Broken Leylines and Circuitbleed

An overview of the nature of Numiastra's broken magic and Leylines, and the dangers of the Circuitbleed phenomena

History of a Broken Land

Though it would be hard to imagine in the current day, the lands of Numiastra were not always so broken and desperate as they are in the modern day - once, the lands of Numiastra were one contiguous continent rather than the scattered and disparate lands that they are now. It was not until several thousand years ago, when the Skyfall Calamity rocked the land of Numiastra and changed it forever that it would break apart into its current disjointed state - and while records of a time before the Skyfall Calamity have been lost completely and utterly, enough remains to piece together the times immediately during and after the Calamity.
To many, it began with the advent of a burning comet that fell from the sky towards the area of the continent that is now occupied largely by The Blasting Sea - a burning star of destruction that fell to the surface of the planet the size of a gigantic asteroid trailing a stream of silvery fire. This comet, in truth, was one of the ancient Skycities of the Aurelian Hegemony of Man - the Ancient Empire of Humanity whose wondrous Magitech Skycities once crisscrossed the globe floating high in the skies above - though the exact name of the city which crashed into Numiastra's surface has been lost, the city was knocked out of the sky during the final hours of the Hegemony's collapse many thousands of years ago as its highly experimental and prototype magical reactors which powered its numerous Magitech inventions went haywire due to catastrophic damage suffered during the Hegemony's collapse.
Slamming into the grounds of the lush, rolling fields of green that were once stretching across the continent of Numiastra where now stands only The Black Desert like a hammer, the sheer force of the impact sent a plume of dust and debris into the air that nearly blocked out the sun for miles in every direction from the point of impact, causing a massive earthquake whose shockwaves bowled over entire cities and forests near the impact zone and caused untold chaos for dozens or hundreds of miles beyond the immediate vicinity. However, in the moments after the city's impact with the ground after falling from the sky at Terminal Velocity, the city's hyper-advanced construction in this moment served to work against it - the invincible silver metal that made up the city's superstructure held together after the city's collapse, and began to superheat as the city's countless magical reactors began to destabilize and shake themselves apart.
In this way, several hours after the city's initial impact, the invincible silver-shelled Skycity superheated to such an extreme degree that it began to sink and list into the now liquefied ground it had landed on - rapidly falling deep into the ground as its magical reactors continued to destabilize in runaway, wildcat detonations that rocked the city's internal infrastructure but which were contained thanks to the city's invincible silver superstructure. It was not until the city had sank deep into the earth and plunged itself into a Leyline nexus, a central nexus for Atlen energies flowing across Numiastra and much of the surrounding parts of the Planet of Ea, that the city finally gave out as all of its remaining reactors went supernova in unison - sending the city up in a hail of invincible fragmentating supershrapnel whose magical shockwaves not only caused the formation of the Blasting Sea and transmuted hundreds of miles of verdant grasslands into the Black Desert, but whose unmatched destructive energies detonated inside of the Leyline Nexus and shredded the Leylines in not only the land of Numiastra, but much of the south-western hemisphere of the Planet of Ea as a whole.
This shockwave, which ripped through the Planet's Leylines like a blast wave, threw Atlen and Mana out of sorts all across the planet - no continent was spared the aftereffects of this blast whose magical aftershocks caused Atlen Blackouts and countless other Magical Catastrophies across the world even as Numiastra itself experienced the worst of the feedback; Atlen itself was blasted and shredded so utterly than for a time in the immediate afterfall of the Skyfall Calamity Atlen itself collapsed almost entirely - becoming a limited resource and plunging all life on Numiastra into barbarism as millions simply died or vanished, mages began furiously hoarding the remaining Atlen to preserve themselves, and all life flocked to the few leaders that remained in a desperate bid for survival.
In the early days after the Skyfall Incident, Magic was nearly unusable - so unstable and impossible to reliable use and activate that mages hoarded Atlen to power bastions of normality to continue their work; the main issue was its chaotic and limited nature, but it otherwise would work fine with enough effort in the right circumstances - leading to the rise of mage-tyrants and mage-kings whose greedy accumulation of Atlen to further their immortality or other goals likely only quickened the "shift" of The Lattice that was to come. Over the decades that followed, as the fallout from this hyper-dangerous event settled across the planet and the God of Magic and his followers began to stabilize Atlen across the planet and fix the broken Leylines, the "settling" of the damaged and/or destroyed leylines and the completely unreliable Atlen around Numiastra caused a catastrophic "glitch" in The Lattice that caused it to "shift" in the space around Numiastra, irreparably damaging The Lattice itself and forever damaging the means of using magic for any who lived within the area. With the settling and the shifting of The Lattice, the once chaotic and unusable nature of Atlen in the aftermath of Skyfall has changed to its current state - The Lattice has "shifted" to accomodate the new nature of Atlen while Atlen itself has "settled" as well, leading to faulty mismatches in The Lattice's functions that, while still usable, often cause irreparable harm to the caster or the surrounding area with the casting of each new spell.

Circuitbleed

After the chaos that followed the decades immediately after the Skyfall Calamity, Atlen had returned to a relatively usable if not incredibly unreliable and chaotic state, while The Lattice that has traditionally enabled the use of Magic as a whole for mortal casters had "glitched" and "shifted" - now, instead of simply being unable to handle the use of Atlen to cast magic unless absurd amounts of Atlen was pumped into each spell as was the case in the decades following Skyfall, The Lattice's circuits have since adapted but misaligned largely as a result of so many Arcane Casters and Mages around Numiastra abusing it after Skyfall. Now, The Lattice's circuits are misaligned, and as a result magic is usable again without as much effort - however, now the use of magic contains an inherent danger that many refer to as "Circuitbleed" - what was once perfectly streamlined and hyper-efficient conduits and systems within The Lattice to allow for the normal, streamlined casting enjoyed by all other places around the Planet of Ea now has developed faults and "leaks" that bleed out part of the Atlen that is put into them during casting, leading to catastrophic and often completely random results ranging from magical detonations, rampant physical mutations, total organ failure, alterations to the caster's mental state and/or psychology, to any other number of chaotic and unpredictable magical side effects. As one may expect, more powerful magic therefore "bleeds" more Atlen out during casting, leading to more dangerous effects that are typically thematic to the type of magic attempting to be used.
Because of the dangers of Circuitbleed, aspiring mages are forced to turn to drastic means to practice their craft - the most common way to blunt the effects of Circuitbleed is to offer up more Atlen as a pre-existing buffer for the Circuitbleed to slam into and consume like a Tidewall to blunt an incoming Tidal Wave; in this way, the caster is insulated from the worst of the effects. However, this means that practices such as Blood Magic, Living Sacrifice, and other nefarious methods are a common practice for casters on Numiastra, as is the demented practice of using other living beings as batteries or barricades for one's casting - all for the simple fact that to practice such magics without these protections will cause the Circuitbleed to fall onto the caster alone, leading to mutations, psychological changes, and more as described above. Alternatively, casters can also try to alleviate Circuitbleed in more humane ways by carving 'channels' into their magic to allow for the effects to flow into the environment, which can help casters influence what form the backlash will take, pushing it towards environmental feedback rather than personal feedback. This, however, is much less reliable and prone to errors or total failure and often simply does not work for higher tiers of magic.
Thus, the only option remaining to many Casters is to burn their decency and humanity upon the pyre of their own ambition and fear in a selfish bid to keep not only their power and prestige like the Mage-kings of the Skyfall aftermath, but for the simple science of self-preservation; because the alternative is madness, mutation, corruption, death, or any number of fates worse than death, such nefarious and terrible means of avoiding or blunting Circuitbleed are a fact of life for those who seek to practice magic. Unfortunately, while all who practice magic experience the effects of Circuitbleed, none feel it so keenly as Arcane Mages - in the absence of other third parties inherent to other systems of magic such as Divine or Natural Casting(Read The Origins of Magic for more info) which can often help serve as a buffer or insulation against Circuitbleed(See The Rite of Subsumation Below), Arcane Mages have none to rely on and nothing to lose other than themselves...which has naturally resulted in drastic measures taken by Arcane Mages and other Mages of all kinds to preserve themselves, even if it means sacrificing everything about themselves to do so.

The Rite of Subsumation

A common practice that has arisen from the discovery of Circuitbleed and its dangers is "The Rite of Subsumation" - a means of relying on another more powerful entity to essentially store a record of one's biological, physiological, magical, mental, and spiritual "profile" or "essence" at the exact moment of the Rite's activation to allow for the entity accepting the Rite to help the caster return to that base "profile" or even simply to allow for the entity to recognize changes being done to the caster and alert them should blowback from spellcasting and the resulting Circuitbleed begin to change their body, mind, soul, or otherwise.
This Rite, while useful, requires a prospective mage to allow another being into their very soul - and thus effectively ingratiates them to this other entity and requires a great deal of trust - or a patron-like exchange between the two parties where each can be sure the other benefits from the arrangement in some way. Versions of this Rite that can function without a second party(functioning more like storing a copy of oneself on an arcane medium or database) are rumored to exist but are incredibly rare. While this rite does reduce the dangers of Circuitbleed, it does not remove them entirely - depending on the entity in question being called upon by the caster to accept the Rite the protection offered may be more or less comprehensive or work against different aspects of the Circuitbleed as a whole, but none will alleviate the Bleed entirely.

A Land Beyond Repair

Though many cry out for the repair of the Broken Leylines and The Lattice whose damaged frameworks have led to Circuitbleed and the extreme dangers of Spellcasting as a whole within the lands of Numiastra, it is no longer such a simple endeavor - since most of the Gods present across the rest of the planet of Ea fled or were expunged during the chaos immediately following the Skyfall Incident, few beings remain on Numiastra who have the capability or the desire to try and return their broken land to the way it used to be. The stewards of the God of Magic, based on faraway continents, still yearn to fix The Leylines and The Lattice around Numiastra but are hampered by not only the advent of The Divine Gate which prevents Gods of the Outer Realms from manifesting their central cores and bodies upon the Material Realm, but also the dangers of Numiastra itself - The Iron Empire who holds nothing but hatred for magic and its wielders, and the Vrykus Throne who seeks the extermination of all life alone mean that both the stewards of the God of Magic who would see the land fixed and the servants of the natural world who would likely seek to facilitate the natural healing of the Leylines such as the Kami, Druids, and more are either killed or driven out in short order.
Despite it all, however, there are no shortage of those who would try to enact change in this broken and dying land - even if it will lead to little change overall many throw themselves at the task regardless, weighed down by the heavy burden of the worst and most pervasive of all mortal traits: hope. A currency more valuable than any gold in these broken, shattered lands.

Type

Metaphysical, Arcane

To pursue the spark of the arcane is to eschew the whole in favor of the self. To prioritize the self over the needs of the whole - it is a fundamental flaw built into the mindset of every single last one of those filthy, selfish mages of the Arcane; they will always put themselves over others because that is what their ethos demands. They seek knowledge - understanding of this world and its vast intricacies - and wish to bend those secrets to their own ends for no other reason than they seek to - that they have goals they would see fulfilled. They work for the sake of none but themselves and their personal ambitions.
They are not like Druids, who work in service of the forests - they are not like the Clergy who work in service of a higher power - they are not like the Mythmakers who work in service of the people - they work solely in service of themselves. They may fake and pretend, but we are nothing more than things to them; lesser beings whom some may see as pitiful enough to look out for, but things that they will not hesitate to sacrifice if it means empowering themselves. This sickness inherent to their minds betrays the way with which their kind views us - lesser things to be protected or even sacrificed. And what good is it to be cared for by one who thinks themselves so above us?
Even their magic is selfish - they draw upon the Atlen, the Mana of our world, to power their own rituals and selfish ends; Not that of the forests nor the leylines nor that of a higher power. The lifeblood of this land itself - your life, my life, the plantlife, all of it. A degenerate, disgusting branch of mages who are to be pruned wheresoever they are found, and nothing more.

— Lily-Rose Kennedy, Sacrament Mother First Class of the Faith of Tavross, The Iron Emperor

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