setting.
Identity
You carried a storm on this. For days it stood over you, a cloud a mile wide keeping your pace, and the band on your arm was so cold and so heavy you could think of little else. Then the storm went home, and the band kept a breath of it. Now it is a plain ring with a sign cut through it that hums, very faintly, before the weather turns. People who have worn one laden don’t talk about the walk; they just look at the sky first.
Sensory palette. Laden: cold as river water whatever the weather, heavy out of all proportion to its size, humming the note of the hold; the skin under it smells of hail and stays pale, and its wearer’s breath smokes in summer. Kept: warm as skin, light again, humming only before the weather changes, so faintly that you feel it in the bone before you hear it; when you call the gust, the hum rises to a whistle and the air moves. Cracked: a plain band with a split through its sign, silent. Never sparks, never lightning: the ring holds wind and weather, not fire from the sky.
In different worlds
| Profile | Who has it there | Local names | How it looks | Story hook | Rules caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caerwyn (mythic culture, a confluence) | cut by a fjord-born carver to carry a held storm home; fjord oaths are sworn on arm-rings, so whoever wears one gives their word on it that they will carry it | a storm-ring; one ring in particular is the Brackenholm ring | twisted silver worn thin at the twist, a bind-rune cut through it dark with the carver’s blood; laden, cold as river water; kept, warm as skin and humming before weather | The Hail-Rune of Brackenholm: a carver re-cuts two summers of held hail onto her mother’s arm-ring so that someone can walk it home, four days west, to the split stone where the Thunder’s storms break | None. The wearer’s word on the ring is an oath on no holy ground: it binds the wearer by their own tradition only. That is story; the ring’s rules don’t depend on it |
| Gritty low magic | a weather-maker’s knotted leather band, sold to drovers and sailors with the wind tied into it | a tied wind; its knots are breezes | three knots in a greasy cord, one untied; it smells of tallow and salt | a drover bought one with three knots, and only two were breezes: the third is a hailstorm, and he has to walk it to the weather-maker’s grave before the fair | none |
| Arcane-industrial | issued to the weather bureau’s couriers, who walk bottled storms on foot from the condenser yards to the discharge towers | a courier’s band; kept, a pensioner’s band | a brass cuff with a gauge whose needle drops as the storm gathers; kept, the needle twitches before rain | a courier deserted with a laden band, and its time is Thursday; the bureau wants it back by then, and her family wants to know why she ran | none |
Origins and inspiration
- Norse arm-rings (baugar), given by lords to their followers and sworn upon; the sagas tell of oath-rings kept in temples (accounts vary and are late; hedged). The lord as “ring-giver” is a figure of Old English verse too (bēaggyfa, in Beowulf).
- Wind-knots said to be sold to sailors in Finnish and Sámi tradition (reported by Olaus Magnus, 1555; hedged: an outsider’s report).
- The Carolingian tempestarii, the weather-makers Agobard of Lyon wrote against (On Hail and Thunder, c. 815).
No sacred figure is used. The ring borrows the arm-ring’s weight as a pledge, and the knot’s idea that weather can be tied up and carried; what it costs to carry is invented.