The Spellplague

Disaster / Destruction

The Spellplague, called the Blue Breath of Change by the inhabitants of Abeir, was a disaster that struck Realmspace and even the planes themselves, caused by Mystra's assassination. It continued for a decade, leading to the Wailing Years, during which arcane magic ceased to function and the planet of Toril was transformed.

The most popular and widely accepted theory about the origins of the Spellplague was that this calamity was caused by the death of Mystra, the goddess of Magic. For eons, magic had been bound within Mystra's Weave, the universal structure of arcane forces, and her death tore the Weave apart and unleashed the raw magic contained within it, creating the cataclysm that was later known as the Spellplague.   Other scholars, however, didn't consider this to be a logical explanation. Historically, two earlier incarnations of Mystra had died before only to be reborn, and the Weave maintained its hold over the power of magic for the duration of her deaths. In these scholars' views, the truth would never be fully known to mortals, and perhaps not even to the gods.   Around 1396 DR, the sentient construct Cynosure theorized that the escape of an entity named the Traitor from its confinement in the dungeons of Stardeep, around the same time Mystra was murdered, may have also influenced the Spellplague virulent onslaught. During the Second Sundering of the late years of the 15th century DR, a group of adventurers also learned that the Weave had been infected by Cyric's madness, which became a "physical" force after Shar bolstered it with the corrupting energies of the Far Realm in a mistaken belief that after destroying Dweomerheart she could control the Weave.   Mystra's death caused the Weave to collapse and without the Weave the Shadow Weave was unable to be maintained and collapsed as well. The breakdown of the Weave was felt by all wizards across Faerûn. The corrupted madness of Cyric defiled what arcane forces remained from the dissolution of the Weave, resulting in a new magical source of defiling arcane energy in the form of blue flames that destroyed Dweomerheart and continued to spread across the multiverse.   Since the Spellplague was born from the defiling powers from the Far Realm, a plane that existed outside of Realmspace, not even Lord Ao had the power to stop it once it started.