Wistorms
In a small valley surrounded by mountains, a single sapling grew among the grass. Once a simple seed dropped by a bird overhead, it now finally was growing. Its growth was a slow process, and it was the most complex thing for kilometers out here. Its wist was unable to flow out, to mingle with the land around it, and so it twisted.
For months this small knot was a simple snag in the fabric of reality, catching only the smallest pulls in varying directions. But suddenly, and without warning, a deep shift beneath the earth tore the wist apart, and from beneath it poured out a vast storm of wist, spearing up into the sky.
The wistorm was born, and it had the heart of a sapling at its core. As it rolled down the valley, it gave the rocks that rested on the ground great and deep roots, and the grasses shot upwards into a great canopy.
Still the storm rolled on, gathering momentum and energy, building speed until it crested over a mountaintop and into the rolling hills beyond.
There it found so many new forms of life to twist and adjust, burrowing animals twisted into a single massive furry worm that tore through the earth. Clouds fell to the ground like bricks and rained rubble from the sky. Even the very shape of the land twisted and reformed ahead of it, pushing the dirt into the shape of mountains at a fraction of the scale.
It continued onward, but eventually struck a river, and the wist of the river was far stronger and older than the wistorm, unshaken from its ancient path. The wistorm could not cross the running water, and so was diverted back to the rolling hills and grasslands ahead.
It was slowed by the paths and roads left by travelers, but it could cross them with enough force. Indeed the strongest paths were being made ahead of it by the many wistbeasts born of this storm. Hooves trampled tiny streams and what could have been a barrier was quickly diverted, making a new path that could be warped.
This journey continued, whipping up the beasts and warping the land, until it ran into a small village.
The people of the village had set countless barriers in the path of the storm, ditches and troughs, paths and gutters, each a wall that could not easily be crossed.
Though the wistbeasts made it to the town, and ravaged many of the townspeople, the storm died out just a kilometer away from any of the buildings. Without the wist to fuel their existence, many of the beasts died out. For there was no life to a leaf mixed with the wind, or a snake mixed with a stream.
Those that did still live were killed by the mages in the coming weeks, who uprooted the awful creatures and brought the survivors back to their homes.
This was a gentle storm, it did not warp any humans into goblins, kobolds, or dragons. It did not turn houses or chests into awful living mimicries, that laid in wait to devour any who set foot in the corrupted village.
Indeed, it was worst for the sapling that began it all, for it was gone. Eradicated at the moment of the storms birth, only giving it a pattern to invoke when no others were to be found.
This is the way of the wistorm. It lives barely a life, sprouting where wist knots and tangles, and wreaks havoc on all in its path, before subsiding and being forgotten.
Manifestation
Where there is little movement to life, and wist is stagnant left to twist in upon itself, a wistorm can erupt. A pillar of blinding light reaching out into the heavens, it is a disturbing and powerful force.
Localization
Wist cannot easily tangle where life is abundant, for the motion of life is like a comb through hair, straightening out the tangles. Therefore, they most commonly emerge in the barren places, where only the simplest and most immobile life emerges. Mountaintops, tundras, or desert islands, this is where you will see them form.
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