Wild magic (concept)

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On 449-05-184 (June 15, 2024), after briefly losing access to magic entirely, spellcasters were confronted with a new concept to deal with when casting spells: wild magic. See: Wild magic (event)

Overview

When casting a spell subject to wild magic, there is a chance of an unusual effect accompanying the casting. Possibilities include:

Increased TM accuracy

An additional message after casting a targeted magic spell indicating a bonus to accuracy:

The spell surges with wild precision!

Increased TM damage

An additional message after casting a targeted magic spell indicating a bonus to potency:

The spell surges with wild potency!

1 Second Preparation

The prep time for the spell is reduced to just one second.

Your spell pattern snaps into shape with little preparation!

Fill Attunement Refill

Your attunement pool is instantly refilled.

Somehow you feel fully attuned to the mana streams already.

Anti Magic Room

For a brief period of time (less than a minute) it becomes impossible to use magic in the room.

A crash of shattering glass echoes through the area.  You are overcome by a sense of wrongness.

Mana Surges

A mana surge forms and moves about the area, moving around and potentially knocking people down and causing minor damage.

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).

You can cast a spell at the storm to have a chance to destroy it. If you HARNESS the SURGE you will see a short-term guaranteed positive wild magic result. You can also TOUCH, and possibly HUG, KICK, SLAP, or KISS the mana surge. It will send a blast to the room, causing skin damage to people and knocking them prone.

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 would begin dropping vitality (you receive that same message every time you experience a vitality hit). You have ~2 minutes to harness and release mana to lower your attunement so that it is below 50% whenever the vitality damage would occur. If below 50% attunement at the time of a pulse then the effect is cleansed. If not cleansed, you will die fairly rapidly from the vitality loss. For Empaths, Perseverance of Peri'el mitigates the vitality loss until it becomes such that it drops POP completely.

Your efforts to reduce your attunement may be stymied by mana regen items, if you are wearing sufficient enough. During this event, you may consider removing your mana regen items just to make the chance of death by mana burn a little less likely. Conversely, vitality regen items may help maintain your vitality until you can lower your attunement enough!

The death window looked like:

* <Name> was just struck down!
* <Name> was burned out!

Research

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.

RESEARCH WILD has an Arcana requirement in the range of 95-125.

Breakthrough Messages

There were various "Breakthrough" messages depending on your mana/Guild. These seem to give hints about what is occurring:

Trader:

Breakthrough!
Lunar mana fizzes out of focus with unknowable, periodic perturbations from the planets in your range.  Oddly enough, it is the Negotiants' unbidden tutelage that nudges you toward the research's endpoint and a wealth of knowledge relating to wild magic.  You are assured that the Contract is still inviolate and binding, and all prohibitions remain.  The Contract is all that matters.

Moon Mage:

Breakthrough!
Lunar mana fizzes out of focus with unknowable, periodic perturbations from the planets in your range.  Oddly enough, your calculations prompt you to think back to a time with Katamba unburnt and Grazhir whole, the golden age of near-effortless Lunar miracles.  All lost now, and the threads are converging on a similarly disastrous trajectory!

Paladin:

Breakthrough!
You have come to an alarming conclusion you attribute the changes in Holy mana's behavior to long-standing and widespread lopsided practices of magic.  An imbalance is shaking the Bulwark loose, which seems bafflingly vulnerable against this menace.

Cleric:

Breakthrough!
You have come to an alarming conclusion you attribute the changes in Holy mana's behavior to an 'upward' lurch in the flow.  Something is stymieing or etiolating the Font of Creation, and Divinity itself is suffering for it!

Bard:

Breakthrough!
Something is broken with the replenishment cycles of Elemental mana.  Even though you have not noticed a decrease in available power, it seems inevitable.  From what your research has evoked, you have the smallest understanding, the barest shape, of an eonic plan that stretches back to the dark histories -- gods and demons, mortals and monsters all helpless before it.

Warrior Mage:

Breakthrough!
Something is broken with the replenishment cycles of Elemental mana.  Even though you have not noticed a decrease in available power, it seems inevitable.  Lessons from long ago prickle at your mind concerning the lore of Sraan Mehath.  You cannot shake a feeling of deep dread.

Empath:

Breakthrough!
Life mana has buckled under vast pressures from what feel like above and below.  Although this instills a fear in you for the fate of the cycle of life, you do not think the repercussions will echo to the natural world just yet.

Ranger:

Breakthrough!
Life mana has buckled under vast pressures from what feel like above and below.  You have an intimation that the Life dragons are keenly aware of the causes, preparing and further isolating their conserved lands.  However, as usual, they have withheld their counsel.

Necromancer:

Breakthrough!
You just concluded the unpleasant task of tracking the continual disruption in Arcane mana, step by minute step.  Some force beyond your ken, nothing short of godly, has been changing the rules with a brutal hand.  The Great Work is tipped on the brink of impossibility as the mana streams become increasingly immiscible, sterile, and foreign textured all at once.

Redeemed:

Breakthrough!
You just concluded the unpleasant task of tracking the continual disruption in Arcane mana, step by minute step.  The grand order ordained by the gods is under attack by... itself?  In ways you cannot approach grasping, the mana spectrum is separating out, each strand resisting attempts to bend it into patterns.

Spell Customizations

You could also gain a spell customizer for a spell you already know, meaning you will only receive this IF you can use it. The following found so far have been:

• Circle of Sympathy customization (a sky-blue sufil tree): blue bolus
• Starcrash customization (crystal statue of TRADER NAME HERE): clear white bolus
• Shadowling customization (sabertooth): chatoyant bolus
• Osrel Meraud customization (sunbright orb): amber bolus
• Deadfall customization (petrified pink-green egg): mottled bolus
• Moongate customization (triangular moongate): tricolor bolus
• Beckon the Naga customization (?): ?
• Shield of Light customization (?): ?

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

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.