I've also been having trouble with my game crashing when I attempt to reload a game. It has put me off playing until the next patch, since I can only play a game up until so far, since I can't load my saved games without it crashing.
I had this happen to me once, except it was a much smaller island that only had enough room for 2 settlements, and there were no other opponents on the Island. Thankfully there was about 3 champions on the island, 2 of which had the merchant + earth spellbook abilities, so it wasn't a real problem that game (quite the contrary in fact!). This was back in 0.983 mind, I had saved the game before landraising my way to the mainland, but the save files have since been... gone.
So, for fun, I decided just start a game and sit and watch all the various factions duke it out (using the ctrl+u and ctrl+z cheats of course). I noticed at one point one of the custom factions I had made, which had been basically made for a champion only run I once played. Needless to say, the sovereign was quite competent and was doing fairly well exploring the world by himself. I followed him for awhile, and started noticing something when he was following a released timber warg
I noticed that too once, but it was only when my unit was using a certain axe - I forget what it was called - but I remember half it's damage was fire damage, and I *think* it had an attack of 20. As soon as I used another weapon it was fine. This was back in .832.
If I am not mistaken you only get this spell if you happen to have the 'Enchanters' trait, like Pariden does, so not every player will be able to use it. Edit: And yes, I do believe it's been in previous builds for some time now. Personally, I find it quite useful when I have access to it, although I don't ever remember seeing the AI make good use of it.