Though what seemed like it was petrification magic in fact was nothing of the sort as any and all attempts to undo it prove to be useless. Even things that were stated and proven to undo all forms of magic were not able to restore those that were affected at the conference.
It was something that confused all the mages and sorcerers that went there after it was confirmed to be safe to enter without the threat of whatever happened repeating itself.
Both the guild and the union had their best people there as nothing more than statues at the moment so they had a vested interest in trying to restore them to normal.
However, what all of them were not aware of was that the reason they could restore them to normal was that the means they were using were failing. They were working as intended perfectly fine and would have worked like a charm....if what they were dealing with was something that could be undone in the first place.
What they were all unaware of was that what struck the conference was not petrification magic at all. Instead, it was extremely strong and targeted curse remover.
Curses were solemn utterances intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something. However, what is defined as harm and punishment can vary from person to person as well as change from point of view of those looking at things.
Unknown to everyone that living on the surface of the planet they resided on they were all under a curse that had been afflicted to their ancestors ages ago. The mystery of where they came from was something that was one of the biggest undiscovered mysteries of their time.
They had no idea where they came from as nothing on their planet could be connected to them truly. They had guesses based on what they thought was the case but they had no means to prove anything.
Some believed that it was aliens that came and altered their ancestors to become transform to them into what would become the planet's current human race. Thus they can not find any proof of their ancestors because they were transformed so drastically from them.
It was something they were laughed at for at how strange it sounded that they were the subject of an alien race messing with native wildlife to create them or that they were the results of alien and the native life interbreeding until they were the human race that existed in the current day.
Though the idea is that reality is stranger than fiction because reality is not based on what one person can imagine would be at play here.
The truth there ancestors were the creation of aliens however not in the sense that they were native creatures turned into test subjects or the result of crossbreeding with aliens.
In fact, their ancestors were not even considered alive in the first place as they were golems created through and powered by magic.
They were placed on the planet by their alien creators to carry out certain tasks and had been built with the specs to do them. Each one of them has a programmed function and purpose installed in them.
The reason they could not find any sign of their ancestor's civilizations or anything like that was that they did not exist.
They were golems as the only thing they did was actually terraform the planet so that it could be seeded with life and then were left with the task of monitoring it to see if a species developed on its own to become the dominated one that become similar to their alien creator's ancestors.
They had developed in magic and tech so far that they were just trying to see if they could recreate the whatever allowed them to develop in the first place themselves.
In sense, they were at the point in their own development where they were attempting to play god in a sense as they created life and were seeing just how far it could go by itself without them getting in the way.
So the humans of the planet were never even meant to be there as their origin was just as golems for terraforming and then to serve as caretakers of the planet for life that was developing on its own.
Everything but them was native to the planet as the process might have been jumped started by aliens but it developed a progress all on its own until a certain event happened.
A certain group arose amongst the aliens that just woke up one morning and chose violence. Thus they were going about causing it where ever and whenever they could.
When it got to the project of them trying to see if they recreate the scenario that would another race like them being born naturally after being given a head start.
The chaotic group of aliens messed that up by casting a curse on the golems that would turn them into organic beings as the degrees of the curse would vary but the only way to undo this curse would be to use curse removal on the level of the original curse itself.
To a different degree, while every golem became an organic being that did not make so that all of them would live shortly after the curse was intact.
The aliens had created some many of them and placed them on some many planets. The chaos spread faction did not what happened after their curse was used on the golems.
They just like seeing the chaos of golems dropping dead as they might have woken up and chosen violence. They did not choose through with anything they did just cause as much chaos as possible and move to the next target as fast as possible.
As a result, surely a lot of golems were dying cause they were on worlds that were in the middle of being terraformed and thus was no place for organic beings to be at them.
In other places, they were organic but had no idea how to function as organic beings. They could not handle all the information they had built up over countless years. All died off because they were sterile and could not reproduce. All sorts of reasons cause all sorts of chaos that chaotic alien faction loved every second.
While there was untold chaos amongst various planets there were those where the golem became were in that goldilocks zone that allows them to continue to live on and develop into their own new species over time.
The planet where the Mage's and Sorcerer's groups were located on happened to be one of these planets. So despite ages have passed since the curse was placed on their ancestors long long ago. The humans of the current era were created with this curse as something that was part of them from the very start from before they were even born.
They literally came into existence curse. Thus after their curse was removed they just reverted back into a golem form.
One that would seem like they were petrified was not something that could ever be cured or undone. To revert them back to human forms would require them to be cursed once again to become human. However, that would just be one step of two as then it would require them to be in the goldilocks zone for that curse as well.
The ones behind this did not know all this back story as they just discovered through sheer chance the means to undo their hidden curse and revert them to a golem form. Seeing it as a form of petrification that could not be undone and means to take over both the main guild and union.
There would be branches that would not fall under their control but how much of a problem could they pose with all the strongest, brightest, and most talented having been at the conference that day?
The princess of the island nation and the sorcerer she had met. They were lucky that a member of the same branch as the sorcerer was not at or near the conference at the time. Thus was not caught in the event that affected everyone else there. So they managed to make their way to the two of them and get them out there before they could be found by the anyone else.
Those that were running the test and attempting to save everyone in the public view at least. We're a part of the group that had been within the main offices of both the union and the guild thus they knew things would fail so they were not wasting rare items and spells by having only used two or each. In a scenario where there would be no need to do it more than twice given the effectiveness of both.
The new group they would form called the Union Guild would introduce the world to the first magical golems having learned that they activate the those reverted to their golem form by powering them with magic.
They would carry out whatever task was given to them as they were basically in a sense factory reset. They reverted to just mere tools to be used they would have lost everything they gain in their life up until that point even their sense of self. Their raw talent and base level skills and abilities would remain.
This Union Guild would play so that while everyone at the conference would be considered to have died that day. They would continue to contribute to the world as golems that would be useful in a variety of ways.
The families and loves ones of those at the conference well they would not contest to this treatment of those they lost because all those that would have a contest to this were in the same boat as them.
Only those that agreed with the Union Guild's plan or were paid off were not there on that day. Those that were paid off never got to use the money cause they returned and then a golem modeled after them would appear months later. The model is crafted in their image would be the public story at least.