The Spellplague: How the Weave Broke

The Spellplague is the hinge of the modern Forgotten Realms timeline. It began on Tarsakh 29 in 1385 DR, ran for about a decade, and left a map so changed that a party carrying a pre-1385 chart would be lost within a day. On Abeir, the world that traded lands with Toril during the disaster, people remember it as the Blue Breath of Change.

The Murder of Mystra

The accepted story is simple. Shar, goddess of darkness, and Cyric, god of trickery, plotted to end Mystra's control over the Weave and her influence over the Realms. Cyric killed her. The in-world history Magical Histories, Volume 2 says her death "threw the Weave into utter chaos and collapse."

The plotters wanted control and got collapse. Without the Weave, the Shadow Weave could not hold together, and it fell too. Every wizard in Faerûn felt it break. Cyric's corrupted madness fouled what arcane force was left, and that residue took the form of blue flame. The flame destroyed Dweomerheart, Mystra's home plane, and kept spreading across the cosmos.

The Omen

Before it happened, the diviner Yaphyll saw it as an allegory: a troubled white queen, a black queen who "gives the assassin a black coat," a screaming sword, a falling city, stones crushing a soothsayer in a cavern, and a burning tree with its branches twisting together. Mystra is the white queen, Shar is the black queen, and Cyric is the assassin. The soothsayer is identified, speculatively, as Savras, god of divination. The city, cavern and tree stand for Dweomerheart and the World Tree cosmology coming apart.

Three Theories, No Answer

This is where the lore becomes useful at the table. The wiki calls Mystra's death the most popular explanation. Nobody ever proved it.

None of the later theories replaced the first one. They were added next to it, and none was ever confirmed. That leaves a DM free to decide the answer.

The Storm of Blue Fire

On Toril the plague first showed up as a storm of blue flame in the Mhair Jungles, west of Halruaa, and it grew huge quickly. Halruaan wizards had divined Mystra's death, and they used the fire's own energy to move most of their kingdom to Abeir. Wild magic tore apart the Halruaan land left behind, in an explosion felt as far away as Waterdeep. Sespech, the Golden Plains and the Nagalands became the Plaguewrought Lands.

The fire infected portals and planar gates and spread through them. Thousands of spellcasters died or went mad. In Cormyr, a third of the War Wizards were killed or driven insane, and the survivors lost their arcane magic.

Touching the fire could kill you. It could also leave you plaguechanged, with massive mutations, often lost sanity, and sometimes terrible power. Lighter exposure might leave only a spellscar, a mark that could also grant magic. Warped places became changelands, where the ground heaved like the sea and chunks of earth tore loose to float as earthmotes. Some of the dead rose as plaguechanged ghouls.

Abeir and the Great Swap

In 1386 DR the plague reached Abeir through the gates. Tiny, nearly invisible pieces of the two worlds had been trading places since the Time of Troubles. This exchange was enormous.

On Abeir the fire hit Gontal in southwestern Laerakond and reached Glaur, the fortress of the primordial Nehushta. Glaur exploded with a force compared to the Tearfall and left the Glaur Barrens. Part of Skelkor tore loose and vanished in blue fire. It held Djerad Thymar, capital of the dragonborn nation of Tymanchebar, and it came down on Unther.

This is the best contradiction in the record. Many in Faerûn believed the blast wiped out the Untherites and the Mulhorandi occupation forces. In fact, Unther had been carried to Shyr, Abeir's counterpart to Faerûn. People also believed the rest of Laerakond had landed on top of Maztica. In fact, Maztica went to Abeir, and Laerakond, now called Returned Abeir, sits somewhere else in the Great Sea. What Faerûn believed and what actually happened add up to two different maps.

Magic and the Gods

Spells failed or misfired. Some effects could now be done only through elaborate rituals, and others became so easy that casters could do them at will. The Wards of Silverymoon shattered.

The gods fared worse:

Notice the hedges. The Malar and Talos stories are reports, and the wiki keeps them that way.

The Map Redrawn

The Planes

The World Tree was destroyed. Most Outer Planes were destroyed or merged into astral dominions, and new dominions formed. The Feywild drifted close to Toril again. Asmodeus hurled the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos to end the Blood War, but the war only stalled for a hundred years. People tied to the Shadowfell became the shadar-kai. The illusions hiding settlements on Selûne failed.

Aftermath

By 1395 DR most effects had faded. Arcane magic was close to normal again, though the way spells were cast had changed. Coups and uprisings hit governments that relied on arcane magic. Psionics spread at an exponential rate. By 1479 DR the remaining affected zones were called Plaguelands, and Neverwinter had expelled its victims to Helm's Hold and its Sanatorium. In 1480 DR Mystra's Return restored the Weave. In 1482 DR Ao began the Second Sundering to repair both worlds.

Using the Spellplague at the Table

  1. The wrong map. The party believes Unther was wiped out. A gate drops them in Shyr among living Untherites who have a century of history the party knows nothing about.
  2. The open cause. Cynosure blames the Traitor's escape from Stardeep. Rhazzad and other Chasm scholars blame the aboleths of the Abolethic Sovereignty. Give each theory a faction hunting for proof, and decide privately which one, if either, is true.
  3. Helm's Hold. A patron's spellscarred sibling is locked in the Sanatorium. Getting them out means facing what the plague left in the people it touched. For a jungle campaign, remember that, according to the bara Alisanda Rayburton and the naga Saja N'baza, Mezro will not return while Ras Nsi lives.

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