Boreal, The North Wind

The truth of life in the Universe is that weather controls the world. The life-giving water that flows across Golarion, the maintenance of healthy forests, and the snows, thaws, and rains that help crops flourish all rely on the weather—weather that's shaped at the whims of the winds. Anemoi are powerful beings from the Plane of Air tasked by ancient gods to guard the skies and shepherd the winds of every world across the planes. They guide the winds along their natural paths, and while neither malevolent nor malicious, an anemos has little regard for how a storm might affect any creature caught in its path.

Anemoi can take several forms and shift between them as easily as they slip between the breezes. They wear humanoid guises to walk among mortals without drawing undue attention, and they transform into great, thunderous horses made of storm clouds and rain when they need to move quickly across the skies. Their true form, however, is wind coalesced into a humanoid shape, often with curling hair and feathery wings made of soft, drifting clouds.

On Golarion, each of the four cardinal winds are created and directed by a quartet of cardinal anemoi. The cold north winds are guided by Boreal, bringer of winter. Austral shepherds hot winds from the south. Eural brings stormy winds from the east. Finally, the gentle winds of spring come at the call of Zephyr, from the west. These four cardinal anemoi, alongside their councils of lesser anemoi, shape and control the winds across all of Golarion. As far as anyone can tell, the cardinal anemoi don't answer to a greater authority. There are even more powerful maximal anemoi living in the Plane of Air, but they seem content to leave the Universe out of their plans.

Though the cardinal anemoi try to keep a degree of separation from mortal affairs, lesser anemoi occasionally take a closer interest. Some monitor a single settlement or county, protecting, nourishing, or even vindictively destroying it. Each one has their own sets of interests. Many are vain or petty. Even more change attitudes just as quickly as the winds they guide. Pleasing an anemoi isn't a matter of following a set formula, but rather repeatedly changing course to give them what they desire for their mercurial current interests or perceived needs.

The Shape Of The Air

Anemoi on the Plane of Air are typically genderless, while those who spend time in the Universe sometimes experiment with or develop preferences for one of the genders of the mortals they watch or live close to.