Dantia/Storylines/Mana Surges & Wild Magic

The Long Lead Up

438-05-38(ish) (June/July 2021) - People started receiving occasional odd messaging when casting spells. During Hollow Eve 2021 (and 2022), several Merelew Greeters asked adventurers if they had been having these strange feelings, too. For a comprehensive list of messaging and probability over time, see Urbaj's roundup.

448-05-04 (March 2, 2024) - Mazrian hosts the "Investigating the Magical Mind" event, where adventurers participated in an experiment to try to recreate these oddities in a controlled way. Various mana types and spells were tested, with casters being observed, and other casters attempting to tamper with the mana streams to induce resonance or dampening, with the goal of inducing a similar state as the oddities. There were no conclusive outcomes of this investigation.

449-05-20 (June 14, 2024) - The magic oddities (sometimes referred to as surges) begin increased in frequency, eventually culminating on June 14, 2024 to occur on each and every each cast. Several meetings are held to discuss what this might signify, with no solid hypothesis. One idea that comes up is to try to reduce the amount of casting that adventurers are doing, but it's decided that would be too hard to orchestrate.

Magic is Out

449-05-184 (June 15, 2024) - Realm wide, people felt one of the below messages, depending on their mana type/Guild:

• Pain stabs through your mind and body as your attunement to the breathing rise and fall of Life is suddenly severed! (Empath / Ranger)
• Pain stabs through your soul as your attunement to the footsteps of the gods wavers and becomes lost! (Cleric / Paladin)
• Pain stabs through your mind and body as your attunement to the elemental forces around you is suddenly severed! (Warrior Mage / Bard)
• Pain stabs through your mind and body as your attunement to the heavenly bodies is suddenly severed! (Moon Mage / Trader)
• Pain stabs through your scarred mind as your multifaceted attunement to the mana spectrum is suddenly undone! (Necromancer)

After this, attempting to use the magic system (such as prepare a spell, harness, invoke a tattoo, or use a wand) you would receive one of two messages. Magic was off!

• [The magic system is inoperative at the moment. Sorry for the inconvenience.]
• Strangely, you can sense absolutely nothing. It's as if magic didn't exist.

Over the next hour, we felt (in this order):

• Your body trembles as your mind instinctively reaches toward that place where you usually feel your connection to magic. It is cold.
• You feel a surge of mana reaching toward you! You instinctively reach out to grasp it. You struggle to hold on, but it slips away again, leaving you feeling exhausted.
• You sense a fleeting trace of mana. It briefly grows stronger, but quickly fades away again.
• Your senses explode and you are momentarily blinded! Mana overfills your being, and you struggle to control the flow! Just as suddenly, it seeps away, leaving you empty.
• You feel a deep sense that something has changed. Your attunement to the breathing rise and fall of Life is restored, but it does not feel controllable!

Casting had returned, but with mixed results.

Wild Magic Returns

From the Discord announcement:

Wild Magic is active!
There are a variety of effects.  So far people have discovered:
+ Increased TM accuracy
+ Increased TM damage
+ 1-second preparation
+ Full attunement refill

- Chance to "break glass" and cause no magic in the room for a short period of time (less than 1 minute)
- Increased backlash chance
- "Mana burn" - weaken your attunement!  quickly!
- Chance to spawn a mini-mana storm

Break Glass

> cast
Emotional pain and exhaustion lingers in your mind, even after you regain rational control.
A crash of shattering glass echoes through the area.  You are overcome by a sense of wrongness.
> 
> prep lw 5
Something in the area interferes with your spell preparations.

This would prevent anyone in the room from casting magic for about 30 seconds.

Mini-Mana Storm

A swirling vortex of brilliant light spins across the area.
Raw energies rupture near Navesi, leaving her looking pale and drained.
A weak mana surge slowly makes its way to the north, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

> look surge
Roaring winds shot through with blinding rainbows spin and turn wildly within a weak mana surge as it tears a path of destruction through the area.  Chaotic manifestations caught in the rampaging vortex spiral violently within its terrible embrace.

A weak mana surge slowly makes its way into the area, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

The howling wind pounds against you, making it very difficult to maintain your balance.
Pilot Sarahkyth staggers slightly as wind pummels it.

A swirling vortex of brilliant light spins across the area.
Raw energies rupture near Thanataar, leaving him looking pale and drained.

A swirling vortex of brilliant light spins across the area.
A wave of energy passes through, invisible except for the obscene ways the world stretches and pulls around you!  Though it seemed as though Elanthia was going to rip itself apart, the wave passes without causing bodily harm. 
Dasheek collapses to the ground as the world seems to stretch and pull around him briefly.
Pilot Sarahkyth staggers slightly as the world seems to stretch and pull around it briefly.

> peer forward
You peer forward and see ...

[You are aboard a four-masted galleon with twelve sails and a fierce dragon figurehead named the Dragon's Slave which is afloat in Segoltha Bay facing south.]
[The Dragon's Slave, Aft Waist]
Here the silver-hinged gangway is ever ready to release and secure the heavy mistwood boarding plank.  The railings are carved with detailed scenes of dragons along their length, while overhead the vivid blue and white sails obscure the view to the top of the mizzen mast far above.  A honeysuckle vine grows from a banded barrel placed out of the way, the plant flourishing despite the harsh elements it encounters.
You also see a weak mana surge, some sufil sap, a piece of black flint, the crossjack, the mizzen lower topsail and the mizzen upper topsail.
Ship paths: forward, aft, down.
Nearby in the water you see: Arthe Bay (at horizon: east), the Boot (far: north), the north shore (at horizon: east), the south shore (rather far: south), the Segoltha estuary (far: south).

Mana Burn

People could also die from "mana burn." Sometimes when casting you would feel:

Excruciating pain sets your nervous system afire!  Something is wrong with your mana attunement and you must weaken it!

At this point you had to harness and release to lower your attunement, to something like 20%. If not, you would die. The death window looked like:

[20:18] * Grief was just struck down!
[20:18] * Grief was burned out!
[20:19] * Jacquelyn was just struck down!
[20:19] * Jacquelyn was burned out!
[20:19] * Morgaunt was just struck down!
[20:19] * Morgaunt was burned out!

Research WILD & Bonegrinder

There is a new RESEARCH option!  It could be dangerous!  This is on a lengthy global cooldown, but can be completed several times a day.
When you perform the new RESEARCH, several things happen.
1. You will lose your memorized spell scrolls.  You will gain some magic experience - sometimes more than other times.
2. If you have the Magic Theorist, you will gain new spell scrolls.  
3. There's a chance to learn a brand new spell (being previewed here before it finds its permanent home).
4. There's a chance to earn a spell customizer for certain spells, if you know them.

With the release of Wild Magic, a new Magical Research option was also made available: RESEARCH WILD. On successful completion, you have a 100% chance to lose any memorized scrolls. Depending on the number of spell scroll slots you then had, you would be granted up to 2 randomly selected spells, which would be temporarily memorized just like regular scroll spells. At this time, this was the only way to gain a NEW spell called Bonegrinder.