Barcuvian antiweather

The only thing worse than getting rained on because you forgot your umbrella is getting rained on from underneath your umbrella. Despite this, antiweather remains one of the biggest reasons why it's inexplicable that people still live in the geographical region of Barcu. The ultimate cause of antiweather, and its localization to Barcu, remain unknown, though one favored theory blames it on an ancient and accidental case of space persuasion.

The most common form of antiweather is uprain, which condenses into droplets deep in the water table, then precipitates up until it breaks through the ground, rising into the sky to become clouds and drenching the underpants of any visitors who forgot their underbrellas. More severe forms of antiweather include antithunderstorms, where bolts of darkness cause sudden periods of silence, and antitornados, wherein air from the upper atmosphere is blown to the surface in a column that pushes away everything near its base. The crepusculum borealis was previously blamed on Kingsland, until archaeologists found evidence that the shadowy curtains that occasionally flit through the region were attested from before Kingsland was founded. The snow in Barcu is hot, but it's still just called snow.

Geologists studying Barcu often invoke antiweather effects to explain Barcu's odd mountainous geography. While some regions of Barcu are relatively flat, like the Barrowlands, the mountainous areas rise up sharply, creating stark boundaries between jagged, rocky slopes and arcadian plains. This happens, it is thought, because while normally mountains are weathered down, in Barcu they are weathered up. The air of mystery this gives Barcuvian mountains makes it a popular location for the theorized headquarters of the Esoteric Order of Florists — a somewhat flawed theory, because the Order has never (been proven to have) given anyone the common Barcuvian Laserlily, and you'd think that they'd make use of such an easily-available resource if they were really based there.

Antiweather is thought by some to be closely related to the electric undead, which have been traced back to the Barrowlands. These researchers theorize that both the electric undead and antiweather are sustained by an ancestral curse lying over the Barrowlands. Some fringe theorists further suggest that the Barrowlands' current sovereign, Sornhandr, King Eternal, has been cursed to live on as a revenant, and that this is why the last few sovereigns of the Barrowlands have all had the exact same name and appearance. The mild racism of these suggestions aside, answers have not been forthcoming, since the interns tasked with asking the King Eternal about this tend to receive ancient curses in an old and forgotten tongue instead of answers, and my grad students keep quitting when I suggest they try. However, the ancient curses often cause their victims to be struck by lightning, so the connection is plausible.

One reason to think that the Esoteric Order of Florists does have a base in the Barcu region is that the sociophysical effects of the Order's activities would be noticeable anywhere else, but would fade unnoticed into the noise of Barcu's peculiar idea of what physics is. The Book of Schemes even suggests, in some translations and interpretations, that Flandre should carry out its cutting-edge experimental work in physics close to Barcu, in order to disguise the effects of the experiments. Though, of course, since we don't really know what the Order does, we can't tell what sort of noise they're trying to blend in.

Citations: The Book of Schemes / Flandre

Rubric, you know damn well that you're the only one seriously peddling the "Sornhandr is a bunch of identical decrepit old guys pretending to be the same person throughout the ages" theory. It pisses me off that you got four interns killed off investigating that theory. Four! I've been at this twice as long, put in four times as much work, and I've only gotten two interns! This is so fucking unfair.