The Great Decay

The Great Decay, known in academic circles as Soulpower Entropy, is a phenomenon that is theorised to be draining the soulpower in the world. As soulpower is the fundamental driving force for the power of living creatures, the general consequences of the Great Decay is the significant decrease in strength and power of all people.

## Consequences

### General Consequences

Soulpower is the quality through which living beings use to perform supernatural feats of endurance, agility and strength in addition to channeling magical forces. Not only is this the case, it is also the building block of one's soul which dictates their personality, characteristics and possibly even fate. With a reduction in soulpower, the average capabilities of an ordinary warrior is far lower than it had been in the past and the apex of the past is now often seen as an insurmountable obstacle. Likewise, spellcasters have also seen a notable drop in power as it has become significantly harder to progress up the tiers of magic.

Though the upper limits for single user spellcasting has not declined, the average ability of spellcasters had decreased significantly. The average spellcaster is somewhere between 1st and 2nd tier where instead in the past, it was well within the 3rd to 4th tier. Higher order spellcasters have also become much rarer as the barrier between each tier has become much harder to breach. The overall consequence of this massive, affecting warfare, agriculture, industry and infrastructure.

Contemporary magical item production has slowed significantly with the shortage of skilled labour capable of creating them. As a result, magical items have become rarer and in many places have become associated moreso with aristocrats and wealthy merchants than adventurers who used to utilise them extensively. Nowadays, only skilled adventuring groups possess powerful magical items as even if a weak party were to come into possession of one, they were quickly stolen by magic item thieves or confiscated by powerful individuals.

### Dead Zones

Dead zones are areas where the weave had failed to repair itself following the Cataclysm. Pockets of warped space, these areas are prime locations for extraplanar incursions from not only its denizens but sometimes even the very plane itself. In large, old dead zones, the local environment can become corrupted by another plane causing the local environment to take its shape. In some cases, there could even be elements from not only but multiple planes coexisting in the same space at once.

Within dead zones, magic was significantly disrupted and prone to failure or unintended side effects. Depending on the degree of damage the weave had sustained, magic could even be unusable entirely, failing to produce any effects. This quality of dead zones were what gave them their name - as areas of dead magic. All but the most foolhardy of mages avoid dead zones like the plague although it is not always easy to identify one. While many dead zones do appear warped by extraplanar corruption, some more insidious ones remain untouched physically. These areas have served as the graves of many spellcasters who were lulled into a sense of false security, only to be ambushed or attacked without the power to defend themselves.

### Hollowborn Epidemic

Soulrot is increasingly common disease that is a consequence of the Great Decay and is a terrifying ailment that affected newborn children. Those who were afflicted with soulrot are said to have been born without a soul; though their biological functions were working, these babies were little more than husks, not reacting to any stimuli. There is no cure and little is known about the workings of the ailment - it is unknown whether or not it is a curse, a disease or something else entirely.