Chaos and Corruption

Chaos

After countless bizarre events, it had long been suspected that excess order in Nodd leads to chaos to counteract it - any time things seemed to be operating as intended, something bizarre and horrific would take place. This pattern seemed to appear at any scale, from an individual’s life to the city as a whole. The rare, gifted mage was known for appearing able to avert these swells of chaos (or divert them onto others). The Council performed a series of experiments to try to determine the truth of these questionable legends, and if and how it can be controlled.

Chaos is, itself, somewhat hard to define and thus inherently confounds precise knowledge of what should, or should not, be done. This not only creates a sense of general unease but also encourages increasingly unpredictable, dangerous, or generally deranged behavior in hopes of both pleasing the council and avoiding catastrophe.

Corruption

Alongside aging, citizens undergo a process known as corruption, which makes a citizen more in tune with the city's magic, and renders their appearance gradually more monstrous. Acute corruption is also achievable by various means, and is usually a terrible idea. Consistent use and manipulation of gloam is thought to relate to corruption, but the exact relationship and nature is not understood and difficult to study.

Attunement

Attunement is a process through which artifacts can be subtly altered through prolonged exposure to mages with a particular affinity - i.e. a methodically crafted Omnillian wand meant to cauterize wounds and create sutures used by a Vivirian long enough begins to shift more to a Vivirian manner of healing - growth, overgrowth, regeneration, etc. This is considered a form of corruption and, over time, as attunement grows the artifact's appearance will change as well. Even simply spending a significant amount of time studying an artifact, attempting to divine its purpose, repair or troubleshoot it, or in any way placing one's extended intention and focus upon it can cause this to happen.

Note that even mundane items can be affected by this albeit much more slowly and subtly and those items which actively channel larger amounts of gloam are more readily affected by the user's beliefs.

As such, mages attempting to utilize artifacts from opposing Houses, and thus beliefs, will find their use more difficult. In such cases the artifact will also be more resistant to the effects of attunement, at first.

It is worth emphasizing that this effect is only pronounced in the case of powerful mages - citizens who are not experienced in magic use will tend to not have such an effect, at least not over shorter periods or in more obvious fashions.