World Event Story: The Shattered Heart
Lensmoor is a land of magic; the magic that flows through the land is the same as the mana that flows through our bodies. Sever one and you sever the other. As the blood gathers at the heart of the body, so too does the magic gather, at fount of power, a place where all the ley-lines of the lands intersect. Periodically they ley-lines will move, and with them an old fount will go away, and a new one will appear.
It was the wish of the young mages whose names were lost to history, to create a permanent fount of magic; a place to establish a Magic Kingdom; a capital for all the magic users on Lensmoor. The place was to be one of unrivaled beauty with the natural power to rival even the gods. Such hubris was the cause of many downfalls in the past, and it was the downfall of these young mages.
These young mages tracked the ley-lines until they found the largest fount of magic ever discovered. Newly formed, the fount was unstable and could vanish at any moment. To realize their ambition, the mages worked quickly to bind the magical energy in the ground itself. To lock the ley-lines from shifting and make the fount of magic eternal.
They, however, did not truly understand what the ley-lines were; had they heeded the wisdom of any any elder mage they would have known that the ley-lines are beyond mortal control, a force of nature itself. Like trying to dam up a river with your bare hands, the magic spilled out round their bindings into the sky itself. Shattering, the greatest fount of magic ever known, to be known as the Mana Heart ripped into the fabric of the material plane, crystallizing and shattering across the land; the shards of the mana heart scattered to the four winds.
The crystallized fragments of the ley-line that remained in the earth inhibited the flow of magic within the earth and over time the flow of mana in the bodies of mortals began to replenish itself more slowly; and in time it even began to drain away. In their shame, the young mages were unable to face the world for what they had done and vanished from history.
The price of filled mana stones skyrocketed to unbelievable levels; as much as one thousand platinum coins per filled stone changed hands during this time. There where even a few killings by desperate people looking to hold onto their magical reserves. Despite all that, as mana bled out of even the land itself, mana stones themselves began to drain and become emptied.
It was about that time when people began to find the shards of the Mana Heart. The people, wishing salvation offered up the shards to the Goddess Zyexria with the promise of one day restoring the Mana Heart they understood so little about.
'This happened because mortals took magic for granted; the magic bestowed to you by the gods.'
-– The Goddess Zyexria.
The Angel waited patently as mortals brought shards to her, in time however, there three shards missing. The first was in the hands of an Algolian Knight who bartered it back to the population of Lensmoor for a ransom, he was paid generously for that shard.
The second was in the hands of a dark shapeshifter of Antrippa whom refused to give it up to anyone, even Zyexria herself. Eventually champions found him scribing a document and otherwise distracted, by the time he noticed their approach it was all over; the dark shifter was slain and the shard returned.
The final one was simply misplaced, at the bottom of a chaotic sprite's rather full chest, the sprite apologized and laughed about it flitting around as if it were of no consequence.
When all the shard were returned, the Mana Heart was reformed, and turned back into the energy that bore it, leaving the physical plane forever. The fount of power vanished as the ley-lines resettled into a new configuration and no one ever dared binding a ley-line again.
This ordeal taught many mortals a greater respect for the powers they've been given by the land and by extension, the gods themselves.
