Before the Age of Collapse, Samsara Oasis was home to a group of calikangs called the Sixfold Repentance. Ashamed of the role they had played in the Mana Wastes' devastation, they devoted their long lives to a slow and careful process of renewal. They ran their town under a strict policy of sustainability, swearing to never take more from the land than what could be renewed and restricting the growth of the Oasis to ensure they would never have to. That changed after the Alchemist's weapon devastated the Mana Wastes. With a new and unprecedented crisis facing the land, greater even than the one they dedicated themselves to fixing, the calikang knew that turning their back on the people of the Mana Wastes would only shame them even further. They dedicated their magic and their resources to protecting their enclave from the mana storms, and promised to shelter any travelers who made their way to the remote Oasis.
But not everyone who would take advantage of the offer would meet generosity in kind. The Mana Wastes were once home to many people from many lands, and none had earned more distrust and skepticism than the wizard gangs. Called "Los Aterrodores" by the locals, the wizard gangs were most often made up of outcasts from Nex and Geb who saw in the Mana Wastes and opportunity to pursue their own goals and push the limits of magic in ways that even their homelands wouldn't have supported. Not all of the gangs were malicious, but the worst of them—those populated by liches, necromancers, fleshforgers, and war criminals who found the world they had flourished in vanishing after Nex disappeared and Geb declared victory—were cruel tyrants who stalked the wastes and menaced its inhabitants. The wizard gangs did not survive the early days of the Age of Collapse. Most were killed by their own magic turned against them, in condensed mana explosions caused by the new intensified mana storms, or by the residents of the Wastes they had once killed and exploited using the chaos to strike back against them. Most of those survivors became Fleshwarps, or else accepted their magic would be of limited use and joined the desert's other nomads in simply trying to survive with whatever was available to them. But some of the Mana Wastes' wizards decided instead to join together, abandoning whatever affiliations and rivalries they may have once held, and seek refuge in the one place they hoped might let them still make use of their magical talents.
When the wizards arrived at Samsara Oasis, they were offered refuge like any other travelers. The calikangs had some reservations, but they weren't willing to turn back on their decision, or to turn away people who would only perish like their fellows had if turned back to the desert. They chose kindness and solidarity in a time of profound crisis. It was the only choice they could have made.
The wizards, of course, were counting on that. They had spent their lives exploiting and manipulating people, and they weren't willing to give up on power and dominance. If they were willing be humbled by circumstance and by nature, they would have joined the nomads like the others. Once they had a foothold in Samsara Oasis they manipulated the calikangs into handing over their records and resources before killing as many as they could and pushing the rest out into the Wastes.
Not all of the wizards had the stomach for the violence. Some who thought they did realized only when they saw it in action what horror they had wrought. And as time went on, and the perpetrators had to sit with what they had done, when they passed the story on to their children and their children looked at their history with unclouded eyes, the capture of Samsara Oasis didn't feel like a victory. It wasn't a testament to cunning and might. It was cruelty and betrayal. And the wizards came to know the same feeling that had motivated the calikangs before them: shame. Guilt hung over them. It always would. There was nothing they could do except try to make amends for what they had done. So, eventually, the wizards of Samsara Oasis took up the same mission that the calikangs before them had pursued. They would take their magical aptitude and turn it towards studying the magic of the Mana Wastes and finding a way to fix the land. It would take centuries, countless generations, but they and their children and their children's children had a responsibility to see through the mission they had disrupted.
Of course, through the Age of Collapse, that goal remained largely theoretical. They had a great volume of research to study, interpret, and add to. The calikangs had built great crystal structures that used primal magic to slowly restore the balance of nature, and it took centuries for the wizards to understand how their magic worked and what needed to be done to repair and maintain them. The strenuous demands of basic survival ensured progress was very slow for a very long time. Some nomads occasionally made their way out to the Oasis to trade for goods and services, but the Oasis's wizards had to meet most of their needs on their own. The infrastructure built by the calikangs to make that possible was a constant reminder of their guilt. And it still took significant effort and labor to meet their basic survival needs. In a strange way, this created a certain sense of communal unity that lasted through the Age of Collapse: a shared struggle, and a grander goal to work towards.
In the Age of Renewal, however, the wizards have begun to make real progress towards their goal. Bertille Abras, the current archwizard of Samsara Oasis, is leading a project to restore the magical balance of the Mana Wastes' soil in an attempt to reduce the occurrence of mutations among the local wildlife in collaboration with researches from the Grittybank Academy of Magical & Medical Sciences. This effort has benefited greatly from the support of a Magaambyan scholar of primal magics named Ojong Sama, who came to the Oasis to study the calikangs' records and has been offering his own considerable expertise and ingenuity in exchange for the town's support in his studies.
Ironically, though, making real progress towards their goal has started to create fractures in the community. Some have seen the enormity of the task before them, and the promise of the world beyond the Oasis, and begun to question if they truly want to dedicate their lives and the lives of countless generations after them to atone for their ancestors' sins. Others have begun to question if the goal they're pursuing is really the best thing for the Mana Wastes. The environment has existed as it does now for over 1000 years. Does it truly need to be "fixed"? Would that be improving the Wastes, or simply forcing them to conform to an ideal of how the land is supposed to be? Most of the Oasis remains in agreement on their shared cause, but conversations questioning it are becoming more frequent each year. Or at least they were. With the Shardstorms throwing the Mana Wastes into chaos once again, most in the Oasis can at least agree they are the more pressing issue for now.
Still, there are those in the Oasis who have found themselves disillusioned with endless attempts to fix the world. These mages, mostly from the younger generation, came to realize they simply want to live their lives and pursue their own interests, instead of shouldering the burdens of everything that went wrong before they were born. Some have chosen to trace their heritage not to conquerors and villains, but to the legacy of Velasco Cueto, a legendary ancient wizard who emphasized cultivating physical strength and skill in tandem with his magic and butted heads with other wizards he believed were simply using magic as a crutch and a shortcut and a way to exploit others. They've given themselves the name "Los Voladores" and have chosen to pursue physical skill and self-expression using the clockwork skateboards designed by the Gearhounds of Pranee's Forge. With the open space and tall crystalline structures of Samsara Oasis as their playground, they've developed their own style of riding, using their boards together with their magic to fly as high as they possibly can and achieve maximum airtime.