Boldness, Ikarani Adept of the Temple Assassins, has awoken. She is looking around at the Aotrs base with an expression of fairly profound nervousness. It's not the nervousness of someone coming to grips with the idea that they are surrounded by the living dead - it's the nervousness of someone who has noticed that the sandbags covering their trench are filled with highly explosive fertilizer. "Azura's cold spit," she murmured to herself. "Are you [i]sure [/i]about all this?"

*

The good news was that the Aotrs had literally decapitated the Azura leadership. It wouldn't stick, but regrowing an entire brain was always a bit of an ask. The last was seen of him was that his headless body was still going through combat motions, devoid of intelligent guidance, resulting in the forced relocation of the entire Goltir encampment. Nobody could risk getting close enough to him to try and heal him and so his headless body just whirled around striking at shadows while his brain slowly regrew.

*

On the other side, there was a problem with Lord Death Despoil. The Furnace Knight's strike had dealt a lot of damage on a lot of levels, but there was one particular malady that seemed stubbornly [i]stuck [/i]at a spiritual level: the same curse that seemed to mark the souls of every citizen of the Endless Azure Skies. Its most obvious and dramatic symptom is the instant destruction of any electronic device that comes within ten feet of the Lichemaster.

The nature of the Curse is not hard to decode. It is written in the same style as the Lychmaster perceived in the Azura stars, and there is no doubt a connection between the two. At this distance the effect is mild - ambient mana and the Lichemaster's own reserves are converted to fuel its power, but it does this slowly and inefficiently. If exposed to the full light of a violet sun and the effects and range would increase exponentially. 

The Curse's specific wording is is as follows:
[i]"You will only have the sight of your own eyes,
The reach of your own hands,
The influence of your own voice.
All that which is beyond your reach will be beyond your grasp,
Until you are free from grasping."[/i]

How this manifests is a prohibition on various kinds of enhancements, magical and nonmagical, with a particular focus on communication and sensory enhancements. The Curse aggressively shuts down communication magic and signal technology, jams long range sensors and scrying, and causes computer technology to shatter apart in frankly worrying localized power surges. It doesn't interfere with the Gate spell whatsoever, and it does not interfere with future prediction, but if every Azura exists under this curse then their complete failure to use even basic sensor technology stands to reason. It would likewise be impossible to fabricate electronic components under these conditions.

*

Curiously, though, Boldness is not causing the same electronic detonations that the Lychemaster is. She's very clearly cursed in the same way he is but the ambient disruptive surges aren't occurring around her. She's still *deeply* worried about getting too close to any technology, though, seemingly expecting it to explode randomly at any moment.