The Fraying Weave

The state of magic in Korinth, May 2026.

What is happening

The Ashen Host’s arcane wing — the Shattered Hand magi, commanded by Kaelith the Seared — is engaged in a slow, sustained campaign to corrode the fabric of magic across Korinth. They do not destroy the weave; they thin it. They run small rituals at leyline nodes, plant scrying anchors in the wilderness, bind nature spirits as batteries for their work, and leave each site a little less stable than they found it.

The damage is cumulative and, once done, permanent. The Eternal One does not repair this. The dead jaaren cannot. Mortal hands have never woven the weave; they cannot mend it either.

What this means at the table: spells in Korinth no longer behave the way they did a generation ago. They mostly work. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they work but bring something with them — a memory that isn’t yours, a smell from somewhere else, a moment of seeing the world a half-second out of phase. The longer the Ashen Host’s campaign continues, the more often this happens.

The Mechanic

Each time a spell is cast in Korinth, the caster (or GM) rolls d100. If the roll is at or below the current Wild Surge Chance, roll on the Wild Surge Table below.

The chance increases each year. There is no decay, no recovery, no method short of the campaign’s eventual climax for reversing what has been lost.

How the chance rises

Each year:

• +1% unavoidable — the Ashen Host’s broader campaign that mortals cannot directly oppose. Added regardless of player action.
• +1% avoidable — earned by the Ashen Host if the year’s Gen Con table fails to foil that year’s lever encounter. The Gen Con party is the only group with the opportunity to prevent this.

Once an avoidable point is added, it becomes part of the new floor. There is no way to remove it. Failing one year’s lever sets the new starting line for every year that follows.

The endgame, if play continues twenty years, sits between 20% and 40% — the lower bound is what a perfect record looks like, the upper bound is what total failure looks like. Any individual player’s choices contribute to where the world ends up.

The Running Tally

Year	Floor (unavoidable)	Carryover (avoidable)	Final rate	Lever	Outcome
2025	1%	—	1%	Weyholt ritual	Foiled by the party. No carryover into 2026.
2026	2%	0%	2%	Eldenwood travel side-trek	Pending. Outcome determines 2027 starting rate.
2027	3%	0% or 1%	3% or 4%	TBD	—
2028	4%	—	—	TBD	—

Current rate as of May 2026: 2%.

Wild Surge Table

Roll d20 when a surge is triggered. The flavor of these effects is rooted in the Unraveling — the thinning of reality, the bleeding of times and places, the failure of certainty. Damage is rare. The real damage is to coherence.

d20	Effect
1	The spell works, but for one round all words spoken in earshot are heard a half-second before they’re said.
2	A scent appears that doesn’t belong to this place — sea air in a forest, smoke in a riverbed, a specific person’s perfume. Lingers 10 minutes.
3	The caster’s shadow shows what they were doing 10 minutes ago, not what they’re doing now. Lasts 1 minute.
4	The spell works. A bird, insect, or small animal nearby dies, untouched. Cause unknown.
5	The spell works at +1d4 effect (damage, healing, range, duration — caster’s choice within reason).
6	The spell works at -1d4 effect (GM’s choice of which dimension).
7	Everyone within 30 ft. briefly remembers something that didn’t happen. A childhood event, a conversation, a person who was never there. Fades within a minute but leaves a feeling.
8	A nearby small object (no larger than a fist) is replaced with the version of itself from one year ago. If it didn’t exist a year ago, it’s just gone.
9	The spell affects the wrong target — a creature within 30 ft. chosen randomly, including allies and the caster.
10	The spell works, but the caster hears a voice — distant, indistinct, speaking words they don’t recognize. (At GM’s discretion: it’s one of the dead jaaren, or Dezlock, or something worse. The caster doesn’t know which.)
11	Color drains from a 20 ft. radius for 1 minute. Sight is reduced to greyscale.
12	The spell works. A random non-magical item carried by the caster — coin, button, cup — turns to ash.
13	The caster ages forward or backward 1d4 days. Cosmetic only, but it sticks.
14	The spell duplicates: the same spell, same target, fires again immediately. (If single-target, hits same target twice; if area, fires from the same point.)
15	The spell fizzles entirely. Slot is consumed.
16	Reality “skips” — one creature in 30 ft. (random) loses their next action. They feel time pass but cannot act in it.
17	The spell works, but creates a brief opening in the weave: a small object from elsewhere in Korinth (or elsewhere in time) falls at the caster’s feet. GM’s choice; usually mundane, occasionally significant.
18	The spell works and persists past its normal duration by 1d4 rounds — including hostile spells, ongoing area effects, or transformations the caster wanted to end.
19	All wounds on creatures within 30 ft. — including healed ones, including old scars — briefly become visible as if fresh. Painful but not damaging. 1 round.
20	The spell works. The caster forgets one specific thing — a name, a face, a memory. GM’s choice but in keeping with the character. Permanent, unless someone reminds them and they make a Wisdom save.

Scope

This applies to all spellcasting in Korinth, everywhere. Dragon Isles, Lorean Freeholds, the Marches, the Karsuun Barrens — every region. One global rate. The Shattered Hand’s campaign is strategic, not localized.

The Long Arc

Every Gen Con table, year after year, is making decisions for the entire future of Korinth. The damage they fail to prevent will still be present when they sit down to play their Dragon Isles characters that October, and the following March, and every game thereafter until the campaign’s climax — which, if the world is still standing twenty years on, will be the moment the Ashen Host’s work is either undone or completed.