Global enchantments

What a global enchantment is, how many can run at once, what happens when the slots are full, how a dispel is rolled, and how dominion shapes them.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake9 min read

A global enchantment is a ritual whose effect covers the whole world rather than one province. It is the biggest thing a mage can cast on the map, and usually the dearest in gems. Some pour gems into the caster’s treasury every month. Others choke the world’s income, rewrite the weather, or turn a pretender’s dominion into a weapon. This page explains how they behave as a group: the limit on how many can exist, how a new one pushes an old one out, how a dispel is settled, and what to expect from the main kinds.

Every rule here is the manual’s. We have not measured any of it, and the closing section lists what the manual leaves out.

What makes a spell global

The manual files global enchantments inside the ritual list, in their own table at the back of the spell appendix. They are cast like any ritual: a mage in a province, paying gems of the spell’s path, during the rituals step of the turn. The effect is then applied in a later step, which the manual lists separately as the global enchantments step. The turn order page shows where both steps sit.

Two features set them apart from other rituals.

• They are tied to the caster. If the mage dies, the global ends, whether the cause was old age or an assassin. Spending extra gems does nothing to protect the mage from a knife. An immortal caster that is killed and has to wait for its body to reform also loses the enchantment.
• Some are tied to a place. A few globals are anchored to the province where they were cast. Stellar Focus is the manual’s example, and Well of Misery is broken if its province is lost. The global enchantments screen (the F6 key) lists the origin of each one that has a province.

Most of them last until the caster dies or someone dispels them. The manual’s global table says so in its opening note.

The slot limit

Only so many globals can be active at once. The number is set in the game setup and can be 3, 5, 7 or 9. The manual’s casting-order list calls five the usual figure, so that is the number to assume if you do not know the setting.

The F6 screen shows which ones are active right now. It is worth opening before you plan a cast, because the answer decides which of the cases below you are in.

Casting one when the slots are full

When a global is cast, the game works down three cases and stops at the first that fits.

1. The same spell is already up. The new cast tries to replace it by the dispel rules below. This applies even when the older copy belongs to another nation, which is how you contest an enemy’s version of a spell you also know.
2. Slots are free and the spell is not already active. The new global takes an empty slot at once.
3. All slots are full. The new cast tries to replace one existing global picked at random. The pick can land on one of the caster’s own spells, so a mage can knock out its own work by accident.

Because the target in case 3 is random, casting a global to remove a particular enemy global is a poor plan, though the manual allows it is better than doing nothing. It also notes that several mages casting on the same turn resolve in a random order, whichever nations they serve. A world that has two globals at the start of the turn may have a full set by the time your mage’s turn comes up, so you cannot be sure which case you will land in.

How a dispel is rolled

The same comparison is used whenever a dispel ritual hits a global and whenever one global tries to replace another. Each side gets a score.

• One point for each gem spent above the spell’s minimum.
• Five points for each level the caster’s skill in the spell’s path stands above the level needed to cast it.
• An open-ended roll, a DRN, added on top.

The side with the higher total wins. If the attacker wins, the old global is gone. The manual does not say what happens on a tie.

Since extra gems count, the manual advises piling them on when you cast something you want to keep: the more gems, the harder it is to dispel. A mage may put in at most 100 gems for each level of skill in the path, so a skilled caster has a great deal of room. Five points for each level of skill is the other lever, and it favours a better mage as much as a bigger purse.

The dispel rituals

The Inspector lists two dedicated rituals. Both are Astral.

• Dispel is an Enchantment spell of level 5 that needs Astral 3 and costs 30 Astral gems.
• Disenchantment is the stronger one: level 7, Astral 5, 50 Astral gems. The manual says that if it falls short it still wears the target down, taking off half of Disenchantment’s own overcast level, so a failed attempt is not wasted.

Arcane Decree works against both. While it is up, hostile casts of globals and hostile dispels must first get past it, and they lose half of the decree’s strength even if they succeed. Attacks on the decree itself are weakened in the same way.

The text of the Dispel entry says its gem total “must be matched”, which sounds like a flat comparison of gem counts. The dispel-mechanics passage describes a roll instead, with gem points, skill points and a DRN. We follow the roll and flag the mismatch in the last section.

Grand Communion

A mage with the Grand Communion ability can add other mages’ help to a global or a dispel. Each helper adds its skill in the ritual’s path to the total. The manual’s worked case brings a dispel with twelve extra gems to 20. The communions page has the full account.

Globals and dominion

Many globals only work, or work better, inside the caster’s own dominion. That is why dominion matters to anyone who wants to blunt one: the manual’s advice for these is to push the enemy dominion out of your provinces. The strength of the dominion usually scales the effect, so a weak dominion gets weak results. See dominion for how the score is built.

Examples from the manual’s table:

• Purgatory gives each hostile undead creature in the caster’s dominion a chance, ten percent per point of dominion, of being struck by a fire hit.
• Dark Skies lowers enemy morale by one for each point of dominion.
• Gift of Health raises hit points by ten percent per point of dominion for loyal units in the dominion and halves their ageing.
• Riches from Beneath boosts resources in friendly dominion, by 20 percent per point up to a doubling.
• Gift of Nature’s Bounty lifts income by 15 percent per point of dominion.
• Vengeful Water lets water in friendly dominion strike enemy commanders, with a chance of 5 percent plus 2 for each point of dominion.

Protection

Most globals that act on units can be stopped by an enchanted dome, such as the Dome of Solid Air, in the same way a dome stops a local ritual. Strikeback domes are the exception: damage reflected at the caster never applies to the caster of a global, so a trap dome such as the Dome of Flaming Death does nothing against a global.

Kinds you will meet

The manual’s table is long. These groups give a feel for it. Names, paths and base costs are from the Inspector; the monthly figures and percentages are from the manual’s table.

Gem producers

Several globals exist to feed the caster’s treasury. Eternal Pyre yields 20 Fire gems a month and heats its province. Gale Gate yields 20 Air gems and also steers hurricanes onto random provinces. Earth Blood Deep Well makes 17 Earth gems, five more if cast in a cave. Mother Oak makes 10 Nature gems. Stellar Focus makes 10 Astral pearls and also drains the whole world of magic. See gems for what the gems buy.

Whole-world scourges

Others cut the world down. Second Sun raises temperatures every turn. Perpetual Storm cuts income by a fifth and makes shooting hard. Utterdark cuts income and resources by 90 percent outside caves and deep seas, and puts every battle in darkness. Burden of Time ages everyone and sheds population. Sea of Ice freezes the waters and stops sea travel. Wrath of the Sea floods coastal provinces for lower income and slower growth.

Rules of magic itself

A few change how everyone casts. Arcane Nexus skims gems from everyone else’s rituals and item forging. Ordeal by Fire burns anyone who works with gems unprotected. Elemental Dampening slows elemental combat spells and raises the gem cost of elemental work. Forge of the Ancients cuts the gem cost of forged items by a fifth.

Hunters and summoned forces

Some set creatures loose. The Kindly Ones releases three spirits of vengeance, and Wild Hunt sends a hunt after enemy priests and sacred commanders in forest provinces. Those two end when the creatures are slain. Ghost Ship Armada sends a fleet to plunder coastal provinces.

Battle spells with a similar name

Spells that affect a whole battlefield are a different thing. They have their own page: battlefield enchantments. For ordinary casting in a fight see combat magic, and the rituals page covers rituals in general.

What the manual leaves out

• It does not say who wins a tie in a dispel roll, as it does for the penetration roll in battle.
• Its slot count is given as 3, 5, 7 or 9 by the setup, yet the casting-order list says “fewer than five (usually)”. We take the setting as the rule and treat five as the common default.
• The Dispel entry says the gems “must be matched”, while the dispel-mechanics passage describes a roll with gem, skill and dice terms. We follow the roll.
• It does not give the order in which mages are drawn, only that it is random.
• It does not say how a global that is tied to a province behaves when the province changes owner by means other than conquest.