Magical Decay

The way the Wonders die...

Pure, free-floating magic in the air we breathe, in the blood that courses through our veins. It is the life force of everything mortal and divine. Power of a mind amplifies it, allowing us to perform most wonderous feats that we're taking for granted, but will it always be like that?

— Plato

The rule as old as time: if you've got a good imagination, you can perform magic. Those who have the will to bend reality with their mind or innate energy, became mages. Those who's faith burned brightly, became priests. There were even those who could make magic flow with a note or a carefully placed word. But the more time progressed, the less powerful all of them were becoming. A neverending regression that is known to the Fringe as "Magical Decay".
Imagine magic being like a huge pool of water, but somewhere there is this crack at the bottom, and it lets the liquid leak into the ground. The overall level will decrease wery slowly, but it will decrease. With time, maybe, the crack will become bigger, allowing for the liquid to escape faster. One day, instead of a pool there will be just scattered small puddles of water left.
Fringe Scholars, using old and scattered records which are riddled with methaphors, have concluded that there were at least seven stages of magical power, with two more rumored to have existed, judging from the mythology. Of these seven stages, spells of just two of them are available in 2020.

Manifestation

Magical Decay is like a tide: it comes with small ripples and waves, and then it crashes a tsunami down on you. Spellcasters start by feeling that performing certain spells becomes increasingly harder, though some might brush it off at first. Then, one is able to cast certain spells only after saturating the area of casting by release of magical energy. It happens, for example, when certain magical artifacts are used or destroyed, or when something living is sacrificed.
Unfortunately, there aren't any surviving documents that describe the decay of any given stage of power: the fourth "leaked" around the end of XIII century, and the third gave out after the common knowledge of magic started being suppressed by the Enlightened minds. One of the last recorded mentions of a spell capable of creating a fiery blast from nothing, pertains to the assault on the Bastille during the French Revolution. The prison's Governor, monsieur de Launay, has threatened to set all the gunpowder stocks inside the keep ablaze with something that reminds us about this Fireball spell. After that, though, no mention of any magical intervetions of the third stage.
Fringe Scientists have constructed a reference on when a certain stage of Magic stops being available. They've used the Occam's Razor principle: if there aren't any mentions or evidence of a known spell of this stage cast after a certain year, this year is marked with the end of this particular stage. This document is revered by time travelers, since they know what kind of sorcery they can encounter on their treks.

GM's note:

Magic in Fringe Earth is restricted to various eras. The further you go in time, the less magic is available. The best campaigns involving time travel would be going from modern times further and further back in history. Though, most campaigns end at around levels 9-11, so the furthest point would be what is called Classical Era.

Type

Metaphysical, Arcane