Stormriders, 'Riders': nonhuman inhabitants of the Sea of Storms

NoK, UK mmpb, Glossary

"Riders, Murl and his fellow pilots called them. Sea-demons and Stormriders to others. Beings of sea and ice who claimed this narrow cut as their own and suffered no trespasss. Only his Jakatan forbears knew the proper offerings to bribe the swiftest passage south of Malaz Isle."

NoK, PSP HC, p.3,4

"...a dazzling sapphire figure breaching the surface: helmed, armoured, a tall lance of jagged ice couched at the hip. Its mount seemed half beast and half roiling wave."

NoK, UK mmpb, p.25

"Their opalescent armour shone silver and sapphire. They leant back then heaved their jagged ice-lances. The gleaming weapons darted across the waves. As they entered the eye of calm surrounding the skiff, they burst into mist.'

NoK, UK mmpb, p.138

"New figures broached the ice-mulched sea. Deepest indigo, their scaled helms revealed only darkness within. Instead of a long lance of barbed ice, each bore short blunt wands of amethyst and olivine. These they levelled at the distant skiff. From their tips cyan lightning leaped, splitting the air, only to dissipate into nothing before the skiff's prow."

NoK, UK mmpb, p.139

"One Rider dared to lunge within the circle of calm surrounding the fisherman. Wave-borne, it reared close only to howl and beat at its arms as its glittering pearl armour melted, then it plunged beneath the boiling surface. Far off, amid the whitecaps and rafts of ice, five indigo-robed Riders watched, conferring. They cradled amethyst wands to their chests. Cold pulsed from them as an expanding sphere. Kneeing their churning wave-mounts, they disappeared."

NoK, UK mmpb, p.242

"You may choose to stand aside, Tayschrenn," Agayla observed. 'Malaz would fall, no longer a barrier forestalling the Riders expanse. That is the ancient worry, is it not? That free of the confines of the strait, they would dominate the seas? A menace to all?"

NoK, UK mmpb, p.361

"It rolled free of its rags. Fog burst forth like smoke from burning green leaves. It drifted away, revealing something like a rod that appeared carved from precious gemstone: crystal shot through with veins of purple, bright blue, and startling verdant green. It foamed before their eyes, dissipating, leaving nothing."

NoK, UK mmpb, p.416

"It is alien to this realm. It reminds me of the Jaghut, but profoundly alien from them. They, at least, were not so different from you. It is said that long ago the Jaghut inadvertently allowed it into this world when they wrought their ice-magic too strongly."

NoK, UK mmpb, p.375

"It had spoken a halting Korelan, the language of the isles south of the Cut where the Riders and Korel inhabitants continually warred over the Stormwall - the human-raised barricade that stands between land and sea."

NoK, UK mmpb, p.455