Chaosweaver
Chaosweaving, academically called 'Catabasis', is a magical discipline rooted in the act of ritual sacrifice - the deliberate withering of objects, substances, or even living things to wield arcane effect. Where most disciplines draw power inward from ambient potentia, Catabasis draws power from exchange. Practitioners, known as Chaosweavers or simply Weavers, are a solitary and peripatetic lot; feared, misunderstood, and quietly growing in number across Pannotia despite every social force working against them.
History & Culture
Catabasis is among the older magical disciplines recorded in Pannotia, predating several schools that now enjoy far greater institutional prestige. Its precise origins are disputed - partly because Weavers have never maintained the kind of academies or guilds that might have preserved a clean historical record, and partly because the discipline's reputation has made honest documentation dangerous for those who practiced it openly. The most credible scholarly accounts place its earliest coherent practice somewhere in the interior of Ellawren, where remote communities developed ritualistic traditions around the idea that dying things release something - a final, concentrated outpouring of potentia at the moment a thing ceases to be. Early Weavers learned to catch that release and shape it.
At its heart, Catabasis is a discipline of sacrifice. To cast, a Weaver must wither an object - accelerating and completing its decay through an act of focused will - and channel the potentia released in that final moment of dissolution. What is withered need not be living, though living sacrifices yield considerably more power. A dried flower, a worn coin, anything that has been touched by time or use carries residual value, and a Weaver can tear it out entirely. What remains afterwards is ash, dust, or simply nothing. The object is gone in every meaningful sense. This is why critics - including a significant contingent of arcane scholars - argue that Catabasis is not truly magic at all, but rather an elaborate and dangerous form of ritualism that is somehow “exchanging” this for potentia with an unknown third party.
What makes Catabasis uniquely unsettling to both laypeople and fellow magic users is its tendency to cross lines that other disciplines treat as fixed. Summoning minor entities - imps, wraiths, servile things drawn from beyond - is among the more common applications of higher-level Weaving, requiring the withering of something still alive at the moment of casting. Influencing the actions and decisions of others, bending their will without their knowledge, is another. These are not side effects of the discipline; they are its most practiced applications. Weavers do not tend to conjure fire or shield themselves from blows as a go-to. They tend to reach into things - into the living, the unsuspecting - and quietly take.
The social consequence of all this is predictable. Chaosweavers are, broadly, unwelcome. Other arcane practitioners regard them with suspicion at best and open hostility at worst, treating Catabasis as a corruption of legitimate magical study rather than a peer discipline. Religious institutions in several nations have at various points issued formal condemnations. Even in regions with relatively tolerant attitudes toward magic, a known Weaver will find doors closed and conversations cut short. This isolation has, ironically, shaped the discipline's transmission into something far more intimate and resilient than any academy could produce. Without institutions, Weavers teach one another directly - a learned Weaver will take on a small handful of students, traveling with them, passing on technique through practice until the students are capable enough to seek out others and learn more. It is a slow, personal, and surprisingly effective method of propagation. The number of practicing Weavers across Pannotia is rising, and no particular effort to stem that rise has found purchase.
What no teacher of Catabasis can honestly omit - though some try - is the cost the discipline extracts from the caster over time. The prevailing theory among those scholars willing to study Catabasis seriously is that the act of withering is not entirely external. Each casting routes the released potentia through the Weaver's own body, and something of the caster goes with it - not dramatically, not all at once, but steadily. Long-practicing Weavers tend to share certain characteristics: a hollowness behind the eyes, a persistent chill to the touch, a constitution that recovers from illness more slowly than it should. Hair thins. Wounds take longer to close. The oldest known Weavers have reportedly described the sensation of advanced practice as feeling increasingly like a room that has had all its furniture slowly moved out - functional, but empty and hollow. Whether this is a flaw in the discipline that further study might correct, or simply the price Catabasis has always intended to charge, is a question that Weavers tend to answer differently depending on how long they have been practicing.
Notable People & Places
- Lyraen Voss - Arguably the most well-documented Chaosweaver in recent Pannotian history, Lyraen Voss spent nearly two decades traveling the Republic of Keldwike and its borders before settling - if that word applies to someone who still leaves for months at a time - in a small cottage on its fringes. She is notable not for any dramatic feat of magic, but for having made written records of many of the practice’s oral traditions. Her handwritten collection of practice notes, copied and re-copied by students until the original was reportedly lost, is the closest thing Catabasis has to a foundational text.
- Dorin Pale - A Weaver of considerable notoriety and, depending on the account, considerable age. Pale is most frequently cited in connection with at least three separate accusations of murder by mind control across the Kingdom of Monteluz, though none resulted in conviction - largely because the accusers later recanted under circumstances that various parties found suspicious in different directions. Whether Pale is a scapegoat for a discipline that invites suspicion, or a genuine practitioner of Catabasis at its most ethically compromised, is a question that follows them everywhere. They have not, to anyone's knowledge, attempted to answer it.
- The Waning House - A crumbling estate on the rural outskirts of Ironhurst province that serves, quietly and unofficially, as something like a waystation for traveling Weavers. Its owner - whose name does not appear in any account, only descriptions - is believed to be a retired Weaver whose practice has left them largely housebound. The house is notable in Weaver circles for maintaining a library of practice notes, correspondence, and records of withering effects that practitioners have contributed over the years. It is not widely known and those who know of it prefer to keep it that way.
Spells
| Name | Description | Cooldown/Cost | Action Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tribute to the Periphery | The Weaver offers a living creature in a brief ritual sacrifice. This offering conjures a diminutive, servile imp-like creature that is physically manifested to perform mundane tasks and engage in conversation. It stands at a mere two feet tall and cannot participate in combat. | Passive | N/A |
| Ash-Strike | The Weaver performs a fleeting ritual, sacrificing an item to petition the forces of dissolution. This unleashes a jarring burst of raw potentia at a foe in melee range, making a MYS attack roll. On a successful strike, the target suffers 1d6 damage and is violently knocked 4 blocks in any direction as the force tears them away. | 2 turns | Action |
| Bulwark of Oblation | The Weaver offers a few drops of their blood to conjure a spectral, impassable barrier. The wall measures 3x3 blocks, can be placed anywhere within emote range, and remains for 2 turns. | Once per Combat | Action |
| Name | Description | Cooldown/Cost | Action Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Offering of Decay | The Weaver calls an immediate surge of power to strike the target as a bolt, making a MYS attack roll. On hitting, the bolt causes a brief burst of force, which either decreases the target’s next movement by 2 blocks, or moves them 2 blocks in a chosen direction. The caster determines the initial effect, and all subsequent casts within a fight will alternate. | No Cooldown | Action |
| Darkness of the Final Breath | By sacrificing a light source, the Weaver summons forth a roiling ball of magic to sling at a target or block. This manifests as an unnatural darkness, shrouding a 7x7 area centered on the position hit for 2 turns and Blinding all enemies within. | Once per Combat | Action |
| Binding Sacrificial Will | The Weaver seizes the target's body, briefly usurping their motor functions. Making a MYS vs SCR attack roll, on a success the Weaver takes control of the target’s body briefly, forcing them to move up to their full Movement Distance. This forced movement will trigger Attacks of Opportunity. | Once per Combat | Action |
| Name | Description | Cooldown/Cost | Action Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Convocation of the Consumed | With the sacrifice of both blood and a living creature, the Weaver summons a trio of imp-like creatures to their side. For 3 turns, the Chaosweaver's Offering of Decay is enhanced to fire three additional projectiles. Each is rolled separately, dealing only 1d3 damage and applying only half the bonus effect of the primary projectile. | Once per Combat | Action |
| Screams of the Lost | The Weaver offers everything in their vicinity, rapidly withering all living beings in the immediate area. The Chaosweaver makes a MYS vs SCR attack roll for everyone within 7 blocks. Anyone failing this roll suffers Disadvantage on their next two rolls of any kind as their inner energy is torn away. | Once per Week | Action |
| Sanctuary of Silence | The Weaver reverses their withering, destructive influence, creating a fleeting space where harm cannot be done. The Chaosweaver must spend a full turn of Concentration on this spell. Once complete, no damage may be dealt by anyone in the current combat for the 2 following turns. | Once per Week | Action |
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