Chaos Maelstrom

CategoryMarvels
Locationvaries
Ownernone
Builtunknown

The Chaos Maelstrom is a storm of entropic energies that merges with a world's normal storm. Normally they drift aimlessly about the Web of Magic, a pollutant that even the mighty weave spiders cannot rid. Sometimes, these storms of chaos, powered by the same energies that course across Chaos, find a breach. A mini-rift or other anomaly unleashes this raw storm of chaos into an area. Like Chaos, the effects are unpredictable, with rivers flowing in the opposite direction, grasslands changing colors, creatures becoming mutated, or large landmasses changing shape.

One legend has it that the Chaos Maelstrom was created when the god Benevolence slew his wife Kesserine.

Benevolence in a fit of unbridled rage, battled Kesserine ... with each blow from her mighty sword of pure whiteness, the sky cracked with thunder. Kesserine fought feebly against such passion and rage. After a day of battle between them and their armies, she was slain. Her essence merged with the Weave, becoming a storm of chaos, the Chaos Malestrom. The sadness and grief of what had been produced in the false marriage and the death of the wife he still loved was too much for Benevolence. A year to the day later, at first his body froze in place, then it petrified, rising up into the clouds in pursuit of his lost wife. It did not leave this world, instead it was trapped on our side of the Web, left to drift on the Weird Flow.

- Oreithyia, Einglach Lore Sentinel - "The Storm and the Stone Clouds"

In 1296, sorcerer-scientists of the Mutation Lab, an Entropy cell, summoned more than fifty creatures from the Limbo System. This summoning temporarily weakened the energies binding the Web of Magic, creating a rift. Then according to plan, a storm of chaos passed through a rift that would become known as the Sink of Chaos. This storm led to great changes in sector Aettein's northern tracts, chaos infusing the land and its peoples (c.f. Flux).

In 1829, the Chaos Maelstrom froze a large swathe of the Nautrek Sea. This created a temporary land-bridge between the continents of Elemantum and Brucrumus. This was followed by a rupture in the Elemantum Boundary Ward. This hole allowed the escape of a large Cinderfall army, which then made its way to Brucrumus where they attacked MogdĂșlg. Convinced by higher authorities, they stopped their attack, joining the greater might of the Flux Pact.

The Chaos Maelstrom is an invisible, chaotic force that can be thwarted but never completely blocked and contained by the higher powers.

- Seer Samjunk, of the Loremasters of Ermikel - "The Chaos Maelstrom"

Inter-System and intra-system shifts are usually caused by a Chaos Maelstrom.