EREBUS — the Cicatrixes, spell-torn battlegrounds
It’s common knowledge that magic can’t create anything permanent: otherwise, all wizards would be filthy rich with the gold they conjured.
But spells can leave scars that won’t go away.
Thanks to its laissez-faire attitude regarding arcane practices, the Holy Infernal Empire displays many remnants of daring experiments, arrogant displays of power, and clumsy mishaps.
In Erebus, for example, there are the Cicatrixes, pieces of land showing the signs of the magical battles held there. They may be stretches of glass created by intense fire spells, craters carved by magic artillery, or grasslands still recovering from the conjuring of poisonous gas clouds.
Farmers that get a cicatrix as their land are quite unlucky: they may have to work around giant spherical boulders used as projectiles, have their plow broken by weapons fused with the grounds, or have trenches crisscrossing the places where smooth fields should be. Sometimes there are advantages: war wizards built infrastructures to aid the troops, like weels, mud cottages, or roads, but, usually, the nuisance of random objects littering the ground is usually much greater.
A cicatrix doesn’t have active spells, just what remains of them. Objects created ex nihilo will slowly unravel in the mana field, leaving incorporeal and translucent simulacra fading into nonexistence. Once a transmutation spell ends, the original object will become an amorphous blob. Only things created indirectly, maybe using telekinetic-like powers to shape them, will not be affected by the spell ending.
There is a notable exception. Almost 50 years ago, during the conflict against the beast nations part of the III Axam War, the then Princess Astarte used a holy relic in war, an unprecedented breaking of a taboo.
Thanks to the Hand of Azazel, the princess was able to create a wildfire of black flames, capable of burning everything and gifted with a sort of sentience. This inferno took the shape of dragon-like creatures and saved Prince Nergal, the current Prince Elector, slaughtering the captors.
After decades there are still some little black flames burning in that area, small tounges of fire not much bigger than a candle. This made the “Astarte cicatrix” a place of pilgrimage, albeit a controversial one. While a lot of people want to see the fabled fire produced by the holy relic, the clergy is not happy with such popular devotion toward what is, on paper, a sin: relics should be not ever used outside explicitly codified rites.
Prince Nergal is encouraging this folk religious practice, not only because he wants to celebrate his beloved mother, but also to keep the church (and so indirectly Imperial authority) in check. He even disposed of that a part of the Knights of the Azure Hand, the order charged to protect the relic, move to the Astarte Cicatrix, not only a way to protect the site from clerical meddling but also a way to actively use this elite corp of warriors.
Besides the Astarte Cicatrix, there are other magic-scarred places that became famous: historical sites, where heroic sacrifices or notable victories occurred, have become destinations for travelers, with the strange spell remains working as monuments.
Other places, theatre of defeats or accidents, are clearly ignored hoping to be forgotten. No noble has the money or will to actively reclaim them, so the poor farmers have to work around those shameful reminders.
