Chronomancy | Kronomantik

Chronomancy is a school of magic pertaining to the alteration of time. Its use has been has been forbidden by The Academy since the Niederung disaster. Only one chronomancer is known during the last 500 years and he is believed to be the cause of the Niederung disaster.

The principles of chronomancy

The school of chronomancy was established when enterprising mages attempted to apply the energy exchange principles of the conventional magical schools. The spells within this school relates to the bending of time and mages have successfully used it to halt or at least slow the passage of time if the effect is confined to small areas and short durations.

The dangers

The principal danger of using this school of magic is the energy exchange required. The energy needed for classical spells is quite manageable and can easily be siphoned from the surroundings without excessive harm. However, time appears to be much less flexible than ordinary matter and the energy cost involved quickly becomes enormous. One of the foremost scholars on chronomancy Gelin Jannum said shortly before his disappearance "Time does not want to change, whatever bend we want to create, it works against us, countering and pushing back".

The Niederung disaster

The town of Niederung only has one real claim to fame. The unremarkable settlement was the site of a wizards duel between the Greycoats of The Academy and an unknown mage who was rampaging through the city.
Exactly what occurred in the town square has not been released by academy archivists but what is known is that the unknown mage attempted to cast a chronomancy spell of unprecedented scale not only to halt the passage of time but to shift the whole town backwards in time. The resulting energy exchange cleanly obliterated the whole town center leaving only a 100 meter wide perfectly spherical Mage Glass lined crater. The number of casualties is unknown but at least 600 people died in the disaster.
The Academy has made heavy use of the disaster to promote the operations of their Greycoats and to stamp down on the activities mages outside the academies control citing the danger of another mage attempting what the Unknown Mage did.

Mitigation

There have been some efforts and successes in mitigating the dangers of using chronomancy spells. Particularly the advent of the energy exchange target rune  was hailed as a success since it allowed the user to designate an area or target for the energy drain instead of allowing it to use the immediate surroundings. However the total energy cost remained prohibitively high.
It has been rumoured that The Academy has tried to weaponize the energy drain effect but statements from The pinnacle have categorically denied this and even went so far as to suggest that it is in fact not possible to do.