1365

## **Strange magic presents itself to House Stonehearth**

### **House Stonehearth was known to be tapped into a deeper sort of magic…**

The mass production and consistency of scrolls and potions tipped the Stonehearth hand. There were strange developments afoot that by **1365**, told mages and wizards all they needed to know that the SMC was tapped into something different.

This brought seekers of all sorts, but it also brought those who were different, seeking to discover if Stonehearth was like they were.

Among the most consistent of the different were the “mind mages” or “psionicists.” a kind of magic-like ability that wasn’t actually magic at all. From what few hushed rumors were out there, this was the art and science of psionics.

### **It was no-doubt potent, but not as flexible as traditional magics.**

It was part of the fabric of the universe, closely connected with the Ki that monks studied, sought and employed… but it flowed through living being differently than magic. It was, perhaps, the stuff that souls themselves were made of – the manifest power of consciousness.

It became part of the retinue of Stonehearth. This wasn’t something that was taught to outsiders of any kind, and taught to very few of the insiders. Basic knowledge of it was required by the core of the House, first as a defense, and second as an awareness to the makeup of the universe.

### **Patterns in the Fabric of the Cosmos**

In their strange ways, everything in the cosmos was connected. From the Ki and Psionics of the mind and soul, to nature of those connections across great distances. It was kind of a spooky action at a distance.

There were implications that impacted the nature and understanding of Realmspace and Cosmology in general. The parallax and distances of certain stars and objects didn’t mesh with certain models, even when accounting for wildspace issues found by Spelljammers.

Not the least of the nearby “issues” was the eight elder evils that looked like stars but were, in fact, deity-like beings from the Far Realm – who’d invaded no thanks to the actions of the Abolethic Sovereignty.

It was this level of perspective that shaped and influenced policies and approaches of House Stonehearth – they were looking at a *much bigger picture*.

Likewise, their understanding of phlogiston and the observed nature of the shell of the Crystal spheres themselves wasn’t so much a true Prime Material Plane physical manifestation as the fuzzy threshold of a demiplane. The shell itself, and the phlogiston-filled distance between different shells, was itself a plane.

Akin to the Ethereal and Astral planes, running into the spheres (figuratively or literally) was a side-effect of the nature of Spelljammer magic. The magic shifted the phase of travelers, and the phase transition itself was anchored to the object at the center of the solar system (usually a star).

Star Trek fans would recognize this as an arcane transition to a demiplane of subspace.

There were key relationships between Spelljamming and how it crossed vast distances, and the nature of both Teleporting and portal travel. Portal travel itself did much the same thing as spelljamming through subspace: greatly compress Prime Material distances.

At this point, Stonehearth was starting to classify Spelljamming as potentially useful for exploration, but ultimately inefficient if one knew where they were going and had points of navigation that could open portals.

Portals and teleportation became a minor obsession of the Stonehearth Arcane Corps, who were determined not simply to master those localized, semi-common spells, but to learn the nature of medium through which those traveled…

## The Second Son rises to Patriar

The first-born Barrett had died two years prior in Impresk. As Piers stepped aside, the second son Everett now assumed the mantle of House Patriar.