| races | aberrations, demons, horrors |
| neighbors | {"N"=>"zephyr"}, {"NE"=>"rup"}, {"E"=>"mountain"}, {"SE"=>"selva"}, {"S"=>"elyria"}, {"SW"=>"arallu"}, {"W"=>"ocean"}, {"NW"=>"trell"} |
An uninhabitable zone bordering the nations.
All nations border the Flux, a nightmarish zone of ever-shifting reality. Those entering the Flux rarely survive, but those that do emerge changed and warped in unpredictable ways.
Near the edges, the Flux appears to be a normal scrubland. But as one delves deeper, the earth heaves, air bursts to smoke, the sky rains acid, the night freezes the clouds which fall like boulders, and fires spring to life, coalescing into gargantuan forms. People’s minds twist, and as they go mad they physically contort into shapes defying all sanity and reason.
Sometimes, demons emerge from the Flux to threaten those foolish enough to have settled nearby.
A tower is visible deep within the Flux, nearly touching the sky. Some say it contains vast wealth beyond mortal imaginings, but no one has survived an expedition there.
Wild Magic
Some sorcerers skirt the edge of the Flux to practice a style of magic known as wild magic. Most others believe them to be insane.
Outbreaks
Mallory tells the party that several new areas of Flux have emerged, including one where the Stormherd camp was, and another at the old SPI headquarters under the Mountain. He says that their colleague Audreth has been dispatched to Euphoria to research ways to combat their growth. Mallory stresses that the SPI’s new top priority is to prevent, or failing that, contain explosions of wild magic from now on (e.g., like Cal tried to do by destroying the Flux weapon), until a way is found to reverse the Flux at these hotspots.
- (after case 05) The Temple of Symmetry was ultimately sucked into the unstable vortex which was created when Vondal disrupted the Zenithal Summit. Sonan the Scholar is dead, from the wounds he suffered curing Vondal. Ceowyn wants a place where he can meditate in seclusion, as recompense.
- (after case 04) Growing where Brian was.
- (discovered during case 03) Where first SPI HQ was.
- (after case 06) Where Stormherd camp was.
- (after case 08) Where circus was in the RUP.
The Crystalline Flux
A surreal realm of structured chaos. See Case 09.
Chronicle
- 13e04
With Erathis’s approval via Callie’s augury, Vondal wove Flux into the destroyed door of Alye’adu, creating a wild magic door.
- 14e02
Vondal sensed Evershroud Manor chaotically infused with Flux, its tendrils everywhere, triggering a wild magic surge.
- 14e03
Lady Nightshade ripped open reality with her scythe and grabbed the Flux, which crawled up her arm and transformed her into a creature of mouths.
- 14e04
Invictus explained that the Flux is everything that is not the world, unreality, kept out by the gods’ binding of Aecus with the elements; a destroyed ninth element would explain the hole in the world.
- 15e07
Vondal witnessed its birth in a stained glass vision: a ritual by three elves to heal the world with a ring, which cracked at the apex of its power when one of them betrayed it.
- 16e01
Beneath HQ, Vondal felt his perception of the Flux turned inside out: there, the Flux was leaking out and reality leaking in, as though the place were a linchpin holding something together.
- 16e05
The agents woke in tunnels beside a great root wreathed in Flux, flowing in one direction, with shapes pushing out as though trying to escape. Shadowy undead creatures bubbled up from the roots and attacked, becoming shadow duplicates of whoever they fought.
- 16e08
At the heart of the Flux, the battle sliced reality open; when Megaera’s shield fell, waves of Flux washed over the agents, leaving prismatic zones, a null spot, and a crossroads of reality, and transforming everyone. The SPI badges protected the agents from worse.
- 17e00
Mallory concluded that whatever was happening in the tower under, and in, the Flux, also tangled with the Feywild and perhaps the Afterworld, needed to stop.