I dare say something under the hood is really wrong...or I'm having a terrible day.
I went kicking around the vault because my main is borked in a separate incident. Tried playing a different character but got no xp from writs:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=43591
Then finally dusted off an old character to try cleric paths while waiting to see if the first can be restored...and this happened:
This character went from 9th lvl to 2nd level. No great tragedy, but I think maybe something larger is very, very wrong.