Calm chaos

The calm chaos spell temporarily calms a chaotic situation involving a group of people. The situation may involve any range of emotions from violence to joy and merrymaking. Calm chaos does not cause a change in the emotions of affected creatures -- anger, fear, or intense joy remain in each individual. The emotion is simply restrained rather than released. Thus, an angry character intent on attacking someone will still feel the desire to do so, but he will withhold his action as long as the spell remains in effect.

At the time of casting, the priest or a character of his choosing must gain the attention of the affected creatures by giving a speech, performing for the crowd, or casting spells with intriguing visual effects. The attention of the crowd is then held for as long as the distraction continues. A character could filibuster and maintain control over the affected characters for hours or days.

Two conditions will cause the group to resume its original actions. In the first, the method of entertaining the crowd ceases -- the speech ends or the spell expires. If this action is not replaced with another distraction quickly, the crowd is freed of the spell. In the second condition, if an event occurs that is more immediate than the distraction, the crowd will divert its attention to that event. Thus, if the spell were used to stop a barroom brawl and the building caught fire or was attacked, the crowd's attention would be diverted and the individuals could act freely.

Note: This spell originally appeared in this form in the Tome of Magic for the AD&D game from TSR. Its use here is for the purposes of providing context for the campaign only.