Chaos Enthrallment

Chaos enthrallment is when a person becomes magically enchanted by extreme amounts Ederstone radiation and loses control of their mind and actions for a period of time.
It is well known that Ederstone radiation magically mutates the body: direct exposure to the substance destroys any non-Kobold person or thing without exception, turning them bodily into something completely new. People exposed to radiation from Ederstone have been known to physically change, growing new body parts. Mental changes are also known to happen, where people experience new emotions, lose memories, gain artificial memories, and sometimes subtly change in personality. Such high exposure is usually paired with traumatic or exceptional experiences - people only very rarely change their personality entirely because of exposure alone.
Chaos enthrallment is different . It often begins as a subtle call in the back of a person's mind to abandon everything and flee towards the source of radiation. This call is tailored to the individual maybe playing on their desires, their intuition, their curiosity, or their guilt. The intensity and sophistication of that call intensifies over time if high radiation exposure continues. If allowed to build to extreme levels it may involve hallucinations, false memories, and distortions of perceived reality. This is not a linear process. Sometimes, resisting the call for an extended period causes it to slowly fade and eventually leave entirely. Sometimes it rises and fades in waves, like high and low tide. Sometimes it only gets worse and worse and can only be made better through leaving high-radiation zones.
Most curiously, the call to enthrallment does not strike everyone. People can live their entire lives highly exposed without any kind of call to enthrallment. Some places or religious-cultural traditions seem outright immune to the effect for unknown reasons. Other people develop the calling with comparatively little exposure and almost immediately - some rare cases even see people outside of the full chaos wastes develop light cases. Scholars have never been able to fully piece together how or why enthrallment occurs.
Once someone is drawn in to the depths of the wasteland by the siren call of the radiation, the enthrallment becomes a more overt mental presence that actively fights to control the subject's mind and body. It cannot take control without the host accepting this domination, but the dreamlike disassociation and powerful mental impulses make accepting very easy. The dangerous and difficult terrain of the inner wastelands adds physical pressure to let go. Once someone gives control over, their mind falls into a state of altered consciousness. Survivors often describe enthrallment as an intoxicated dreamlike state, where it takes active effort to assert control over their own body - it even takes active effort to care. Time is fluid in this state, memories are distant, and physical sensations of the body aren't felt. There is no pain for the enthralled. Emotions are often distorted and warped by the dream-logic of that altered state. Things that would horrify the person normally suddenly seem funny or mundane. It is extremely easy for the subject's consciousness to simply drift into apathy and inaction, letting the magic puppet their body while they curl up inside themselves to avoid the world outside.
Enthralled people are often characterized as violent and possessed raiders by outsiders. Violence, however, is only a small fraction of what the enthralled actually do. The enthralled feed on the magic that ensnares them; it keeps them ageless and practically without needs. Some ensnared do re-enact normal life, building shacks and forming fantasy families with other enthralled strangers. Others dance freely in their intoxicated state. Some make art or music. Some seem to fall into odd fixations, like counting every rock on a mountain. Often, the enthralled will find and escort those who are becoming enthralled into the deep wasteland. The monsters and magical threats often ignore the enthralled. Often - but not always. Some enthralled end up killed by beasts, struck by lighting, or stumbling off cliffs. Some even seek out death either by willingly jumping into Ederstone, leaping off great heights, or even returning home to immolate themselves in front of their loved ones. These cases are rare, but they happen.
Enthralled people often act on the impulses of the enchanted and irradiated landscape around them. When the chaos wastes begin resonating with violence from wars or attacks on their ecosystems, swarms of enthralled people pick up salvaged weapons from the wastes and launch coordinated assaults on outsiders. This is responsible for the bad reputation the enthralled have. Frontiersmen of settled kingdoms typically only see the enthralled when things go wrong. They might see one or two enthralled people skipping by in the distance over years, but their primary reference point are sudden unprovoked attacks by groups of armed strangers who don't seem to be fully conscious. Adventurers in the wasteland sometimes speak of makeshift villages of enthralled people, false sanctuaries that offer no real food or company or protection to outsiders.
Enthrallment is not permanent. It often lasts months or years, but can be as brief as a few days. Sometimes it lasts centuries. If a person doesn't accept control back over their body, they will just keep on being a thrall - if a person completely refuses control, the condition will go on until they die in a fight, spontaneous suicide, or accident. Most really old thralls don't make it home - they usually die out in the wastes after they wake up. People who are enthralled for long periods of time are usually mistaken for Revenants or other people-impersonators and are almost always attacked by settled peoples. Unless you are from a wasteland community familiar enough with enthrallment to help get you home after it wears off, enthrallment is basically a death sentence. No wonder so many enthralled people just accept their fate and refuse to retake control. Even if the enthralled mind isn't lucid, the idea that this is a death sentence isn't hard to grasp.
Enthrallment is most common in the innermost cores of the chaos wastes; it typically requires being in the area around a chaos nexus (one of the eighteen massive deposits of ederstone around Stildane). In the outer chaos wastes, you need to either be unlucky or exposed to a lot of radiation for Enthrallment to strike. In the settled kingdoms, enthrallment only strikes the truly unlucky - it is basically a rare medical disorder and is often mistaken for spirit possession. Enthrallment is not well-studied or understood by virtually any non-wasteland community. Even the Lunar Gods don't understand it.

Type

Magical

Origin

Magical

Cycle

Short-term

Rarity

Rare