Node of the Flow

Since the grand migration, only a few things were considered to be an existential threat to us.
Among the inability to sustain ourselves, our own greed, and falling to corruption lies one more, more ongoing threat.
The Nodes of Flow are able to strip the Flow from the upper streams themselves. The same streams which keep our precious Atocites afloat.

- Grandpa Gzhongk

Description

Node is a specific point in Flow Dimension which atracts the Flow of its Element.
In the physical world, the Flow concentrated by its attraction sooner or later creates a crystal onto which the Node connects. Should this Crystal be destroyed, the Node attaches to a nearby being, or if there is nothing to attach onto, it will recreate the Crystal.

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Influence, dangers, and Node Sentinels

The mere presence of the Node attracts all Flow of the Node's element towards the Node. The radius of this effect is fluctuating from a few meters up to several kilometers. Luckily for the Atocites, the effect gets weaker with distance.
The upper Streams can be affected by Nodes even from the Ground below. Having Nodes without proper control can therefore lead to the upper streams losing their Flow, which is an existential threat to all of the Atocites.

The Flow attracted to Node is not lost, but it will get misplaced in the Ground below, and absorbed by the ecosystem. Beast, animals, monsters, and even fauna would get access to a great quantity of the Flow. Thanks to the Flow they would be able to charge up or evolve new abilities, making Raids in the area needlessly more dangerous. Getting the Flow back to the upper streams would require immense effort and a lot of sacrificed Crystals.
In order to avoid all the effort to fix the effect of uncontained Node, all Atocites are expected to cooperate in order to track and secure the Nodes whenever they appear in the Ground below.
After the Node is secured, a fitting Node Sentinel is found to absorb the Node and suppress its effect.
While the Sentinel is undergoing their training, they are exposed to Flow from the upper streams that the unsuppressed Node inevitably attracted.
This Flow is returned back to the upper stream as soon as the Sentinel finishes one of their first lessons and learns to manipulate the Flow.
In cases where the Sentinel is taking a long time to learn the basic Flow manipulation, someone else can help with returning the Flow. This ensures that the upper streams remain strong and the Atocites are not threatened.
Since the first time the Nodes were secured, every new generation of Sentinels was trained faster and more efficiently. This gives the Sentinels more time to research the Node and find more uses for it. The most common type of such research is in the field of Abilities utilizing the abnormal concentration of Flow caused by the Node.
Due to the Node being a key component in many of these abilities, they are available only to those with a Node, or exceptional level of focus.

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History

Few hundred years after the Cataclysm, the Flow itself started to change.
Monsters and beasts of great power were discovered at places with unnatural quantities and concentrations of Flow caused by the newly appeared Nodes.
At first, the monsters and beasts were deemed too dangerous to be engaged, but sooner or later, the Nodes were noticed to be affecting the upper streams. This was immediately seen as an existential threat to the Atocites and all people living on them.
All Atocites were called to action. From Cyclers spreading the info, through VeilPlise using their own supply of Veil crystal to detect the Nodes to most capable raiders launching raids on the Node empowered monstrosities.

by Firel Dakuraito via MidJourney

Details:

Material: None; Crystal
Dangers: 
Increases difficulty of raiding in the area while uncontained.
Existential threat to Atocites.
Priority:
Extreme.
Cooperation of multiple Atocites is needed.
Detection: 
Via Veil users scouting the Flow Dimension.

Item type

Magical

by Firel Dakuraito via MidJourney