A long time ago, an experiment in making antimagic fields exploded contaminating a large area of the forest. The forest healed, the magic did not. Any magic user traveling through will find, in the days of being in that forest, they cannot use their magic. -- Anon Guest
War has been with the world since one intelligent being looked at another and decided to throw a rock. Or a sharp stick. The records are non-existent. War ruins many things, and they can leave scars. Not just on the survivors, not just on the culture, but also on the landscape.
Many glass craters are the remnants of once-great cities whose polity made some crucial mistakes. Others are not so obvious.
They call it Silva Nullius when they call it anything at all. A certain kind of person tends to seek it out. A very special kind of person wants to live there. This is where the Wild Mages go.
There may or may not be a glass crater underneath the forest floor. Nobody there has bothered to look. They come seeking relief, and do not care to go poking into why it might be so. It's a nice place to be, if you don't mind never having access to magic.
Once upon a time, someone figured out how to obliterate magic in a certain area. They could not kill it for all of the world, because that would kill the entire world. They were angry, but they weren't suicidal.
It was one of the final shots of the Xenophobia Wars. Though some employed it more than once. Because some people are just petty like that.
There are little towns, here. Towns populated entirely by those who are magically dangerous, or those who fear inheriting the same quality from an ancestor. Nothing is easy, here. Fires must be lit with flint and tinder. Wheat must be milled to make flour, then further processed to make bread. Crops must be grown with the constant vigilance of the farmer, and the same goes with the cattle.
Everything is done by hand, and an Elf has come to this place to learn how it's done. It is here that a Hellkin is learning that they are scared of the dark.
"On one hand, it's weird to see colour at night, but on the other... Has it always been this difficult to see at all?" Ambience nervously plucked the strings of their lute. Though there was music, there was no inherent magic spilling forth. Not even so much as a spark.
Wraithvine had been tending the bread ovens. "I gather so. There are some who would erase magic all over the world, if they could. Some who simply think that magic makes everything worse. Some who employ magic nullification to defeat the inherently magical." A gesture of one graceful hand indicated the two of them. "I have been caught having to manage without magic before. I will not be lacking because of it again."
"You really believe that sort of thing is going to happen twice," said Ambience.
"I am immortal. Unlikely happenstances repeat themselves a lot."
[Photo by eberhard 🖐 grossgasteiger on Unsplash]
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