Tired of all the world-altering magical anomalies happening everywhere else on Azeroth, the humble citizens of Duskwood have decided they, too, are entitled to a font of unimaginable, poorly-understood cosmic power. Everything else is so normal in Duskwood after all that they need something to spice up their lives!
Enter: The Duskwell.
Discovered last Tuesday in spitting distance (if you are good at spitting) from the Raven Hill cemetery’s southernmost crypt - right next to a patch of particularly aggressive bloodweed and run-down shack selling moonshine. This ordinary-looking stone well has been declared a “miraculous convergence of primal forces” by exactly three local gravediggers and a very confused ghoul.
According to locals, the Duskwell doesn’t just spout standard, boring magic. It actively erupts with a torrential geyser of Invisible Light and Pure Void simultaneously.
“It’s a marvel, truly,” says Bonkers (yes, apparently that is his name), a long-time resident and noted connoisseur of terrible life choices. “You look at it, and you see absolutely nothing. But it’s a blinding nothing. The Invisible Light is so bright I had to take off my tinted goggles just to not see it properly. And the Void? Oh, it’s there. You can’t see that either, but you know it’s there because every time you pull up a bucket of water, a disembodied voice tells you that your mother never really liked your haircut.”
Scholars from the Kirin Tor were dispatched to investigate the phenomenon yesterday afternoon, but left shortly after, citing that “this is clearly just a puddle of muddy rainwater mixed with runoff from the embalmer’s shack.”
The locals, however, are fiercely defending their new cosmic anomaly. They argue that the mages simply lack the “spiritual attunement” required to appreciate the majestic oxymoron of the Duskwell.
“They just don’t get it,” grumbled Caretaker Smithers, currently charging a silver piece per vial of the allegedly holy-shadow water. “Just yesterday, I drank a cup of it. Instantly, I felt the warm, comforting embrace of the Holy Light purge my arthritis, while simultaneously plunging my soul into a thousand-year abyss of screaming, maddening despair. My joints feel great, but I can no longer perceive the emotion of joy. It’s exactly what the cosmos intended!”
The effects of the Duskwell’s dual-nature are already transforming the Raven Hill community. Paladins of the Silver Hand who visit the site report getting severe “invisible sunburns” while feeling an overwhelming urge to listen to tragic poetry. Local Warlocks, meanwhile, are complaining that their summoned Voidwalkers are coming out of the ether wearing cheerful yellow sweaters and offering unsolicited gardening advice.
Even the local undead wildlife seems confused. Witnesses report seeing a skeletal warrior attempting to dramatically claw its way out of the dirt, only to pause, politely fix a loose cobblestone, sigh heavily at the futility of existence, and bury itself back down.
The local watch has issued an official travel advisory warning citizens not to throw copper coins into the Duskwell. According to Guard Captain Norskeldong, “Tossing loose change into a vortex of localised, invisible holy-void energy doesn’t grant wishes; it just creates highly-annoying, aggressively-shiny black holes that keep swallowing our missing-person-slash-tentacle-monster posters.”
I would have staid to learn more, but a woman who claimed she had deposited a corpse in the well just last week told me it was snack time for large spiders. Not that I am afraid of spiders, but I left my.. ehh something important at the inn and had to retrieve it instantly.