Last week we brought you rumours that the isolated Masurian Conflux might be opening up to the outside world after 175 years of allowing very little contact with the rest of the European Confluxes. Our research team has been hard at work ever since, and we can now present a look into this mysterious place and its history.
In the early 1800s Masuria was known as a place of high society, strong sources of magic and distinguished academia. It was a time of advancing ideas and societal change, marked by the Peace of Phalsbourg in 1801 after the Sans-Noms equality movement. With a majority of hexborn inhabitants, Masuria was slow to adapt to the new ideas, but did not directly oppose the developments. People and ideas were flowing freely in and out of the conflux, until it suddenly closed its borders in 1846 and stopped all communication to the outside world.
Very few records remain about what actually happened, but it most likely has to do with the conflux’s advanced magical research. The records suggest that multiple witchards in the conflux even had a permit to study Chronomancy. This may actually have been the reason for the eventual undoing of the Masurian Conflux: our most reliable sources point to a large-scale chronomantic accident of some sort that led to the entire conflux being isolated in order to contain the damage. Not everyone was happy with the decision, and apparently some people left the conflux before it closed. The assumption was that the situation would return to normal as soon as the situation had been solved, but those news never came. Masuria stayed silent and was mostly forgotten over time.
There are no physical walls around the conflux, but instead there are various strong wards preventing entry. Anyone getting too close will either be repelled by an invisible force, completely lose interest in where they were going, or otherwise get led away from the border. (We sent an intern to try it out, and he was found two days later in Gdańsk, convinced that he was supposed to go there all along.) There are also no runic bridges leading into the conflux. Any attempts to divine or otherwise magically find out anything about the place results in glitches, fuzzy images and probably a headache. Similarly, it is also likely that no one can get out of the conflux, though it’s uncertain whether anyone even wants to. There have been multiple rumours of defectors over the years, but none have been confirmed.
The Masurian conflux was led by three noble families, and unless there have been drastic political changes within the conflux, it is likely that they are still in power. Each had notable fame in their own areas of expertise: the Zamoyski family as archaeologists, historians and magiscientists, the Weyher family as diplomats, soldiers and technomancers and the Bathory family as alchemists, healers, cryptozoologists and ritualists. Any major policies in the conflux were approved by the Council of Six, consisting of two leading members of each family. The families were quite influential before the conflux closed, and now many old hexborn families are anxiously waiting whether these three really are about to rejoin the high society.
We will continue to report about the situation in the Masurian Conflux as new information surfaces.
