Runewakening
Fate's threads weave a tale for all. Sometimes, that fate must be re-sewn.Runewakening is an odd new affliction that has begun to spread across Istralar as of the 5620s. It is a sudden onset of magical ability, transforming a commoner from a mere peasant to someone who may now have to worry about fire erupting from their hands on a bad day.
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It does not seem to distinguish by the kind of magic it grants: there have been cases of arcane, divine, and even psychic magic manifesting.
Whether it remains is an entirely separate aspect of the condition. Some have found that their experience with magic has lasted only for a few hours or days, leading to a brief reversal in fortune and potentially inspiring them to follow pathways to clerical study or wizardly research.
Others have seen months or even years pass without any indication that they will lose their abilities, and no known cases exist of the powers disappearing beyond the six month mark.
What perplexes scholars is the lack of obvious cause. Illnesses like the Wolf's Bite typically have a trigger, and poisons or drugs are their own trigger. Runewakening has no identifiable cause, no sign that it will occur, and no indicator even on a deific level as to why it has begun to happen.
Causes
[ IT IS A MYSTERY ]
Symptoms
Simon, dear, why is your teddy in the air? Can you, er, put him down?Rather obviously, the biggest symptom of runewakening is that the individual in question suddenly has magic where they did not possess it before. How exactly this manifests varies greatly between different individuals, depending both on their physiology and the magic they develop.
For instance, gnomes are known to be very close to the arcane. They possess innate arcane ability even without the condition affecting them, and the thrum of magic through their veins sparks an energy within them that is utterly unmistakeable to both themselves and to other gnomes close with them.
Meanwhile, a human will have absolutely no idea that something has changed until the magic manifests. Runewakening always causes a manifestation of spontaneous magic, meaning that it may then react on its own to any stimuli until the new mage in question has learnt to control their new power.
In some cases, it is challenging to identify when exactly runewakening began because the new magic took so long to manifest in an identifiable manner.
Occasionally, some sufferers experience seemingly unrelated symptoms. Their eyes may take on an odd glow or drain of their colour to a silver-grey, their shadow may shift into something smokelike and indistinct, or they may experience fragmented dreams that cannot be remembered in the waking world.
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Treatment
Once given, magic cannot be taken... usually.Magic is a fickle thing. Whatever causes runewakening to strike is imperceptible even at the moment at which it strikes, and whatever it changes in those it hits does not seem to be able to be undone. Naturally, this has been a worry to those aware of the odd condition: if it hits a fighter in the middle of combat, the unexpected shock could cause distraction and thus death.
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Fortunately, the world's many mages have already developed methods of helping those who develop magical ability later in life. Those with the ability to travel to a nearby academy are the most lucky, for it is the academies of the world that know best how to train a freshly-minted sorcerer into someone that won't accidentally set the world on fire.
Those further away are less lucky. With that said, their tutors do not need to know the same magic as them. In a pinch, a cleric with formal temple training may teach even a psychic the essence of magical control, which is all most people need.
In the most unfortunate cases, where a mage appears without the means of reaching any other, they may fall back on written information (if possible to obtain; such texts may be expensive), or may rely on folk tales. There are countless tales throughout various ethnic groups and country-bound lore that tell of mages wrestling with their inner magic, often speaking of meditation or simple repetitive training.
History
I'm beginning to think that instead of rune-wakening, we should have named it rude-wakening.There is unfortunately a great deal of confusion around when runewakening first began. Magical power may exist latent in the veins of almost anyone, particularly if they could be chosen as an oracle or if an ancestor was a sorcerer. Cases of late awakenings are not uncommon, even in normal years. What makes runewakening unusual is that it can seemingly happen to anyone, and without warning or consequence. It began to be tracked after an incident in Gildómar where an innkeep's daughter awakened as an oracle at the centre of a pulse of magical flame. The incident matched a few similar incidents in the nation, with the worst being a shoemaker accidentally flooding his own shop with a pulse of arcane magic, and thus began to catch the attention of the nation's religious scholars.
Across the world, scholars in other areas had been noting occasional anomalies as well. Gildómar, however, was uniquely positioned to observe the beginning of this strange condition due to their strict laws against arcane magic and thus their detection mechanisms throughout their major cities.
When they confirmed that these incidents were not simply late bloomers, they began to share information with their allies, which then began to circulate the globe.
Through the collective sharing of knowledge, the international community has approximated the earliest case as being in the summer of 5620, when an oread labourer in Yulan Sheng accidentally excavated a new tunnel with a sudden surge of divine magic that he had not previously been known to wield.
In the six years since, there have been at least four detected cases in most countries each year - and it is unknown how many more have gone unnoticed.
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Sixty years I lived without a single spark of anythin' too special. I cut trees down, whittled them into furniture and decoration. Lived a peaceful life. What the hell am I goin' to do with the ability to call on the gods' power? Gedda from the town over's offered to take me under her ancient wing, but I'm not a druid. I've been seein' things in the night. Dreams, but they ain't dreams. Maybe she can shape it into somethin' kinder to the world, maybe not. Gotta try, I guess.
Psychic Magic
The manifestation of psychic magic is a relatively recent development, and some have suggested that this new and unknown kind of magic may itself be linked to runewakening's mysterious source. Worryingly, this does mean that psychic magic is rapidly being discovered by more of the world - and reactions have not been kind to the appearance of new magic. New, untrained psychic spellcasters also suffer the inherent risk of all psychic mages: to be killed for what they are before they understand it. Psychic spellcasters are not just rare - they are actively endangered, hunted by foes they do not understand.
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Gently frightening, especially that it can be psychic magic. Must be terrifying to have it happen to you.
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