Balai's Curse

Balai’s Curse, also called Apprentice's sickness due to it's prevalence in new mages, or Rebound Syndrome in localized cases, is the result of an overload of magic. It is named for the first Magi, Balan Balai. The curse is amongst the chiefest concerns of any mage when casting any sort of magic, channeling any sort of power, or being exposed to raw magic in any form. Simply put it is the flow of magic through a person’s body in a volume far beyond what they are able to control which causes first the damage of the physical body and then the fraying of the soul-body connection. This can be triggered by magic rebounding due to improper casting, through exposure to a source of raw magic, but it is most commonly triggered by improper channeling of magic; usually by apprentices who do not yet know their own limits or have not yet trained themselves to sustain the higher concentrations of magic necessary for powerful spells, rituals, or other such invocations.

Levels of Severity

The severity of Balai's curse can be broadly judged in four levels of severity: Mild, Moderate, High, and Extreme.

Mild Severity

When the curse is at it's weakest it is usually called Apprentices sickness which itself can vary wildly in both symptoms and severity. If the overload of magic is caught and stopped early, it may result in little more than the feeling of a particularly severe hangover or strained muscle in cases or more localized rebound. This is because while the mage’s body and mind have been overloaded with magic, no real damage beyond the superficial has been done, and said superficial damage can be easily healed given time.

Moderate Severity

More moderate cases of apprentice’s sickness are often triggered by an apprentice using some sort of channeling implement, inadvertently allowing them to access far more magic than they could easily reach before. Alternatively it can be caused by casting sustained for longer than a mage’s stamina might usually allow, or some action causing them to lose concentration of a spell thus inadvertently opening the proverbial flood gates. Moderate Apprentice’s Sickness usually results in prolonged severe nausea, for 2 days or even up to a week, consistent extreme soreness across a mage’s body, and can potentially result in a fever or other severe flu like illness. Generally, a mage suffering from a moderate case of apprentice’s sickness will remain sensitive to magic for one to three weeks after their overt symptoms have worn off, leaving them prone to much more easily retriggering their apprentice’s sickness at a more severe level.

High Severity

Balai’s Curse is what happens when the flow of magic is enough to cause permanent damage either to the body, mind, or the soul-body connection. It is called Balai’s Curse because in many situations it will leave a sufferer permanently marked with scarring bearing the luminous blue or gold of raw magic itself. Rebound sickness can quickly compound itself into Balai’s Curse, leaving the affected extremity or other location on a mage’s body marked with the telltale lightning-branch scars of the Curse (the scars cannot be healed except for with the highest of skilled healers, even then they run the risk of triggering the Curse once more if healing the scars specifically. Other than that, the scars remain as a sign without tangible effect on the victim’s ability to cast magic after they have otherwise recovered). Not every case of Balai’s Curse results in obvious external damage, it can manifest as varying levels of severe chronic pain, paranoia, obsession, or other mental illness. In the worst cases, where the soul-body connection becomes frayed beyond the point of repair, but not to the point of death, a person may lose all ability to control magic, or suffer from an extreme vulnerability to the magic of others.

Extreme Severity

In the severe cases, Balai’s curse can prove to be a fatal affliction, though the way it proves fatal can appear differently. When no external damage is apparent, a person suffering from a fatal case of Balai’s Curse will appear to drop dead, their eyes clouding over, and their corpse becoming physically warm to the touch. In other cases, they might have an effect obviously parallel to whatever magic they had been casting (i.e. manipulation of stone may turn them to stone, or spontaneous combustion in cases of pyromancy). When external scarring or damage is present before the fatal event, a person might appear to be slowly consumed by the growing fractures of raw magic as it literally overloads and destroys their physical body. Generally this is a much slower and more painful process than the other ways that Balai’s Curse may kill a person, taking from minutes to hours. On rare occasions, when the overload of magic becomes so great so quickly, the Curse might simply cause a mage to implode or rarer still detonate. The destruction caused by a mage detonating in such a manner is immense, the raw power instantly vaporizing a bubble around the mage, turning the surroundings into glass, or even generating Spectral Stone.