Serenity Drain
What is Serenity Drain?
Casting a spell in Theoma requires being very calm. Spellcasters frequently go into trances. Sometimes that's how they ready themselves to cast, but sometimes it's an unintended side-effect of working too hard for too long at visualizing a complicated effect. Spellcasting may take longer than expected and "combat magic" is very rare (it mostly consists of Kalla lightning).
Beyond that requirement for calm, geomantic spells have about a 50/50 chance of being 'free'. Lose the coin-flip and your perfect serenity gets slagged with cognitive distortions and emotional lability, making further spells steadily harder to cast. Called serenity drain, it lasts for 1-15 hours depending on intensity, which will gradually decline from onset. Bigger spells inflict more intense serenity drain. Spellcasters suffering serious serenity drain go temporarily insane with irrational thought processes and extreme emotional fluctuations, but survive that and there's no permanent effects. Nobody likes major serenity drain, but a lot of casters report minor serenity drain as a "giddy" feeling that can be enjoyable.
Necromantic spells also have a 50/50 chance of causing serenity drain when cast. It works exactly the same way. Necromantic spells are never free, and if they don't cause serenity drain they instead cause the infamous syndrome of Spellwasting. Most necromancers prefer serenity drain.
What Countermeasures are Deployed Against Serenity Drain?
The most basic countermeasure is to work spells only in the company of serene people who are not working spells. It's important to avoid working spells alone, as a lone spellcaster will struggle to counter the temporary insanity of an unlucky spellworking. A spellcaster who has suddenly lost the native resilience that powers their spells may not think of reasonable things like sedating themselves to sleep it off. Lone spellcasters also commonly engage in reckless behaviors while serenity drained, and incidents of self-harm are not unknown.
Calming and sedating drugs can also be used to improve magic performance at some risk of putting the user to sleep. They can be used to counteract minor serenity drain (if necessary) or put a seriously drained caster to sleep so they aren't in danger. More dramatic countermeasures exist as well, and so for instance it is common aboard seagoing ships to bind windmages to the floor of a closed room during their shift, so that it doesn't matter at all if the windmage suffers serenity drain for a few hours while making the wind flow for the ship's use. Binding the mage as a preventative countermeasure to potential temporary insanity is also sometimes deployed on land when preparing for major geomantic workings.
Is Serenity Drain Ever Permanent?
Although typically regarded as a temporary condition, spellcasters who go deep into serenity drain on a regular basis risk permanently losing some of the calm and resilience of their personality. It's a serious psychohazard - heavily drained casters can go insane. Overworked spellcasters can also lose their edge even if they only suffer minor serenity drain, because spending a long time at the slightly reduced serenity level will get the caster used to being slightly less serene.
Permanent serenity drain can only be fixed by efforts to gain serenity permanently. This means that the greatest spellcasters often cast few spells while spending a great deal of time on activities that they believe will cultivate their ability to engage with the world in a calm and resilient way.
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