We\u2019re pleased to announce that we will be releasing the new second edition rules next Monday, March 30th. In the meantime, we wanted to share this piece of news from the Five Realms in advance of the player-organised IC social this weekend. This short fiction is intended to explain the upcoming changes from an IC point of view.
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Winter, 803 TR<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n News travels unevenly across the Five Realms. Some news marches along the R\u00e9ig’s Road, sallying out from Corroch or returning to it, involved in the important business of keeping the Five Realms one. Other news takes the back roads, making itself known only to those who need to know it. News sweeps through the circles of the Ruby Court, stirring them up like winds across the wheat fields of Siabhal. It flits back and forth across the Lowlands of Baol, changing hands like coin. It gets dragged up into the Highlands, whether it likes it or not. It seeps down into the caverns of Dra\u00edod to be scrutinised and measured, and it creeps, ever so slowly, into the forest of Bruid. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n They say there are villages in the Great Forest where the people still fear the wrath of Duarcan the Grim.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rarely, the news doesn’t need to travel at all. Last autumn, no one needed to be told that ritual circles all over Tirneach were behaving strangely. That news could be found anywhere there were eyes to see it. What people did need however was to be told why, and on that front the news was sorely lagging. The news may march, or drag, or creep but rumour; rumour always flies. And so the Five Realms were alive with stories of Lowlanders stealing ritual circles, of the Gwyllt driving them out of the forest, and of ancient spirits withdrawing their blessing. All the while, a battle was being fought in Dra\u00edod-Above against the real and almost universally unsuspected source of the problem.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When peace settled over Shepherd’s Stand and the news began its proper journey outward from that place, it was once again overtaken by events. Something had changed, and it had changed everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The first to notice it were Galloglaigh on campaign and for many it was a costly discovery. Reliable tools, things depended upon in moments of life and death, began to act strangely. Too often, panic set in and lives were lost in the ensuing chaos. Settlers deep in the Great Forest also found themselves to be early initiates of this strange new phenomenon, as were workers in dangerous crafts, but soon the news made itself apparent to all: magic had changed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n At first, rumour let fly and Gwyllt malice was suspected. Most people also assumed their problems to be local ones but it gradually became clear that the effects were universal. R\u00e9ig Tiernan MacAonghusa sent for experts from the Arcane College to come and explain what was happening and how to set it right. The scholars, dragged from their libraries and laboratories, were perhaps a little bit too excited about the fascinating academic implications of the change but a cogent explanation was eventually coaxed from them.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many arcane scholars throughout the centuries have pondered the question: through what medium do spells and other magical effects move? A number of popular but untestable theories have proposed that the paths of the leylines were involved in the process. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, one of the scholars explained with misjudged enthusiasm, we have proof that the leylines are a key influence on the transmission of magical effects! The great disruption wrought upon the leyline network by the machinations of Eagna\u00ed in Shepherd’s Stand have caused a sufficient change in their patterns as to alter the behaviour of spells and other common magical effects. The changes were unstable at first but things appear to be settling into a new normal. Most commonly the alteration appears to be in how spells can be transmitted, but some spells appear to have changed in their effects, while others now seem impossible to recreate, and there are reports of experimentation uncovering new easily learnable effects. Careful study of these changes and their implications stands to reveal secrets of the Shaper’s design that were believed unfathomable only weeks ago!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The court at Corroch was, at best, unmoved by the scholars’ enthusiasm and a number of those present had to be restrained from more physical explanations of their failure to read the room. Finally, the calm but implacable voice of the R\u00e9ig cut across the outrage with a simple question: “How do we fix this?”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The scholars were crestfallen, surely they had thought, the R\u00e9ig would appreciate the opportunities presented by the change but the R\u00e9ig appreciated order, stability, and reliability all the more. The experts conferred a long time before one of their number was pushed forward with the unfortunate reply: “We don’t.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The magic used by Eagna\u00ed was strange and terrible, poorly understood and liable to disaster. Even if an attempt could be made to manipulate the leylines en masse there’s no way of targeting their old order as it was never fully understood and any such attempt would be far more likely to create a third state than to return to the familiar past.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was with much relief that the scholars of the Arcane College left Corroch and returned to the sanctity of their laboratories and libraries. Following their failure, R\u00e9ig Tiernan MacAonghusa put out the call across the Five Realms to any who might have some way of undoing the damage caused by Eagna\u00ed but, after months of hosting the delusional and the predatory in the R\u00e9ig’s court, a new plan became necessary. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, as winter turned to spring, the Teachers and the Reckoners were sent out in force to discern, record, and understand the new order and to help prepare the people of Tirneach to live in it. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019re pleased to announce that we will be releasing the new second edition rules next Monday, March 30th. In the meantime, we wanted to share this piece of news from the Five Realms in advance of the player-organised IC social this weekend. 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