Night of Horrors

The **Night of Horrors**, also known as the **Night of Despair** and the **Night of Witches**, was an event when a recurring Magestream disruption, named the Portent of Woe, would flow through the continent of Inecuria and leave a trail of destruction in its path. Though termed a "night", the Night of Horrors rarely lasted just a single day; its longest recorded occurrence lasted eight days. The name is instead reflective of how the sky would darken during the event, blotting out all sunlight.

Though the sun, moon and stars would cast no light onto Inecuria during the Night of Horrors, it would not be pitch-black, for the land was illuminated by the powerful, turbulent and multicoloured Magestream currents that flowed through the sky. Usually these currents would change shape and colour in minutes, but it was not unheard of for specific regions to have a consistent certain kind of Magestream flow, in turn tinting the land with a certain coloured hue such as violet, red or green.

During the Night of Horrors, the boundary between realities would become extremely thin, enabling dimensional rifts to easily be torn open to allow creatures to come and go from the Dreadlands. The powerful but turbulent Magestream currents made magic substantially more powerful, but also more unstable and harder to control; it was relatively common for inexperienced mages to be taken by surprise by unexpectedly powerful magic during the Night, leading to serious injury or death. The Night of Horrors would also physically empower mutants, making them stronger, faster and hardier; some accounts described the skin of mutants as being "tougher than steel" during a Night of Horrors. Intelligent mutants were seemingly not affected mentally by the Night, but bestial mutants would be far bolder and more aggressive, rarely retreating from a fight.

As well as making mutants more powerful, the Night of Horrors greatly increased the incidence and severity of mutation. Those who became mutated during a Night would be warped far more from their original selves, and sexual intercourse between mortals during a Night was heavily discouraged - and often prohibited under pain of death - for a child conceived during a Night was guaranteed to be a mutant. Pregnant mothers had to be kept safe and calm to protect against the risk of their unborn child mutating; emotional stability was particularly important, as the phenomenon of Chaos - the tendency of intense emotional states to disrupt the Magestream - would draw magical energies towards a distressed mother and increase the likelihood of her child mutating. Mothers giving birth were particularly vulnerable, as the agony of childbirth caused much Chaos, and children born during a Night of Horrors were far more likely to come out mutated.

## Timing

It was calculated by the Librarians of Feronar in 43 BC that the Portent took an average of 1008 days (or 2.76 years) to make a full revolution around its circuit and appear in Inecuria once more to create the Night of Horrors. The date of the Night of Horrors would migrate across the seasons, and for whatever reason the Night tended to be both shorter and milder when it occurred in summer compared to winter. The shortest recorded interval between two Nights was 999 days, and the longest was 1017 days. A reliable estimate could therefore be made about roughly when in the year the Night would occur, but the exact timings were impossible to know until just a few days before the event.

Beginning from around 12-10 days before the Night of Horrors, the aerial currents of the Magestream would become increasingly erratic and unstable, taking on a violet hue distinct from their usual turquoise and azure. The behaviour of magovores would also become erratic, turning skittish and often hostile. From 8-7 days before the Night, mutants would become noticeably bolder and stronger, and the rate of random mutations would increase. From 5-4 days before the Night, the weather would become unpredictable and extreme, changing rapidly between clear skies with a hot, burning sun and a torrential downpour.

The final sign of the occurrence of the Night of Horrors appeared on the day before, known as Horror's Eve. The sky would begin to darken at this point, the process always without fail being complete by midnight, blotting out the moon and the stars. When the turbulent currents of the Magestream began to dance across the night sky, the people of the world would know that the Night of Horrors had began, and their doom was near.