Long ago, the Isan homeworld of Alma was struck by a meteorite, sending survivors into the skies to forge an airborne society of nomads, now forced to search the corpse of their world, now called Karsa, for oases of calm within the ever-swirling storms of Nephelium that pollute the surface. But their proximity to Nephelium also afforded them the means to build ships powered by this energetic new material and spurred a technological revolution and the adoption of the Isan-Kanri, the ritualistic modification of their bodies using Nephelium to connect their nerves to these new machines.