Around the time of the death of the Septarch Quintillian, the crackpot scientist Waitai Kuro published his theory entitled Interstellar Weight: How the Regular Growth of Trees Proves Celestial Disaster Is Imminent. The book detailed Kuro's observation that all trees which had grown in the past several decades had done so in an almost completely uniform direction. He took this to mean that some other celestial body was approaching the world and, through its gravitational attraction, was causing the trees to grow in a particular direction.

The theory was met with outright skepticism at the time, and Kuro was reprimanded by the Oversight Committee. He continued his work, but was killed in an unfortunate accident only a few years after publishing his initial research. The issue lay dormant for almost half a century until the famous landslide which buried Lunesdale prompted a survey of the surrounding mountains by the ailing Septarchy. The results of that survey were alarming. All the mountains around Lunesdale had, for the past thirty years, been suffering from drastically increased rates of erosion. The striking detail was that the erosion had no visible cause and seemed to all be happening on the leeward face of the mountains.

The Septarch was intrigued by this and, against the recommendations of the Oversight Committe, he ordered an investigation across the entire empire. In the investigation, the research of Kuro was rediscovered and an obvious link was found. The trees were growing in the same direction as the erosion. Moreover, numerous other studies about population movement, river flow, arwhal migration patterns, etc were shown to be following a similar pattern. The report, published on the eve of the Festival of All Stars compared the effect to 'a giant, invisible wind constantly sweeping over the land, bending trees, decaying mountains and pushing people, animals and rivers along its path.' When the effect of the Invisible Winds was charted, it became immediately obvious that its point of origin was in the Helicon Valley. It was there, shortly after the festival, that the first region of Dead Air was discovered.

Given the source of the Invisible Winds, the next step was to go to the point where the winds should converge, on the other side of the world. The first expedition sent there never returned. The second, with a full military escort, was ordered to approach with caution. When the reached the point where the Invisible Winds converged, the found what was later dubbed the Pillar of Ascension, famed both for its religious significance to the Aetherists as well as its role in the Sandalphon Affair.

The second expedition returned and made a report which was immediately denounced by the Oversight Committee. The thoroughness of the report combined with the increasingly obvious affects of the Invisible Winds led to the rebuke of the committee by the Septarch, and many argue, started the organization’s eventual fall from power. This report coined the term Dipoles to describe the Aberration and its mirror, the Pillar of Ascension, as well as the flow of invisible wind between them.

—Gwydion Vadeki