The year was 403 of the 4th Era. Summer was nearing its end and Autumn was beginning to take root. The first spots of colors were appearing on a leaf every so often. It was nothing noticeable, the weather to the North hardly changed at all, there wasn't a day that wasn't freezing once you were above the southern border of the Barren. Balefall was a desert and always hot, except at night when temperatures could drop rapidly. But from the Vardendale capital of Nemira to the Southernmost of the Cespid Islands, Skiid, it was warm and humid. North Thystys was a quiet enough city. The Mage's guild had been keeping it quiet and there were no festivals at this time of the year. Occasionally there would a noisy immigrant from an anti-magic province shouting about how all arcane users should return to the Nether and be thrown into the darkest pit of the 7th circle of Hell. Most anti-magic protests were similar in this regard. On this day however the quiet was broken by a very powerful explosion of Dark Magic emanating from just outside of the city borders. This powerful explosion caused rapid compression of the energy used to form magic and created a riptide which ripped apart most of the surrounding area, reconverting the physical world it touched into magic, leaving behind a smoldering crater that reeked of Dark Magic. The shockwave, though subsiding in power almost immediately so it no longer destroyed what it touched, rippled through the air like a tidal wave through the ocean. It swept across the land with ease and caused the stomachs of mages everywhere to turn. It was not so easily missed, most non-mages brushed it off as a bad meal or the oncoming of an illness. It would be more obvious however to any who had channeled the arcane energies through their body. This was a catastrophe that couldn't so easily be ignored.