Precedence Unpredictable

Precedence Unpredictable is a book uncovered through use of Study-related Inquiries.

## History

Seeking to further understand her place in history - or more accurately acknowledge the rivals that she surely sought to surpass to be crowned as the greatest wild sorcerer to ever live, Moxzi repeatedly pestered the librarian at the Amber Archives, Waddles, for a tome - after a short while, Precedence Unpredictable was presented to her, the next task finding someone to read it to her.

## Reading

### Completed by Moxzi Bluhedd

The spirit of victory granted by the Battlemistress teaches that the greatest of triumphs are those seized from a place of seeming inevitable failure and defeat. In the world of the arcane, many see the presence of Wild Magic sorcerers - a frightfully rare, but noteworthy occurrence in which an individual bubbles and boils with a connection of Divinus' Weave, the power of unfiltered magic churning within. Faced with the adversity of their powers, few find the success that they might covet at the start of their journey in understanding their powers, but those that do are worthy of, at the very least, immortalisation in the history books. In this tome, we will consider six such cases - Ethor Cazal, The Greenwood Family of Scylbialia Hold, Marek the Chainbreaker, Bluk Blightbearer, Sylran Lunarfond and the village of Arrowick.

#### Ethor Cazal

Born to a Knight-Régyr in the Province of Pervou, Ethor Cazal's sorcerous bloodline manifested in his late teens, nearly killing the knight for which he squired in an incident involving a xorn terrorising a local mining town. Instead of disparaging the youth, Ethor was instead guided to seek out teaching from the Guild of the Bronze Oak, one of the Ten Guilds that specialised in the study of abjuration magics. Though it is understood that there were a number of further mishaps on the way, in time Ethor became particularly adept at channelling his innate magics, all the while using his learned understanding to protect those that stood at his side, funnelling the Weave only in the direction he sought.

Ethor Cazal would, after his adventuring days drew to a close, return to the Guild of the Bronze Oak, eventually becoming its third Archmage, a role that he served in for the best part of a decade before his passing.

#### The Greenwood Family of Scylbialia Hold

Widely considered to be amongst the most eccentric of the nobility of the Duchies of Tynd, the long-standing connection that the Greenwood Family hold with Srar in all their facets of being has infused much of the bloodline with a range of arcane, divine and primal magics. Many in the family have gone on to be druids, in place of the clerical or paladin paths so highly respected and acclaimed throughout the Duchies, although there are certainly those of the latter two likewise, Isolt the Huntress and Ottokar Gladehearth naturally coming to mind. Of sorcerers however, less note had been made, until the manifestation of powers in aunt and nephew simultaneously, seemingly when Duchess Sashia first met her sister's firstborn, her siblings family having resided in Tulis for a time. The pair - one the ruling member of the Greenwood family, the other a child of just four years, both found themselves enveloped in wild magic, bolstered by their counterpart's presence.

While for a time, the pair grew increasingly close, a familial bond bolstered by their shared experiences. However, with it, so did the scope of their powers. While Duchess Sashia could control it, her infant nephew Ingo, understandably, failed to do so. Subsequently, the pair were kept apart, and by the time Ingo understood, his opinion of his aunt had soured so greatly that they found themselves seeking little to do with each other.

#### Marek the Chainbreaker

A member of the Black Cross, elite mercenaries most commonly fighting in the armies of the Empire of Codorne, Marek was, by his account, taken one night by a slaving party while he had left the banner's camp to relieve himself. Subdued with a paralytic poison and carried back to the depths of the Underdark, Marek found himself sold in service to Buruz Den, vassals of the Hunzrach Den, rulers of Melelon, The City of Thorns. Within the city Marek toiled for several years on end, his strength and constitution built with a decade and a half of steady mercenary work the only thing that ensured his survival. Beneath the haze of faerzress, a magical miasma found throughout the Underdark, he mined, constructed and otherwise laboured, before his owners were ambushed by a duergar raiding party. The resulting skirmish would ignite a huge undetected pocket of explosive gas, though Marek claims he was somehow shielded by the miasma that surrounded him, the resulting surge of energy sufficient still to knock him unconscious. Misfortune had not finished for Marek however, for a few days later, he was once again captured by a raiding party returning from the surface, and once more cast into chains, along with a dozen other individuals taken in the night, just as he had been years prior.

Marek has repeatedly said that found himself simply wishing for a chance - for the ceiling to collapse on his captors, for a gust of fresh air, for the chains to fall from his hands. The lattermost came true, seemingly willed by nothing more than Marek's desire. Surprising the would-be slavers, Marek and those he freed managed to flee for the surface - and since Marek has created a new mercenary band that sells their services to protect travellers, armies and all others besides from such incursions come nightfall.

#### Bluk Blightbearer

For those familiar, the name Bluk Blightbearer, or more properly Bluk "Booyahg Booyahg Booyahg" Blightbearer, is one met with infamy, given their activities in the Tviatini Jungle during their reign of terror, ambushing and pillaging all those that sought to travel through the forest, whether in the wild depths to the west, or the more frequented regions to the east. During such time, it seemed that the Blightbearer was ever-present, springing up at a lumberyard one day, a mine many miles away the next. With their pillaging of merchants, the tributes claimed from those clans and tribes around their land and the loot gathered from those sought to hunt them down, Bluk wielded a mighty arsenal of enchanted items and other treasures, further augmenting their destructive power.

All of a sudden however, the Blightbearer vanished. Reports vary wildly on the exact cause of their demise, with foes, rivals, friends, lovers and themselves all implicated in different tales, but all agree - the surge of wild magic that followed was greater than any they had managed in life, and the body vanished, leading to rumours and beliefs that they had surely been reincarnated in some manner, yet nothing has yet come of it.

#### Sylran Lunarfond

The vast majority of mages will consider themselves to be patrons of Divinus, the Three-Eyed Light, from which magic flows as readily as the waves and tides of the ocean. Others instead seek patronage elsewhere, motivated by a range of misguided beliefs, and thus find themselves bound by terms that mortal minds fail to comprehend or acknowledge the scope of. The Keeper of Whispers promises much and more to those that seek him out, forbidden knowledge, or that which has simply been cast aside by the God of Destiny, and is vigorously guarded against in institutions throughout the continent. But they are not the only other entity enamoured with the arcane, seeking mastery and understanding. Sylran Lunarford, a Gawylthian politician with elven heritage, instead found themselves bound in contract to that of the Duke of Brimstone, Mephistopheles. The Lord of Cania granted Sylran skill above that of his peers, a preternatural sense for it, allowing him to raise high in the courts of Inverden, accruing wealth, power and fame.

With it, Sylran's ego would grow, and so he started to chafe against the terms of the contract, and the payments of fealty to come. After a spell of defiance, Sylran attempted to bypass the Archdevil's contract, and thus, the fury of the Master of Hellfire was unleashed in full, twisting and augmenting what had been given to the elf so that the magic overwhelmed him, ripples of untempered wild magic lashing out at all that had come to stand at his side. Only after Sylran had destroyed all that he had come to hold dear did Mephistopheles send his sycophants for him, striking him down, and seizing his soul as a listless vessel of administration at the sanctums of Mephistar forever more.

#### The Village of Arrowick

Located on the island of Morass, near the edges of Gambler's Bait, the village of Arrowick, was, by every rhetoric and measurement, an underwhelming and lacking place, home to a population of a few dozen that subsisted from the surrounding marsh and swampland. Nonetheless, they made some level of trade acting as guides to those that sought out the Gambler's Bait, a region within the island known for its intense fetidity, with deep fens swallowing up all by the hardiest of mangrove trees and creeping vines - but seemingly serving as a site of all manner of treasures, from coinage, to artifacts of particular curiosity.

One such expedition that would later involve Earl Lilian Telcorth would be preceded by a number of wild magic manifestations in the village; at one point nearly three-quarters of the population had developed some connection to the Weave, however chaotic it ultimately proved to be. When the Rosaigostone, an artifact seemingly linked to the Wandering World of Limbo, was pulled free from the bogs, the cause of these developments was seemingly explained, although the magics did not fade, even as the relic was carried beyond the coast of Morass.