The Magic Revolution is a period of Oceanykan History which encompasses the period from 540 CE, with the founding of the Collegiate of Magicians, and lasting until 618 CE, when the Magocrats rebelled and took control of said institution. Throughout the Oceanykan Dark Ages, the continent suffered from a series of devastating diseases, known as the Great Pestilences. Sociopolitical factors, such as a state of near permanent warfare, also resulted in poor living conditions, constant famines, and perfect conditions for the aforementioned diseases, particularly for plague.
For all of Oceanykan history, Sorcery had existed in the form of the Clevermen, Aboriginals who were deeply acquainted with both Primal Magic and Theurgical Magic, though in cases of extreme emergency, they also knew how to employ Goetic Magic at great risk. Whenever a natural Psychic was found, they would be taken in, often by force. This traditional practice was, and still is, passed down orally from father to son, with an extreme degree of secrecy. The great difference is that while in the modern age the clevermen are either hunted down as rogue sorcerers or recruited into the Federal Special Research Division, in those times, they were respected members of rural communities and often consulted for matters of health, natural disaster, great beasts, or simply for their wisdom. The clevermen of that time naturally despised urban centres due to being perceived as a perversion of man's natural way of life.
However, this class of magicians was divided into two types: the Rooted Clevermen, whose purpose was to help their own communities, and the Wandering Clevermen, who had either lost their people or wished to help all the peoples of the world. The latter, with greater connections and a wider cultural repertoire, was less disdainful of urbanity, of court politics and of traditional constraints. Following the Second Great Pestilence in which around 40% of Oceanyka's population perished, a group of wandering clevermen set their sights on a new purpose: where the human body had failed to tame nature to ensure its own survival, magic would prevail. They began compiling knowledge into great tomes, zealously guarded from the eyes of outsiders, experimenting with the supernatural world, and organising into lodges. Throughout the next few decades, the lodge system grew increasingly popular amongst the previously solitary wandering clevermen, until there were lodges in every corner of the continent, including the first Ferozen ones.
In 580 CE, representatives from every cleverman lodge met at what is now known as the Jupiter Forest to discuss their path forwards. Traditional magic had done well, and its practitioners were often more effective at providing care and knowledge than the warring States. They could treat disease, cure wounds, summon the rains, destroy blight, protect the innocent, and everything else which the nobles could not. It was decided then to found the Collegiate of Magicians in this very place, a closed city dedicated towards the study of magic, of the elusive Cryptids and of The Dreamspace itself. The Collegiate of Magicians would continue to operate from its foundation until 1552 CE, when it was razed to the ground by Morlon of Toffia as the grand finale of the Asterist Crusades.
From 580 to 612 CE, the Collegiate did what it set out to do. The wandering clevermen were now errant knights armed with the shared knowledge of thousands of their peers, performing impossible feats for the good of the common man. One line they never dared to cross was to enter political struggle, despite the constant nagging of nobles from across the continent for aid in their wars, to enter their service as ministers, or even to help in schemes of intrigue.
This changed in the autumn of 612 CE thanks to Quailing the Featherfoot, a notoriously morally flexible wandering cleverman who entered the service of the Duchy of Pinikura. Featherfeet, better known in their mother tongue as Kurdaitcha, were rumoured to be magician-assassins who punished the wicked and primarily used Goetic Magic. Kurdaitcha were not only shunned by the superstitious population, but also by their cleverman peers, and for this reason they kept their particular skills hidden. To be accused of being a Kurdaitcha was a serious matter. Through the use of magic, against all odds, Pinikura won battles with seemingly impossible odds, where fire and lightning would rain down on the enemy's armies. Scheming courtiers would disappear overnight, the rains would come even in a year of drought, and no man dared to question the monarch's orders. For his actions, Quailing the Featherfoot was banished from the Collegiate of Magicians.
In 615 CE, three years after entering the crown's service, Quailing the Featherfoot reportedly became increasingly frustrated with petty court politics, with the meaningless or impossible requests of the nobility, and with the severe mismanagement of his realm by the monarch he served. As a result, a coup d'etat was organised. The nobility was executed or banished, and Pinikura became the first magocracy on the continent.
This act created a state of panic not only in the neighbouring realms, but also in the Collegiate of Magicians, which was now divided into the Traditionalists, who wished to defend the ancient way of life of the cleverman and the ban on all political activity, and the radical Magocrats, who supported the usurpation of all political authority to sorcerers. A period of civil struggle emerged in the city, but after much fratricide, the Magocrats were victorious. In 618 CE, the lodges convened once more in the Collegiate, where it was announced that the traditional customs of sorcery were now null and void, and the clevermen were free to elevate the common man... by any means necessary.
And so began The Magocracy, a period of Oceanykan history where political authority was increasingly in the hands of sorcerers, until The Magicide began.