The Eidonshroud

The Eidonshroud is a living veil woven throughout Eldrahn’s local Ether to filter and contain alien influences. Conceived by the Eidons 1,500 years ago, it auto–translates or suppresses any pattern, technology, or theory not already sanctioned by the Codex of Eternal Truth.

1. Overview

The Eidonshroud is an invisible membrane within every Ether Channel.
It ensures Outlander knowledge and foreign magics cannot reshape Eldrahn without divine sanction.
Native Eldrahnians experience it as “eldritch wonkiness”; Outlanders discover its true nature only at high expertise.

2. Pre-Level 10 Interference

Before unlocking Eidonshroud Sense (Level 10), any attempt to employ truly alien effects is subject to two outcomes:

Fizzle – The attempt fails outright with no observable effect.
Transform – The attempt auto-maps onto the closest native analogue.

 * E.g., an Outlander’s gravity-bend rune transforms into the local “Stonecall” pattern.  
 * A skyship’s inertial drive transforms into a basic storm-craft spell.

3. Unlocking Eidonshroud Sense

At Level 10, Outlanders gain the special skill Eidonshroud Sense, which reveals the veil’s activity and grants the ability to challenge its interference:

Detection – You perceive when a fizzle or transform is about to occur.
Override Roll – You may attempt an Attribute + Skill roll versus a GM-set DV to impose your original effect.
Post-Override – Successful overrides manifest the intended alien effect; failures incur backlash.

4. Mechanics

4.1 Static Interference

No roll is needed to fizzle or transform—interference is automatic.
The GM adjudicates which native pattern a transformed effect becomes.

4.2 Override Attempts

Trigger: Declare you’re resisting the Shroud’s interference.
Resolve: Attribute + relevant Skill versus DV (set by complexity or rarity of the foreign effect).
Outcome:
- Success → your original effect manifests.
- Failure → the effect fizzles or transforms, plus you suffer Eidonshroud Strain.

5. Eidonshroud Strain

Minor backlash accrued when you force alien magic through the veil:

Each failed override adds 1 Strain point.
Strain Effects: Disorientation (–1 to checks), minor Etheric feedback (1d4 shock), or sensory echoes.
Purge:
- Short rest clears all Strain.
- Succeed on an Equilibrium check (Equilibrium + Reality Mending vs. DV 7) to remove up to half.

6. Lore & History

6.1 Origins and the Great Lockdown

Roughly 1,500 years ago, the Eidons grew alarmed by successive waves of Outlander incursions, each bringing alien philosophies, arc-technologies, and magic theories that subtly altered Etheric currents—and, in turn, changed the Eidons themselves. In response, they enacted the Great Lockdown, a single, world-spanning decree that wove the Eidonshroud into every thread of Eldrahn’s living Ether. Overnight, wild, free-wheeling Conjuring Cycles gave way to a stable, rule-based order, and the chaotic flux of pre-Lockdown eldritch energy was tamed into the four-part architecture of the System.

6.2 Pre-Shroud Eldrahn and the Ageless Witnesses

Before the Eidonshroud, Eldrahn was a realm of near-infinite magical flux: landscapes would reshape themselves, invention followed personal inspiration alone, and every sentient being’s thoughts left ripples in the Ether. Only a handful of Eldarii—ancient scholars granted near-immortality—and a few Shapers with extended lifespans now recall those days. To them, the Conjuring Cycles of old were symphonies of raw potential, where Ether-scribed glyphs could bloom into living forests and arc-forges breathed sentience into metal. Their accounts survive in obscure treatises and cryptic murals, often dismissed by modern scholars as allegory.

6.3 Cultural Shock and Adaptation

Native populations awoke to find their rituals subtly altered: once-reliable grounding spells went inert if they echoed foreign patterns, and familiar enchantments refused to mesh with new runic sequences. Entire artisan guilds—blacksmiths, stonecarvers, rune-weavers—were forced to relearn their crafts under System mandates. Over generations, these upheavals were woven into myth: the “Day of Silent Hammers,” the “Falling of the First Storm Glyph,” stories of entire mountain holds that vanished after their signature techniques fizzled into nothingness.

6.4 The Eidonshroud’s Divine Architecture

Unlike mortal spells, the Shroud cannot be studied or unbound by conventional means. It is said to exist both as a veil draped over the Ether and as an underlying set of self-correcting “rules” encoded within the Codex of Eternal Truth—the Ether’s living memory. Attempts to map the Shroud’s structure invariably collapse into paradox, as the veil adapts to every new discovery. Even Eidons rarely peer behind its layers, trusting its design to preserve the cosmic balance they themselves maintain.

6.5 Modern Rediscovery & Scholarship

As Outlanders became rarer and native magic more codified, most of the Eidonshroud’s origins faded from common knowledge. It wasn’t until several centuries ago—when a renegade group of Arcane Antiquarians began comparing second-hand Outlander journals—that the pattern of systematic fizzling and transforming was recognized as deliberate. Since then, a new academic field, Shroudology, has emerged. Scholars debate whether the Shroud is a self-aware defense mechanism of the Ether or a willful artifact of Eidon intellect. A handful of clandestine orders even hunt for residual pre-Shroud glyphs, hoping to glimpse a lost age.

6.6 Evolution and Potential Breaches

Although the Eidonshroud is often thought immutable, subtle shifts in the Conjuring Cycle suggest it evolves over time. Periodic Shroud Resonance Ripples—temporary fluctuations in interference patterns—have been recorded following major world events: Eidon Council conclaves, Conjuring Cycle realignments, and rare cosmic conjunctions. Some believe these ripples might offer narrow windows for Outlanders or audacious Eldrahnians to slip alien insights through permanently, provided they can decode the Shroud’s ever-shifting “grammar.”

6.7 Legacy and Cultural Memory

Today, everyday practitioners accept the Eidonshroud as an invisible law of nature: odd failures or unexpected spell substitutions are blamed on “shroud quirks.” Yet in hidden enclaves and dusty archives, the ageless Eldarii and a handful of Shapers continue to whisper of Eldrahn’s pre-Shroud wonder—a time when magic, thought, and invention interwove without guardrails. Their guarded tales remind modern readers that the stability they prize was once a wild frontier—and that, someday, the veil might be undone.