This spell is a part of the Bio Instability spell chain and can be found in the Bio Instability rune stone.
Everyone is waiting for something. This is perhaps the most universal truth of mortal existence. Life is lived in anticipation of what comes next and the present moment is always partly occupied by whatever is being waited for. The next meal. The end of the battle. The return of someone loved. The resolution of something that has gone unresolved for too long. Mortals are defined by their waiting as much as by their living, and most never stop to consider what it would mean if what they were waiting for simply never came. The Fade has considered it. The Fade has considered very little else.
When the seniumancer casts The Long Wait they reach through The Fade and find the thing the target is waiting for, not consciously, not deliberately, but that deep and wordless anticipation that underlies everything a living thing does. The Fade takes hold of it gently and moves it just out of reach. Not destroyed. Not denied. Simply deferred. Always about to arrive yet never arriving. The target feels this as a settling, a strange and heavy peace that is not quite peace. It is the feeling of someone who has decided to sit down and wait because surely it will not be long now. Surely. Each round the target must make a Mental Balance check, the difficulty increasing by one level each round, starting with Normal, as The Fade deepens its hold, or they spend their active round simply waiting. They are not frozen, not afraid, not in any distress that can be easily named. They are just waiting, with the patient certainty of something that has been told the thing it needs is coming and has chosen to believe it. They are not wrong to wait. They are simply waiting for something that The Fade has quietly ensured will not come. Not this round. Not the next. Not for as long as The Fade holds its gentle, inexorable claim on what they are waiting for.
The spell lasts for a number of rounds equal to 1d6 plus the seniumancer's Arcana. The Fade is in no hurry. It never is. That, after all, is rather the point.
N/A