“What did we do to anger the gods so?”
The Ripple is the name given to the magical storm that started fifteen years ago, coined by Archmage Kai of Aëvon. Roiling multicolored clouds fill the sky day and night, a sight as beautiful as it is terrifying to behold. Much as an overload of voltage brings down thunder and lightning, so too does an overload of magic bring down… well, just about anything. Life becomes unsustainable as weather randomly shifts, extreme weather events have become common, changes in any number of physical properties occur on a regular basis, mutated monsters and animals crawl from the underbrush… just a few of the occurrences brave (and foolhardy) explorers have documented in their attempts to survive the storm.
It started with just a few wisps, a few things wrong noted in a couple parts of the world– but as it quickly grew, a worldwide panic set in as the different societies of the world made preparations to weather a new kind of disaster.
And it hasn’t stopped getting worse. Governments are doing their best to avoid spreading panic, and there are always rumors, but the word on the street recently is that diplomats and certain other important people have begun to be reticent to use teleportation at all, for reasons one could only guess…
Magic in the age of the storm
The storm interferes with magic. Individual mages of various kinds find themselves able to cast their spells as normal, but runes, rituals, magical constructs, and magical connections across distance are interfered with by the storm, requiring advanced levels of skill to cast and unprecedented effort to maintain. This has especially affected Aëvon, but it has outsized effects on the world because teleportation (as a ritual and magical connection across the storm) has become even somewhat dangerous without the presence and input of multiple skilled magic wielders.