The Mythek Vortex, also called the Crimson Vortex, is a spectral arcane phenomenon that appears without warning across Rolara and disperses just as suddenly. It manifests as a swirling storm of shifting, multicolored light, wind, and fine particles, born from the ignited Stars of Power. Prolonged exposure to a vortex is the established cause of Crimson Crying, the neurological affliction that can end in an irreversible monstrous transformation. The popular byname is a misnomer borrowed from that disease rather than drawn from the phenomenon itself; the vortex is not crimson.
The term is an elven coinage. It references the Weave, which the elves call the Myth, marking the vortex as a disturbance in that magical fabric. The first recorded vortex appeared at the village of Three Falls, high on Mount Origin in west-central Ofica, and it was there that the Crimson Crying first entered the world. Exposure to a vortex is unpredictable in its outcome: a person may emerge unharmed, or be marked by the disease and, in time, transformed.
The cantrip Druidcraft can predict a vortex’s appearance and departure, which gives those who know it a means of avoiding exposure. It is the only reliable warning available against an otherwise capricious phenomenon.
Manifestation
A Mythek Vortex forms suddenly, with no dependable warning, as a swirling mass of shifting, multicolored particles and light accompanied by a cold wind. The light carries an unusual spectrum and is the immediate agent of the Crimson Crying, marking those who remain exposed too long. The wind carries the vortex’s fine particles, which the body absorbs by breathing or through the skin over prolonged contact, and sufficient exposure can transform the afflicted into monstrous forms.
The vortex leaves no physical trace when it disperses. What remains is the changed eyes of those who witnessed it and the transformations of those who were exposed for too long. Its comings and goings follow no schedule an observer can rely on beyond the prediction offered by Druidcraft.
A vortex’s wild magic does not require a sorcerer’s blood to act on: any creature within a vortex’s light for long enough can trigger a Wild Magic Surge, whether or not it possesses a Wild Magic Sorcerer’s own feature by that name. Rarer still are accounts of such a surge advancing a nearby creature’s personal experience of time relative to the world outside it, though how and why this occurs is unrecorded. Whether the same effect explains the occasional report of a place aging faster than the world around it, rather than a creature within it, is disputed, and no observer has yet watched both happen closely enough to say.
The surges a vortex produces are not confined to the moment of their casting. Some settle into the subject and persist: witnesses have come away from a vortex carrying compulsions and fixed convictions that were not theirs beforehand and that do not fade with distance. These are distinct from the paranoia of Crimson Crying, arriving without the disease and in subjects who never contract it, and prolonged proximity to a vortex appears to make them more likely rather than less. Documented cases include permanent physical alteration in bystanders, up to and including the growth of limbs and features belonging to unrelated creatures, and the sudden, unrequested transportation of a subject to their own home from a considerable distance.
A minority of scholars hold that the vortices are not wholly indifferent to their surroundings. The intervals between a vortex’s bursts of magic appear to shorten in the presence of alert, endangered minds and to lengthen when none are near, which some read as evidence that the phenomenon responds, however dimly, to the state of those around it. The claim is speculative and far from settled.
Localization
Although a vortex’s appearance is unpredictable, certain sites draw them more reliably than others. At Mount Origin, vortices linger longer and grow more intense, their light brighter and their wind stronger, as though the mountain anchors the otherwise transient phenomenon. Large clusters of Aetherite crystals, whether natural or gathered and refined by mortal hands, exert a similar pull: a vortex that forms near a substantial quantity is markedly more potent and its effects more pronounced, an amplification attributed to the concentrated arcane energy of the crystals. In the presence of enough aetherite, the space around the vortex itself visibly warps, and creatures attempting to move through it find the ground and air alike resistant, as though wading against a current only they can feel. Even at these focal points, however, the timing of a vortex remains beyond prediction.
Duration
The lifespan of a vortex is deeply inconsistent, ranging from the span of a single skirmish to the better part of a decade. Observers across that range report one uncanny constant: the duration, in whatever unit best measures it, resolves to the number nine. Vortices are recorded lasting nine minutes, nine hours, nine days, nine months, or nine years, and seldom any other count. Many wink out only to reappear later, in the same place or elsewhere. Rarest of all are the vortices that manifest and abide without ever inflicting the Crimson Crying, a benign occurrence so uncommon that some scholars doubt the reports entirely.
Dispelling
No means of dispelling or dispersing a Mythek Vortex is known. No record documents one being ended by deliberate action, and informed speculation reaches no further than the untested supposition that a wish might undo one. Whether older or forgotten knowledge on the matter once existed remains an open question, and one that a few determined seekers still pursue.
Details
Type: Metaphysical, Supernatural