Leylines

Some day someone much smarter than me will manage to map them all. The challenge now is that they move, and maps don't really like the things on them moving all that much. That and some of the darned things don't really like being mapped, and have been known ignite any overly accurate map of their location.

— Jasper Cameron, Leader of The Bronze Ravens.

Leylines are, at their core, magic, and as such incredibly hard to explain, and even harder to model. They pass through the planes, but no in the same way as things like the World Trees. It is theorized that they tie together the different planes of existence, or perhaps that, were one capable of modeling the planes accurately over time, that they are the shortest path between the relatively "fixed" locations of the World Trees. They are not, obviously, the shortest path on the plane that you are on, as some of you have no doubt noted by the partial map that we have.
Although with their movement it is best, if you are looking to harness their magics, which I cannot stress enough that at your current skill level you should not do, your best bet is to make or procure a Leyline Compass. Indeed that creation of said compass will, for many of you, mark your graduation from this school, to be unleashed upon the world in all your youthful enthusiasm.
But getting back to the subject at hand, leylines. They are areas of concentrated, directed, and flowing magic. The flowing part is important, as should you attempt to power a spell from them, they will supercharge the spell, and likely you as the caster. Best case scenario you get a more powerful version of the spell you are casting and are left with only a massive headache and some other minor side effects of magic burn. Worse case, the magic lights you up like one of the Colored Flame Beacons, and you end up like the fuel used in the beacons. Which is faster and technically better than the absolute worst case, which is the magic mutates you into some abomination and shatters your mind, leaving you to wander the world in confused agony, like poor William, whom I'm sure you have all encountered in his circuit of the campus. Yes, before anyone brings it up, it has been tried, several times, to put him out of his misery, or contain him. Unfortunately, as he has become a channel for the Leyline of Astral Chaos containment has proven basically impossible. He is a rather effective example of why not to channel leyline magic though.
Oddly, despite its name the Leyline of Astral Chaos is one of the more consistent Leylines as far as its position in our world goes. Linking Jarvnidartre to a location somewhere in the Usan Uuls it passes rather near to our school, along with at least two others. Can anyone name them? Anyone... Bueller... Bueller... *sigh* Why do we even have books if none of you read them.
The other two are, of course the Leyline of Frozen Flame, and the Leyline Outside of Time. Don't ask about the second one. We know basically nothing about it. Those who study it have a bad habit of disappearing, or getting stuck. As in they experience time differently. Medabis has been holding a 1 hour candle for 7 years, 4 months, and 34 days. The candle has burned almost 1/4 of the way down. On the other hand, Young Djeoff is only 40 by our reckoning, but several magics have confirmed that he is nearing the second millennium of his life, making him one of the oldest living elves.
Other known leylines include the Leyline of Wandering Wind, the Leyline of Ascendant Blood, and of course Twilight. Yes, the demarcation of day and night on our world is a leyline. What did you think provided power to the gates of The Twilight Trade? Why do you think they are only active at twilight? Yes, there is also no small amount of meta-math involving the moons, but that has more to do with ensuring that the planar border is only permeable in certain places.

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Twilight

The Gloaming. The Thin Veil. The line that is Twilight goes by many names across cultures and planes. While there are many properties associated with it, the biggest are Change and Transition. There is a reason that many old rituals and ceremonies take place at dusk or dawn. There is power in the endless cycle of day and night. The passing of the torch from light into darkness, and darkness to light.
The legends that are told, of people getting lost in the night and ending up in the Fae lands or other, darker places, as far as we have been able to determine, are based in fact, they just get the time wrong. The people in question, some of whom have returned to us after months or years, more often than not crossed from our realm to another at twilight without realizing what had happened. As any traveler of the planes will tell you the near Fae is nearly indistinguishable from our world. Depending on where you crossed into, the natural and magical properties or the region are likely to confuse and confound your sense of time and direction, causing you to either panic and run deeper into the area, or lull you into a sense of false security.
But before we delve to deeply into the nature of the Fae realms, and their intersection with the Leyline Outside of Time, we will return to the topic at hand, the Properties of Twilight. Change and transition can easily segue, depending on your point of view, into things like healing or curses. Lycanthropy comes to mind. While most closely tied to one of the moons, it is noteworthy that the oldest recordings of that particular curse had the transformations into a beast happening on the night of the full moon. Looking at context clues, and incorperating the societal nature of people, it is most likey that the transformations happened at twilight, with the cursed individual trying to isolate themselves, either through distance or barriers, from people around them. Thus the attacks happening at night after the transformation had happened.
Now if we are to look at some of the lesser properties....

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The Leyline Outside of Time

Permanence and transience. Time is the one universal thing that we all experience together. While it may not seem so, a second in this lecture hall is the same as a second spent at the show of a Shadow Bard and the second a bee spends gathering pollen from a flower. Those of you who pay attention and remember my love of the myths and legends will think thay you have caught me in a trap, why, even the less astute amoungst you will likely be thinking of Medabis or Young Djeoff and are about to bring them up as an example of how I am wrong. But in these cases the exception proves the rule. The only force that we know of that is capable of slowing or speeding up the passage of time is indeed Tapping into the Leyline Outside of Time.
It has several other names, of course. Closer relations with the Fae Courts has lead to study of a phenomena that they call the "The Cycle of the Shifting Constant." For the sake of saving time, for the rest of the lecture I shall be using the name in the records from the Storm Giant Empire describing a source of magic that translates roughly to "Mercurial Permanance."
While it has since moved on, the The Crimson Cairn is the best place we have to study the effects of this leyline. Best in the sense that we have mostly documented the rules of the Cairn and the Leyline no longer touches our world there, so there is little enough risk of getting sucked along and living your life in the span of a few seconds. Not that there are not other dangers. The guardians there are, once thought to be realistic statues, or magically preserved warriors, are in fact still alive. They only experience time when they need to, and then they experience it at a faster rate than others in the Cairn. That is how they appear to move instantaneously, guarding... what exactly we dont know, though I have my suspicions.
I cannot stress enough that chronomancy, and THIS LEYLINE IN PARTICULAR are NOT to be trifled with. Even with temporal anchors the outcomes are to diverse and unpredictable. You wouldn't want to be caught is a fight where every second for you was a minute for your foes would you? Imagine trying to move as fast as you can only for a tree to lift you hundreds of feet into the air and then rot out from under you.