In the age before recorded history, when the celestial bureaucracy was still being organized, dragons were the governors of weather. Each dragon commanded a province of clouds, distributing rain according to the Jade Emperor's edicts.

But a faction of younger dragons grew restless. Why should they serve a distant emperor who never dirtied his claws with cloud-work? They petitioned for independence, and when refused, they took flight — all three thousand of them.

The mass migration of dragons across the heavens caused a century of storms. Farmers watched in terror as the sky churned with scales and fire. The Jade Emperor, forced to negotiate, granted the dragons autonomy over their own weather domains.

This is why rain still falls unevenly across the land — each dragon governs its own territory. Some are generous, some are miserly, and some have simply forgotten their posts, lost in the endless flight across an infinite sky.