The Age of Magian Hegemony:
After defeating the Atlanteans, the Wizards and Mages of Nystol had established themselves as a power to be reckoned with.
Secluded in their remote plateau, their will was law and prevailed commanding all Intermundia for many centuries.One particularly knowledge-hungry Archmage commanded all books and scrolls to be taken to Nystol to be copied. This Archmage decieved the world, secretly conspiring with others to gain total power by having access to all knowledge, arcane and otherwise, and denying it to the rest of the world.
The books and scrolls, obediantly brought to Nystol on the behest of the Ammouric Soothfold, were never copied, and never returned to their owners, the kings and sages of high renown.
Most of the adepts of Nystol were no longer giving heed to the censure of the Ammouric Soothfold, and little by little, through the advent and consent to novel philosophies and forbidden magics, they lost favor with the Allfather.
Sorcery began with a man known only as Infernalius. He was able to lead the other wizards down a slippery slope to transgress the Ammouric Law and access the forbidden praeternatural source fonts. In doing this he was promised great power by the demons, though he nevertheless died an obscure death.
On this account, all magic in intermundia would be abandoned, since few could easily tell the difference between right magic and demon-inspired sorcery.
The divine retribution for this was twofold. First the logos ecliptic, (the paraphysical deliniator which brought magic into conformity), as well as the preternatural source founts, were permanently sealed by decree of the Ammouric Soothfold. Secondly, the Great Burning occured, the Magnum Conflagrationem, in which the Allfather allowed Barbarian hordes to destroy the home of the Mages, the towers and library on Ancient Rises of Nystol, burning it down.
This event changed Intermundia permanently. Now only evil magic is found in the lands, sorcery, the summoning of demons by evil men. Occasionally an enchanted relic of the past is found or dug up, such as a wand or ring invested with good magic.
Elven magic is rare, and most of the high elves have left intermundia ages ago anyway.
The magic power of the elves was a natural extention of their spirits, therefore, few instruments like rings and staves and wands made by elves remains, for such components were unneeded and few were made.
If such a relic did exist, it would be almost impossible for a human to use properly, and probably considered useless. Enchanted weapons and armour are the rare exception, since the elves fought many wars against the dragons and the Nol Ghost.
Through the betrayal of one man, the sage Adeuces, the horde of barbarians were able to sack the city Nystol and burned all the towers and the great scriptorium. Almost every history, philosophic tract, poetry, sagas, and science, was burnt and utterly destroyed.
This was known as the Magnum Conflagrationem and it would send Intermundia into a dark age of ignorance. Dating of this in intermundian time corresponds roughly to 1000 AD. The story of the Great Burning is recounted in The Fall of Nystol, the sources of which are thought to be an extant work rescued from oblivion by the gnome Cruthius Eleusinion.
Forty years after the Great Burning, the Nol Ghost, finally learning of the catastrophy, renewed his war against the civil lands and raised a great army of beast-men, trolls, and scorc lords. The Dark Horde breeched the Orc Wall and marched upon all the northern civil lands, Aram, Ardeheim, Tyrni, all Regulia, Kithom, and the Nine Feudatories. Ulthor alone did not capitulate.
This war was called the Bellum Diabolicum and it changed intermundia forever. The Nol Ghost and his army of beastly orcs built a fleet of Horror Ships and sailed unchallenged to Ulthor. Ulthor, vanguard of the West, was utterly destroyed, its princes put to death, and the earth salted. The people of the kingdom of Ulthor would later build the city Yrbath (somewhat modelled after Ulthor) north upon the sea of Goldyndol.
Only one man, the old King Argoth the Good, rose up and called upon all good-willed men in the civil and barbaric lands to come meet in the valley of the holy city Vesulum and assemble an army.
Although not enough came, King Argoth the Good weilding the ancient sword Oceanicing, led a force of ten thousand across the Orc Wall and into feilds of Aram where they faced the orcs.
King Argoth prayed to they Allfather while the battle raged, until, seeing need for more swordsmen, he entered the fray himself, still able, at the age of twenty two, to lift a great sword and kill thirty five orcs in an hour.
Most of the Ammouric Knights were slain in this battle, the battle of
the Longhairs. After a costly victory, King Argoth, steeped in gore, entered Hithgrod and the Cracked Mountains even marching into remote mountain fortress Zabol, the seat of the Nol Ghost.
The inaccessable fortress was breached through a series of miraculous events and the fortress was taken, and King Argoth cast the Nol Ghost into a pit to be chained for a thousand years.
The power of the Nol Ghost, though greatly diminished because of his chaining in the great pit, lived on in certain men who carried out his crimes. The few Ammouric paladins who survived the Bellum Diabolicum were hunted down in later years by the Red Ascetic.
King Argoth himself expired after thirty years guarding the pit of the Nol Ghost in ever-cold conditions.
A note on the magic system:It is commonly said that magic is a way of manipulating nature or natural processes. In intermundia magic is based on philosophic modes. The first mode we should discuss is the system of Rhistogorst.
In Rhistogorst's system, magic is preformed by manipulating the accidents of a natural object or event by means of exciting vibrations in the substrates of a "substance". The vibrations are excited by tonal interference in the utterance of certain primordial words.
Certain rules must be applied. Accidents can be changed, for example, a red apple can be altered into a blue apple, or clear weather can be replaced by storm. However certain properties are immutable, for example, fire can never be cold, nor can there ever be anything known as cold fire, since heat is proper to fire.
A woman cannot be changed into a man, or vice versa, since the female-ness of a woman is proper to her person, permanently fused with who she is, her personhood, on the deepest level of being. She may be changed into a goat or owl or other creature, provided that it is a (female)warm blooded mammal, for she would at least need to remain in the proper animal category in which her vegitative and sensitive soul has accustomed itself, or else the system shock would be too great.
Her humanity is proper to her as well, but this, the rational soul, is seperable to some extent, from the physical body. The mammal she changes into would need to have at least enough brain power to house her rational soul, perhaps such as a mule, but not a mouse.She can be more easily be changed into a mermaid or harpy, since legs are merely accidental to man/woman, and she would still retain her specific difference (which identifies her as human), that is, her intellect and reasoning power. (Reasoning does not mean logic, or just thinking, but here understand reasoning as the entire spectrum of unseen realities that makes up what a human mind does)
The race of mermaids or harpies, however, (different than a woman magically in the form of one), are intellective beasts or fey, not humans, but rather constructs of Hell.Of course, taken further, since the body parts are accidental, some human body part must remain in a metamorphosis.
In Apuleius' The Golden Ass, Apuleius is changed into a donkey by a witch. Nevertheless he is not a true donkey, since donkeys cannot employ human reason. One might say that he became "a human in the shape of a donkey". Now since the human flesh has no potential to become a donkey flesh, we must also conclude that in such a change the human flesh takes the shape of the donkey, in which case other donkeys would immediately notice the difference.
Such a metamorphosis "spell" would probably take many months of consuming a certain potion in order to be accomplished.Nothing can go contrary to the natural, since in that case it would be miraculous, and miracles are the work of God not wizards, and accomplished through clerics or paladins.Potential existance must must taken into account.
Read the Bladetongue Saga,epic of the Fourth Age
